Thisepoch is the beginning of the 400-year Gregorian leap-year cycle within which digital files first existed; the last year of any such cycle is the only leap year whose year number is divisible by 100.
January 1 of this year (1601-01-01) is used as the base of file dates[1] and of Active Directory Logon dates[2] byMicrosoft Windows. It is also the date from which ANSI dates are counted and were adopted by the American National Standards Institute for use with COBOL and other computer languages. All versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onward count units of one hundred nanoseconds from this epoch as a counter having 63 bits until 30828/9/14 02:48:05.4775807.[3]April 1 of this year is the earliest possible calendar date inMicrosoft Outlook.[4]
February 25 – The Earl of Essex becomes the first of the Essex's Rebellion participants to be executed. He is beheaded atTower Hill. His co-conspirator, the Earl of Southampton, sentenced to death, but Queen Elizabeth commutes his penalty to life imprisonment; Southampton will be released two years later.
March 5 – The treason trial for five secondary participants inEssex's Rebellion —Gelli Meyrick,Henry Cuffe,Christopher Blount,Charles Danvers, and Sir John Davies — is held in London. All five are found guilty. Meyrick and Cuffe are hanged at Tyburn on March 13, and Blount and Danvers are beheaded at Tower Hill on March 18. Davies is allowed to go free.
May 5 – Dutch explorerJoris van Spilbergen, leading three ships of theCompagnie van De Moucheron, departs on his first expedition to Asia, departing fromVeere with the shipsRam,Schaap, andLam (Ram, Sheep and Lamb). After establishing trade inSri Lanka, Spilbergen and his crew return to the Dutch Republic in 1604.
Juan de Oñate, the Spanish colonial administrator in what is now the U.S. state ofNew Mexico, departs fromSan Gabriel de Nuevo Mexico with 130 Spanish soldiers and 12 priests on an expedition to explore the interior of the area.[8]
July 2 – The Spanish expedition ofJuan de Oñate reaches theCanadian River on (the feast day of Biblical Mary Magdalena), in what is now Texas.[9]
July 5 – TheSiege of Ostend, which will last more than three years and claims more than 100,000 casualties for both Spain and the Netherlands, begins asAlbert of Austria, Governor General of the Habsburg Netherlands, leads an attack on the Dutch Netherlands fortress atOstend. The Spanish forces eventually triumph on September 20, 1604, albeit in aPyrrhic victory that will see at least 60,000 soldiers killed, wounded, or dead from disease.[10]
September 11 – Queen Elizabeth I summons her 10th, and last, meeting of the English Parliament.
September 19 – The Juan de Oñate expedition of Spanish explorers first encounters the indigenousEscanjaque Indians in what is now the U.S. state ofKansas. The Escanjaques ask the Spaniards to assist them in a war against a rival tribe, the Rayados. Instead, Oñate befriends the Rayados five days later.[9]
September 28 – TheEscanjaque Indians attack Juan de Oñate's Spanish expedition as the Spaniards are returning from their furthest venture east, the Little Arkansas River.[9]
October 4 –Claudine de Culam, a 16-year-old girl in the French village ofRognon, is hanged after being convicted of "carnal cohabitation with a dog". The dog is hanged along with her.[13]
December 6 – TheBattle of Castlehaven is fought off of the coast of southern Ireland as six Spanish Navy ships led by GeneralPedro de Zubiaur are intercepted by an English fleet of four warships led and commanded bySir Richard Levenson. Two of the Spanish ships are sunk, and the other four are run aground.
December 27 – TheBattle of Bantam is fought within what is nowIndonesia off of the coast of the island ofJava, as Walter Harmensz leads five Dutch Republic galleons in a successful attack against a Portuguese fleet led by André Furtado de Mendonça.
^Claes-Göran Isacson,Vägen till stormakt - Vasaättens krig ("Road to Power: The war of the Vasa family") (Norstedts, 2006)
^Richard Flint and Shirley Cushing Flint,The Coronado Expedition: From the Distance of 460 Years (University of New Mexico Press, 2003)
^abcdStan Hoig,Came Men on Horses: The Conquistador Expeditions of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and Don Juan de Oñate (University Press of Colorado, 2013) pp. 221-230
^Anna E.C. Simoni,The Ostend Story: Early Tales of the Great Siege and the Mediating Role of Henrick Van Haestens (BRILL, 2021)
^"Litany", by Francis Mershman, inThe Catholic Encyclopedia (Robert Appleton Company, 1910)
^The Modern Part of an Universal History from the Earliest Account of Time, Vol. XII: History of the Othman Empire (S. Richardson 1759) p. 415
^A. F. Niemoller,Bestiality and the Law: A Resume of the Law and Punishments for Bestiality with Typical Cases from Fifteenth Century to the Present (Haldeman-Julius Publications, 1946)
^Palmer, Alan; Palmer, Veronica (1992).The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 166–168.ISBN0-7126-5616-2.
^Edwards, Phillip, ed. (1985).Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. New Cambridge Shakespeare. Cambridge University Press. p. 8.ISBN0-521-29366-9.Any dating of Hamlet must be tentative. Scholars date its writing as between 1599 and 1601.