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Oct 22, 1485
Richard lll is killed in battle
King of England for two years, from 1483 until his death in 1485 in the Battle of Bosworth Field. He was the last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty. His defeat at Bosworth Field, the decisive battle of the Wars of the Roses, is sometimes regarded as the end of the Middle Ages in England. He is the subject of the play Richard III by William Shakespeare. -
Oct 12, 1492
Christopher Columbus reaches the Americas
Columbus led his three ships - the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria - out of the Spanish port of Palos on August 3, 1492. His objective was to sail west until he reached Asia (the Indies) where the riches of gold, pearls and spice awaited. He reached the Americas on October 12, 1492. -
Oct 22, 1503
Leonardo da Vinci paints the Mona Lisa
The Mona Lisa is a half-length portrait of a woman by the Italian artist 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." -
Oct 22, 1516
Thomas More's Utopia is published
The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs.A frame story is a literary technique that sometimes serves as a companion piece to a story within a story. -
Oct 22, 1516
William Shakespeare, te Bard on Avon, is born
William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman and a successful glover originally from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden, the daughter of an affluent landowning farmer.[8] He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and baptised there on 26 April 1564. His actual date of birth remains unknown, but is traditionally observed on 23 April, Saint George's Day. -
Oct 22, 1543
With the Supremacy Act, Henry Vlll proclaims himself head of Church of England
Henry VIII is known for his role in the separation of the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church. Henry's struggles with Rome led to the separation of the Church of England from papal authority, the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and his own establishment as the Supreme Head of the Church of England. Yet he remained a believer in core Catholic theological teachings, even after his excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church -
Oct 22, 1558
Elizabeth l becomes queen of England
Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty. The daughter of Henry VIII, she was born into the royal succession, but her mother, Anne Boleyn, was executed two and a half years after her birth, In 1558, Elizabeth succeeded her half-sister, during whose reign she had been imprisoned for nearly a year on suspicion of supporting Protestant rebels. -
The Globe Theater is built in London
The Globe was built in 1599 using timber from an earlier theatre, The Theatre, which had been built by Richard Burbage's father, James Burbage, in Shoreditch in 1576. On 29 June 1613 the Globe Theatre went up in flames during a performance of Henry VIII, but was rebuilt later that year. -
Shakespeare writes King Lear and Macbeth
Macbeth is believed to have been written between 1603 and 1607, and is most commonly dated 1606 and is considered his darkest and most powerful tragedy. King Lear was written between 1603 and 1606 also and later revised.After the Restoration, the play was often revised with a happy ending for audiences who disliked its dark and depressing tone, but since the 19th century Shakespeare's original version has been regarded as one of his supreme achievements. -
First permanent English settlement in North America is established at Jamestown, Virginia.
Jamestown was the first settlement of the Virginia Colony, founded in 1607, and served as capital of Virginia until 1699, when the seat of government was moved to Williamsburg.On May 14, 1607, the colonists chose Jamestown Island for their settlement largely because the Virginia Company advised them to select a location that could be easily defended from attacks by other European states. -
Shakespeare's sonnets are published
Shakespeare's sonnets are a collection of 154 sonnets, dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality, first published in a 1609 quarto entitled SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS. -
King James Bible is published
The King James Version (KJV), commonly known as the Authorized Version (AV) or King James Bible (KJB), is an English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England begun in 1604 and completed in 1611. -
The Mayflower lands at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts
The real Plymouth Rock was a boulder about fifteen feet long and three feet wide which lay with its point to the east, thus forming a convenient pier for boats to land during certain hours of tide. This rock is authenticated as the pilgrims' landing place by the testimony of Elder Faunce who in 1741 at the age of ninety-five was carried in a chair to the rock, that he might pass down to posterity the testimony of pilgrims whom he had personally known on this important matter. -
John Mjlton begins Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton (1608-1674). It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse. A second edition followed in 1674, changed into twelve books (in the manner of the division of Virgil's Aeneid) with minor revisions throughout and a note on the versification. -
Puritan Commonwealth ends; monarchy is restored with Charles ll
The Restoration of the English monarchy began when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The term Restoration is used to describe both the actual event by which the monarchy was restored, and the period of several years afterwards in which a new political settlement was established.
