1586

• 19th of November Henry Barrow, English Puritan and Separatist is imprisoned
• End of the reign of Emperor Ogimachi of Japan
• Emperor Go-Yozei ascends to the throne of Japan
• Toyotomi Hideyoshi becomes grand minister of Japan
• William Harrison becomes canon of Windsor
• Luis Barahona de Soto publishes Primera parte de la Angélica
• William Camden publishes Britannia
• Simon Stevin, a Dutch mathematician demonstrates that two objects of different weight fall with the same speed.
• Roanoke, the first English colony in the New World, is founded
• St. Augustine, Florida, and Santo Domingo in the modern day Dominican Republic are plundered and burned by English sea captain Sir Francis Drake
• Jacobus Gallus composes his motet O magnum mysterium
• Caesar Baronius publishes a new edition of Roman martyrology
• The first HMS Vanguard is launched in England
• Thomas Cavendish, English explorer, begins his circumnavigated of the globe.

• theologian Johann Valentin Andrea
• Axel Oxenstierna's half-brother, Gabriel Bengtsson
• Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel and Surrey
• Cornelis van Poelenburgh, a Dutch painter of Italian landscapes
• Jacob Revius, poet who also worked also on the new bible translation known as the Statenbijbel

• January 25 - Lucas Cranach the Younger, a painter
• March 26 - Joan Naylor, mother of Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork
• June 28 - Primoz Trubar, the author of the first printed book in Slovenian
• September 20 - Chidiock Tichborne, English conspirator and poet, executed
• October 17 - Sir Philip Sidney, English poet, courtier and soldier, known as a writer of sonnets, killed in the battle of Zutphen
• Sir Anthony Babington, executed for leading the Babington plot.
• Stephen Báthory King of Poland.
• Andrea Gabrieli, Italian composer
• Ottavio Farnese, Duke of Parma
• Joachim Ernest who united the whole of Anhalt under his rule
• Peter Symonds whose will creates a fund to create Peter Symonds College
• Theoleptus II, Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople