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1441
Portuguese begin slave trade from Africa to Europe
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1448
Portuguese explorers reach the southern part of Africa
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1453
Fall of the eastern Roman Empire (Constantinople)
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1454
Gutenberg invents the printing machine
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1492
Columbus sails from Spain to America
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1492
Spain unified & expels the Jews and Spanish moors; Colonization of the Americas begins with Christopher Columbus in the Dominican Republic
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1497
Portuguese reach India
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1500
Inca Empire at its peak in Peru
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1508
Begin the colonization of Puerto Rico
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1511
Begin the colonization of Cuba
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1517
Martin Luther begins the religious Reformation in Europe
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1520
Suleiman rules the Ottoman Empire
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1522
Magellan travels around the world (Portuguese)
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1535
Spain completes the conquest of the Aztecs in Mexico and the Incas in Peru
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1543
Copernicus suggests that the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the universe
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1571
Europeans defeat the Muslim Ottomans in the battle of Lepanto
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England defeats the Spanish Armada and becomes the greatest naval power in the world
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England begins the colonization of North America
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Galileo uses a new invention, the telescope, to study the universe
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Thirty Years' War begins (The Holy Roman Empire, Great Britain, Dutch Republiv, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, France, Spain, and Austria)