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1452 : Johannes Gutenberg invented his own printing machine and commercialized printing by 1450. He printed the Bible and made it more common, cheaper and more available in 1452. This later led to people like John Calvin and Martin Luther to revolutionize people’s views on religion.
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Sultan Mehmed II conquered Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire. He brought an end to this weakened state and expanded the Ottoman Empire for centuries.
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In 1516, Ottoman sultan Selim I conquered the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt. This allowed him to annex a great portion of land from Syria to Arabian Peninsula and Egypt. He also took control of Muslim’s holy cities: Mecca and Medina with this acquisition of land.
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Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk, published his famous “95 Theses”, a list of grievances criticizing the Catholic Church, and their corrupt way of repenting sins, using their power and their core teachings. This marks the start of the Reformation Era.
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1518 : Smallpox arrived in the Caribbean in 1518 and was extremely deadly. In Mexico and Central America, 50% of the Amerindian people died because of this disease. These mortality rates were so high due to the fact that indigenous people were never exposed to these European diseases, so they never developed immunity.
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Martin Luther gets excommunicated (exiled from the church) because of his heretic behavior. He then translated the Bible into German and continued to write about the corruption of the Church.
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Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) writes a book on his theory of heliocentrism (1543). This is a theory that proposes that the planets in the solar system revolve around the Sun, as opposed to the mainstream theory of geocentrism, where everything revolves around the Earth. This starts the scientific revolution.
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Spanish colonizers discovered a major silver deposit in Potosí in Alta Peru. More people traveled to this location to mine silver, and by the 1580s this was the largest city in the New World.
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(1564-1642) Galileo Galilei improved the telescope and made a lot of discoveries about the planets in our solar system. He also proved Copernicus’ theory correct with his calculations. His findings and proofs led to the Catholic Church adopting the theory of heliocentrism, which was a huge event during the Scientific Revolution.
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A Portugese colonizer named Paulo Dias de Novais received a charter from the Portugese government to colonize the area that is now Angola in Africa. He also received permission to conquer sections of the Kwanza River. He founded the colony in 1575.
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The first documented slaves from Africa were brought to Jamestown, an English colony in NA. This was the start of a huge demand for slave labor, and the establishment of the Triangle trade between England, US colonies, and Africa. In this system, Africa supplied the labor to America that produced cash crops like sugar, tobacco, and cotton for Europeans. The Europeans would then send manufactured goods back to Africa, completing the triangle.
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During the Scientific Revolution, it was considered heresy to promote scientific and Copernican ideas. Because of the work, Galileo was brought before the Holy Office to be tried. In 1633, the Office ruled Galileo as guilty of heresy and was ordered to recant his work, which he did.
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(1643-1727) Isaac Newton added many contributions to physics and astronomy. Building on Galileo and Copernicus’ theories, Newton details the laws of motion. He also makes new breakthroughs in the scientific consensus on optics and light.
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Beijing falls to a peasant rebellion and the Ming Dynasty ends. This rebellion was led by Li Zicheng. Although this is the final straw that broke the camel’s back, the Ming Dynasty had a plethora of problems like the “little ice age”, disease, riots and invasion. In the aftermath of the chaos, the Manchu, an ethnic minority, people established the Qing Dynasty.
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The Enlightenment started when Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica was published (1687) This book outlined Newton’s laws of motion, classical mechanics, gravitation laws and more. This was one of the most influential texts of the Scientific Revolution, which is closely related to the Enlightenment.
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Saint Petersburg was founded by Peter the Great after he reconquered the Ingrian from Sweden. It became the capital of the Russian Empire.
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Agaja's rise to power brought along a lot of benefits to the kingdom of Dahomey in Africa. He expanded the military, which allowed him to conquer land like Allada in 1724.
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Baron de Montesquieu was a philosopher and a judge. He wrote his famous book The Spirit of Law, which was about the separation of powers in the government. He believed that the government should be broken down into equally-powered branches, so that the system is fair and balanced. These ideas were later used by the Founding Fathers in the United States of America during the drafting of the Constitution.