-
Oct 22, 1485
Richard 3 is killed in battle
Richard III (2 October 1452 – 22 August 1485) was King of England for two years, from 1483 until his death in 1485 in the Battle of Bosworth Field. He was the last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty. His defeat at Bosworth Field, the decisive battle of the Wars of the Roses, is sometimes regarded as the end of the Middle Ages in England. He is the subject of the play Richard III by William Shakespeare. -
Oct 22, 1492
Christopher Columbus reaches the Americas
Christopher Columbus (Italian: Cristoforo Colombo; Spanish: Cristóbal Colón; Portuguese: Cristóvão Colombo; born between October 31, 1450 and October 30, 1451 – 20 May 1506) was an Italian explorer, navigator, and colonizer, born in the Republic of Genoa, in what is today northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents. -
Oct 22, 1503
Leonardo da Vinci paints the Mona Lisa
The Mona Lisa (La Gioconda or La Joconde) is a half-length portrait of a woman by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci, which 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." -
Oct 1, 1516
Thomas More's Utopia is published
The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs. Utopia is a work of fiction and political philosophy by Thomas More published in 1516, composed in the Latin language. -
Oct 22, 1534
With the supremacy act, Henry VIII proclaims himself head of Church of England
Henry VIII was King of England from 21 April 1509 until his death. He was Lord, and later King, of Ireland, as well as continuing the nominal claim by the English monarchs to the Kingdom of France. Henry's struggles with Rome led to the separation of the Church of England from papal authority, the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and his own establishment as the Supreme Head of the Church of England. -
Oct 22, 1558
Elizabeth 1 becomes queen of England
Elizabeth I (7 September 1533 – 24 March 1603) was queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called "The Virgin Queen", "Gloriana" or "Good Queen Bess", Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty. -
Oct 22, 1564
William Shakespeare, the Bard of Avon, is born
William Shakespeare was born to John and Mary Shakespeare in Stratford Upon Avon in Warwickshire, England. William was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. His extant works, including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, along with other works of literature. -
Globe Theatre is built in London
The Globe Theatre was a theatre in London associated with William Shakespeare. It was built in 1599 by Shakespeare's playing company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men. The Globe Theatre was destroyed by fire on June 29, 1613. A second Globe Theatre was built on the same site by June 1614 and closed in 1642. It was located in Southwark, London, New England. -
Shakespeare writes King Lear and Macbeth
Written within a year of each other, these are widely regarded as Shakespeare’s most profound tragedies. The course will consider them not only as studies in moral evil, but also as tragedies of state with a peculiar relevance to the Jacobean period. Both contain studies of murderous ambition and self-consuming evil; both seem to raise the question whether human disorder is mirrored in the natural world; both are concerned with the nature of kingship and authority. -
First permanent English settlement in North America is established at Jamestown, Virginia
Jamestown Settlement is a name used by the Commonwealth of Virginia's portion of the historical sites and museums at Jamestown. Jamestown was the first successful English settlement on the mainland of North America. Named for King James I of England, Jamestown was founded in the Colony of Virginia on May 13, 1607. -
Shakespeare's sonnets are published
Shakespeare's sonnets are a collection of 154 sonnets, dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality. The publisher, Thomas Thorpe, entered the book in the Stationers' Register on May 20, 1609. Sonnets 138 and144 had previously been published in the 1599 miscellany The Passionate Pilgrim. -
King James Bible is published
The King James Version (KJV), commonly known as the Authorized Version (AV) or King James Bible (KJB), is an English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England begun in 1604 and completed in 1611. In January 1604, King James I convened the Hampton Court Conference where a new English version was conceived in response to the perceived problems of the earlier translations as detected by the Puritans,[6] a faction within the Church of England. -
The Mayflower lands at Plymouth Rock, Massachussetts
The Mayflower was the Pilgrim ship that in 1620 made the historic voyage from England to the New World. The ship carried 102 passengers in two core groups – religious Separatists coming from Holland and a largely non-religious settler group from London. -
Newspapers are first published in London
In the beginning of the 17th century, the right to print was strictly controlled in England. This was probably the reason why the first newspaper in English language was printed in Amsterdam by Joris Veseler around 1620. The control over printing relaxed greatly after the abolition of the Star Chamber in 1641. -
John Milton begins Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton (1608-1674). It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse. A second edition followed in 1674, changed into twelve books (in the manner of the division of Virgil's Aeneid) with minor revisions throughout and a note on the versification. It is considered by critics to be Milton's "major work", this work helped to solidify his reputation as a poe -
Puritan Commonwealth ends; monarchy is restored with Charles II
The Restoration of the English monarchy began when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The term Restoration is used to describe both the actual event by which the monarchy was restored, and the period of several years afterwards in which a new political settlement was established.
