1540 in New Spain

Yucatán, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Yucatán, is one of the 31 states which, along with Mexico City, constitute the 32 federal entities of Mexico. It comprises 106 separate municipalities, and its capital city is Mérida.

Francisco de Ulloa (died 1540) was a Spanish explorer who explored the west coast of present-day Mexico and the Baja California Peninsula under the commission of Hernán Cortés. Ulloa's voyage was among the first to disprove the cartographic misconception of the existence of the Island of California.

The Cathedral of Santa María la Menor in the Colonial City of Santo Domingo is dedicated to St. Mary of the Incarnation. It is the oldest existing cathedral in the Americas, begun in 1504 and was completed in 1550, and the second constructed, after the Garðar Cathedral Ruins in Greenland. It is the cathedral of the Archbishop of Santo Domingo who has the honorary title of Primate of the Indies because this cathedral was the first diocese and the oldest cathedral established in the New World in the post-Columbus era.

The Tiguex War (Tee-wesh) was the first named war between Europeans and Native Americans in what is now part of the United States. The war took place in New Spain, during the colonization of Nuevo México. It was fought in the winter of 1540–41 by the expedition of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado against the twelve or thirteen Pueblos or settlements of what would become the Tiguex Province of Nuevo México. These villages were along both sides of the Rio Grande, north and south of present-day Bernalillo, New Mexico. The Tiguex War led to significant casualties on both sides and damage to all Pueblos, and increased tensions within Spanish-Native relations.

The Cathedral of Santa María la Menor in the Colonial City of Santo Domingo is dedicated to St. Mary of the Incarnation. It is the oldest existing cathedral in the Americas, begun in 1504 and was completed in 1550, and the second constructed, after the Garðar Cathedral Ruins in Greenland. It is the cathedral of the Archbishop of Santo Domingo who has the honorary title of Primate of the Indies because this cathedral was the first diocese and the oldest cathedral established in the New World in the post-Columbus era.