The 15th century

In 1401, the statute De heretico comburendo made burning the penalty for heresy in England (England).

In 1402, Timur defeated and captured the Ottoman sultan at Ankara, halting Ottoman expansion for a decade (Anatolia).

In 1403, work began on the Yongle Encyclopedia, which ran to over eleven thousand volumes (China).

In 1404, Owain Glyndwr held a parliament at Machynlleth and was crowned Prince of Wales (Wales).

In 1405, Zheng He's first treasure fleet sailed, with ships far larger than any in Europe (Indian Ocean).

In 1406, Florence conquered Pisa and gained a seaport (Italy).

In 1407, the Banco di San Giorgio was established at Genoa, among the earliest chartered banks (Italy).

In 1408, the Yongle Encyclopedia was completed in over twenty-two thousand chapters, too large ever to be printed (China).

In 1409, the Council of Pisa elected a third pope instead of resolving the schism (Europe).

In 1410, the Polish-Lithuanian victory at Grunwald broke the power of the Teutonic Order (Eastern Europe).

In 1411, the First Peace of Thorn settled the war between Poland-Lithuania and the Teutonic Order (Eastern Europe).

In 1412, Joan of Arc was born at Domremy (France).

In 1413, Henry V became king and reopened the French war two years later (England).

In 1414, the Council of Constance opened to end the schism and judge Hus and Wycliffe (Central Europe).

In 1415, Henry V won at Agincourt against a much larger French army (France).

In 1416, Jerome of Prague was burned at Constance, a year after Hus (Central Europe).

In 1417, the election of Martin V ended the Western Schism after thirty-nine years (Europe).

In 1418, Portuguese navigators reached Porto Santo, beginning the settlement of the Atlantic islands (Portugal).

In 1419, the first defenestration of Prague began the Hussite wars (Central Europe).

In 1420, the Treaty of Troyes made Henry V heir to the French throne (France).

In 1421, Beijing replaced Nanjing as the Ming capital (China).

In 1422, Henry V and Charles VI died within two months, leaving an infant claimant to both crowns (France and England).

In 1423, Vittorino da Feltre opened his school at Mantua, a model for humanist education (Italy).

In 1424, Jan Zizka died undefeated, having made the Hussite wagon fort a match for armoured cavalry (Central Europe).

In 1425, the University of Louvain was founded (Low Countries).

In 1426, Jan van Eyck was working at Bruges, and oil painting spread from the Netherlandish workshops (Low Countries).

In 1427, Dai Viet expelled the Ming and restored independence under the Le dynasty (Southeast Asia).

In 1428, the Triple Alliance of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco and Tlacopan formed the Aztec empire (Mesoamerica).

In 1429, Joan of Arc relieved the siege of Orleans, turning the Hundred Years' War (France).

In 1430, Joan of Arc was captured at Compiegne and sold to the English (France).

In 1431, Joan of Arc was burned at Rouen at about nineteen (France).

In 1432, the Ghent Altarpiece was completed, among the first major works in oil (Low Countries).

In 1433, the last of Zheng He's seven voyages returned, and China withdrew from long-range seafaring (Indian Ocean).

In 1434, Cosimo de' Medici returned from exile and the family dominated Florence for sixty years (Italy).

In 1435, the Congress of Arras detached Burgundy from the English alliance (France and Burgundy).

In 1436, Brunelleschi's dome over Florence Cathedral was completed, the largest masonry dome ever raised and built without centering (Italy).

In 1437, James I was assassinated at Perth, and Scotland entered another royal minority (Scotland).

In 1438, Pachacuti began the expansion that turned Cusco into the Inca empire (South America).

In 1439, the Council of Florence agreed a short-lived union between the Latin and Greek churches (Italy).

In 1440, Gutenberg was developing printing with movable metal type at Strasbourg (Germany).

In 1441, the first African captives were brought to Portugal by sea, beginning the Atlantic slave trade (West Africa and Portugal).

In 1442, Alfonso V of Aragon took Naples, joining it to the Crown of Aragon (Italy).

In 1443, Sejong's scholars completed the hangul alphabet, promulgated three years later (Korea).

In 1444, the crusading army was destroyed at Varna, ending organised resistance to the Ottoman advance (Balkans).

In 1445, Portuguese ships reached the Senegal river and Cape Verde (Portugal).

In 1446, the Hunminjeongeum promulgated hangul, an alphabet designed from first principles to be learnable in a day (Korea).

In 1447, the Ambrosian Republic was proclaimed at Milan on the death of the last Visconti duke (Italy).

In 1448, the Concordat of Vienna settled church appointments in the empire and lasted until 1806 (Central Europe).

In 1449, the French reconquest of Normandy began and was complete within a year (France).

In 1450, Gutenberg's press was working at Mainz (Germany).

In 1451, Mehmed II became Ottoman sultan at nineteen and began preparing to take Constantinople (Anatolia).

In 1452, Leonardo da Vinci was born at Vinci near Florence (Italy).

In 1453, Constantinople fell to Mehmed II after a siege in which large cannon breached the walls, ending the Roman empire in the east (Constantinople).

In 1454, the Peace of Lodi set a balance among the Italian states that held for forty years (Italy).

In 1455, the Gutenberg Bible was printed, the first substantial European book made with movable type (Germany).

In 1456, Joan of Arc's conviction was annulled twenty-five years after her death (France).

In 1457, the Mainz Psalter was printed, the first book to carry a printed date and printer's name (Germany).

In 1458, Matthias Corvinus was elected king and built the Bibliotheca Corviniana, among Europe's largest libraries (Hungary).

In 1459, the Wars of the Roses resumed after four years of uneasy peace (England).

In 1460, Richard of York was killed at Wakefield, and his son took the crown within months (England).

In 1461, Towton was fought in a snowstorm and is thought the bloodiest battle on English soil (England).

In 1462, Ivan III became Grand Prince of Moscow and began gathering the Russian lands (Eastern Europe).

In 1463, the long Ottoman-Venetian war began, and Venice lost most of its Aegean possessions (Mediterranean).

In 1464, Pius II died at Ancona waiting for a crusade fleet that never assembled (Europe).

In 1465, the League of the Public Weal rose against Louis XI, the last great feudal coalition in France (France).

In 1466, the Second Peace of Thorn gave Poland access to the Baltic and made the Teutonic state a fief (Eastern Europe).

In 1467, the Onin War began and left Kyoto in ruins, opening a century of civil war (Japan).

In 1468, Orkney was pledged to Scotland against a Danish dowry, and Shetland followed the next year (Scotland).

In 1469, the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile joined the two crowns (Iberia).

In 1470, Henry VI was briefly restored, and Edward IV fled to the Low Countries (England).

In 1471, Edward IV won at Barnet and Tewkesbury within a month, and the Lancastrian line ended (England).

In 1472, Ivan III married Sophia Palaiologina, and Moscow began styling itself heir to Byzantium (Eastern Europe).

In 1473, Nicolaus Copernicus was born at Torun (Poland).

In 1474, Venice enacted a patent statute granting inventors ten years of exclusive rights, the earliest such general law (Italy).

In 1475, Michelangelo was born near Arezzo (Italy).

In 1476, William Caxton set up England's first printing press at Westminster (England).

In 1477, Charles the Bold was killed at Nancy and the Burgundian state was partitioned (Burgundy).

In 1478, the Spanish Inquisition was established under royal rather than papal control (Iberia).

In 1479, Castile and Aragon were united under Ferdinand and Isabella (Iberia).

In 1480, the standoff on the Ugra river ended Mongol overlordship of Moscow without a battle (Eastern Europe).

In 1481, Otranto was recovered a year after an Ottoman landing on the Italian mainland (Italy).

In 1482, the first printed edition of Euclid's Elements appeared at Venice (Italy).

In 1483, Raphael was born at Urbino (Italy).

In 1484, the bull Summis desiderantes gave papal backing to witch prosecutions in the Rhineland (Europe).

In 1485, Henry Tudor's victory at Bosworth ended the Wars of the Roses and the Plantagenet line (England).

In 1486, the Malleus Maleficarum was printed, and the press carried it across Europe within a decade (Central Europe).

In 1487, Bartolomeu Dias sailed south to find the end of Africa (Portugal and Africa).

In 1488, Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope, opening the sea route to the Indian Ocean (Southern Africa).

In 1489, the plus and minus signs appeared in print for the first time, in Johannes Widmann's arithmetic (Iberia).

In 1490, a scheduled postal service was established between the Habsburg lands, the beginning of the Thurn und Taxis network (Europe).

In 1491, the marriage of Charles VIII and Anne of Brittany began the union of Brittany with France (France).

In 1492, Columbus made landfall in the Bahamas, beginning sustained contact between Europe and the Americas (Caribbean).

In 1493, the Nuremberg Chronicle was printed with over eighteen hundred woodcut illustrations (Europe).

In 1494, the Treaty of Tordesillas divided the newly encountered world between Spain and Portugal along a meridian (Iberia and the Atlantic).

In 1495, the Italian Wars began with the French invasion, drawing Spain and the empire into a sixty-year struggle (Italy).

In 1496, the Intercursus Magnus restored English trade with the Netherlands (England and the Low Countries).

In 1497, John Cabot reached Newfoundland under English commission (North America).

In 1498, Vasco da Gama reached Calicut by sea, linking Europe and India without an overland leg (India).

In 1499, the Swabian War ended in effective Swiss independence from the empire (Central Europe).

In 1500, Pedro Alvares Cabral made the Portuguese landfall in Brazil (Brazil).