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The last Roman emperor in the west was overthrown by the Germanic leader Odoacer, who became the first Barbarian to rule in Rome.
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Time between the fall of the Roman Empire to the fall of Constantinople
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Multi-ethnic complex of territories in Central Europe
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A series of religious wars sanctioned by the Latin Church in the medieval period
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Italian explorer Marco Polo sets off for Asia
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The Renaissance was a time of great beauty and art. Artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo created greats works of art during this time. Writers like William Shakespeare were producing their own masterpieces.
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The Great Famine started with bad weather in spring 1315. Crop failures lasted through 1316 until the summer harvest in 1317, and Europe did not fully recover until 1322. The period was marked by extreme levels of crime, disease, mass death and even cannibalism and infanticide.
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A long-running struggle from 1337 to 1453 between two royal dynasties, the Plantagenets of England and the Valois of France, for the throne of France.
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One of the most devastating pandemics in human history, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 75 to 200 million people in Eurasia
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The division of the Roman Catholic Church in which rival popes were in Rome and Avignon
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Regarded as "one of the greatest minds the world has ever produced", Leonardo (artist, scientist, inventor and polymath) was born in Italy
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Christopher Colombus discovers the Americas
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The Protestant Reformation was a schism in Western Christianity. Protestants argued for a religious and political redistribution of power into the hands of Bible
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A series of events that marked the emergence of modern science during the early modern period
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William Shakespeare builds the famous Globe Theater. Over the next few years, he'll write great plays like Hamlet
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Galileo Galilei discovered four of Jupiter's moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto
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A religious civil war between the Protestants and Roman Catholics in Germany that engaged the Austrian Habsburgs and the German princes
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European politics, philosophy, science and communications were radically reoriented. Enlightenment thinkers throughout Europe questioned traditional authority and embraced the notion that humanity could be improved through rational change
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The fighting between French and colonists merged into a European conflict involving France, Austria, and Russia against Prussia and Britain
