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The Gutenberg Bible is the first substantial book printed in the West with moveable metal type. Before its printing in 1454 or 1455, books were either copied by hand or printed from engraved wooden blocks—processes that could take months or years to complete.
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Lorenzo de' Medici was an Italian statesman and de facto ruler of the Florentine Republic, who was the most powerful and enthusiastic patron of the Renaissance
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Michelangelo, David, 1501-1504, marble
David is one of Michelangelo’s most-recognizable works, and has become one of the most recognizable statues in the entire world of art. -
The Mona Lisa is a half-length portrait painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci that has been described as "the best known, the most visited, the most written about
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Acting on this belief, he wrote the “Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences,” also known as “The 95 Theses,” a list of questions and propositions for debate. Popular legend has it that on October 31, 1517 Luther defiantly nailed a copy of his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle church.
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Sir Thomas More, venerated by Roman Catholics as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman, and noted Renaissance humanist
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However, in 1534 King Henry VIII declared himself to be supreme head of the Church of England. ... As a result of this schism, many non-Anglicans consider that the Church of England only existed from the 16th century Protestant Reformation.
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Although named after Italian physicist Galileo Galilei, the thermometer described in this article was not invented by him. Galileo did invent a thermometer, called Galileo's air thermometer (more accurately termed a thermoscope), in or before 1603.
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According to tradition, the great English dramatist and poet William Shakespeare is born in Stratford-on-Avon on April 23, 1564. It is impossible to be certain the exact day on which he was born, but church records show that he was baptized on April 26, and three days was a customary amount of time to wait before baptizing a newborn. Shakespeare’s date of death is conclusively known, however: it was April 23, 1616. He was 52 years old and had retired to Stratford three years before.
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De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the revolutions of the heavenly spheres), written by Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) and published just before his death, placed the sun at the center of the universe and argued that the Earth moved across the heavens as one of the planets.
