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Jan 1, 1400
The Renaissance
a cultural movement that spanned the period roughly from the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. Though availability of paper and the invention of metal movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the later 15th century, the changes of the Renaissance were not uniformly experienced across Europe. -
Jan 1, 1417
Prince Henry’s School founded
About 1417, Prince Henry started the first school for oceanic navigation along with an astronomical observatory at Sagres, Portugal. In this school, people were trained in nagivation, map-making, and science, in order to sail down the west of Africa. -
May 29, 1453
Fall of Constantinople
The capture of Constantinople marked the end of the Roman Empire, an imperial state which had lasted for nearly 1,500 years. The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople also dealt a massive blow to Christendom. -
Jan 1, 1481
Peak of Ottoman Empire - 1481-1566
Ottoman Empire achieved the peak of its power and wealth. New conquests extended its domain well into central Europe and throughout the Arab portion of the old Islāmic caliphate, and a new amalgam of political, religious, social, and economic organizations and traditions was institutionalized -
Aug 3, 1492
Columbus discovers America
Christopher Colombus under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean. Those voyages, and his efforts to establish permanent settlements on the island of Hispaniola, initiated the Spanish colonization of the New World. -
Jun 7, 1494
Treaty of Tordesillas
The Treaty of Tordesillas, signed at Tordesillas (now in Valladolid province, Spain), 7 June 1494, divided the newly discovered lands outside Europe between Spain and Portugal -
Jan 1, 1498
Vasco de Gama finds water route around the tip of Africa
He was the first European to reach India by sea, linking Europe and Asia for the first time by ocean route, as well as the Atlantic and the Indian oceans entirely and definitively, and in this way, the West and the Orient. -
Jan 1, 1507
Mona Lisa finished
A half-length portrait of a woman by 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, thought to be a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, is in oil on a white Lombardy poplar panel. -
Jan 1, 1509
Erasmus’ Praise of Folly
An essay written in Latin in 1509 by Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam. The essay was inspired by De Triumpho Stultitiae, written by the Italian humanist Faustino Perisauli, born at Tredozio, near Forlì. Erasmus revised and extended the work, which he originally wrote in the space of a week while sojourning with Sir Thomas More at More's estate in Bucklersbury. In Praise of Folly is considered one of the most notable works of the Renaissance and played an important role -
Oct 31, 1517
95 Theses
The Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences were written by Martin Luther in 1517 and are widely regarded as the initial catalyst for the Protestant Reformation. The disputation protests against clerical abuses, especially nepotism, simony, usury, pluralism, and the sale of indulgences. On 31 October 1517, Luther posted the ninety-five theses, which he had composed in Latin, on the door of the church in Wittenburg -
Jan 1, 1519
Cortes conquered the Aztecs - 1519-1521
The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire was not just one of the most significant events in the Spanish colonization of the Americas but also in world history. Although the conquest of central Mexico was not the conquest of all regions in what is modern Mexico, the conquest of the Aztecs is the most significant overall. -
Jan 1, 1519
Magellan circumnavigates the globe – 1519-1521
Magellan's expedition of 1519–1522 became the first expedition to sail from the Atlantic Ocean into the Pacific Ocean and the first to cross the Pacific. His expedition completed the first circumnavigation of the Earth. Magellan did not complete the entire voyage, as he was killed during the Battle of Mactan in the Philippines. -
Jan 1, 1526
Start of Mughal Empire
In the early 16th century, northern India, being then under mainly Muslim rulers, fell to the superior mobility and firepower of the Mughals.The resulting Mughal Empire did not stamp out the local societies it came to rule, but rather balanced and pacified them through new administrative practices and diverse and inclusive ruling elites. -
Jan 1, 1532
Francisco Pizarro Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire 1532-1572
The Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire was one of the most important campaigns in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. After years of preliminary exploration and military skirmishes, 168 Spanish soldiers under Francisco Pizarro and their native allies captured the Sapa Inca Atahualpa in the 1532 Battle of Cajamarca. -
Jan 1, 1534
Anglican Church Started
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the mother church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by Saint Augustine of Canterbury. -
Jan 1, 1543
Copernicus Heliocentric Theory Published
Copernican heliocentrism is the name given to the astronomical model developed by Nicolaus Copernicus and published in 1543. It positioned the Sun near the center of the Universe, motionless, with Earth and the other planets rotating around it in circular paths modified by epicycles and at uniform speeds. -
Jan 1, 1545
Council of Trent - 1545-1563
The Council of Trent, held between 1545 and 1563 in Trento (Trent) and Bologna, northern Italy, was one of the Roman Catholic Church's most important ecumenical councils. Prompted by the Protestant Reformation, it has been described as the embodiment of the Counter-Reformation. -
Defeat of the Spanish Armada
The Spanish Armada was a Spanish fleet of 130 ships that sailed from A Coruña in August 1588, under the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia with the purpose of escorting an army from Flanders to invade England. The strategic aim was to overthrow Queen Elizabeth I of England and the Tudor establishment of Protestantism in England, with the expectation that this would put a stop to English interference in the Spanish interest of English. -
30 years war - 1618–1648
The Thirty Years' War was a series of wars in Central Europe between 1618–1648.It was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history, and one of the longest.
Initially a war between Protestant and Catholic states in the fragmenting Holy Roman Empire, it gradually developed into a more general conflict involving most of the great powers of Europe, becoming less about religion and more a continuation of the France–Habsburg rivalry for European political pre-eminence. -
Taj Mahal built - 1632–1653
Taj Mahal became a UNESCO World Heritage Site. While the white domed marble mausoleum is the most familiar component of the Taj Mahal, it is actually an integrated complex of structures. The construction began around 1632 and was completed around 1653, employing thousands of artisans and craftsmen.The construction of the Taj Mahal was entrusted to a board of architects under imperial supervision, including Abd ul-Karim Ma'mur Khan, Makramat Khan, and Ustad Ahmad Lahauri. -
Descartes Discourse on Method
The Discourse on the Method is a philosophical and autobiographical treatise published by René Descartes in 1637. Its full name is Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences. -
William Harvey Discovered Circulation of Blood
William Harvey made the momentous medical discovery that the flow of blood must be continuous and that its flow must be in one direction only. This discovery sealed his place in the history of medicine. -
Newton’s Laws of Gravity
Newton's law of universal gravitation states that any two bodies in the universe attract each other with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. This is a general physical law derived from empirical observations by what Isaac Newton called induction. -
Galileo’s First Telescope
Galileo is correctly credited with the first use of the telescope for viewing objects in the heavens, but letters between him and friends suggest that he first had other, more pragmatic applications for the telescope. He believed that he could make money selling his telescopes to wealthy Italian princes so that they could use them for military purposes. -
Tobacco Introduced to Europe
Tobacco has a long history from its usages in the early Americas. It became increasingly popular with the arrival of the Europeans by whom it was heavily traded. Following the industrial revolution, cigarettes were becoming popularized, which fostered yet another unparalleled increase in growth. This remained so until the scientific revelations in the mid-1900s.
