1576

1576 (MDLXXVI) was a leap year beginning on a Sunday of the Julian calendar.

Events

• January 20: in the current state of Guanajuato (Mexico) the villa of León is founded.
• January 25: On the West Coast of Africa, the Portuguese explorer Paulo Dias de Novais founded the village of São Paulo da Assumpção de Loanda, which will become Luanda.
• March 8: Spanish Diego García de Palacio was the first to give news of the Mayan city of Xukpi (now Copán, Honduras), at least in writing to King Felipe II of Spain, in his Copán ' s reports.
• April 25: Holland and Zeland sign the Delft Union, by which both provinces join in a confederation under the government of Guillermo de Orange.
• 5 May: in France, the Edict of Beaulieu or the Peace of Monsieur (since Monsieur, the Duke of Anjou, brother of King Henry III, who negotiated it) ends the fifth French Wars of religion. The Protestants are given the freedom of worship again.
• July 11: English navigator Martin Frobisher arrives in Greenland.
• August 11: English navigator Martin Frobisher, in his search for the "passage of the northwest", enters the bay that today bears his name.
• 2 November: Rodolfo II becomes emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
• 4 November: In Belgium, Spanish soldiers begin the three days of looting of Antwerp, in which they will destroy the city. Because of the destruction, Antwerp ceases to be the most important city in Belgium, passing this title to Amsterdam.
• 8 November: in Belgium the looting ends, through the Pacification of Ghent.
• 14 December: Hungarian prince Stephen Bathory is elected king of Poland.
• A plague epidemic is happening in Venice.
• In New Spain (now Mexico) there is a coconutliztli epidemic.
• In Colombia Antioquia was founded.

Art and literature

• Jean Bodin: The six books of the Republic.
• One such Thomas Whythorne writes an early example of autobiography.

Births

Deaths

• January 19: Hans Sachs, German poet (n. 1494).
• 2 May: Bartolomé de Carranza, Spanish theologian (n. 1503).
• 2 August: Lorenzo Sabatini, Italian painter (n. c. 1530).
• August 27: Titian, Italian painter (n. 1485).
• Luis de Requesens, Spanish Governor of the Netherlands.
• Nicolà Vicentino, musical theorist and Italian composer of the Renaissance.
• Tahmasp I, king pėrsa.