1543 - Definition and Overview

Events

• February 11 - Battle of Wayna Daga - Ethiopian/Portuguese? troops defeat the armies of Adal and the Ottoman Empire.
• May - Nicolaus Copernicus publishes De revolutionibus orbium coelestium
• July 12 - King Henry VIII of England marries Catherine Parr. It is the sixth of Henry's marriages and the third of Catherine's. Princess Elizabeth attends the wedding
• Nice is captured and sacked by a Franco-Turkish fleet under Khair ed-Din Barbarossa.
• September-October - Landrecies in Picardy is besieged by forces under Emperor Charles V, but withdraw on the approach of the French army.
• Japanese receive first firearms from shipwrecked Portuguese
• Indians in Spanish colonies are announced free against the wish of local settlers

Science

• Andreas Vesalius publishes De Humanis Corporis Fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body), revolutionising the science of human anatomy
• Nicolaus Copernicus - De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium

Births

• Tokugawa Ieyasu, Japanese shogun and founder of Tokugawa shogunate
• Sonam Gyrso, who will become Tibet's 3rd Dalai Lama Buddhism
• Federigo Zuccaro, Italian painter
• William Byrd, renowned English composer
• January 18 (baptized) Alfonso Ferrabosco, Italian composer active in England
• Giovanni Maria Nanino (Nanini), Italian composer of the Roman School

Deaths

• February 11 - Ahmed Gran, sultan of Adal.
• May 24 - Nicolaus Copernicus, Polish astronomer
• July 19 - Mary Boleyn, former mistress to both Francis I of France and Henry VIII of England.
• Francesco da Milano, Italian composer