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Jan 1, 1485
Richard III is killed in battle
Richard III was King of England from 1483 until his death in 1485, at the age of 32, in the Battle of Bosworth Field. He was the last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty. His defeat at Bosworth Field, the last decisive battle of the Wars of the Roses, marked the end of the Middle Ages in England. He is the subject of the historical play Richard III by William Shakespeare. -
Jan 1, 1492
Christopher Columbus reaches the Americas
Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer, navigator, colonizer, and citizen of the Republic of Genoa. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean. Those voyages and his efforts to establish permanent settlements on the island of Hispaniola initiated the European colonization of the New World. -
Jan 1, 1503
Leonardo da Vinci paints the Mona Lisa
The painting, thought to be a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, is in oil on a white Lombardy poplar panel, and is believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506. Leonardo may have continued working on it as late as 1517. It was acquired by King Francis I of France and is now the property of the French Republic, on permanent display at the Louvre Museum in Paris since 1797. -
Jan 1, 1516
Thomas More’s Utopia is published
Utopia is a work of fiction and political philosophy by Thomas More published in Latin. The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs. Many aspects of More's description of Utopia are reminiscent of life in monasteries. -
Jan 1, 1543
With the Supremacy Act, Henry VIII proclaims himself head of Church of England
The title was created for King Henry VIII, who was responsible for the English Catholic church breaking away from the authority of the Roman Catholic Church after the Pope excommunicated Henry in 1533 over his divorce from Catherine of Aragon. By 1536, Henry had broken with Rome, seized the church's assets in England and declared the Church of England as the established church with himself as its head. -
Jan 1, 1558
Elizabeth I becomes queen of England
Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, his second wife. 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, Elizabeth and the Roman Catholic Mary, in spite of statute law to the contrary. Edward's will was set aside and Mary became queen, deposing Lady Jane Grey. -
Jan 1, 1564
William Shakespeare, the Bard of Avon, 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. His extant works, including collaborations, consist of approximately 38 plays,154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. -
Globe Theatre is built in London
The Globe Theatre, in London, is associated with William Shakespeare. It was built by Shakespeare's playing company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, on land owned by Thomas Brend, and was destroyed by fire on 29 June 1613. A second Globe Theatre was built on the same site by June 1614 and closed by an Ordinance issued on 6 September 1642. A modern reconstruction of the Globe, named "Shakespeare's Globe", opened in 1997 approximately 750 feet from the site of the original theatre. -
Shakespeare writes King Lear and Macbeth
Both works known as two of his best plays. These plays were both known as tragedies. Macbeth being about a soldier who becomes overzealous and is manipulated by his wife, and King Lear is about a king who becomes a lowly "nudist". -
First permanent English settlement in North America is established at Jamestown, Virginia.
William Kelso writes that Jamestown "is where the British Empire began ... this was the first colony in the British Empire." Jamestown was established by the Virginia Company of London as "James Fort" on May 4, 1607 and was considered permanent after brief abandonment in 1610. -
Shakespeare’s sonnets are published
Shakespeare's Sonnets is the title of a collection of 154 sonnets that covers themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality. The first 126 sonnets are addressed to a young man; the last 28 to a woman. -
King James Bible is published
The first English translation of the christian bible for the church of England. Being an authorized version by King James because he had longed to have a newly translated bible. Having this bible created, translators used references and translations mainly from other bibles around the time: Tyndale, Matthew, Coverdale, Great, and Geneva. -
The Mayflower lands at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts
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 or in Bradford's journal Of Plymouth Plantation . The first known written reference to the rock's existence is in 1715, when it is described in the town boundary records as "a great rock." The first written reference to Pilgrims landing on a rock is found 121 years after they landed, in 1741. -
Newspapers are first published in London
Corante: or, Newes from Italy, Germany, Hungarie, Spaine and France was the first newspaper printed in England. The earliest of the seven known surviving copies is dated September 24, 1621 and the latest is dated October 22 of that same year. -
1658 John Milton begins Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse. The first version, published in 1667, consisted of ten books with over ten thousand lines of verse. A second edition followed in 1674, arranged into twelve books (in the manner of Virgil's Aeneid) with minor revisions throughout and a note on the versification. It is considered by critics to be Milton's major work, and it helped solidify his reputation as one of the greatest English poets of his time. -
1660 Puritan Commonwealth ends; monarchy is restored with Charles II
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. Restoration, in other words, was the period of several years afterwards in which a new political settlement was established.[1] It is very often used to cover the whole reign of Charles II (1660–1685) and often the brief reign of his younger brother James II (1685–1688).
