| 1100–1532 | South America [administration] | The Inca empire dominates the Andes region of South America. Its population numbers as many as 12 million. Incan society is based on a strict hierarchy, with an emperor who rules with absolute power. Their religion is based on sun-worship, and they are skilled builders who create a system of roads and irrigation. |
| c. 1524 | Portugal [births and deaths] | Luís Vaz de Camões, national poet of Portugal, whose best-known work is Os lusíadas/The Lusiads (1572), born in Lisbon (–1580). |
| 1524 | Holy Roman Empire [political events] | Lutheranism is adopted during the year across the Holy Roman Empire by the rulers of Sagan in Silesia, Pomerania, Brandenburg-Kulmbach, Brunswick-Lüneburg, Schleswig, and Holstein. |
| 1524 | Holy Roman Empire, Swiss Confederation [political events] | The Swiss Protestant reformer Ulrich Zwingli establishes control over Zürich, and his colleagues Matthew Zell and Martin Bucer (the imperial knight Franz von Sickingen's former chaplain) establish control over Strassburg. |
| 1524 | Denmark-Norway, Sweden [treaties] | King Frederick I of Denmark and Norway confirms the independence of Sweden under King Gustavus I Vasa in the Treaty of Malmö, mediated by the Hanseatic city of Lübeck, thus ending the Union of Kalmar (Denmark-Norway and Sweden, united in 1397). |
| January 1524 | Holy Roman Empire, Saxony, Germany [political events] | The Diet (legislative assembly) of Nuremberg opens and the papal legate Lorenzo Campeggio orders the enforcement of the repressive Edict of Worms (of May 1521) banning the German church reformer Martin Luther and condemning his teachings. In response, the Lutherans, led by Frederick III, Elector of Saxony, demand that a national synod should meet to discuss church reform at Speyer in the Rhineland Palatinate in November. Frederick's cousin, Duke George, leads an attack by the imperial cities on the financial burden of the Reichsregiment (the imperial governing council) that leads to its abandonment. |
| March - September 1524 | Livonia, Prussia, Courland, Estonia, Poland-Lithuania [political events] | The diet of the Baltic Estates subject to the Teutonic Knightly Orders swears to defend the ‘Word of God without any additions’ to the death, effectively adopting the Reformation. Iconoclastic riots take place in the cities of Riga and Reval (present-day Tallinn, Estonia). |
| May 1524 | Ottoman Empire [births and deaths] | Selim II, Ottoman sultan (1566–74), who brought peace to Europe and Asia, but during whose reign the power of the sultans began to diminish, born (–1574). |
| June 1524 | Holy Roman Empire [political events] | The Bauernkrieg (‘Peasants' War’), the most extensive and revolutionary of European insurrections to date, begins in the Hegau at Stühlingen, against the landgrave's despotic demands that his peasants ignore the hay harvest to collect snail shells. |
