mmw 13

1258

Mongol Conquest of Baghdad

1270

End of Song dynasty, beginning of Yuan dynasty in China

1347

The Black Death arrives in Europe

1368

End of Yuan dynasty, beginning of Ming dynasty in China

1405

death of Timur (Tamer Lane)

1440

Gutenberg develops his moveable type printing press

1453

Ottoman Turks conquer Constantinople

1492

Columbus arrives in the Bahamas (though he thinks “The Indies” or Japan)

1499

Vasco da Gama arrives back in Portugal after sailing to India via the Cape of Good Hope

1508-12

Michelangelo painting the frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome

1514

Selim I defeats Shah Ismail at the Battle of Chaldiran

1517

Martin Luther composes his 95 theses

1521

Spanish Conquest of Mexico City (Tenochtitlan)

1524-25

The German Peasants’ War

1526

The Mughal sultan Babur conquers Delhi

1534

English Reformation initiated by Henry VIII

1536

Jean Calvin publishes the first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion

1540

Jesuit order founded by Ignatius of Loyola

1543

Copernicus’s On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres published & Luther publishes On the Jews and Their Lies

1545

The world’s biggest silver mine discovered at Potosi in Spanish colonial “Peru”

1545-63

Council of Trent

1553

Michael Servetus burned at the stake in Geneva

1553-58

reign of Mary I (Tudor), aka “Bloody Mary,” in England

1562-98

Wars of Religion in France

1571

Battle of Lepanto & Spanish create a major entrepôt at Manila, establishing a link between the American mines and Asian markets

1572

The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, publication of Camoens’ The Lusiads

1588

The Spanish Armada attempts an invasion of England

1603

Most of Japan united under shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu

1607

English establish a colonial outpost at Jamestown, Virginia

1615

Galileo writes his “Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina”

1618

Thirty Years’ War breaks out

1620

Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum published

1642

English Revolution begins

1644

Beijing falls and the Manchus take control, beginning the Qing dynasty

1648

King Charles I tried and beheaded

1653-58

Oliver Cromwell rules as Lord Protector of England

1660

The Restoration of Stuart Monarchy in England

1662

British Royal Society chartered

1672

The Royal African Company was founded and granted a monopoly in the slave trade

1687

Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles ofNatural Philosophy) is published

1726

Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels published

1763

Voltaire publishes his “Treatise on Toleration”