The source of the "contagion", as French…

Burmese king Bayinnaung, intent on subduing the fractious Shan states of Upper Burma, launches a large-scale assault on the north and in March 1555 captures the Shan-held former Burmese capital of Ava.

No stigma had attached to Chancellor on his return to London in the summer of 1554, despite King Edward having died and his successor Mary having executed Northumberland for attempting to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne.

The Muscovy Company, as the association of London merchants is now called, has sent Chancellor again to the White Sea.

He has learned on this voyage what had happened to Willoughby, recovered his papers, and found out about the discovery of Novaya Zemlya.

Chancellor spends the summer of 1555 dealing with the Tsar, organizing trade, and trying to learn how China might be reached by the northern route.

Georgius Agricola, the German mineralogist and educator who serves as town physician of Joachimsthal, dies at sixty-one on November 21, 1555, having completed his twenty-five-year study of all aspects of the mining and metallurgy industry by which his town thrives.

His De re metallica, a twelve-chapter treatise on mining and metallurgy, including two hundred and ninety-two woodcut illustrations carefully executed by Blasius Weffringis, will see posthumous publication in early 1556.

Agricola has also authored several works on medicine, geology, mineralogy, politics, and economics.

De re metallica mentions the use of a forked hazelwood stick—the virgula divina, or "divining rod"—to find silver ore in medieval German mines.

Agricola's treatise serves as an engineering tool, demonstrating that basic mining operations—draining and ventilating the mines, carrying the ore to the surface, and crushing and washing it preparatory to working it—are all undergoing mechanization.

The diet of the Holy Roman Empire meets, after years of conflict, in Augsburg in 1555 to make peace between the warring Roman Catholic and Lutheran princes of Germany.

The Peace of Augsburg, negotiated by Ferdinand Habsburg, King of Germany and brother of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, adopts the formula cuius regio, eius religio, whereby each prince—not his subjects— is to determine the religious character of his territory.

The settlement, while a great victory for Protestantism, is essentially a truce calling for the maintenance of the religious and political status quo.

In effect, it recognizes Lutheranism as the religion of most of northern and central Germany.

Lutheranism and the rival Protestant sect of Calvinism, excluded from the settlement, continue to make progress in Germany, to the dismay of Catholic princes and church leaders.

Although the settlement divides the Holy Roman Empire into Catholic and Lutheran states, and at the same time curbs the emperor's authority over the princes, the Habsburg rulers do not abandon their objective of forging the patchwork of German, Dutch, French, Italian, Baltic, Slavic and Magyar polities into a modern, unified state.

Suleiman, realizing that conditions in the Porte and abroad will not permit the high expenses of an all-out war against Persia despite an excellent chance of success, finally despairs of defeating his elusive enemies and makes peace with the Safavid rulers at Amasya in 1555.

However, this first formal peace between the Ottomans and the Safavids offers no clear solution to the problems confronting the sultan on his eastern frontier.

Under the terms of the peace, ...

...the Ottomans abandon all claims to Tabriz, ...

...Erivan (Yerevan), and ...

...Nakhjivan (Naxçivan), but ...

...retain control of Mesopotamia, ...

...Erzurum, ...