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Henry the Navigator was an important figure in 15th-century Portuguese politics and in the early days of the Portuguese Empire.
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The Yongle Emperor was the third emperor of the Ming Dynasty in China, reigning from 1402 to 1424.
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Zheng He commanded a fleet of 317 ships, almost 28,000 men, their arms and supplies. The fleet included several massive "treasure ships," approximately 400 feet long and 160 feet wide.
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The commission came from the operai of the cathedral of Florence, who intended to decorate the buttresses of the tribunes of the cathedral with 12 statues of prophets.
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Gutenberg's movable type printing press initiated nothing less than a revolution in print technology. His press allowed writings to be mass produced at relatively affordable costs.
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The Fall of Constantinople marked the end of the Byzantine Empire, an empire which had lasted for over 1,100 years.
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The Hundred Years' War was a series of conflicts waged from 1337 to 1453 between the House of Plantagenet, rulers of the Kingdom of England, against the House of Valois for control of the Kingdom of France. Each side drew many allies into the war.
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The Granada War was a series of military campaigns between 1482 and 1492, during the reign of the Catholic Monarchs Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, against the Nasrid dynasty's Emirate of Granada. It ended with the defeat of Granada, ending all Islamic rule on the Iberian peninsula
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The first European to reach the cape was the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias 12 March in 1488, who named it the "Cape of Storms". It was later renamed by John II of Portugal as "Cape of Good Hope"
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Early in the morning on October 12, 1492, a sailor looked out to the horizon from the bow of his sailing ship, the Pinta, and saw land. After 10 long weeks at sea, from the port of Palos, Spain, Columbus and his crews saw the New World.
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The Treaty of Tordesillas, signed at Tordesillas on 7 June 1494 and authenticated at Setúbal, Portugal, divided the newly discovered lands outside Europe between the Portuguese Empire and Spanish Empire.
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Vasco da Gama was a Portuguese explorer. He was the first European to reach India by sea, linking Europe and Asia for the first time by ocean route, as well as the Atlantic and the Indian oceans entirely.
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The expeditions became widely known in Europe after two accounts attributed to Vespucci were published between 1502 and 1504. In 1507, Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the new continent America after the feminine Latin version of Vespucci's first name, which is Americus.
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Historians agree that Leonardo commenced the painting of Mona Lisa in 1503, working on it for approximately four years and keeping it himself for some years after
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Michelangelo replaced a blue ceiling dotted with stars. Originally, the pope asked Michelangelo to paint the ceiling with a geometric decoration, and place the twelve apostles in spandrels around the decoration.
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The School of Athens is one of the most famous items by Raphael. It was painted between 1509 and 1511 as a part of Raphael's commission to decorate the rooms now known as the Stanze di Raffaello, in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican.
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Luther's 95 Theses centers on correcting practices within the Catholic Church regarding baptism, absolution, and more. Also, the Theses reject the idea of indulgences.
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Velasquez appointed Hernan Cortes as Captain-General of the Armada and sent him off to follow the rumor that there had been new land spotted. Cortes’ armada arrived at Veracruz on Holy Thursday of 1519.
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Enslavement of African people was widespread in the colonial Americas, and one of the most brutal slave labor systems was on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. The earliest known slave revolt in the New World took place here in 1522.
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On November 16, 1532, Francisco Pizarro, the Spanish explorer and conquistador, springs a trap on the Incan emperor, Atahualpa. With fewer than 200 men against several thousand.
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The Prince is sometimes claimed to be one of the first works of modern philosophy, especially modern political philosophy, in which the effective truth is taken to be more important than any abstract ideal.
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Ivan IV came to throne in 1553 when he was only three years old.
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On March 19, 1534, Cartier was assigned the mission of undertaking the voyage of this kingdom to the New Lands to discover certain islands and countries where there are said to be great quantities of gold and other riches.
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Anne Boleyn was Queen of England from 1533 to 1536. She was executed for adultery, incest, and treason. She was executed in London.
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Edward VI was King of England and Ireland from 28 January 1547 until his death. He was crowned on 20 February at the age of nine
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Ignatius of Loyola was a Spanish knight from a local Basque noble family, hermit, priest since 1537, and theologian, who founded the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) and, on 19 April 1541, became its first Superior General.Ignatius emerged as a religious leader during the Counter-Reformation. Loyola's devotion to the Catholic Church was characterized by absolute obedience to the Pope
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Mary I was Queen of England and Ireland from July 1553 until her death. Her executions of Protestants caused her opponents to give her the nickname "Bloody Mary".
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Charles v unwillingly agreed to the Peace of Augsburg. It allowed German princes to chooseothe religion for their territory.
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Ferdinand's son, Philip II, inherited Spain, the Spanish Netherlands, and the American Colonies.
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Elizabeth I was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Her mother was Anne Boleyn. She was an Anglican and died in 1603.
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Between 1562 and 1598, Huguenots and Catholics fought 8 religious wars. Chaos spread through France.
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The British East India Company was a privately owned company which was established to create profitable trade with countries in the region of Asia called the "East Indies". Granted a Royal Charter by Queen Elizabeth in 1600, it became one of the most powerful mercantile organizations in the world by maintaining a monopoly on the importation of exotic goods from India into Britain.
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The Dutch East India was a chartered company established in 1602, when the States General of the Netherlands granted it a 21-year monopoly to carry out trade activities in Asia. It is often considered to have been the first multinational corporation in the world and it was the first company to issue stock.
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The publicatoin of Don Quixote de la Mancha is sometimes called the birth of the modern European novel.
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In the spring of 1611, Hudson intended to search for a western outlet from James Bay. But the crew mutinied and set Hudson adrift in a small boat with his son, John, and seven loyal crewmen. Hudson and his party were never seen again.
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William Shakespeare was a famous playwright who lived between the years 1564 to 1616. Two of his most famous plays are Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. He also wrote many sonnets.
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Starting in the 1618, the Protestand Union and the Catholic League fought. It was a conflict over religion, territory, and for power among European ruling families.
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in 1625, James I died. Charles I, his son, took the throne. Charles always needed money- in part because he was at war with both Spain and France. Several times when Parliament refused to give him funds, he dissolved it.
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The Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems was a 1632 Italian-language book by Galileo Galilei comparing the Copernican system with the traditional Ptolemaic system
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Rene Descartes' major work on scientific method was the Discourse that was published in 1637.
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From 1642 to 1649, supporters and opponents of King Charles fought the English Civil War.
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The efforts of Henry IV and Richelieu to strengthen the French monarchy paved the way for the most powerful ruler in French history, Louis XIV.
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Leviathan is a book written by Thomas Hobbes and published in 1651. The book concerns the structure of society and legitimate government, and is regarded as one of the earliest and most influential examples of social contract theory.
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During his reign, Parliament passed an important guarentee of freedom, habeas corpus. This law gave every prisoner the right to obtain a document ordering that the prisoner be brought before a judge.
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La Salle named the entire area of the Mississippi watershed Louisiana after king Louis XIV of France.
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Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant surrenders New Amsterdam, the capital of New Netherland, to an English naval squadron. Following its capture, New Amsterdam's name was changed to New York, in honor of the Duke of York, who organized the mission.
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One of the most important works in the history of modern science is Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.This was revolutionizing because it provided an exact quantitative description of the motions of visible bodies, the significance of which is apparent in Newton’s laws of motion.
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Two Treatises on Government is a work of political philosophy published anonymously in 1689 by John Locke.
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In 1696, Peter became the sole ruler of Russia. He is known to history as Peter the Great, because he was one of Russia's greatest reformers.
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England, Austria, the Dutch Republic, Portugal, and several German and Italian states joined together against France and Spain.
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in 1717, He moved his points to 32 degrees and 96 derees in order to remove fractions.
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Work on the new capital, St. Petersburg, began in 1703. Ships could sail down the Neva River into the Baltic Sea and on to western Europe.
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Maria Theresa succeded her father, just five months after Frederick II became king of Prussia. Frederick sent his army to occupy Silesia, beginning the war
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Frederick's achievements during his reign included his military victories, his reorganization of Prussian armies, and his final success against great odds in the Seven Years' War. He became known as Frederick the Great.
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In the early 1750s, French expansion into the Ohio River valley repeatedly brought France into armed conflict with the British colonies. 1756 was the first official year of fighting in the Seven Years War-
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In 1756, Frederick attacked Saxony, an Austrian ally. Fought in Europe, India, and North America, the war lasted until 1763.
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Mary Wollstonecraft was an English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights.
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Partitions of Poland were a series of three partitions that took place towards the end of the 18th century. The First Partition of Poland was decided on August 5, 1772
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On April 19, 1775, British and American soldiers exchanged fire in the Massachusetts towns of Lexington and Concord.
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56 delegates in Philadelphia signed the Declaration of Independence, a statement announcing that the thirteen American colonies were now independent states, and thus no longer a part of Great Britain.
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in 1781, British General Charles Cornwallis surrenders 8,000 British soldiers and seamen to a French and American force at Yorktown, Virginia, bringing the American Revolution to an end.
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Joseph abolished serfdom in November 1781 he issued a decree allowing any peasant to move away from his village, to engage in any trade of his choosing, and to wed whomever he wished, all without asking permission of his lord.
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The Constitution was written and signed in Philadelphia in Independence Hall. The same place the Declaration of Independence was signed.
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In 1826, Beethoven caught a cold coming back from his brother’s place, with whom he had argued again. He passed away surrounded by his closest friends on March 26th 1827, just as a storm broke out.
