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1586

year

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 15, 2026
Entity authorityQ6739 ↗
Source-derived summary

1586 (MDLXXXVI) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar, the 1586th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 586th year of the 2nd millennium, the 86th year of the 16th century, and the 7th year of the 1580s decade. As of the start of 1586, the Gregorian calendar was 10 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.

January – March

January 3 – Augustus of Wettin, the Elector of Saxony, marries Agnes Hedwig of Anhalt, the 12-year-old daughter of Joachim Ernest, Prince of Anhalt. Augustus dies less than six weeks later.

January 18 – The 7.9 magnitude Tenshō earthquake strikes the Chubu region of Japan, triggering a tsunami and causing at least 8,000 deaths.

February 11

After a two-day battle, an English assault force led by Francis Drake captures the South American port of Cartagena de Indias, part of Spain's colony, the Viceroyalty of Peru (now Cartagena in Colombia.

In Dresden, Christian I becomes the new Elector of Saxony, after the death of his father Augustus.

February 14 – In India, Yakub Shah Chak becomes the new Sultan of Kashmir after the death of his father, the Sultan Yousuf Shah.

February 16 – In what is now Buner District, Pakistan, Kalu Khan leads his Yousafzai-Afghan Lashkar to defeat the Mughal Army at the Karakar Pass in the Afghan-Mughal War, annihilating them by the 10s of thousands and inflicting one of the greatest defeats in Mughal history to Emperor of India Akbar the Great known as Battle of the Malandari Pass.

February 23 – The Scottish crown jewels, recovered for King James VI by William Stewart of Caverston, are formally returned to the royal treasurer, Lord Melville.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “1586” is year. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through year, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1586, 1923—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, year is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “year” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6739. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1586 and 1923.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. 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.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “1586”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow 1586 primary sources, 1586 archive and year research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “1586”?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “1586” 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.