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Christopher Columbus sailed looking for a trade route to Asia. Instead of finding Asia, he "found" the Americas. -
The Renaissance was a period of rebirth in innovation, culture, art, and learning. It produced a number of artists, scientists, and thinkers who are still household names today: Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Donatello, and Botticelli. It lasted from 1300-1500. -
Martin Luther began exploring the idea that salvation did not come from works, but from grace, the limitless love and forgiveness of God, which is achievable through faith alone. Luther developed the idea that it takes an act of God to merit a person’s salvation, and the reflection of that act is in the heartfelt faith of the individual. -
Around the 1520s the Europeans recognized that the New World was not a part of Asia. Amerigo Vespucci invented the term America for the New World. -
Martin Luther was tried at the Diet of Worms where Emperor Charles V ordered him to recant his works. He refused and was excommunicated from the church. -
Lutheranism started spreading amongst the general population. Most Lutherans were reform-minded at this time. -
Jean Calvin is exiled for his sympathy with Protestantism. He settles in Geneva, Switzerland. -
By 1560, Europe was divided by religion in a way it never had been before. Protestantism was now a permanent feature of the landscape of beliefs and even the most optimistic Catholics had to abandon hopes that they could win many Protestants back over to the Roman Church through propaganda and evangelism. -
In the Northern Hemisphere, the natural fluctuation of the Earth's climate became dramatically more pronounced. This change enhanced the frequency and severity of bad harvests. -
Charles and Catherine invited the Huguenot Prince Henry of Navarre, leader of the Protestant forces, to Paris to marry Charles’ sister Margaret. However the Duke of Guise would convince the king that only the death of Henry and his followers would truly end the threat of religious division, Catholic forces launched a massacre. St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre would live in infamy in French history as a stark example of religiously-fueled hatred because more than 2000 Protestants were killed.