This Year in History:
1542
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
On the banks of the Mississippi River in present-day Louisiana, Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto dies, ending a three-year journey for gold that took him halfway across what is now the United States. In order that local peoples would not learn of his death, and thus disprove de Soto’s claims of divinity, his men buried […]
On September 28, 1542, the Spanish explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo arrives in San Diego Bay while searching for the Strait of Anian, a mythical all-water route across North America. Cabrillo was not the first to search for a water passage across the North American continent, and he would not be the last. Ever since the […]
In Linlithgow Palace in Scotland, a daughter is born to James V, the dying king of Scotland. Named Mary, she was the only surviving child of her father and ascended to the Scottish throne when the king died just six days after her birth. Mary’s French-born mother, Mary of Guise, sent her to be raised […]
