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Jan 1, 1485
Richard 3 is killed in battle.
Richard III died in the thick of battle after losing his helmet and coming under a hail of blows from vicious medieval weapons, new research has shown. Detailed scans of the king's bones show that he sustained 11 wounds at or near the time of his death, nine of them to the skull. -
Aug 3, 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. His first stop was the Canary Islands where the lack of wind left his expedition becalmed until September 6. -
Jan 1, 1503
Leonardo da Vinci paints the Mona Lisa.
Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa is one of the most famous and most celebrated works of all time. The mastery of the painting lies in its subtle detail, including the faint smile, and Mona Lisa's distinctive gaze. The work is said to have been commissioned by a gentleman named Francesco del Giocondo, who hired Leonardo to paint a portrait of his wife, and this is why The Mona Lisa is sometimes referred to as La Gioconda. -
Jan 1, 1516
Thomas More's Utopia is published
Written in Latin for a European audience, More's Utopia is the quintessential humanist dialogue. First published in Louvain, Belgium, in 1516, Utopia was an immediate sensation. Set as a dialogue in Antwerp between More and a voyager returned from newly discovered lands, the complexity of the work ensured that it would have nearly as many interpretations as readers. Utopia broadly satirises European society for its short-sighted love of gain. -
Jan 1, 1543
Supremacy Act
The first Act of Supremacy was legislation in 1534 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. -
Nov 17, 1558
Elizabeth 1st becomes queen of England.
Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII by second wife, Anne Boleyn, who was executed two and a half years after Elizabeth's birth. Anne's marriage to Henry VIII was annulled, and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate. Her half-brother, Edward VI, ruled until his death in 1553, bequeathing the crown to Lady Jane Grey and ignoring the claims of his two half-sisters, -
Apr 26, 1564
William Shakespeare is born.
William Shakespeare was an English poet, playwright, and actor, 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 Theatre 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. -
William Shakespeare writes Macbeth.
Macbeth tells of a man who is deceived by himself and his wife. The play opens with thunder and lightning and the appearance of three witches--supernatural beings. Due to the fact that this is the beginning of the play, the opening Act, it foreshadows the central theme of the play. -
Shakespeare writes King Lear.
In Britain, King Lear, in old age, chooses to retire and divide up Britain between his three daughters. However, he declares that they must first be wed before being given the land. Next, Lear passes all powers and governance of Britain down to Albany and Cornwall. -
Jamestown, Virginia is first permanent English settelment.
Some 100 English colonists arrive along the west bank of the James River in Virginia to found Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America. Dispatched from England by the London Company, the colonists had sailed across the Atlantic aboard the Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery. -
Shakespeare's sonnets are published.
Although the entirety of Shakespeare's sonnets were not formally published until 1609, an allusion to their existence appeared eleven years earlier, in Francis Meres' Palladis Tamia, in which Meres commented that Shakespeare's "sugred Sonnets" were circulating privately among the poet's friends. -
King James Bible is published.
The King James Version, commonly known as the Authorized Version or King James Bible, 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.
Plymouth Rock is the traditional site of disembarkation of William Bradford and the Mayflower Pilgrims who founded Plymouth Colony in 1620. It is an important symbol in American history. There are no contemporaneous references to the Pilgrims' landing on a rock at Plymouth, and it is not referred to in Edward Winslow's Mourt's Relation (1620–21) or in Bradford's journal Of Plymouth Plantation. -
Newspapers are first published in London.
The King James Version, commonly known as the Authorized Version or King James Bible, is an English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England begun in 1604 and completed in 1611. -
John Milton begins Paradise Lost/
Man's disobedience and the loss thereupon of Paradise. The poem opens in the midst of things, after the war in Heaven but before the fall of Adam and Eve. Satan and his multitude of angels have been cast out of Heaven and into the Deep for rebelling against God and are chained on the burning lake in Hell. -
Purtian Commonwealth ends; Monarchy is restored with Charles 2nd.
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. 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.
