• In revenge for the attempt to invade England by the Spanish Armada the year before, Sir Francis Drake leads the "English Armada" in an attempt to invade and liberate Portugal from Spanish rule. Drake's fleet sacks the minor Spanish port of A Coruña enroute, but is unable to capture Lisbon due to storms, disease, and mostly incredibly poor planning and overconfidence. Drake heads home in defeat and the tide of the Anglo-Spanish War turns against the English once more, ultimately causing England to make peace on terms favorable to Spain at the Treaty of London in 1604.
• The War of the Three Henrys intensifies in France as the Catholic League, enraged by the assassination of their leader Henry de Guise the year before, makes open rebellion against French king Henry III, declaring him deposed and acclaiming the Cardinal de Bourbon as King Charles X in League-controlled Paris. The two remaining Henrys - King Henry III and his erstwhile enemey Henry of Navarre - team up to beseige Paris, but the seige is broken when a fanatical Catholic monk assassinates Henry III and his Catholic troops refuse to support the protestant Henry of Navarre despite his proclaiming himself King Henry IV. Even with Spanish intervention on behalf of the League, the last remaining Henry manages to renew his assault on Paris, winning a major victory over Spanish and League forces at the Battle of Arques, but without the aid of Henry III's old supporters, he cannot take Paris, and the war drags on.
• Japanese warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi, having secured control of the west and the south, turns his attention to the east, invading the Kanto plain and initiating the Odawara Campaign against the Hojo clan to wipe out the last significant resistance to his dominance.
• A Spanish-fomented rebellion is raised in Scotland by the Earl of Huntly and Sir Brian O'Rourke, but is quickly put down by forces loyal to the English.
• The Russian Orthodox Church is elevated to its own patriarchate, co-equal with the other Eastern Christian churches.
• Galileo becomes a professor at the University of Pisa and begins his experiments on the laws of bodies in motion which would revolutionize science.
• Meanwhile, medieval Christian demonology reaches its apogee as Jesuit priest Peter Binsfield publishes the authoritative list of demons and their associated sins, including a list of the demons associated with the Seven Deadly Sins: Lucifer (pride), Mammon (avarice), Asmodeus (lechery), Satan (anger), Beelzebub (gluttony), Leviathan (envy), and Belphegor (sloth).
• Englishman William Lee invents the knitting machine, which is denied a patent by Queen Elizabeth I for fear of destroying the livelihood of hand knitters, but catches on in France and eventually revolutionizes the textile industry.
• Swiss Protestant theologian Thomas Erastus's treatise on punishment and one of the important documents in Erastianism, Explicatio, is published for the first time, and sets off a heated debate over the place of religious measures like excommunication in the punishment of earthly sins.
• Spanish Jesuit theologian Luis Molina publishes his treatise Concordia, in which he first expounds the doctrine now known as Molinism which attempts to reconcile the dogma of God's grace with the dogma of the free will by making the condition of grace dependent upon the free assent of the human will.
• Thomas Kyd's play The Spanish Tragedy is published for the first time.
• Thomas Lodge writes his romance Scillaes Metamorphosis, a key source of Shakespeare's poem Venus and Adonis.
• The Arte of English Poesie is published. Believed to have been written by George Puttenham, or perhaps his brother Richard, it is one of the most comprehensive studies of English verse up to this time.
• The Indian city of Hyderabad, now the capital of the state of Andhra Pradesh, is established as a fort named Bhagyanagar by the Golconda kingdom.

These people were born in 1589:

• Russian tsar Feodor II.
• Prince of Transylvania Gabriel Báthory.
• Yonten Gyatso, the fourth Dalai Lama.
• Manchu general Abatai.
• Croatian poet Ivan Gundulić.
• French philologist Franciscus Junius, a pioneer in the study of the Gothic and Anglo-Saxon languages.
• Spanish poet Esteban Manuel de Villegas.
• French poet Honorat de Bueil, seigneur de Racan.
• Dutch thologian Gisbertus Voetius.
• Spanish theologian Antonio Escobar y Mendoza.
• French historian Michel Baudier.
• Spanish historian Antonio de Leon Pinelo.
• English courtier Sir Henry Vane.
• Italian painter Domenico Feti.
• Dutch painter Adriaen van de Venne.
• Toyotomi Tsurumatsu, son of Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

These people died in 1589:

• French Queen Catherine de Medici.
• French king Henry III, assassinated by Catholic partisan Jacques Clément.
• Fanatical catholic monk Jacques Clément, assassin of French king Henry III, killed on the spot, then posthumously quartered and burned.
• Legendary Indian musician Tansen, one of the "nine jewels" of Akbar's court, and one of the founders of classical Indian music.
• Hungarian humanist and diplomat Andrija Dudić.
• Polish clergyman, diplomat, cartographer, and historian Marcin Kromer.
• Italian anatomist Julius Caesar Aranzi.
• Sicilian friar Saint Benedict the Black.
• Belgian thologian Michael Baius.
• Influential Italian Catholic Cardinal Alessandro Farnese.

1588 - 1589 - 1590

16th century