1471 Apr 14, On Easter Sunday Edward led an army of mercenaries and Yorkists at the Battle of Barnet and defeated the Lancastrians under the Earl of Warwick, who was killed in battle. Margaret of Anjou returned from France. With her son, the Prince of Wales, she planned to join with Jasper Tudor, a Welsh ally, and attack Edward west of London.
1473 Feb 19, The astronomer Copernicus (1473-1543) was born in Torun, Poland. He promulgated the theory that the earth and the planets move around the sun.
1473 The game of golf was played in Scotland at the Old course at St. Andrews.
1475 British fishermen lost access to fishing grounds off Iceland due to a war in Europe. The cod catch did not go down and it is presumed that they had discovered the cod-rich waters off Newfoundland, whose discovery was later attributed to John Cabot.
1480 The Spanish Inquisition was introduced by Ferdinand and Isabella to enable the crown to control the inquiries into whether or not converted Jews were really secret "Judaizers" who kept their original faith.
1485 Aug 22, Henry Tudor defeated Richard III at Bosworth. England's King Richard III, the last of the Plantagenet kings, was killed in the Battle of Bosworth. This victory establishes the Tudor dynasty in England and ended the War of the Roses.
1492 Aug 3, Christopher Columbus departed Palos, Spain, with the Santa Maria, the Pinta, and the Nina on a voyage that would take him to the present-day Americas. The Santa Maria was formally listed as La Gallicia and the Nina as Santa Clara. He sailed across the Ocean Sea, as the Atlantic was then called, and headed for Cipangu, i.e. Japan.
1494 The earliest report of Scots making whiskey was made.
1497 June 24, Italian explorer John Cabot (1450-1498?), (aka Giovanni Caboto), on a voyage for England, landed in North America on what is now Newfoundland or the northern Cape Brenton Island in Canada. He claimed the new land for King Henry VII. He documented the abundance of fish off the Grand Banks from Cape Cod to Labrador.
1500 During the first half century of printing 1450-1500, the majority of printed books were renderings of Greek and Latin works, previously available only in manuscripts... From this point on, published works in the national languages... were in the majority.
1500s Most people got married in June because
they took their yearly bath in May and were still smelling pretty good
by June. However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried
a bouquet of flowers to hide the odor. Baths equaled a big tub filled with
hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean
water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the
children. Last of all the babies.
Houses had thatched roofs. Thick straw, piled high, with no wood underneath. There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. They found if they made beds with big posts and hung a sheet over the top, it addressed the problem of things falling onto the bed. The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying "dirt poor". The wealthy had slate floors which would get slippery in the winter when wet. So they spread thresh on the floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on they kept adding more thresh until when you opened the door it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed at the entry way, hence a "thresh hold".
They cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They mostly ate vegetables and didn't get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes the stew had food in it that had been in there for a month. Hence the rhyme: peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old."
Sometimes they could obtain pork and would feel really special when that happened. When company came over, they would bring out some bacon and hang it to show it off. It was a sign of wealth and that a man "could really bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and "chew the fat."
Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with a high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food. This happened most often with tomatoes, so they stopped eating tomatoes... for 400 years. Most people didn't have pewter plates, but had trenchers - a piece of wood with the middle scooped out like a bowl. Trencher were never washed and a lot of times worms got into the wood. After eating off wormy trenchers, they would get "trench mouth."
Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the "upper crust".
Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination would sometimes knock them out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a "wake".
England is old and small and they started running out of places to bury people. So, they would dig up coffins and would take their bones to a house and re-use the grave. In reopening these coffins, one out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they thought they would tie a string on their wrist and lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night to listen for the bell. Hence on the "graveyard shift" they
would know that someone was "saved by the bell" or he was a "dead ringer".
1500-1509 Black slaves first arrive in the New World when Spanish settlers bring them to Hispaniola
1500 Feb 24, Charles V, king of Spain, was born in Ghent, Belgium. He was the last Holy Roman Emperor to be crowned by the Pope.
1500 Christopher Columbus, during his third sojourn to the new world, engaged in a dispute with the ambassador plenipotentiary to Santo Domingo, on Espanola, which is now shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. He was arrested and returned to Spain in shackles, but was later released and forgiven by the Queen. Columbus took 30 women along on his third trip to the New World.
1500 King Louis XII of France captured Milan in the Italian Wars
1500 - 1509 The Canterbury Cathedral in England is completed after 436 years of work.
1500 The population of the world at about 400 million
was distributed as follows: China, Japan, and Korea 130 million
Europe and Russia 100 million India subcontinent 70 million Southeast Asia and Indonesia 40 million
Central and western Asia 25 million Africa 20 million The Americas 15 million
1500-1509 Renaissance genius Leonardo da Vinci paints the Mona Lisa and designs the horizontal water wheel, which leads to the development of the water turbine
1500s The Navajo began settling on Hopi land. They have farmed in the southwest since this time
1500-1509 Isabella of Castile dies after ruling for 30 years, during which time she led the Inquisition's persecutions of non-Christians and financed Columbus's exploration of the New World.
1501 Gaspar de Corte-Real, Portuguese navigator, made the first authenticated European landing on the northern continent of the Western Hemisphere since c1000AD.
1502 May 9, Christopher Columbus left Cadiz, Spain, on his fourth and final trip to the Western Hemisphere. He explored Central America, and discovered St. Lucia, the Isthmus of Panama, Honduras, and Costa Rica.
1502 Amerigo Vespucci declared that South America is a separate continent after his second voyage
1504 Feb 29. An eclipse occurred and helped Christopher Columbus subdue his rebellious Indian carriers.
1504 Louis XII of France ceded Naples to Ferdinand II of Aragon in the Treaty of Lyon. Naples remained under Spanish control for the next 200 years.
1506 May 20, Christopher Columbus died in poverty in Spain, still believing he discovered the coast of Asia.
1507 Martin Luther was ordained.
1507 Martin Waldseemuller, German geographer working at a small college in Eastern France, labeled the New World "America," for the first time in his book "Cosmographiae Introductio," and gave Amerigo Vespucci credit for discovering it. Letters of 1504-1505 had circulated in Florence claimed that Vespucci had discovered the new World. Vespucci was in fact only a passenger or low officer on one of the ships captioned by others. Vespucci was later believed to have been the brother of Simonetta Vespucci, the model for Venus in the Botticelli painting.
1507 Johannes Ruysch produced the first printed map of America, as declared by the selling map dealer, R.B. Arkway, Inc. It is dotted with Asian place names. In 1995 it was for sale for $135,000.
1509 Apr 22, Henry Tudor was crowned King Henry VIII of England following the death of his father, Henry VII. He married Catherine of Aragon, his brother's widow and the aunt of Charles V (the Holy Roman Emperor), and fathered Mary, future Queen of England.
1509 Jul 10, John Calvin, founder of Calvinism, the basis for modern Protestantism, was born. French theologian. He started the Protestant Reformation in France in 1532.
1510 Slave trade began with a consignment of African slaves to work on Portuguese sugar plantations in Brazil.
1510- 1519 England's new king Henry VIII, and Castile's Ferdinand II join Pope Julius II's Holy League to drive the French from Italy, which they succeed in doing after the Battle of Spurs in 1513.
1513 Apr 2, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon landed in Florida. Juan Ponce de Leon, Spanish explorer, discovered Florida and planted orange and lemon trees there.
1513 Sep 9, King James IV of Scotland was defeated and killed by English at the Battle of Flodden Field. The Scottish navy was sold to France.
1514 Diego Columbus, son of Christopher, built the first seat of government in the Americas in Santo Domingo.
1514 England and France declared a truce in their warfare. Mary Tudor, sister of Henry VIII, married Louis XII.
1516 The first published account of the discovery of North America appeared in "De Rebus Oceanicus et Novo Orbe" by the Italian historian Peter Martyr.
1510-1519 The South Sea is renamed the Pacific Ocean by the famed Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan after he sails through the straits at the southern tip of South America.
1517 Oct 31, Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-five Thesis to the door of the Wittenberg Palace All Saints' Church. He grew to believe in faith alone as man's link to the justice of God, and therefore denied the need for the vast infrastructure of the Church. This event signaled the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in Germany and Protestantism in general, shattering the external structure of the medieval church and at the same time reviving the religious consciousness of Europe.. Martin Luther (1483-1546) was born in Eisleben, Germany. He was a monk in the Catholic Church until 1517, when he founded the Lutheran Church.
1510-1519 The sweating sickness plagues England and wipes out much of the population of Oxford and Cambridge
1520 The Anabaptists, Protestants who baptized believers only and not infants, grew as a movement in Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands. Some emigrated to America and established themselves as the Amish of Lancaster, Pa.
1520-1529 Two young and rigorous monarchs, Francois I and England's Henry VIII, engage in a lavish summit called the Field of the Cloth of Gold outside of Calais that leaves the French treasury depleted for a decade.
1522 England declared war on France and Scotland. Holy Roman Emp. Charles V visited Henry VIII and signed the Treaty of Windsor. Both monarchs agreed to invade France.
1520-1529 Monks are burned alive for following the teachings of religious reformer Martin Luther
1527 May 21, Philip II (d.1598), king of Spain and Portugal, was born. He collected a fifth of all the wealth generated from the mines and trade in the Americas. He invested heavily into his military and lost it all with the defeat of the Armada in 1588. His debt at his death amounted to 85 million ducats, or 300 tons of gold.
1528 The Scottish Reformation began.
1520-1529 Oranges from the Far East are first brought to Europe by Portuguese merchants
1528 England established its first colony in the New World at St. Johns, Newfoundland
1529 Maize from America, grown in Turkey, was introduced to England as "turkey corn."
1530-1539 Sugar rivals gold in value in colonial trading
1532-1540 Thomas Cromwell disbanded most of the monasteries in England and absorbed their vast wealth under the crown.
1533 Sep 7, England's Queen Elizabeth I was born in Greenwich.
1530-1539 Fourteen-year-old Catherine de Medici of Florence marries the future King of France Henri II and introduces France to vegetables such as artichokes and broccoli and pastries such as macaroons and frangipani
1534 May 10, Jacques Cartier reached Newfoundland. He noted the presence of the Micmac Indians who fished in the summer around the Magdalen Islands north of Nova Scotia. Jun 9, Jacques Cartier became the first man to sail into the mouth of the St. Lawrence River.
1534 Henry VIII was declared Supreme Head of the Church in England. He suppressed the monasteries and renounced papal jurisdiction. He issued the Act of Supremacy which signified a break with the Catholic Church of Rome.
1535 Sept, The site of the city of Quebec was first visited by Jacques Cartier. It was an Indian village called Stadacona. Quebec is the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in what is now Canada.
1536 Oct 6, William Tyndale, the English translator of the New Testament, was strangled and burned at the stake for heresy at Vilvorde, France.
1536 Robert Aske led an uprising of some 30,000 people against the dissolution of the monasteries in the northern counties of England. It ended a year later with the arrest and hanging of Aske.
1538 The earliest reference to a diving bell was made at Toledo, Spain.
1530-1539 After publicly beheading one of his four wives after a vision from heaven, Anabaptist zealot John of Leyden Munster is tortured and then executed; his remains swing in a cage until the 20th century
1539 May 30, Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto landed at Tampa Bay in Florida in search of gold.
1540 The first potato from South America reached Pope Paul III. It was then taken to France and grown as an ornamental plant.
1541 May 8, Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto discovered and crossed the Mississippi River, which he called Rio de Espiritu Santo. He encountered the Cherokee Indians, who numbered about 25,000 and inhabited the area from the Ohio River to the north to the Chattahoochee in present day Georgia, and from the valley of the Tennessee east across the Great Smoky Mountains to the Piedmont of the Carolinas.
1541 John Knox, a Scottish theologian and historian, led the Calvinist Reformation in Scotland.
1540-1543 The Catholic Counter-Reformation gains
momentum when Pope Paul III recognizes the Jesuit order.
Needing to sire enough male heirs to the throne, England's Henry VIII remarries Anne of Cleves in 1540 but protests the match less than nine months later and marries Catherine Howard; he beheads Howard on charges of adultery and marries Catherine Parr in 1543.
1541 Ireland came under the rule of England's Henry VIII.
1542 Sept 28, California was discovered. Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, Spanish explorer, stepped ashore at the present day harbor of San Diego and named it San Miguel. He went on to explore the coast of California. The tip of Point Loma in San Diego is the home of the Cabrillo National Monument, the second most visited monument in the US after the Statue of Liberty. The island of Coronado was named in honor of the Four Crowned Martyrs, Los Quatro Martires Coronados, on whose feast day it was discovered.
1542 Nov 22, New laws were passed in Spain giving protection against the enslavement of Indians in America
1543 The Inquisition of Pope Paul III of Rome conducts trials of heretics in an attempt to waylay the Reformation; Protestants begin to be burned at the stake in 1543.
1545 Dec 13, The Church Council of Trent began with the meeting of 30 bishops. It lasted 3 years but took 18 years to complete its work. The Council sparked the beginning of the Counter-Reformation.
1540-1549 The Colorado River is discovered by explorer Hernando de Alarcon, and Lopez de Cardenas discovers the Grand Canyon
1547 French became the official language of France, displacing Latin.
1549 Aug 9, France declared war on England. England declared war on France.
1540-1549 Nikolaus Copernicus waits until the end of his life, then defies church doctrine by publishing his theory of a sun-centered solar system.
1540-1549 Henry VIII of England, a king noted
for his athletic abilities, has grown so fat and ill that he must be moved
up and down stairs by special machinery; he dies in 1547 and is succeeded
by his weak son, Edward VI
The native population of Hispaniola has been reduced from 14,000 to 500 during the past 50 years because of disease transmitted by European explorers
1549 Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, issued the "Book of Common Prayer." Other prayer books were forbidden by the Act of Uniformity. The book was mandated by the government under Edward VI, son of Henry VIII, so that services could be spoken in the language of the people.
1550 In Washington state Mount St. Helens began almost nonstop eruptions that continued for a century.
1550-1559 The famous French astrologer Nostradamus publishes a book of prophecies that is revived by readers in later years for its apparent prediction of 20th century events.
1550 The Peace of Boulogne ended the war of England with Scotland and France. France bought back Boulogne for 400,000 crowns.
1551 Printing was introduced into Ireland.
1552 Aug 2, The treaty of Passau gave religious freedom to Protestants living in Germany. The Augsburg Interim was annulled and Lutherans were allowed freedom of worship in Germany.
1552 The Second Prayer Book of Edward VI, more radical than the first, was authorized by a second Uniformity Act.
1552 Books on geography and astronomy were burned in England because of fears of magic.
1553 The Forty-two Articles of the Church of England were written by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer "for the avoiding of controversy in opinions." The Forty-two Articles had been partly derived from the Thirteen Articles of 1538. When Mary became queen in 1553 and restored Catholicism, the Forty-two Articles were eliminated.
1553 Protestants fearing persecution in England began leaving to Switzerland.
1554 England and the Pope reached a reconciliation.
1555 Sep 25, Lutheranism was acknowledged by the Holy Roman Empire in the Peace of Augsburg. The Peace of Augsburg was the first permanent legal basis for the existence of Lutheranism as well as Catholicism in Germany. It was promulgated as part of the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire on September 25, 1555. Charles V's Augsburg Interim of 1548 was a temporary doctrinal agreement between German Catholics and Protestants that was overthrown in 1552.
1550-1559 The Inquisition continues under Rome's Pope Paul IV, who orders Rome's Jewish quarters to be walled in
1555 Oct 16, In England the Protestant martyrs Bishop Hugh Latimer and Bishop Nicholas Ridley were burned at the stake at Oxford for heresy under the Catholic rule of Mary, half-sister of Edward VI.
1555-1600 Richard Hooker, architect of Anglicanism. The Anglican Communion emerged from the conflicts between Henry VIII and Pope Clement VII over Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn.
1558 Nov 17, Elizabeth I ascended the English throne upon the death of Queen Mary. Upon the reign of Elizabeth I a new statement of doctrine of the Church of England was needed. The Church of England was reestablished.
1558 The religious climate in England changed for the better and Protestants returned home from Geneva and Zurich.
1550-1559 The first Venetian coffeehouse is established and ice cream is made in Italy.
1559 John Knox preached an inflammatory sermon at Perth and incited the Protestants lords to rise. They captured Edinburgh and sacked religious houses in other cities.
1560 The Church of Scotland was founded. The Presbyterian branch of Protestant Christianity was started by John Knox.
1560-1569 English participation in the slave trade begins when John Hawkins hijacks a slave ship and trades his captives in Hispaniola; despite an expressed empathy for slaves, Queen Elizabeth condones the trade.
1560 The beginnings of Puritanism appear in England.
1561 May, In Montpellier, France, a Calvinist stronghold, the Catholics marched in protest against the Calvinists chanting "We shall dance in spite of the Huguenots." Wars of religion began to rip France apart and lasted for the next 6 decades.
1560-1569 A final devastation of the sweating sickness sweeps London, England, killing more than a quarter of the population
1561 Sep 20, Queen Elizabeth of England signed a treaty at Hampton Court with French Huguenot leader Louis de Bourbon, the Prince of Conde. The English would occupy Le Harve in return for aiding Bourbon against the Catholics of France.
1561 Sep 23, Philip II of Spain gave orders to halt colonizing efforts in Florida. The French took advantage of the opportunity.
1561 The first Calvinist refugees from Flanders, clothworkers, settled in Sandwich, England.
1561 The Edict of Orleans suspended the persecution of the Huguenots.
1561 Jean Nicot, French ambassador to Lisbon,
sent tobacco seeds and powdered leaves back to France. The word "nicotine"
is derived from his name. French diplomat Jean Nicot introduced the use
of tobacco to the French court in the 1560s. Tobacco was cultivated and
smoked by American Indians long before the arrival of Columbus to the New
World. By the 1530s Spanish settlers were cultivating wild tobacco (N.
rustica) and exporting it to Europe from the West Indies. Sir Walter Raleigh
popularized smoking tobacco in England during the late 1500s.
Nicotine, an addictive alkaloid found in tobacco and certain other plants, is named for Nicot, as is the genus name for the tobacco plant, Nicotiana.
1562 Dec 19, The French Wars of Religion between the Huguenots and the Catholics began with the Battle of Dreux.
1562 John Hawkins, English naval commander, removed 300 African slaves from a Portuguese ship bound for Brazil. This marked the start of the English participation in the slave trade.
1560-1569 Rice riots in Japan occur after the imposition of heavy taxes.
1562 The Guises massacred more than 60 Huguenots at a Protestant service at Vassy and sparked off The Wars of Religion in France.
1563 Foxe's "Book of Martyrs" appeared in its first illustrated English edition.
1563 The 1563 Canterbury Convocation drastically revised the Forty-two Articles of the Church of England. The 39 Articles combined Protestant doctrine with Catholic church organization to establish the Church of England. Dissenting groups included the Puritans, Separatists, and Presbyterians.
1563 The Peace of Amboise ended the First War of Religion in France. Huguenots gained limited tolerance. The French regain La Havre from the English.
1564 The first horse-drawn coach was introduced to England from Holland.
1564 France adopted the reformed calendar and shifted the new year from April to Jan. Some didn't like the change and were called April fools.
1565 Sep 8, A Spanish expedition established the first permanent European colony in the present day St. Augustine, Fla., the first permanent European settlement in what is now the United States.
1565 Sep 20, Pedro Menendez of Spain wiped out the French at Fort Caroline, in Florida. Spanish colonists in the northeast coast of Florida under Pedro Menendez de Aviles massacred a band of French Huguenots that posed a potential threat to Spanish hegemony in the area. They also took advantage of the local Timucuan Indian tribe.
1566 Fanatical Calvinists instigated religious riots in the Netherlands
1560-1569 The Aztec population in New Spain is devastated by an outbreak of a new disease
1566 Sir Francis Drake visited an island off Roanoke, Va., with a ship full of Turkish prisoners. Only half the prisoners were recorded as taken back to England.
1567 The Huguenots started a second War of Religion in France with the Conspiracy of Meaux.
1568 May 3, French forces in Florida slaughter hundreds of Spanish
1560-1569 Mary Queen of Scots is kidnapped and forced to marry James Hepburn after her husband is found murdered; Scottish nobleman are enraged and force her to abdicate to her son, James VI.
1568 May 19, Defeated by the Protestants, Mary, Queen of Scots, fled to England where Queen Elizabeth imprisoned her.
1568 Jun 5, Ferdinand, the Duke of Alba, crushed the Calvinist insurrection in Ghent [Belgium].
1568 An eighty year war of independence from Spain was carried on by the Calvinist and predominantly mercantile Dutch provinces.
1570 Aug 8, Charles IX of France signed the Treaty of St. Germain (Peace of St. Germain-en-Laye), ending the third war of religion and giving religious freedom to the Huguenots.
1570-1579 Francis Drake captures the largest booty recorded in piracy when he captures a shipload of silver from the Spanish.
1571 Along with the Common Book of Prayer, the Thirty-nine Articles constitute the doctrinal statements of the Church of England. Developed from the Forty-two Articles written by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in 1553 "for the avoiding of controversy in opinions." When Mary became queen in 1553 and restored Catholicism, the Forty-two Articles were eliminated. Upon the reign of Elizabeth I in 1558 a new statement of doctrine was needed. The 1563 Canterbury Convocation drastically revised the Forty-two Articles and a final revision resulted in the Thirty-nine articles in 1571, approved by the Queen and imposed on the clergy. They deal briefly with the doctrines accepted by Catholics and Protestants alike and more fully with the points of controversy.
1571 Charles IX of France had a reconciliation with the Huguenots.
1571 Potters from Antwerp introduced Delft ware to England about this time.
1572 Aug 24, The slaughter of French Protestants at the hands of Catholics began in Paris as Charles IX of France attempted to rid the country of Huguenots. France's fourth war of religion started with the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, in which 50,000 Huguenots and their leader, Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, were killed in and around Paris. Meyerbeer's 1836 opera "Les Huguenots" was centered on the struggle.
1572 The first book privately printed in England, "De Antiquitate Britannicae Ecclesiae" by Matthew Parker, was published.
1572 Dutch warships, Beggars of the Sea, effectively harried Spanish shipping in the English Channel and fueled the Dutch War of Independence.
1573 France's Fourth War of Religion ended with the Pacification of Boulogne.
1573 The Huguenots gained an amnesty and were promised freedom of conscience.
1574 Feb 23, The 5th War of Religion broke out in France.
1570-1579 England's Queen Elizabeth gives license to Sir Humphrey Gilbert to possess all un-Christian lands in the New World.
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