March 24– Portuguese Navy Captain Álvaro de Carvalho reaches Mazagan in Morocco with a relief force that includes 600 well-equipped troops.1562 – O Triunfo Português no Grande Cerco a Mazagão in Barlavento Another force of 1,565 volunteers arrives on March 26 from Lisbon.[3]
May 5– Prince Abdullah of Morocco withdraws his troops after seeing no way to overcome Portuguese defenses at Marzagan.[7]
May 28– The Siege of Rouen as Claude, Duke of Aumale, leads 3,000 French government troops against the Huguenot fortress at Rouen. The siege lasts for five months. He orders a retreat in June but returns on 29 July with a larger force and heavier artillery.[8]
June 10– English Catholic printer Thomas Somerset is jailed at Fleet Prison "for translating an oratyon out of Frenche, made by the Cardinall of Lorraine, and putting the same without authority in prynte." On June 27, he is summoned before the Lords of the Council for a parole hearing, but is turned down because "he seamed to go about to justifye his cause" and returned to Fleet, "there to remaine until he shall have better considered of himself." He remains imprisoned for more than 19 years before finally being released on February 28, 1582.[9]
June 17 Full moon of Waso 924 ME– King King Bayinnaung of Burma establishes an army garrison at Dawei in preparation for an attack against the Siamese Kingdom of Ayutthaya.[11]
August 3– A severe hailstorm causes serious damage in the German town of Wiesensteig, and leads a few days later to the demand of Mayor Ulrich von Helfenstein for the arrest of several women on charges of practicing witchcraft. Six of the women are executed the first of 63 women and men put to death after being convicted of practicing sorcery.[12]
August 24– In the French city of Bar-sur-Seine, at least 300 Huguenots are massacred by Catholic soldiers after their success in reconquering the citadel there. The killing occurs nine days after the burning alive of 94 Huguenots at Lauzerte.
October 19–La Herradura naval disaster: Twenty-five ships sink in a storm off of the coast of Spain in the bay of La Herradura, where 28 ships had been anchored to weather the elements. At least 3,000 people are killed, and perhaps as many as 5,000, while another 2,000 survivors, mostly slaves on the galleys, are able to escape to shore.[15][16]
October– Privateer John Hawkins undertakes the first of several slave trading voyages, attacking Portuguese slave ships off the West African coast and forcibly transporting the enslaved Africans onboard to Spanish colonies in the Americas to sell. Hawkins arrives at the island of Hispaniola in the Spanish West Indies, where he illicitly sells the enslaved Africans to local colonists, as his presence is technically in violation of Spanish law.[17]
December 19–Battle of Dreux: Huguenot and Catholic forces fight a bloody battle, narrowly won by the Catholic side. The official leaders of both armies are captured in the battle.[19]
The Pünte at Wiltshausen, a small, hand-operated ferry, which becomes a historic monument in the late 20th century, is first recorded.
The Portuguese army is defeated at the Battle of Mulleriyawa, Sri Lanka, at the hand of the Sitawaka army commanded by Prince Tikiri Bandara (King Rajasinghe), leaving 1600 dead. This is considered the worst defeat the Portuguese have suffered up to this time.
An arsenal in Paris explodes. As recorded by Ambroise Paré in The Workes of Ambrose Parey: "In the yeare of our Lord 1562, a quantity of this pouder [gunpowder] which was not very great, taking fire by accident in the Arcenall of Paris, caused such a tempest that the whole city shook, but it quite overturned many of the neighboring houses, and shook off the tiles and broke the windows of those which were further away; and to conclude, like a storm of lightning, it laid many here and there for dead, some lost their sight, others their hearing, and others their limbs were torn apart as if they had been rent with wild horses" (p.415).
Early Voyages and Travels to Russia and Persia, by Anthony Jenkinson and Other Englishmen, With Some Account of the First Intercourse of the English with Russia and Central Asia by Way of the Caspian Sea, ed. by E. Delmar Morgan and C. H. Coote · Volume 1 (Burt Franklin, Publisher, 1886)("the 15. day of March, the yeere aforesaid, I dined againe in his maiesties presence in company of an Ambassador of Persia and others... I departed from the citie of Mosco the 27 day of Aprill 1562, downe by the great river of Volga, in company of the said Ambassador of Persia." p.124
Midelfort, Erik (1972). Witch hunting in southwestern Germany, 1562-1684; the social and intellectual foundations. Stanford University Press. p.88. ISBN9780804708050.
von Adelung, Friedrich (1846). Kritisch-literärische Übersicht der Reisenden in Russland bis 1700, deren Berichte bekannt sind (Critical-literary overview of known reports of travelers in Russia up to 1700) (in German). Saint Petersburg: Eggers. p.231.
Vignola. Canon of the Five Orders of Architecture, translated with an introduction by Branko Mitrovic. New York: Acanthus Press, 1999). p. 17. ISBN0-926494-16-3.
