1558

"Ytt may pleasse your majesty to understand, thatt the firste occasion of the fall of exchainge did growe by the Kinges majesty, your latte father, in abasinge his quoyne ffrome vi ounces fine too iii ounces fine. Wheruppon the exchainge fell ffrome xxvis. viiid. to xiiis. ivd. which was the occasion thatt all your fine goold was convayd ought of this your realme."

- English financier Thomas Gresham in a letter to the new queen Elizabeth I,
in a passage that 300 years later will become the basis of "Gresham's Law"
stating that "bad money drives out good."

In the year AD 1558...

• Queen Elizabeth I takes the throne of England, succeeding her half-sister Mary I and inaugurating the Elizabethan Era of English history.
• The last of the numerous Italian Wars continues between France and Spain for control of Italy.
• Angered by English entry into the war on the side of the Spanish, French troops led by Francis, Duke of Guise capture Calais, the last continental possession of the Kingdom of England.
• French armies continue on to plunder Spanish possessions in the Low Countries.
• However, French forces under Marshal Paul de Thermes are badly defeated by Spanish forces led by Lamoral, Count of Egmont (with the support of the cannons of the English Navy) at the Battle of Gravelines on the beach near Calais, forcing French King Henry II to sue for peace and forever renounce all French claims in Italy the following year.
• Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible launches an invasion of Livonia, setting off the 25-year Livonian War pitting Imperial Russia against a host of enemies, including the Livonian Federation, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Denmark-Norway, Sweden, and Transylvania.
• In the Battle of Wadi al-Laban, Moroccan sultan Abdallah al-Ghalib halts an attempted invasion of Morocco by Ottoman forces led by Hasan Pasha of Algiers.
• Mary, Queen of Scots, marries Francis, Dauphin of France, at the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris.
• Scottish religious reformer John Knox publishes his polemic The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, arguing that female monarchs are contrary to God's will.
• The Polish Postal Service is founded when Polish king Sigismund II appoints Italian merchant Prospero Provana to organize a postal system that private individuals can use but which is funded by the Polish crown.
• The Hamburg Stock Exchange, the oldest stock exchange in Germany, is founded in the free city of Hamburg.
• The University of Jena is founded in Jena, Thuringia, Germany.
• Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder likely paints his masterpiece Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, now known only from a close copy made by a different artist.
• The Heptaméron, a collection of 72 short stories mainly dealing with love, lust, infidelity, and other romantic and sexual matters written by Marguerite, Queen of Navarre (1492-1549), is first published posthumously.

These people were born in 1558:

• National hero of Romania Prince Michael the Brave.
• Future Archduke of Austria Maximilian III.
• English playwright Thomas Kyd.
• English playwright Robert Greene.
• Dutch engraver Hendrik Goltzius.
• Olivier van Noort, the first Dutchman to circumnavigate the world.
• Japanese craftsman Hon'ami Kōetsu, founder of the Rinpa school of Japanese painting.
• Japanese warlord Bessho Nagaharu, future daimyo of the Bessho clan.
• Japanese warlord Oda Nobukatsu , the second son of Oda Nobunaga.
• Japanese warlord Oda Nobutaka, the third son of Oda Nobunaga.

These people died in 1558:

• Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.
• English queen Mary I, succeeded by her half-sister Elizabeth I.
• French classical scholar Julius Caesar Scaliger.
• Welsh physician and mathematician Robert Recorde, inventor of the equals sign.
• Japanese warlord Oda Nobuyuki, executed by his older brother Oda Nobunaga for planning a revolt against his authority.

1557 - 1558 - 1559

16th century

How they were made