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Nov 9, 1485
Richard III is killed in battle
Richard III 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. His defeat at Bosworth Field, the last decisive battle of the Wars of the Roses, marked the end of the Middle Ages in England. -
Nov 9, 1492
Christopher Columbus reaches the Americas
Christopher Columbus Discovers America, 1492. 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. -
Nov 9, 1503
Leonardo da Vinci paints the Mona Lisa
Leonardo da Vinci began painting the Mona Lisa in 1503 or 1504 in Florence, Italy. Although the Louvre states that it was "doubtless painted between 1503 and 1506", the art historian Martin Kemp says there are some difficulties in confirming the actual dates with certainty -
Nov 8, 1516
Thomas More’s Utopia is published
Utopia is a work of fiction and political philosophy by Thomas More (1478–1535) published in 1516 in Latin. The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs. Many aspects of More's description of Utopia are reminiscent of life in monasteries. -
Nov 9, 1543
With the Supremacy Act, Henry VIII proclaims himself head of Church of England
The Acts of Supremacy are two acts of the Parliament of England passed in 1534 and 1559 which established King Henry VIII of England and subsequent monarchs as the supreme head of the Church of England. Prior to 1534, the supreme head of the English Church was the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church. -
Nov 9, 1558
Elizabeth I becomes queen of England
Elizabeth I (7 September 1533 – 24 March 1603) 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 last monarch of the Tudor dynasty. -
Nov 8, 1564
William Shakespeare is born
church records indicate that a William Shakespeare was baptized at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon on April 26, 1564. From this, it is believed he was born on or near April 23, 1564, and this is the date scholars acknowledge as William Shakespeare's birthday -
Globe Theatre is built in London
: It was built in 1599 by Shakespeare's playing company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, on land owned by Thomas Brend and inherited by his son, Nicholas Brend and grandson Sir Matthew Brend, and was destroyed by fire on 29 June 1613. -
Shakespeare writes King Lear and Macbeth
King Lear and Macbeth are two tragedies that Shakespeare wrote. -
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 writes that Jamestown "is where the British Empire began ... this was the first colony in the British Empire." Jamestown was established by the Virginia Company of London as "James Fort" on May 4, 1607 and was considered permanent after brief abandonment in 1610. -
Shakespeare’s sonnets are published
Shakespeare's Sonnets is the title of a collection of 154 sonnets by William Shakespeare, which covers themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality. The first 126 sonnets are addressed to a young man; the last 28 to a woman -
King James Bible is published
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 books of the King James Version include the 39 books of the Old Testament, an intertestamental section containing 14 books of the Apocrypha, and the 27 books of the New Testament. -
The Mayflower lands at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts
In September 1620, during the reign of King James I, around 100 English men and women–many of them members of the English Separatist Church–set sail for the New World aboard the Mayflower, a three-masted merchant ship. The ship landed on the shores of Cape Cod, in present-day Massachusetts, two months later, and in late December anchored at Plymouth Rock, where they would form the first permanent settlement of Europeans in New England. -
Newspapers are first published in London
In the beginning of the 17th century, the right to print was strictly controlled in England. This was probably the reason why the first newspaper in English language was printed in Amsterdam by Joris Veseler around 1620. This followed the style established by Veseler's earlier Dutch paper Courante uyt Italien, Duytslandt, &c. However, when the English started printing their own papers in London, they reverted to the pamphlet format used by contemporary books. -
John Milton begins 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. A second edition followed in 1674, arranged into twelve books with minor revisions throughout and a note on the versification. It is considered by critics to be Milton's major work, and it helped solidify his reputation as one of the greatest English poets of his time. -
Puritan Commonwealth ends; monarchy is restored with Charles II
King Charles II, the first monarch to rule after the English Restoration. The Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms
