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Period: Jan 28, 1394 to
Ch. 19-20
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Mar 4, 1394
Prince Henry of Portugal is born
Better known as Henry the Navigator. He was responsible for early European exploration. He was the third child of King John I of Portugal. He was an important figure in the Portuguese Empire. -
Jan 29, 1402
Yonglo becomes Ming Emperor
Zhu Di survived the initial attacks on his fief and drove south, sacking Nanjing in 1402 and declaring his new era the Yongle, or the time of "Perpetual Happiness". -
Jul 11, 1405
Zheng He captains his first voyage
This voyage consisted of 317 ships and carried almost 28,000 men. Zheng He presented gifts of gold, silver, porcelain, and silk; in return, China received such novelties as ostriches, zebras, camels, and ivory from the Swahili. -
Dec 19, 1440
Johan Gutenberg Invented of the Printing Press
the Printing Press is typically used for texts, the invention and spread of the printing press are widely regarded as among the most influential events in the second millennium. It has increased literacy rate, made more copies of books, and helped educate people throughout the world. -
Apr 13, 1453
Fall of Constantinople to the Turks
A siege was led by a 21-year old Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II. The siege lasted from Friday, 6 April 1453 until Tuesday, 29 May 1453 (according to the Julian calendar), when the city was conquered by the Ottomans -
Sep 27, 1453
Ending of the Hundred Years' War
A war between the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of France. Was a result of a dynastic disagreement from William the Conquerer. France won and it also ended a period of economic trouble and stopped the decreasing population. -
May 28, 1488
Bartolomeu Dias reached the Cape of Good Hope
The discovery of the passage around southern Africa was significant because, for the first time, Europeans realized they could trade directly with India and the other parts of Asia, bypassing the overland route through the Middle East. -
Nov 25, 1491
Ferdinand and Isabella end war with Muslims
The Treaty of Granada was signed and ratified between Boabdil, the sultan of Granada, and Ferdinand and Isabella, the King and Queen of Castile, León, Aragon and Sicily. It ended the Granada War which had started in 1482. -
Oct 12, 1492
Christopher Colombus spots land in North America
After 10 long weeks of traveling Christopher Columbus and his crew spotted the New World. The following day, 90 crew members from Columbus's three-ship fleet set foot on the island of Guanahani in the Bahamas and planted the flag of their sponsors -
Jun 7, 1494
Spain and Portugal sign the Treaty of Tordesillas
It divided up newly discovered land outside Europe between Portugal and Spain. This line of demarcation was about halfway between the Cape Verde Islands and the islands discovered by Christopher Columbus. -
May 20, 1498
Vasco da Gama lands in India
He is one of the most famous and celebrated explorers from the Discovery Ages, being the first European to reach India through sea. This discovery was very significant and paved the way for the Portuguese to establish a long lasting colonial empire in Asia. -
Oct 29, 1498
Amerigo Vespucci charts New World coast
Amerigo Vespucci charted the New World during his first voyage. He left Spain in 1497 and returned in 1498. He later named the New World, "America" after himself. -
Nov 13, 1503
Start of the Mona Lisa
The Mona Lisa was painted by Leonardo DaVinci. It has been acclaimed as the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world. -
Sep 8, 1504
Creation of the David Statue
Created by David, the statue represents the Biblical hero David, a favoured subject in the art of Florence. Because of the nature of the hero that it represented, it soon came to symbolize the defence of civil liberties embodied in the Florentine Republic. -
Jul 17, 1508
Painting of the Sistine Chapel Ceiling
The ceiling is that of the large Papal Chapel built within the Vatican, by Pope Sixtus IV after whom it is named, and was painted at the commission of Pope Julius II. The chapel is the location for Papal Conclaves and many important services. -
Jul 17, 1511
School of Athens is Painted
The School of Athens, is one of the most famous frescoes by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael. The Stanza della Segnatura was the first of the rooms to be decorated, and The School of Athens the second painting to be finished there, after La Disputa, on the opposite wall. The picture has long been seen as "Raphael's masterpiece and the perfect embodiment of the classical spirit of the High Renaissance." -
Jan 17, 1513
"The Prince" by Machiavelli
"The Prince" was distributed in 1513, but it wasn't published until 1532. It was written in Italian Vernacular. Also is a book that tells people how to be a good ruler. -
Mar 22, 1514
Nicolaus Copernicus begins studying planetary movement
In 1514, Copernicus distributed a handwritten book to his friends that set out his view of the universe. In it, he proposed that the center of the universe was not Earth, but that the sun lay near it. He also suggested that Earth's rotation accounted for the rise and setting of the sun, the movement of the stars, and that the cycle of seasons was caused by Earth's revolutions around it. -
Period: Mar 22, 1514 to
Chapter 22 Enlightenment
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Oct 31, 1517
Posting of the 95 Thesis
Martin Luther posts his 95 Thesis on the door of the Wittenberg Church. Start of the Reformation. -
Feb 23, 1519
Hernando Cortez lands on Mexican coast
in February 1519, in an act of open mutiny. Accompanied by about 11 ships, 500 men, 13 horses and a small number of cannons, he landed in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mayan territory. He claimed land for Spain in 1519. -
Nov 16, 1532
Francisco Pizzaro meets Atahualpa
With fewer than 200 men against several thousand, Pizarro lures Atahualpa to a feast in the emperor's honor and then opens fire on the unarmed Incans. Pizarro's men massacre the Incans and capture Atahualpa, forcing him to convert to Christianity before eventually killing him. -
Period: Feb 28, 1533 to
Age of Absolute Monarchs
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Mar 1, 1533
Ivan the Terrible assumes throne at age 3
He is the first ruler to be crowned as Tsar of All the Russias. Ivan the terrible was described as intelligent and devout. He did have episodic mentall illnessess though. He made many changes such as changing a medieval state into an emerging empire with power. -
Jul 14, 1533
Mary I Becomes Queen
Her opponents gave her the sobriquet "Bloody Mary". As the fourth crowned monarch of the Tudor dynasty, Mary is remembered for her restoration of Roman Catholicism after the short-lived Protestant reign of her half-brother -
Jul 24, 1534
Jacques Cartier claims land in Canada
On April 20, 1534, Cartier set sail under a commission from the king, hoping to discover a western passage to the wealthy markets of Asia. On July 24, he planted a 10 meter cross that said the words "Long Live the King of France" and he took possession of the territory in the name of the king. -
Dec 14, 1534
Ignatius finds the Jesuit Order
The Jesuit Order is a Society of Jesus. It is a Roman Catholic order founded by Saint Ignatius of Loyola to defend Catholicism against the Reformation and to do missionary work among the heathen. It is strongly committed to education and scholarship. -
May 17, 1536
Execution of Anne Boleyn
She was King Henry's second wife. She gave birth to Elizabeth I who would later become the Queen of England. Her execution made her a key figure in the political and religious upheaval that was the start of the English Reformation. -
Oct 12, 1537
Edward VI is born
He was crowned on February 20th at the age of 9. Son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour. He was England's first Monarch raised as a protestant. During his reign the government was governed by Regency Council, because he never reached his majority. -
Nov 17, 1558
Elizabeth I is crowned Queen
She was the fifth and last Monarch of the Tudor Dynasty. She never married and used it to her advantage for more power. Her 44 years on the throne provided welcome stability for the kingdom and helped forge a sense of national identity -
Mar 1, 1580
Philip II becomes king
In 1580, the king of Portugal died with an heir. Becuase Philip was the king's nephew, he seized the Portugal Kingdom. Philip was shy, serious, and a deeply religious ruler. -
Mar 1, 1581
Czar Ivan the Terrible kills his son and heir.
Ivan killed his wife and then he thought his son was trying to defend her. They got into an argument. Ivan accused his son of inciting rebellion. Incensed, Ivan struck his son on the head with his scepter. His son fell, bleeding from his temple. Ivan caught him up in his arms, crying and screaming, "May I be damned! I've killed my son! I've killed my son!" -
Battle of the English Channel
In this battle Spain lost the battle to England. It was an important battle because it knocked Spain off of its spot at top power. Therefore many other countries were fighting for that top spot. -
English East India Company is founded
The East India Company traded mainly in cotton, silk, indigo dye, salt, saltpetre, tea and opium. The Company was granted a Royal Charter by Queen Elizabeth. -
Dutch East India Company is founded
It is considered to have been the first multinational corporation in the world and was the first company to issue stock. It also possessed powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts, negotiate treaties, coin money, and establish colonies. -
Henry Hudson was last seen
People aren't for sure what exactly happened to Hudson. They aren't for sure if he died from a mutiny, or from murder. But he was last seen in 1611 and later that year only 13 people returned home from that voyage. -
William Shakespeare Dies
Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language. He died at age 52. Just four weeks prior to his death, on 25th March 1616, William made his Last Will and Testament. -
Thirty Years' War begins
The Thirty Years' War was a series of wars principally fought in Central Europe, involving most of the countries of Europe. It was one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in European history, and one of the longest continuous wars in modern history. -
New Netherlands becomes New York
The colony of New Netherland was established by the Dutch West India Company in 1624 and grew to encompass all of present-day New York City and parts of Long Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey. A Dutch settlement in the colony grew up on the southern tip of Manhattan Island and was christened New Amsterdam. -
Charles I took the throne
Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Many of his English subjects opposed his actions, in particular his interference in the English and Scottish churches and the levying of taxes without parliamentary consent, because they saw them as those of a tyrannical, absolute monarch. -
Rene Descartes lays out his scientific method in Discourse on Method
The scientific method is a logical procedure for gathering and testing ideas. It begins with a problem or question arising from an observation. Scientists next form a hypothesis. The hypothesis is then tested in an experiment. In the final step scientists analyze and interpret data and form a conclusion. -
Louis XIV begins 72-year reign
Know and Loius the Great of the Sun King, was a monarch in the House of Bourbon. His reign of 72 years is one of the longest reigns in French and European History. Loius XIV was a very weatlh and powerful ruler. -
Oliver Cromwell and Puritans execute English King
Oliver Cromwell was one of the signautre men of King Charles's death in 1649. As a member of the Rump Parliament he dominated a short-lived Commonwealth of England. -
Louis XIV begins 40-year building of palac of Versailles
The court of Versailles was the center of political power in France from 1682, when Louis XIV moved from Paris, until the royal family was forced to return to the capital in October 1789 after the beginning of the French Revolution. Versailles is therefore famous not only as a building, but as a symbol of the system of absolute monarchy. -
La Salle claimed Mississipi River for Spain
In the winter of 1681-1682 the French explorer Robert de la Salle, led an expedition from Canada down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. La Salle reached the river's outlet to the gulf, where he set up a cross and a wooden post carved with the coat of arms of his king, Louis XIV. The thirty-nine-year old explorer claimed the entire Mississippi watershed for France, and named the new territory "Louisiana -
Isaac Newton published his laws of Gravity
Newton's law of universal gravitation states that every point mass in the universe attracts every other point mass with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. It was put in the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica and first published on 5 July 1687 -
Bill of Rights is drafted by Parliamnet
The Bill of Rights[1] is an Act of the Parliament of England passed on 16 December 1689.[2] It was a restatement in statutory form of the Declaration of Right presented by the Convention Parliament to William and Mary in March 1689, inviting them to become joint sovereigns of England. It lays down limits on the powers of the crown and sets out the rights of Parliament and rules for freedom of speech in Parliament. -
William of Orange becomes king
From 1689 he reigned as William III over England and Ireland; it is a coincidence that his regnal number (III) was the same for both Orange and England. As King of Scotland, he is known as William II.In what became known as the "Glorious Revolution", on 5 November 1688 William invaded England in an action that ultimately deposed King James II & VII and won him the crowns of England, Scotland and Ireland. -
Peter the Great and "The Great Embassy"
The Grand Embassy was a Russian diplomatic mission, sent to Western Europe in 1697-1698 by Peter the Great. The goal of this mission was to strengthen and broaden the Holy League, Russia's alliance with a number of European countries against the Ottoman Empire. -
War of Spanish Succession breaks out
The War of the Spanish Succession was fought between two alliances of European powers, including a divided Spain, over who had the right to succeed Charles II as king of Spain. -
Peter the Great Ordes St. Petersburg to be built
Peter was truly a great visionary, a man who lived his dreams. The building and prosperity of St. Petersburg is, without a doubt, mainly due to the iron will and passion that Peter the Great invested in the city.Victory over Sweden at the Battle of Poltava named Russia as a new superpower, established the prominence of Peter the Great, and secured the safety of St. Petersburg. Peter built a dream with his bare hands and his own mind that exists today as one of the most beautiful cities. -
Gabriel Fahrenheit makes first mercury-in-glass temperature
What can be considered the first modern thermometer, the mercury thermometer with a standardized scale, was invented by Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit in 1714. 32°F was the freezing pint of water and 212°F was the boiling point of water. -
First Slave Revolts in Hispaniola
Also known as the Stono Rebellion. In the event 20-50 slaves killed unkind owners. They refused to do some work or did things to slow down their work by breaking tools or unrooting plants. -
Maria Theresa inherits throne
She started her 40-year reign when her father, Emperor Charles VI, died in October 1740. She was the only female ruler of the Habsburg dominions and the last of the House of Habsburg. By marriage, she was Duchess of Lorraine, Grand Duchess of Tuscany and Holy Roman Empire. -
Anders Celsius creates his scale for mesuring temperature
He founded the Uppsala Astronomical Observatory in 1741, and in 1742 he proposed the Celsius temperature scale which takes his name. The scale was inverted in 1745 by Carl Linnaeus, one year after Celsius' death from tuberculosis. -
Denis Diderot publishes the first volumes of his Encyclodpedia
In 1750 an elaborate prospectus announced the project, and in 1751 the first volume was published. This work was unorthodox and advanced for the time. Diderot stated that "An encyclopedia ought to make good the failure to execute such a project hitherto, and should encompass not only the fields already covered by the academies, but each and every branch of human knowledge." -
Seven Years' War begins
It was a world war that took place between 1756 and 1763. It involved most of the great powers of the time and affected Europe, North America, Central America, the West African coast, India, and the Philippines. -
Mary Wollstonecraft is born
During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. She is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in which she argues that women are not naturally equal to men, only because they lack education. -
Cesare Baccaria writes against torture in "On Crimes and Punishment
In 1764 Beccaria published a brief treatise, "On Crimes and Punishments", which marked the high point of the Milan Enlightenment. In it, Beccaria put forth some of the first modern arguments against the death penalty. His treatise was also the first full work of penology -
Catherine The Great puts down the serf Rebellion
The military and economy relied on serfdom heavily. Increasing demands of the state and private landowners led to increased levels of reliance on serfs. This was one of the main reasons behind several rebellions, including the large-scale Pugachev's Rebellion of cossacks and peasants. Pugachev's Rebellion was from 1773-75. -
Boston Tea Party
On December 16, 1773, after officials in Boston refused to return three shiploads of taxed tea to Britain, a group of colonists boarded the ships and destroyed the tea by throwing it into Boston Harbor. The incident remains an important event of American history, and other political protests often refer to it. -
Declaration of Independence is signed
The Declaration of Independence is a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies, then at war with Great Britain, regarded themselves as independent states, and no longer a part of the British Empire. -
Lord Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown
The culmination of the Yorktown campaign proved to be the last major land battle of the American Revolutionary War in North America, as the surrender by Cornwallis of his army prompted the British government to negotiate an end to the conflict. -
Delegates at the Constitutional Convention sign the Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. The first three Articles of the Constitution establish the rules and separate powers of the three branches of the federal government.The last four Articles frame the principle of federalism. The Tenth Amendment confirms its federal characteristics. -
Mozart first performs Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It is based on the legends of Don Juan, a fictional libertine and seducer. -
Beethoven Dies
Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential of all composers. His best known compositions include 9 symphonies, 5 concertos for piano, 32 piano sonatas, and 16 string quartets.
