1591 Ivan the Terrible has been dead for four years. Feodor is still tsar but thought incompetent. Another of Ivan's sons, nine-year-old Dmitri, a possible heir to the throne, dies after his throat is cut. Officials claim that the boy accidentally cut himself playing with a knife during an epileptic fit. Believing that Dmitri has been murdered, mobs attacks and kill Dmitri's guardians.
1591 Toyotomi Hideyoshi expands his rule to all of Japan.
1592 Toyotomi Hideyoshi turns his attention to conquests abroad. Drawing from his military successes he thinks his armies are invincible, and he foresees himself conquering the rest of the world, beginning with China, by way of Korea, which he invades.
1592 Pope Clement VIII states that "All the world suffers from the usury of the Jews, their monopolies and deceit. They have brought many unfortunate peoples into a state of poverty, especially farmers, working-class people, and the very poor."
1593 In Italy, Galileo develops the first thermometer.
1594 The Protestant Bourbon King of Navarre, Henry, has converted to Catholicism in order to extend his power to Paris. He is crowned King Henry IV, France's first Bourbon monarch.
1595 An English actor and writer, William Shakespeare, age 30, is busy writing plays. He is a Renaissance man, his work less devoted to God and more about the vanities of people than were the writings that preceded the Renaissance.
1598 Hideyoshi fails in a second attempt at conquest in Korea. His campaign ends with his death. He leaves an order for his forces to withdraw from Korea.
1598 France's wars of religion are over. Tolerance between Catholics and Protestants is proclaimed in the Edict of Nantes by France's Henry IV.
1600 The Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno is burned at the stake.
1600 Queen Elizabeth of England charters the British East India Company to compete with the Dutch, who control the trade in nutmeg from the Banda Islands.
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