January 28 – In a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is also the Chancellor of the English treasury, King Henry VII of England formally authorizes, from his own funds, declares that “we, for certain considerations us especially moving, have given and granted unto our well-beloved John Calbot of the parts of Venice an annuity or annual rent of £20 sterling, to be had and yearly perceived from the Feast of the Annunciation of our Lady last past, during our pleasure, of our customs and subsidies growing in our port of Bristol by the hands of our customs there for the time being, at Michaelmas and Easter, by even portions.[1]
February 3 – King Henry grants John Cabot a royal patent for a second westward sea voyage toward North America, with hopes that Cabot will discover a seaward route to Asia. The patent declares that “By thiesee presentes geve and graunte to our well beloved John Kaboto, Venecian, sufficient auctorite and power that he may take at his pleasure vi englisshe shippes and theym convey and lede to the londe and Iles of late founde y the seid John in our name.” The expedition launches in early May, but with fewer ships than promised.[2]
February 9 – Leonardo da Vinci completes his painting The Last Supper, on the refectory wall of Milan‘s Santa Maria delle Grazie Convent.[3] Because the location is a thin exterior wall, the effects of humidity and moisture-retaining rock behind the wall begin to cause the painting to deteriorate.
March 21 – In Friesland, in the Netherlands, during the ongoing civil war between the Vetkopers and Schieringers, the Schieringers seek out the help of Albrecht III, Duke of Saxony at the cost of losing Frisian independence.[4]
April–June
April 7 – Louis XII becomes the new King of France upon the death of his wife’s brother, King Charles VIII. King Charles had struck his head on the top of a door frame while on his way to watch a tennis match at Amboise.[5]
May 17 – Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama arrives at Calicut (modern-day Kozhikode), India, becoming the first European to get there by sailing around Africa, thus discovering the maritime route to India. He finds a local Arab merchant who is able to interpret for him.[6]
July 31 – Columbus becomes the first European to visit the island of Trinidad.
August 1 – Columbus discovers the mouth of the Orinoco at what is now Venezuela on the continent of South America, but does not enter.
August 4 – Columbus begins eight days of exploring the Gulf of Paria between Trinidad and Venezuela.
August 5 – Columbus lands on the Paria Peninsula,[10] in what is now Venezuela in the first definitely recorded landing of Europeans on the mainland Americas.
August 12 – Columbus concludes his exploration of Venezuela.
September 20 – (Meiō 7, 2nd day of the 7th month) A massive earthquake, estimated centuries later as having been 8.6 magnitude[11] occurs off of the coast of the Japanese region of Nankaidō at about 8:00 in the morning.[12] The resulting tsunami kills at least 5,000 people (and perhaps as many as 41,000)[13][14] when it strikes Kamakura and the surrounding area in what is now Japan’s Kanagawa Prefecture. The tsunami washes away a building that houses the Kotoku-in Buddhist temple, but spares the large bronze statue of the BuddhaAmitābha.
October–December
October 28 – In the Chinese Empire, two days after being blamed by the Emperor Zhu Youcheng for bringing misfortunes to the Empire by having built a pavilion in the imperial gardens that disregarded feng shui principles, royal administrator Li Guang commits suicide. The Emperor’s daughter Princess Taikang had died suddenly on October 1, and a fire had broken out in one of the palaces in Beijing’s Forbidden City on October 26.[15]
^ abMol, Johannes A. (2022). The Frisian Popular Militias between 1480 and 1560 (1st ed.). Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press. ISBN 9789463723671.
^Heiner Gillmeister, Tennis: A Cultural History (London: Leicester University Press, 1998) p. 21. (ISBN 978-0718501471)
^Petacco, Laura (2016). “La Meta Romuli e il Therebintus Neronis”. In Claudio Parisi Presicce; Laura Petacco (eds.). La Spina: dall’Agro vaticano a via della Conciliazione (in Italian). Rome: Gangemi. p. 35. ISBN 978-88-492-3320-9.
^John Fraser Ramsey (1973). Spain: the Rise of the First World Power. Office for International Studies and Programs. p. 299. ISBN 978-0-8173-5704-7. Archived from the original on April 29, 2024. Retrieved January 6, 2021.
