1475 to 1479

1476

c - An edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales was printed by William Caxton.A copy of the red, leather-bound edition sold at auction in 1998 for $7.5 million.

x - William Caxton sets up printing press at Westminster

aug 13 - Christopher Columbus ?+ swam ashore to Portugal from a burning ship. He believed that Cathay China ?+ lay about 3,900 miles west of the Canary Islands.

sep - Cesare Borgia + born, Italian cardinal, military leader and politician. d.mar 12 1507

1477

x - Future Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, a member of the Habsburg family of Austria, married Mary of Burgundy, heiress of all the Netherlands.

x - Titian (Titziano Vecellio), Italian painter born. He painted "Venus and Adonis and Allegory" with subjects Alfonso d'Este and Laura Diante.d.1576

jan 05 - Swiss troops defeated the forces under Charles the Bold of Burgundy at the Battle of Nancy.

nov 18 - William Claxton published the first dated book printed inEngland ?+ . It was a translation from the French of The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers, by Earl Rivers.

1478

c - Spanish Inquisition + persecutes Jews, Muslims, and heretics

c - January Gossaert (Mabuse), Flemish painter. He painted "St Luke Drawing the Virgin Mary." d.c.1533

x - Russia ?+ takes over Novgorod.

x - Baldassarre Castiglione born, Italian diplomat and author. He wrote theBook of the Courtier * , in which the term sprezzatura was coined. It described the art of making the difficult seem effortless. d.1529

x - The Gubbio Studiola was constructed in the shop of the Florentine woodworker Giuliano da Maiana. The wood inlay art of intarsia was used whereby the carving was done by knife rather than with saws.u.1483

x - The Swiss began annexing the southern approaches to the strategic and lucrative St. Gothard Pass over the Alps.

x - Ten years after the death of Skanderbeg, his citadel at Kruje was finally taken by the Ottoman Turks and Albania fell into obscurity during several centuries of Turkish rule.

feb 07 - Sir Thomas More + d.jul 06 1535 , English humanist, statesman and writer, was born in London.He was best friend of Erasmus, and called by Erasmus: "a man for all seasons." He studied law and rose to the post of lord chancellor after the fall of Cardinal Wolsey. More would not accept Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine of Aragon nor his subsequent marriage to Anne Boleyn. The king had charges of treason filed and More was beheaded. Canonized in1935 .

feb 18 - George, the Duke of Clarence, who had opposed his brother Edward IV, was murdered in the Tower of London.

apr 26 - Pazzi conspirators attacked Lorenzo and killed Giuliano de'Medici.

1479

x - Bosnia The Turks erected a mosque in the center of Banja Luka.It was leveled by the Serbs in 1993.

x - Shkodra fell to the Ottoman Turks. Subsequently, many Albanians fled to southern Italy, Greece, Egypt, and elsewhere; many remaining were forced to convert to Islam.

sep 04 - After four years of war, Spain agreed to allow a Portuguese monopoly of trade along Africa's west coast and Portugal acknowledged Spain's rights in the Canary Islands.

Inline links found above : [mar 12 1507] [1576] [1533] [1529] [jul 06 1535] [1935] [Christopher Columbus ?+] [China ?+] [Cesare Borgia +] [England ?+] [Spanish Inquisition +] [Russia ?+] [Book of the Courtier *] [Thomas More +]