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Jan 27, 1485
RIchard lll is Killed in battle
Richard III (2 October 1452 – 22 August 1485) was King of England from 1483 until his death in 1485, at the age of 32, in the Battle of Bosworth Field. He was the last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty. -
Jan 27, 1492
Chistopher Columbus reaches the Americas
Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer, navigator, colonizer and citizen of the Republic of Genoa. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean -
Jan 27, 1503
Leonardo da Vinci paints the Mona Lisa
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, more commonly Leonardo da Vinci, was an Italian polymath whose areas of interest included invention, painting, sculpting, architecture, science, music, mathematics, -
Jan 26, 1516
Thomas More's Utopia is published
Utopia is a work of fiction and political philosophy by Thomas More published in 1516 in Latin. The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs. -
Jan 27, 1543
With the Supremacy Act, Henry Vlll proclaims himself head of Church of England
Henry VIII was King of England from 21 April 1509 until his death. He was Lord, and later assumed the Kingship, of Ireland, and continued the nominal claim by English monarchs to the Kingdom of France. -
Jan 27, 1558
Elizabeth l becomes Queen of England
Elizabeth I was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana or Good Queen Bess, the childless Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty. -
Jan 27, 1564
William Shaksspeare, the Bard of Avon, is born
William Shakespeare was an English poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet, and the "Bard of Avon". -
Globe Theatre is Built in London
Oak-and-thatch replica of original Elizabethan theatre, showing Shakespeare plays in the open air. -
Shakespeare writes King Lear and Macbeth
The story opens in ancient Britain, where the elderly King Lear is deciding to give up his power and divide his realm amongst his three daughters, Cordelia, Regan, and Goneril -
First permanent English settlement in North America is established at Jamestown, Virginia
The Jamestown settlement in the Colony of Virginia was the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. William Kelso says Jamestown "is where the British Empire began ... this was the first colony in the British Empire." -
Shakespeare's sonnets are published
Shakespeare's Sonnets is the title of a collection of 154 sonnets accredited to William Shakespeare which cover themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality -
King James Bible is published
The King James Version, also known as the Authorized Version or King James Bible, is an English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England that began in 1604 and was completed in 1611 -
The Mayflower lands at Plymouth Rock, Massachuetts
The Mayflower was the ship that transported the first English Separatists, known today as the Pilgrims, from Plymouth to the New World in 1620. -
Newspapers are first published in London
A rare copy of the first ever newspaper printed in Britain is to be auctioned nearly 350 years after it came off the press. ... It was the first newspaper in the world -
John Milton begins Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. The first version, published in 1667, consisted of ten books with over ten thousand lines of verse -
Puritan Commonwealth ends; monarchy is restored with Charles ll
In 1660, in what is known as the English Restoration, General George Monck met with Charles and arranged to restore him in exchange for a promise of amnesty and religious toleration for his former enemies. On May 25, 1660, Charles landed at Dover and four days later entered London in triumph. It was his 30th birthday, and London rejoiced at his arrival. In the first year of the Restoration, Oliver Cromwell was posthumously convicted of treason and his body disinterred from its tomb in Westminste
