1558 - Definition and Overview

Events

• January 7 - French troops led by Francis, Duke of Guise take Calais, the last continental possession of England
• July 13 - Battle of Gravelines: In France, Spanish forces led by Count Lamoral of Egmont defeat the French forces of Marshal Paul des Thermes at Gravelines.
• April 24 - Mary I of Scotland marries Francis II of France
• November 17 - Elizabethan era begins: Queen Mary I of England dies and is succeeded by her half-sister Elizabeth.
• Tobacco comes to France

Births

• October 12 - Archduke Maximilian III of Austria
• Robert Greene, English playwright, poet, pamphleteer, and prose writer
• Thomas Kyd, English playwright
• Chidiock Tichborne, English conspirator and poet (executed 1586)
• Giovanni Bassano, Italian composer and cornettist of the Venetian school

Deaths

• April 18 - Aleksandra Lisowska, wife of Suleiman the Magnificent
• September 21 - Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
• October 21 - Julius Caesar Scaliger, humanist scholar
• November 17 - Queen Mary I of England.