1516
year
Year 1516 (MDXVI) was a leap year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar, there is also a leap year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar.
Events
January–March
January 20 – Juan Díaz de Solís arrives in what is now Punta del Este in Uruguay, where he becomes the first European to sail into the Río de la Plata (in future Argentina). Díaz and nine of his men are attacked and killed by the local Charrúa people shortly after their arrival. although there was likely an expedition earlier in 1511-1512 by João de Lisboa and Estevão de Fróis.
January 23 – With the death of Ferdinand II of Aragon, his grandson, Charles of Ghent, becomes King of Spain; his mother Queen Joanna of Castile also succeeds as Queen of Aragon and co-monarch with Carlos, but remains confined at Tordesillas.
February 18 – After two months in Bologna, part of the Papal States in Italy, Pope Leo X concludes two months of negotiation with King François I of France. Their talks result in the abrogation of the French Pragmatic Sanction, and the conclusion of a new Concordat between the Papacy and France.
February 21 – Sir Edward Poynings becomes England's ambassador to Spain a second time and meets with King Carlos I to negotiate a treaty.
February 25 – In his capacity as Lord of Ireland, Henry VIII opens the first of six assemblies of parliament during his reign of the Parliament of Ireland at Dublin. The parliament holds three sessions, ending on October 2, when it is dismissed.
“1516” enters the record as year. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what year can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“1516” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, year provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6212. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1516, 1511 and 1512.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “1516”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow 1516 primary sources, 1516 archive and year research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “1516”?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “1516” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.