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Aug 22, 1485
Richard III killed in battle
Richard III (2 October 1452 – 22 August 1485) was King of England from 1483 until his death at the Battle of Bosworth Field. He was the last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty. -
Oct 12, 1492
Christopher Columbus
Columbus left Spain in August 1492 with three ships, and after a stopover in the Canary Islands made landfall in the Americas on 12 October (now celebrated as Columbus Day). His landing place was an island in the Bahamas, known by its native inhabitants as Guanahani; its exact location is uncertain. -
Jan 1, 1503
Mona Lisa
Mona Lisa, oil painting on a poplar wood panel by the Italian painter, draftsman, sculptor, architect, and engineer Leonardo da Vinci, probably the world’s most-famous painting. It was painted sometime between 1503 and 1519, when Leonardo was living in Florence, and it now hangs in the Louvre, in Paris, where it remains an object of pilgrimage in the 21st century. -
Jan 1, 1516
Thomas More's Utopia
Sir Thomas More (1477 - 1535) was the first person to write of a 'utopia', a word used to describe a perfect imaginary world. More's book imagines a complex, self-contained community set on an island, in which people share a common culture and way of life. -
Jan 1, 1543
Henry VIII
In the Act of Supremacy, Henry abandoned Rome completely. He thereby asserted the independence of the Ecclesia Anglicana. He appointed himself and his successors as the supreme rulers of the English church. -
Nov 17, 1558
Elizabeth I
Elizabeth I (7 September 1533 – 24 March 1603)[1] was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death on 24 March 1603. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the last of the five monarchs of the House of Tudor. -
Apr 26, 1564
The Bard Avon
William Shakespeare was an English poet, playwright and actor, widely regarded as both the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. -
Globe Theater
Located on the south side of Maiden Lane (now Park Street), under Anchor Terrace, Southwark, just east of Southwark Bridge, the Bankside Globe staged most, probably all, of the plays of William Shakespeare, including famous titles such as Hamlet, King Lear and Othello. -
Macbeth
An extraordinary year began in the autumn of 1605 when Shakespeare, who was always on the hunt for new material, picked up a newly published play-script at his local bookseller’s, a half-forgotten Elizabethan play, The True Chronicle History of King Leir. The timing and context of this purchase is vital. -
James Town
James Town was established by the Virginia Company of London as "James Fort" on May 4, and was considered permanent after brief abandonment in 1610. -
Shakespeare's sonnets
Shakespeare's sonnets are poems that William Shakespeare wrote on a variety of themes. When discussing or referring to Shakespeare’s sonnets, it is almost always a reference to the 154 sonnets that were first published all together in a quarto in 1609; however there are six additional sonnets that Shakespeare wrote and included in the plays Romeo and Juliet, Henry V and Love's Labour's Lost. -
King James Bible
King James Bible is an English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, begun in 1604 and completed/published in 1611. -
Plymouth Rock
Plymouth Rock is the traditional site of disembarkation of William Bradford and the Mayflower Pilgrims who founded Plymouth Colony in 1620. The Pilgrims did not refer to Plymouth Rock in any of their writings; the first known written reference to the rock dates to 1715 when it was described in the town boundary records as "a great rock." -
Newspapers
Corante: or, Newes from Italy, Germany, Hungarie, Spaine and France was the first newspaper printed in England. The earliest of the seven known surviving copies is dated 24 September 1621 (although John Chamberlain is on record as having complained about them in August), and the latest is dated 22 October that year. -
Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton (1608–1674). The first version, published in 1667, consisted of ten books with over ten thousand lines of verse. -
Monarchy is restored
The Restoration of the English monarchy took place in the Stuart period. It began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under King Charles II. This followed the Interregnum, also called the Protectorate, that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.
