February 24 – In what is now south Vietnam, the Champa–Dai Viet War begins when the Dai Viet Emperor Lê Thánh Tông sends 500 warships to block the Champa Kingdom’s Bay of Sa Ky, while another 30,000 troops block all entrances to the capital city of Vijaya at what is now the Quảng Ngãi Province. The Me Can citadel in Quang Na falls two days later and the Vietnamese advance.[3]
March 22 – The Empire of Dai Viet in north Vietnam triumphs over the Champa Kingdom of south Vietnam after Dai Viet Emperor Le Thanh Tong ignores the offer of Champa King Tra Toan to surrender Vijaya.[4] After the city walls are breached, King Tra Toan, his family and 30,000 other Chams are captured as prisoners, while over 60,000 other Chams are killed.[5] Another 40,000 residents who did not die in the fighting are executed.[6]
March 15 – With the help of a group of mercenaries lent to him by Charles the Bold of Burgundy, the Yorkist King Edward IV returns to England to reclaim his throne, landing near Hull, after having departed from Holland on March 11.[7]
May 12 – The siege of London is attempted by hundreds of supporters of England’s House of Lancaster, who are attempting to free the former King Henry VI from imprisonment in the Tower of London. Led by Thomas Neville, the Lancastrians set cannons up on the south bank of the Thames and attempt to bombard London, but is unable to break the defense put up by Londoners led by Edward Woodville, Lord Scales, and the attack fails after three days.[10]
May 21 – King Edward IV celebrates his victories with a triumphal parade on his return to London. The captured Queen Margaret is paraded through the streets. On the same day Henry VI of England is murdered in the Tower of London,[11] eliminating all Lancastrian opposition to the House of York.
August 9 – Cardinal Francesco della Rovere, who received no votes in the initial round of balloting in the papal conclave, receives 13 votes and is elected as the new Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. He takes the regnal name of Pope Sixtus IV to become the 212th pope.[15]
September 21 – After making his way to Prague, convening a session of the Bohemian Diet and making promises to members of the nobility, Hungarian King Matthias Corvinus receives vows of loyalty from more than 50 Bohemian nobles, who agree to support Matthias’s claim to be King of Bohemia rather than to accept the rule of Prince Casimir of Poland.[16]
October 2 – Eleven days after Hungary’s King Matthias is supported to be King of Bohemia, Prince Casimir of Poland, a younger son of King Casimir IV (who is later canonised as a Roman Catholic saint) leads an army on an invasion of Bohemia and begins a war against Hungary.[18]
November 12 – Shah Suwar, the ruler of the independent Ottoman Governor of the semi-independent Anatolian Turk Beylik of Dulkadir is defeated by the army of the Egyptian Mamluk General Yashbak min Mahdi in a battle at Kars, sustaining more than 300 soldiers lost and losing most of his lands in what is now southeastern Turkey. After fleeing to the castle of Zamantu for refuge, Suwar is cornered again by Yashbak and surrenders on June 4, 1472, and executed two months later.[19]
December 25 – The Great Comet of 1472 is first observed from Earth passing in front of the constellation of Virgo. The comet is recorded by astronomers in Korea and by the German astronomers Regiomontanus and Bernhard Walther, and will come within 6.5 million miles of Earth, the closest in recorded history that a great comet approaches. The comet is visible for 59 days, disappearing after March 1.[21]
^Wilks, Ivor (1997). “Wangara, Akan and Portuguese in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries”. In Bakewell, Peter (ed.). Mines of Silver and Gold in the Americas. Aldershot: Ashgate. pp. 1–39.
^Taylor, K.W. (2013). A History of the Vietnamese. Cambridge University Press. p. 220. ISBN 978-0-521-87586-8.
^Sun, Laichen (2006). “Chinese Gunpowder Technology and Đại Việt, ca. 1390–1497”. In Anthony Reid; Tran Nhung Tuyet (eds.). Viet Nam: Borderless Histories. Cambridge: University of Wisconsin Press. p. 100. ISBN 978-1-316-44504-4.
^Maspero, Georges (2002). The Champa Kingdom. White Lotus Co., Ltd. pp. 117–118. ISBN 978-9-747-53499-3.
^Zottoli, Brian A. (2011). Reconceptualizing Southern Vietnamese History from the 15th to 18th Centuries: Competition along the Coasts from Guangdong to Cambodia. University of Michigan. p. 79.
^“English History”, by Albert Frederick Pollard, in Encyclopaedia Britannica (Cambridge University Press, 1910) p.519
^Weir, Alison (2008). Britain’s Royal Family. Vintage Books. p. 133. ISBN 978-0-0995-3973-5.
^Macek, Josef (1998). “The monarchy of the estates”. In Teich, Mikuláš (ed.). Bohemia in History. Cambridge University Press. p. 100. ISBN 0-521-43155-7.
^ abTeke, Zsuzsa (1981). “A középkori magyar állam virágzása és bukása, 1301–1526: 1458–1490 [Flourishing and Fall of Medieval Hungary, 1301–1526: 1458–1490]”. In Solymosi, László (ed.). Magyarország történeti kronológiája, I: a kezdetektől 1526-ig [Historical Chronology of Hungary, Volume I: From the Beginning to 1526] (in Hungarian). Akadémiai Kiadó. p. 292. ISBN 963-05-2661-1.
