Ivan the Terrible asked Elizabeth I for asylum in England in case his boyars overthrew him. The queen agreed, provided he paid his own way. Later he even sought to marry her relative Mary Hastings.

1570 · 1582 · apart: 12 years

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The event

• Ivan IV crowned Tsar1547 · Dormition Cathedral, Moscow. On 16 January 1547 Grand Prince Ivan IV was crowned in the Kremlin's Dormition Cathedral, the first to take the title of tsar. This created the Tsardom of Russia, which lasted until the empire was proclaimed in 1721.

16th century

More amazing facts

• 1564 In 1564 Ivan Fyodorov printed the Apostol in Moscow, and Shakespeare was born in England.
• 1565 · 1572 Ivan the Terrible's Oprichnina (1565–1572) and France's St Bartholomew's Day massacre (1572) were bloody purges of the same decade.
• 1566 · 1601 The great astronomer Tycho Brahe wore a metal nose.
• 1569 Most online maps use a projection from 1569.
• 1571 In 1571 Spain was busy at both ends of its empire: in June it founded Manila in the Philippines, and in October it joined its allies in destroying the Ottoman fleet at Lepanto.
• 1572 Two and a half months after the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre a new star blazed in the sky. Tycho Brahe spotted it on 11 November 1572 and showed the heavens could change: it was a supernova.

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