-
Egyptians began to use the “civil year” or “Nile year”. -
In search of a way to measure the cycle of the seasons in multiples of moon cycles, they eventually discovered the so-called metonic cycle (after and astronomer Meton) of nineteen years. -
Caesar burned the famous library of Alexandria. -
-
They reached the Faeroe Islands some 200 miles north of Scotland. -
They went on and began settling Iceland. -
The era of the great seafaring Vikings
-
They founded Dublin. -
Harold Fairhair, who made a strong kingdom in Norway and forced many lesser chieftains to leave the country, had nine sons who reached manhood.
-
Rollo the Ganger was a Biking chief who brought his invaders twenty years before.
-
The Frankish king, Charles the Simple, offered upper Normandy, the area around Rouen, as a fief to Rollo the Ganger, a Viking chief who had brought his invaders twenty years before. -
It seemed that most of Iceland’s habitable land was fully occupied. -
When Eric was outlawed for manslaughter from his native Norway, he fled to Iceland, where he settled at Haukadal in the west. -
When Eric had been outlawed for manslaughter from his native Norway, he fled to Iceland where he settled at Haukadal in the west. -
He sailed from Iceland again, this time with an emigrant fleet of twenty-five ships carrying men and women and domestic animals. -
In the summer, he took a full cargo to Iceland intending to follow his usual practice of spending the winter there with his father Heriulf. -
He gathered a crew of thirty-five, and set out for the land Bjarni had sighted but did not have the courage or the curiosity to explore. -
William of Normandy invaded England -
Tancred was a Norman who led the First Crusade, captured Jerusalem, and then established still another kind of Norman kingdom in Syria.
-
-
The Vivaldi brothers from Genoa set out round Africa by the sea, but they disappeared. -
-
-
-
-
-
He was celebrated.
-
-
Palla Strozzi was one of the family who used the wealth acquired in commerce to become patrons of learning.
-
A copy of Ptolemy in Greek was brought from Constantinople to Florence by Palla Strozzi. -
Ptolemy’s geographical speculations were published in his Geography which were translated into Greek and Latin, but started to seem out of date by the time it reached the western part of Europe. -
A latter-day Venetian merchant traveled for twenty-five years. During these decades in the East, he renounced his Christianity.
-
Prince Henry sent out fifteen expeditions to round the inconsequential but threatening cape.
-
When Gil Eannes reported back to Prince Henry that Cape Bojador was impassible, the Prince was not satisfied. -
The Chinese seafaring outreach had been so spectacular. -
The Prince sent Gil Eannes back with renewed promise of reward for yet another try. -
When Prince Henry sent out Eannes once again, this time with Alfonso Baldaya, the royal cupbearer, they reached another fifty leagues down the coast. -
When Baldaya went out again, with orders to bring back an inhabitant for the Prince to interview at Sagres, he reached what seemed to be the mouth of a huge river, which he hoped would be the Senegal of “the silent trade” in gold. -
From Prince Henry’s household went Nuno Tristāo and Antāo Gonçalves, reaching another two hundred fifty miles farther to Cape Branco (Blanco) where they took two natives captive. -
From that area, Eannes brought back the first human cargo-two hundred Africans to be sold as slaves in Lagos. -
When Dinis Dias rounded Cape Verde, the western tip of Africa, in 1445, the most barren coast had been passed, and the prosperous Portuguese trade with west Africa soon engaged twenty-five caravels every year. -
-
The Turks captured Constantinople. -
Alvise da Cadamosto-a Venetian precursor of the Italian sea captains like Columbus, Vespucci, and the Cabots who served foreign princes-advancing down the coast for Prince Henry had accidentally discovered the Cape Verde Islands and then went up the Senegal and Gambia rivers sixty miles from the sea. -
It was beautiful and famous. -
At the time of Prince Henry’s death in Sagres the discovery of the west African coast had only begun, but it was well begun. -
King Alfonso, Prince Henry’s nephew, in financial difficulty, found a way to make discovery into a profitable business. -
Nicolaus Copernicus went to much trouble to displace a system that was amply supported by everyday experience, by tradition, and by authority.
-
This is the earliest printed version of this Latin translation. -
-
When Gomes’ contract expired, the King gave the trading rights to his own son, John, who became King John II, opening the next great age of Portuguese seafaring. -
Zacuto’s disciple at Salamanca, Joseph Vizinho, had already accepted the King’s invitation ten years before, and had been sent out on a voyage to develop and apply the technique of determining latitude by the height of the sun at midday. -
When the Spanish Inquisitor - general Torquemada gave Jews three months to convert to Christianity or leave the country, the brilliant Abraham Zacuto left the University of Salamanca and was welcomed to Portugal by King John II. -
-
-
A printed map gave a reasonably precise portrait of the southward extension of Africa. -
Erasmus Reinhold was appointed professor of astronomy.
-
Copernicus’ uncle and guardian, who became bishop of Ermeland, died. -
-
Georg Joachim was an Austrian and town physician who was beheaded for sorcery
-
There were three reprintings of the apocryphal Sir John Mandeville’s Travels, which many thought had been confirmed by Columbus. -
-
Rheticus arrived in Frauenburg to meet Copernicus and learn more about his new cosmology, still not available in print. -
Rheticus wrote his First Report (Narratio Prima) of Copernicus’ system, in the form of a letter to his former teacher. -
Rheticus’ First Report (Narratio Prima) was printed in Danzig. -
Demand for Rheticus’ First Report required a second edition. -
-
The first printed edition of Copernicus’ great work, the De Revolutionibus reached him only on his deathbed. -
-
-
-
The “best” atlases still offered reissues of Ptolemy’s obsolete maps. -
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
With a grand gesture, instead of trying to sell his telescope, Galileo made it a gift to the Venetian Senate in a ceremony. -
-
-
-
-
-
-
Buffon spoke for an urbane world of change.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Captain Magnus Andersen made a 28-day passage from Bergen to Newfoundland through a stormy sea in an exact replica of the Gökstad ship.
-
Kemal Ataturk (Mustapha Kemal) modernized the nation by adopting a new code of laws, by making civil marriage compulsory, and by abolishing the fez for men and the veil for women, he also abandoned the lunar calendar of Islam and adopted he solar calendar of the West.