• Responding to an invitation from the governor of the Punjab to overthrow the sultan of Delhi, Afghan warlord Babur launches an invasion of India that will ultimately lead to his establishing the Mughal Empire
• The five-year German Peasants' War comes to a bloody end with the total defeat of the insurgents by the army of the Swabian League at the Battle of Frankenhausen. An estimated 100,000 peasants are killed in the battle and its aftermath, and Thomas Müntzer and the other peasant leaders are executed.
• The interminable Italian Wars drag on between France and Spain for control of the Italian states. Spain strikes a major blow as Hapsburg forces under Ferdinando Francesco d'Avalos finally end French control of Milan with a brilliant victory at the Battle of Pavia. French king Francis I is captured in the battle, and will only regain his freedom by consenting to the humiliating Treaty of Madrid the following year.
• The armies of Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent invade Austria and Hungary, laying siege to Vienna, although they fail to capture it.
• Muslim sultan of Adal (in what is now Egypt) Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al Ghazi, better known to his Christian enemies simply as Grañ ("the Lefthanded"), embarks on his two-decades-long jihad against the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia.
• Albert of Brandenburg, grand master of the Teutonic Knights, converts to Lutheranism and secularizes the order's domains to create the Duchy of Prussia as his private fief. He nominally recognizes Polish king Sigismund II as his liege lord, thus ending Sigismund's war against him.
• Mixco Viejo, capital of the Pocomam Maya in what is now Guatemala, falls to the forces of Spanish conquistador Pedro de Alvarado.
• Spanish explorer Rodrigo de Bastidas establishes Santa Marta on the north coast of what is now Colombia, initiating Spanish conquest of the region.
• William Tyndale prints the first-ever English translation of the Bible.
• Franciscan friar Matteo da Bascio begins a reform movement to return to a literal observance of the teachings of Saint Francis of Assisi which will eventually be recognized as the Capuchin order in 1528.
• China's Ming Dynasty further tightens its ban on maritime travel, ordering all seagoing vessels with more than one mast to be destroyed.
• Indian astronomy prodigy Ganesa, at the tender age of 17, composes a seminal book of lunar tables that will be studied by Indian astronomers for centuries.
• The splintering of Martin Luther's Protestant reform movement accelerates as Luther splits with the humanists, writing The Bondage of the Will in response to the attacks of Erasmus, and continues his opposition to the ongoing Peasant Revolt by writing "Against the Murderous and Thieving Hordes of Peasants" (Luther always sided with the princes who protected him). Luther also acts upon his earlier denunciation of religious celibacy by marrying Katherine von Bora, a former nun.
• Portuguese explorer Estavão Gomes lands at Cape Fear, becoming the first European to visit what is now North Carolina.

These people were born in 1525:

• Flemish master Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
• Italian religious reformer Laelius Socinus, whose writings would posthumously lead to the development of Socinianism.
• Italian composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, whose masses and motets represent the culmination of Renaissance Music.
• English antiquarian John Stow; his Survey of London (1598) remains one of the most important sources for understanding Elizabethan London.
• English adventurer, privateer, and double agent Thomas Stucley.
• English navigator Stephen Borough, first person to reach northern Russia by sea.

These people died in 1525:

• Cuauhtemoc, last emperor of the Aztec Empire. Having succeeded to the throne following the death of his brother Montezuma II in 1520, his reign as a puppet ruler finally came to an end when he was hung by Cortez as a "traitor".
• Incan emperor Huayna Capac, succeeding by his sons Atahualpa and Huascar, between whom he foolishly divided the empire.
• Soami, Japanese painter, art critic, poet, landscape gardener, master of the tea ceremony and flower arrangement, and one of the seminal figures in the development of Japanese aesthetics.
• Militant radical German Protestant reformer Thomas Müntzer, beheaded following the failure of his German Peasants' War.
• Neapolitan general Ferdinando Francesco d'Avalos, marchese di Pescara, leader of the Hapsburg forces of Charles V against the forces of French king Francis I in the Italian Wars.
• German merchant prince Jakob Fugger (II), the wealthiest man in Europe at the time of his death and primary creditor to Holy Roman Emperors Maximilian I and Charles V.
• Imposter and pretender to the English throne Lambert Simnel.
• English nobleman Richard de la Pole, last of the Pole family of English nobles and last remaining Yorkist claimant to the English throne. He, his family, and the Yorkist house are extinguished with his death while fighting for the French in the Battle of Pavia.

1524 - 1525 - 1526

16th century