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Aug 22, 1485
Richard III is killed in battle
KIng Richard III was King of England for two years. 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. -
Aug 3, 1492
Christopher Columbus reaches the Americas
Christopher Columbus led his three ships - the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria - out of the Spanish port of Palos. His objective was to sail west until he reached Asia where the riches of gold, pearls and spice awaited. -
Oct 22, 1503
Leonardo da Vinci paints the Mona Lisa
The Mona LIsa 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." The painting is thought to be a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo. -
Oct 21, 1516
Thomas More's Utopia is published
The book, Utopia, is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs. A frame narrative is literary technique that sometimes serves as a companion piece to a story within a story. The frame story leads readers from a first story into another story or several stories. -
Oct 22, 1543
With the Supremacy Act, Henry VIII proclaims himself head of Church of England
Henry VIII was responsible for the English church breaking away from the authority of the Roman Catholic Church after the Pope excommunicated Henry in 1533 over his divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Henry had broken with Rome, seized the church's assets in England and declared the Church of England as the established church with himself as its head. -
Nov 17, 1558
Elizabeth I becomes queen of England
Elizabeth I was queen regnant of England and Ireland. Sometimes called "The Virgin Queen", "Gloriana" or "Good Queen Bess", Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty. She was the duaghter of King Henry VIII. She was brorn into the throne. Her mother, Anne Boleyn, was executed two and a half years after her birth -
Apr 26, 1564
William Shakespeare, the Bard of Avon, is born
WIlliam Shakespeare 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, and a few other verses, the authorship of some of which is uncertain. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories. -
Globe Theatre is bulit in London
The Globe Theatre was a theatre in London associated with William Shakespeare. It was built by William Shakespeare's playing company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, on land owned by Thomas Brend and inherited by his son, Nicholas Brend and grandson Sir Matthew Brend. It was destroyed by a fire on June 29, 1613. it was rebulit at that same exact spot by June of 1614 and was closed in 1642. -
Shakespeare writes King Lear and Macbeth
KIng Lear and Macbeth are two of the tragedies by William Shakespeare. The play, KIng Lear, is based on the legend of Leir of Britain, a mythological pre-Roman Celtic king. It has been widely adapted for the stage and motion pictures, and the role of Lear has been coveted and played by many of the world's most accomplished actors. The play, Macbeth, is considered one of his darkest and most powerful tragedies. -
First permanent English settlement in North America is established at Jamestown, Virginia.
A small company of settlers landed at a point on the James River in Virginia and established the settlement of Jamestown. It was the first permanent English settlement in the New World. The first settlers of Jamestown, led by the famed Captain John Smith, built a fort, church, storehouse and other structures in their first three months at the settlement, even as sickness and starvation stalked the new colony. -
Shakespeare's sonnets are published
Shakespeare has wrote 154 sonnets, dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality. The first 17 poems, traditionally called the procreation sonnets, are addressed to a young man urging him to marry and have children in order to immortalize his beauty by passing it on. Other sonnets express the speaker's love for a young man. -
Kings James bible was published
The King James bible is an English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England begun in 1604 was finished in 1611. James gave the translators instructions intended to guarantee that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology and reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and its belief in an ordained clergy. -
The Mayflower lands at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts
One hundred and two individuals, most of whom were Puritans, received a grant of land on which to set up their own colony. They set sail from England on the Mayflower, arriving in Massachusettes in December. When they landed, the colonists called their new home "New Plymouth." The colonists all signed the "Mayflower Covenant" before landing, promising to establish "just and equal laws." -
Newspaper are first published in London
Corante: or, Newes from Italy, Germany, Hungarie, Spaine and France was published by the printer Nathaniel Butter in London. There's only seven still surviving copies. Corante was the first private newspaper published in English. -
John Milton begins Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. The poem concerns the Biblical story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. -
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. In certain contexts it may be used to cover the whole period of the later Stuart monarchs.
