February 29

Alessandro Farnese, who as Pope Paul III would later convene the Council of Trent, was born in the Papal States.

Patrick Hamilton, an early preacher of Reformation ideas in Scotland, was tried for heresy and burned at the stake in St Andrews.

Domingo Banez, a Spanish Dominican theologian known for his Thomistic writings on grace, was born at Medina del Campo.

Herman Hollerith, the American inventor whose punched-card tabulating machine mechanized the 1890 census and seeded the company that became IBM, was born in Buffalo, New York.