Timeline for the Age of Discovery By kilatheodora 1441 Portuguese begin slave trade from Africa to Europe 1448 Portuguese explorers reach the southern part of Africa 1453 Fall of the eastern Roman Empire (Constantinople) 1454 Gutenberg invents the printing machine 1492 Columbus sails from Spain to America 1492 Spain unified & expels the Jews and Spanish moors; Colonization of the Americas begins with Christopher Columbus in the Dominican Republic 1497 Portuguese reach India 1500 Inca Empire at its peak in Peru 1508 Begin the colonization of Puerto Rico 1511 Begin the colonization of Cuba 1517 Martin Luther begins the religious Reformation in Europe 1520 Suleiman rules the Ottoman Empire 1522 Magellan travels around the world (Portuguese) 1535 Spain completes the conquest of the Aztecs in Mexico and the Incas in Peru 1543 Copernicus suggests that the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the universe 1571 Europeans defeat the Muslim Ottomans in the battle of Lepanto 1588 England defeats the Spanish Armada and becomes the greatest naval power in the world 1607 England begins the colonization of North America 1609 Galileo uses a new invention, the telescope, to study the universe 1618 Thirty Years' War begins (The Holy Roman Empire, Great Britain, Dutch Republiv, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, France, Spain, and Austria)