1556

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	15th century – 16th century – 17th century
Decades:	1520s  1530s  1540s  – 1550s –  1560s  1570s  1580s
Years:	1553 1554 1555 – 1556 – 1557 1558 1559

Events

• January 23 – Most devastating recorded earthquake in Shaanxi, China. Over 850,000 deaths.

Births

• January 8 – Uesugi Kagekatsu, Japanese samurai and warlord (died 1623)
• February 21 – Sethus Calvisius, German calendar reformer (d. 1615)
• March 7 – Guillaume du Vair, French statesman and philosopher (died 1621)
• June 6 – Edward la Zouche, 11th Baron Zouche (died 1625)
• November 15 – Jacques-Davy Duperron, French cardinal (died 1618)
• Henry Briggs, English mathematician (died 1630)
• Margaret Clitherow, English Catholic martyr (died 1586)
• Shibata Katsutoyo, Japanese military commander (died 1583)
• Nakagawa Kiyohide, Japanese military commander (died 1583)
• Ahmad Baba al Massufi, Sudanese writer and political leader
• James Melville, Scottish divine and reformer (died 1614)
• Maria of Nassau, second daughter of William the Silent (died 1616)

1556 Media

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  January 23: Shaanxi earthquake, devastation kills 830,000 in China.

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  Countess Maria of Nassau

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  • This is part of a set of images gathered by User:Dcoetzee from the National Portrait Gallery, London website using a special tool. All images in this batch have a known author, and have been manually examined for strong evidence that the author was dead before 1939, such as approximate death dates, birth dates, floruit dates, and publication dates.
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  Saint Ignatius of Loyola