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Oct 21, 1485
Richard III is killed in battle
Richard was the last Yorkist king of England, whose death at the Battle of Bosworth effectively ended the Wars of the Roses. In 2012, archaeologists began excavating beneath a carpark in Leicester, hoping to find Richard’s final resting place. The search captured the public’s imagination and the remains subsequently found were confirmed as those of Richard. -
Oct 21, 1492
Christopher Columbus reaches the Americas
His objective was to sail west until he reached Asia (the Indies) where the riches of gold, pearls and spice awaited. His first stop was the Canary Islands where the lack of wind left his expedition becalmed until September 6. Columbus headed off disaster by promising his crew that if land was not sighted in two days, they would return home. The next day land was discovered. -
Oct 21, 1503
Leonardo da Vinci paints the Mona Lisa
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, and is believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506, although Leonardo may have continued working on it as late as 1517. -
Oct 21, 1516
Thomas More's Utopia is published
Known to Roman Catholics as Saint Thomas More, He was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman and noted Renaissance humanist. He was an important councillor to Henry VIII and Lord Chancellor from October 1529 to 16 May 1532. -
Oct 21, 1543
With the Supremacy Act, Henry VIII proclaims himslef head of Church of England
a piece of legislation that granted King Henry VIII of England Royal Supremacy, which means that he was declared the supreme head of the Church of England. It is still the legal authority of the Sovereign of the United Kingdom. Royal Supremacy is specifically used to describe the legal sovereignty of the civil laws over the laws of the Church in England. -
Oct 22, 1558
Elizabeth I becomes queen of England
She was nicknamed 'Gloriana' and the 'Virgin Queen' and overcame many challenges at home as well as threats from abroad. -
Oct 21, 1564
William Sakespeare, the Bard of Avon, is born
English poet and playwright, 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 Theater is built in London
The first Globe Theatre was built in London in 1599. It was built on the Southbank of the river Thames in Southwark, London in close proximity to the Bear Garden. The land had been owned by the Bishop of Winchester and this estate was called the Liberty of the Clink. -
Shakespeare writes King Lear and Macbeth
King Lear deals with the dismemberment of a kingdom and the nature of royal justice. Acted in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, Macbeth centres upon the murder of a king, and includes among its cast James’s ancestors. -
First permanent English settlement in North America is established at Jamestown, Virginia
The colony was sponsored by the Virginia Company of London, a group of investors who hoped to profit from the venture. Chartered in 1606 by King James I, the company also supported English national goals of counterbalancing the expansion of other European nations abroad, seeking a northwest passage to the Orient, and converting the Virginia Indians to the Anglican religion. -
Shakespeare's sonnets are published
A collection of 154 sonnets, dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality, first published in a 1609. The first 17 poems, traditionally called the procreation sonnets, are addressed to a young man urging him to marry and have children in order to immortalize his beauty by passing it to the next generation. Other sonnets express the speaker's love for a young man; brood upon loneliness, death, and the transience of life; seem to criticise the young man for prefer -
King James Bible is published
In 1604, King James I of England authorized that a new translation of the Bible into English be started. It was finished in 1611, just 85 years after the first translation of the New Testament into English appeared (Tyndale, 1526). The Authorized Version, or King James Version, quickly became the standard for English-speaking Protestants. Its flowing language and prose rhythm has had a profound influence on the literature of the past 400 years. -
The Mayflower lands at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts
The Mayflower was the Pilgrim ship that in 1620 made the historic voyage from England to the New World. The ship carried 102 passengers in two core groups – religious Separatists coming from Holland and a largely non-religious settler group from London. -
Newspapers are first published in London
The urge to inform the public of official developments and pronouncements has been a characteristic of most autocratic rulers. This urge was fulfilled in ancient Rome by the Acta Diurna ("Daily Events"), a daily gazette dating from 59 BC and attributed in origin to Julius Caesar. Handwritten copies of this early journal were posted in prominent places in Rome and in the provinces with the clear intention of feeding the populace official information. -
John Milton begins Paradise Lost
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 resotred with Charles II
With the creation of the Commonwealth of England in 1649, government passed to the English Council of State, a group dominated by Oliver Cromwell, an advocate of religious liberty. In 1650, at Cromwell's behest, the Rump Parliament abolished the Act of Uniformity 1558, meaning that while England now had an officially established church with Presbyterian polity, there was no legal requirement that anyone attend services in the established church.
