1564 William Shakespeare and Galileo are born.
1565 Pencils are first manufactured in England.
1567 Two comedies are performed at a Spanish mission in Tequesta, Florida.
1576 The first playhouse in England is run by James Burbage.
1588 Spanish Armada is battered by the English.
1590 Henry VI, Part 1 becomes William Shakespeare’s first play to open onstage.
1595 Shakespeare writes Romeo and Juliet.
1596 Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is completed.
1599 The Globe Theater is built. Shakespeare writes Julius Caesar.
1600 Shakespeare writes Hamlet.
1603 James VI of Scotland rises to the English throne after the death of Elizabeth I, uniting England and Scotland under one crown, and takes the new name, James I.
1605 Miguel de Cervantes publishes Don Quixote.
1605-6 Shakespeare writes Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth.
1607 Jamestown, Virginia is founded.
1609 Johannes Kepler establishes that the planets move in an elliptical path around the sun; Galileo builds his first telescope.
1611 The King James Bible is published.
1614 English settler John Rolfe marries Pocahontas, the daughter of a Native American chief.
- William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes both die.
1623 Publication of the First Folio.