1597
Yi Sun-sin Wins at Myeongnyang
With only thirteen remaining Korean ships, Admiral Yi Sun-sin ambushed a Japanese fleet of more than a hundred in the narrow straits of Myeongnyang. Tidal currents threw the Japanese vessels into confusion while Korean cannons picked them off. It was one of history's most lopsided naval victories. Yi's tactical genius in using tidal currents to neutralize Japanese numbers has been studied by naval strategists ever since.
Shakespeare Buys New Place
William Shakespeare, doing well enough as playwright and shareholder in the Lord Chamberlain's Men, bought the second-largest house in Stratford, a substantial property called New Place. His father's fortunes had recovered through his son's success. Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream were already on the stage. The purchase reflected his growing wealth from the Globe, where his shares made him one of England's most prosperous theater entrepreneurs.
Second Roanoke Mystery Deepens
English investigators making inquiries along the Carolina coast failed to find any trace of the lost Roanoke colonists. Rumors circulated of white children living among the Croatan, but nothing was confirmed. The fate of Virginia Dare and her neighbors had already passed from history into American folklore. The word CROATOAN carved on a post has generated theories from peaceful assimilation to massacre, none confirmed.
Twenty-Six Martyrs of Japan
On a hillside outside Nagasaki, twenty-six Catholics, including six European Franciscans and twenty Japanese converts, were crucified on Hideyoshi's orders. They sang a hymn as they died. The executions marked the beginning of the long, grinding suppression of Christianity in Japan, which would accelerate under the Tokugawa. Their crucifixion began the long suppression of Christianity in Japan, accelerating under the Tokugawa. They were canonized in 1862.
Francis Bacon Publishes Essays
The English lawyer and philosopher Francis Bacon published the first edition of his Essays, terse aphoristic meditations on honor, truth, studies, and death. Bacon styled them counsels civil and moral. Readers loved their economy and would love them more as he expanded the book in successive editions. The terse, aphoristic style established a distinctively English tradition of moral reflection influencing writers from Johnson to Emerson.