----------1500----------

• Jan- Jul, 1499: The Swabian War; A Swiss confederacy defeat the Swabian and Hapsburg Armies. The Swiss are exempted imperial jurisdiction and imperial tax from the Holy Roman Empire under Maximilian I. 

• 22 Sep, 1499: Peace of Basel is signed ending the Swabian War. 

• 1499: Basel and Schaffhausen join the Swiss Confederacy after the Swabian War (Swiss Museum).

• 1499: Amerigo Vespucci discovers the mouth of the Amazon river and reaches 6d S, present day Northern Brazil. 

• 1499: Invasion of Italy by French King Louis XII; the French take Milan, Genoa, and Naples, but are driven out in 1503 by Spain under Ferdinand V (Britannica). 

• 1499: Alonso de Hojeda voyages to the pearl fisheries of Paria with Amerigo Vespucci and Juan de la Cosa.-Columbus by Armesto.

• 1499: Vespucci begins to contemplate that the New world may be physically separated from Asia, eventually concluding that S. America was the “Antipodes’, the Southern Continent; “I have discovered a continent in those southern regions that is inhabited by more numerous peoples and animals than in our Europe, or Asia or Africa.”-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1499: Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, previously the captain of the Niña on Columbus’s first voyage, sets out under royal license for the New World. He is ordered not to bring back Caribbean natives as slaves, though Africans were acceptable if he enters E. Atlantic waters; he takes 36 slaves from the New World.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1498: Bartholomew Columbus, Christopher’s brother, move the center of Spanish operations from La Isabela to the new capital Nueva Isabela, but Santo Domingo was the name that stuck until 1936, when the ruthless Dominican dictator Trujillo modestly renamed it Ciudad Trujillo.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1498: Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama is the first European to open a maritime trade route to India (British Museum).

• 1498-1500: Columbus’s 3rd voyage to the Americas with 6 ships; they explore Trinidad and some of Northern S. America; allegations of antagonization by him and his brothers to indigenous chiefs and poor administration lead Columbus and his brothers to be returned to Spain in chains (Britannica). 

• Columbus left two accounts of the crossing: the first is in the form of a partial copy by Las Casas of a letter written to Ferdinand and Isabella on arrival in Hispaniola and sent to Spain in Oct, 1498; the second survives in a few fragments extracted from a journal and included in a work of Las Casas.-Columbus by Armesto.

• 1499: Columbus arrives in Hispaniola to find chaos; Francisco Roldan had rebelled against the rule of Bartolome Colon and had withdrawn with followers of his own to live off the Indians.-Columbus by Armesto.

• 5 Aug, 1498: Columbus makes the first recorded European landing on the American mainland, at an unk site, possibly Ensenada Yacua.-Columbus by Armesto. 

• Aug, 1498: Columbus anchors in the mouth of a river (River Guiria). Many natives arrive, calling the region the land of Paria.-Columbus by Armesto.

• 31 Jul, 1498: Columbus’s ships spot the island they name ‘Trinidad’, naming the cape they enter the ‘Cape of Galera’.-Columbus by Armesto.

• 30 May, 1498: Columbus departs Sanlucar for the America’s on his third voyage, sailing from Spain to Madeira to Gran Canaria and thence to the Cape Verde Islands, at which point he heads S. to the equator close to the parallel of Sierra Leone in Guinea where the heat was so intense and the sun’s rays so hot “I expected to burn.”-Columbus by Armesto.

• 1498: Portuguese Explorer Vasco da Gama rounds the Cape of Good Hope and reaches India; the first European to find the all-sea route to India. It took Da Gama 23 days in his ship, Sao Gabriel, to cross from Africa to India (Table Mountain NP).

• 1497-1498: Portuguese Explorer Vasco de Gama rounds the Cape of Good Hope and sails to India and back providing Portugal a sea route to India (NatGeo). 

• 1497: English explorer John Cabot crosses the Atlantic but disappears on his return.-These Truths by Lepore.

• 1497: Portuguese King Manuel I expels both Jews and Muslims and bans the open practice of Judaism in his Kingdom.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1497: Melilla on Morocco’s Mediterranean coast is captured by the Castilians.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• Jul, 1497-Sep, 1499: Vasco da Gama’s 1st voyage to the Indian Ocean with 4 ships that take the route along the W. coast of Africa and past the Cape Verde Islands. His ships were swept along, arriving somewhere along the coasts of modern Namibia and South Africa. There they met naked, tawny-colored Bushmen who were disappointingly ignorant of spices, gold or pearls; further south, Vasco da Gama’s chronicler described people who looked and acted more like the black Africans known from much further to the north. Vasco da Gama arrives in Calicut, India on 20 May, 1498. Their first encounter with the Hindu gods was transmogrified in the fertile imagination of the Portuguese into an encounter with the Virgin and Child. Da Gama was able to leave loaded with samples of pepper and other goods, and to reach Lisbon again in September 1499. Within five years an astonishing eighty-one ships were dispatched from Lisbon to India.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1496-1498: The Voyages of John Cabot, commissioned by English King Henry.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1498: John Cabot’s 3rd Expedition to the Americas; Cabot heads towards Newfoundland, with the idea that the ships would strike southwards towards the tropics, in search, perhaps, of a route to India, or at least Japan and China. Cabot himself disappears.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1497: John Cabot’s 2nd Expedition to the Americas; Cabot discovers ‘New-found-land’ (and possibly Labrador) and finds that the best chance for profit came not from rich ports and courts but from codfish- it was so plentiful that English fishing boats would no longer need to sail to Iceland. -Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• Mar, 1496: John Cabot’s 1st Expedition to the Americas; English King Henry grants John Cabot extensive rights of conquest, trade monopoly and dominion in the lands he would discover. He is defeated by the weather and the pessimism of his crew.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1496: Tenerife is conquered by the Spanish.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1496: Jose Vizinho translates the astronomical tables of Zacuto, revolutionizing oceanic exploration by allowing mariners to accurately determine their position while at sea (Britannica). 

• 1496: Emperor Maximilian decrees the expulsion of Jews from Styria and Carinthia (Slovenia Museum). 

• 1496?: Battle of Guingola; the Mexica under Ahuizotl, fight the Zapotecs (Mexico City Culture Museo). 

• 1495: The Diet of Worms; Maximilian I raises the counts of Württemberg to ducal rank (Landesmuseum Württemberg).

• 1495: Death of Portuguese King João II; succeeded by his cousin, Manuel I.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1494: The Treaty of Tordesillas, mediated by the pope, Alexander VI Borgia, grants Sparin rights to the west of the line of division, Portugal to the east.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1494: The Treaty of Tordesillas; the Spanish borne pope grants all of the lands W of a line of longitude some 500 km W of Cape Verde, to Spain, and everything E of that line, W Africa, to Portugal, the pope claiming the authority to divvy up lands inhabited by tens of millions of people as if he were the god of Genesis. Unsurprisingly, the heads of England, France, and the Netherlands found this papal pronouncement absurd.-These Truths by Lepore.

• 1494: The Invasion of Italy by French King Charles VIII; The French take Naples but an alliance between Maximilian I of Spain and the Pope drive the French from Italy (Britannica). 

• 1494: Treaty of Tordesillas; Spain and Portugal agree to move the Pope’s initial North-South line through the Atlantic westwards (NatGeo). 

• 1494-1495: King Charles VIII of France conquers Naples with a force of 50K mercenaries. Facing a contingent of Spanish troops, Charles flees, picking up Treponema pallidum (Syphilis)- most likely from Spanish attackers with transmission occurring via the women violated by both sides.-1491 by Mann. 

• 1494: The Treaty of Tordesillas; Pope Alexander VI grants all lands West of a demarcation in the Atlantic to Spain.-War by NatGeo.

• 1494-1495: First recorded European epidemic of syphilis.-1491 by Mann.

• 1494: The Treaty of Tordesillas is signed between Spain and Portugal dividing the Western Hemisphere between the two (Britannica).

• 1493-1496: Columbus 2nd Voyage to the Americas with 17 ships and 1300 men that make the crossing in 29d. He returns to Hispaniola, explores the Caribbean, and founds several cities. Columbus leaves two of his brothers in charge on Hispaniola.-Columbus by Armesto.

• 1493- 1593: Hundred Years Croatian- Ottoman War; the Ottoman Empire conquers areas of the Croatian Kingdom before being stopped in 1593. 

• 1593: The Battle of Sisak in Croatia; Croatian soldiers under the Holy Roman Empire stop the advance of the Ottoman’s into the Holy Roman Empire.

• 1493: The Battle of Krbava Field. 

• 1493: Pope Alexander VI issues the decree Inter Caetera (NatGeo). 

• 1493: Pope Alexander VI draws a line from North to South down the Atlantic, decreeing that Spain could exploit the new continent to the West, infuriating the Portuguese. To avoid war, direct talks open between Spain and Portugal and the line is extended westwards (NatGeo). 

• 1493: Inka Civil War following the death of Emperor Thupa Inka, which ignites a fight for the throne. Factions formed around each son; the first son was banished or killed and the second, a teenager, became emperor taking the name Wayna Qhapaq (Why-na Ka-pok: ‘Munificent Youth’).-1491 by Mann.

• 1493: Columbus’ brings sugar cane to the Caribbean, where it flourishes. By the 17c, there were hundreds of sugar refineries throughout the Caribbean Islands, Mexico, and Brazil (NatGeo). 

• 15 Mar, 1493: Columbus writes King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, announcing that after sailing west from Cadiz he had reached “many islands inhabited by numerous people: in the Indian Sea.”-Documents that changed the world.

• 1493: Columbus 2nd Voyage to the America’s; commanding a fleet of 17 ships and 1200 men, seeds and cuttings of wheat, chickpeas, melons, onions, radishes, greens, grapevines, and sugar cane, and horses, pigs, cattle, chickens, sheep, and goats, male and female, two by two. Hidden were stowaways, the seeds of plants Europeans considered to be weeds, like bluegrass, daisies, thistle, nettles, ferns, and dandelions.-These Truths by Lepore.

• 1493: Hosokawa Masamoto takes over the Kyoto Shogunate in a coup d’état.-Ninjutsu by Zoughari.

• 1493: Portuguese King João II settles São Tomé with Jewish children, forcibly taken from their parents in order to ensure that they are baptized and brought up as Catholics. These were Jews who had fled from Spain to Portugal in 1492, at the time of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and who had overstayed the eight-month period the king had reluctantly allowed them to remain.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1492: The Spanish expel all Jews from Spain, giving them 8 months to leave.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• Aug, 1492-1504: Columbus’ voyages to the Americas.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1502- Nov, 1504: Columbus’ 4th voyage to the Americas; Columbus departs with 4 ships while the governor of Hispaniola, Nicolás de Ovando, sails out to the Indies ahead of him with 30. In June 1502 Columbus’s ships stood off Santo Domingo, the 3rd attempt at European settlement in Hispaniola and now the island’s capital; but they had to sit out a hurricane, as he was not supposed to set foot on the island that he had discovered and ruled. Ovando loses nearly his entire fleet in the storm. Columbus sails south towards Panama in 1503 where his men discovery solid gold ornaments worn by local Indians. Columbus attempts to found a settlement in lands he suspected were genuinely rich in gold; but when he was beaten off by the locals and when his ships were tossed to and fro in another hurricane, he found himself washed up on the shores of Jamaica, an island he knew vaguely but had never tried to conquer. For a whole year from June 1503 onwards he was allowed to languish there, since the Spanish governor of Hispaniola rather enjoyed leaving him to rot, but one of his companions who had made the journey to Hispaniola from Jamaica by canoe sent him a ship, and in early November 1504 he was back in Spain, only to discover that his eager patron, Queen Isabella, was on her deathbed; her husband had other priorities (following his conquest of Naples a year earlier).-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1497-1500: Columbus’ 3rd voyage to the Americas; Columbus heads further south, through the Cape Verde Islands, in the hope that he would find a route to the Far East somewhere to the S. of Hispaniola. He discovered ‘a very great continent, which until today has been unknown’, the N. coast of S. America. In Hispaniola, reality intruded: trouble with the Taínos was compounded by trouble with his fellow Europeans, and he faced a series of rebellions by his Spanish lieutenants. These culminated in the dispatch of yet another official investigation under a somewhat dubious figure, Bobadilla, and in the arrest of Columbus. In 1500, Columbus was sent back to Spain in chains that he refused to have removed until he stood in the presence of the king and queen, whom he was still, remarkably, able to charm.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1498: Columbus reaches the mainland of America (S. rather than N.), and felt too ill to set foot there, though he did send his men ashore.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• Sep, 1493- Apr, 1496: Columbus’ 2nd voyage to the Americas with an armada of 17 ships. Much of his energy was spent trying to subdue the interior of Hispaniola, as he became sucked into rivalries between the different chieftaincies on the island. He establishes a new center of operations at La Isabela in N. Hispaniola, and the Taíno Indians were subject to harsh demands for tribute in gold. Columbus hurried back to Spain in 1496 and due to his skills as a navigator, he was allowed to go out a third time in 1497.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1495: Spanish inspector, Juan Aguado, is sent to Hispaniola to assess Columbus and his discoveries.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1493: Columbus takes sugar cane from La Gomera in the Canaries to Hispaniola, though several attempts were necessary before the Caribbean sugar industry took off.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• Aug, 1492- Mar, 1493: Columbus’ 1st voyage to the Americas with two caravels and the Santa María (a slightly larger Nao- Carrack). The expedition set out from Palos de la Frontera in Andalusia, passed through the Canary Islands, and reached its first stop in the Bahamas on 12 Oct. Over the next few months Columbus explored the Bahamas and the coast of Cuba, but decided that the large island he called Hispaniola (modern Haiti and the Dominican Republic) would be most suitable as a base. Columbus returns to Europe in Mar, 1493, after a difficult voyage through the Azores that washed him up in Lisbon, where King João II was deeply disconcerted to learn of his discoveries, having previously ignored him as a fantasist. After Columbus had presented himself, and the Taínos he brought back with him, to Ferdinand and Isabella at court in Barcelona he received a 2nd commission, setting out in September.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• Christmas, 1492: La Navidad on Hispaniola is constructed out of the timbers of the Santa María. Within a year, all the Spanish settlers are dead, turned on by the Taíno chief and his men. La Isabela was subsequently constructed and would be the collection point for the gold and spices of the Indies.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• Columbus divided the inhabitants of the New World into good Taínos, whom he had made into notionally free subjects of the king and queen, and evil Caribs, who were fair game for slaving expeditions: ‘when your Highnesses order me to send you slaves, I expect to bring or send the majority of them from these people.’ Rather than being actually slaves, the Taínos were understood to be legally free; but like other subjects they had to render some service to their rulers, which for Columbus meant tribute in gold dust, an amount per head sufficient to fill a hawk’s bell. Queen Isabella was adamant that the natives were her free subjects and must not be enslaved.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• Oct, 1492: Columbus lands in Hispaniola, believing he’d found a new route to the old world and naming the people he’d met ‘Indians’, thinking that he was in the Indies. Two months later, Columbus prepared to head back to Spain but, off the coast, his three-masted flagship ran aground. Before the ship sank, Columbus’s men salvaged the timbers to build a fort; the sunken wreckage has never been found.-These Truths by Lepore.

• 1492: ~75M people live in the Americas.-These Truths by Lepore.

• Early, 1492: Spanish King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella order all Jews expelled from their realm and, confident that their Inquisition had rid their kingdom of Muslims and Jews, heretics and pagans. They order Columbus to sail, to trade, and to spread the Christian faith.-These Truths by Lepore.

• 1492: Columbus makes landfall in the Caribbean. There he met locals, who became generically known to the Spaniards as indios—Indians—because Columbus thought he had reached the East Indies.-Brief History by Rutherford.  

• 1492: The Spanish finally expelled the Moorish invaders who centuries earlier had seized parts of the country. With the wartime burden on her treasury lifted, Isabella felt she could finally respond to the demands of her explorer friend, and she decided to pay for three ships, equipment, the salaries of the crews, and a modest stipend for Columbus.-48 Laws of Power by Greene. 

• Tue, 11 Oct, 1492: Columbus lands at Hispaniola.-1491 by Mann.

• By 1548, fewer than five hundred of Hispaniola’s once “innumerable” indigenous Taino Indians survived. 

• 24 Dec, 1492: Columbus’ Santa Maria founders on a reef off Cap Haïtien, Haiti; its hull is dismantled and used to construct the fortified village of La Navidad (NatGeo). 

• 1492: Colombo settles La Isabela, the first European Settlement in the Americas after sailing a straight longitudinal path across the Atlantic. Searching for trade routes to Asia, Colombus lands on Caribbean island; claims region for Spain; builds first colony. 

• Researchers generally agree that human malaria did not exist in the Americas before 1492.-1493 by Mann.

• Exploration 

• Second Colombo expedition

• 17 ships and a combined crew of nearly 1500.

• Goal of the second expedition was to create a permanent bastion for Spain in the heart of Asia, a headquarters for further exploration and trade. 

• Columbus’ crew decimates the Taino Population of DR. 

• Third Colombo Expedition

• So little was left of La Isabela that he landed on the opposite side of the island, in Santo Domingo, a new settlement founded by his brother Bartolome, whom he had left behind. 

• 3 Aug, 1492- Mar, 1493: Columbus 1st Voyage; with 3 caravels and a combined crew of 90 sailors, Columbus crosses the Atlantic in 33d and discovers the Americas.-Columbus by Armesto.

• 15 Mar, 1493: Columbus arrives in Palos, Spain after departing Portugal 6 days prior.-Columbus by Armesto.

• 4 Mar, 1493: Columbus arrives in Lisbon, taking refuge there, and conducts three interviews with the King of Portugal before leaving 9 days later.-Columbus by Armesto.

• Feb-Mar, 1493: Fierce storms ravage Columbus’s ships, splitting them apart and pushing the Santa Maria N. towards Portugal.-Columbus by Armesto.

• 14 Feb, 1493: Columbus runs into a terrible storm which provokes the first of a long series of increasingly febrile religious experiences. Two days later, he reaches the Azores.-Columbus by Armesto.

• 15 Jan, 1493: Columbus’s crews set sail for Spain, encountering a fair wind. They lose sight of Hispaniola the following day.-Columbus by Armesto.

• 10 Jan, 1493: Columbus’s crews carry off four Indian men and two boys by force at Rio de Gracia or Puerto Blanco; And when it was time to set sail from there, he carried off four Indian men and two boys by force. The Admiral orders them to be well dressed and return to shore.-Columbus by Armesto.

• 6 Jan, 1493: Martin Alonso Pinzon rejoins the expedition, bearing a further large quantity of gold which he claims to have obtained by trading.-Columbus by Armesto.

• Early morning, 25 Dec, 1492: Columbus’s ship the Santa Maria is lost after running aground on a reef. Columbus’s thoughts turn homewards and he fits the disaster of the loss of his ship into his providential scheme of things by characterizing it as a miracle intended to provide him with the means of building a fort.-Columbus by Armesto.

• 20 Nov, 1492: Martin Alonso Pinzon sails off without leave.-Columbus by Armesto.

• 17 Oct, 1492: The first big piece of gold is reported.-Columbus by Armesto.

• 15-23 Oct, 1492: Columbus and his crew reconnoiter the three small islands which he names Santa Maria de le Concepcion, Fernandina, and Isabela.-Columbus by Armesto.

• 12 Oct, 1492: Columbus’ fleet makes landfall in the Bahamas.-Columbus by Armesto.

• Thu, 11 Oct, 1492: Columbus records European’s first sight of the America’s, which he names ‘San Salvador’ and its natives, whom he calls ‘naked people’. As he was approaching from the latitude of Gomera and heading SW, Columbus could have arrived at almost any of the islands of the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos.-Columbus by Armesto.

• 3 Oct, 1492: Columbus privately reckons they had covered over 2000 miles of open water.-Columbus by Armesto.

• 19 Sep, 1492: Columbus’ pilots declare their calculated positions; the Nina’s pilot ~440 leagues beyond the Canaries; the Pinta’s ~420; and the Santa Maria ~400.-Columbus by Armesto.

• 0800, 3 Aug, 1492: Columbus departs Palos from the bar of Saltes to cross the Atlantic with three ships. By 9 Aug the pass Tenerife as it erupts. After a brief stay in the Canaries, they depart from Gomera on 6 Sep.-Columbus by Armesto.

• 12 May, 1492: Columbus departs Granada by land for Palos to prepare his three caravels for voyage.-Columbus by Armesto.

• 1492: Rodrigo, nephew of Pope Calixtus III, is appointed Pope Alexander VI, making his 18y old bastard son Cesare Borgio a cardinal (NatGeo). 

• 1492: German cartographer Martin Behaim, produces the first proper globe.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1492: Martin Behaim produces a globe of the Earth in Nuremberg.-Columbus by Armesto.

• 1492: Colon lands at what is now the Bahamas.-Turn Right at Machu Picchu by Adams.

• 1491: Portuguese priests and emissaries become permanent representatives of their country in the court of the Kongo king. Their arrival marked the beginning of the first sustained encounter between Europeans and a black African nation.-Léopold’s Ghost by Hochschild. 

• 1490-1700: Earth experiences a long period of below-average temperatures.-Ecoviews by Gibbons.

• 1490: The king of Denmark relaxes his ban on direct English trade to Iceland.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1490: Leprosaria (leper colonies) in Europe are banned by the Pope, allowing sick people to return home.-1491 by Mann.

• 1489: A world map depicting Cipangu in a position most nearly corresponding to that of Cuba is made by Henricus Martellus Germanus.-Columbus by Armesto.

• 1488: Bartolomeu Dias rounds the "Cape of Storms" aka Cape of Good Hope. 

• 1488: A third Swabian League is formed in opposition to the expansionist Bavarian dukes from the House of Wittelsbach and the Swiss to the South. 

• 1487- 1488: Portuguese Explorer Bartolomeu Dias sails from Lisbon passing the furthest discovered point near Namibia and rounds the Cape of Good Hope noting that ‘the coast here turned northwards…giving great hope of the discovery of India’- for this Dias called it the “Cape of Good Hope” (Table Mountain NP).

• 1487: Battle of Magari no Jin; Ninja first appear during the siege of the castle of Rokkaku Takeyori in Magari.-Ninjutsu by Zoughari.

• 1487-1644: The Ming Dynasty rules China (British Museum).

• 1487: Van Olmen’s ill-fated voyage W. of the Azores.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1487-1505: The Ming are ruled by Hóngzhì, 10th Ming emperor.-China by Jaivin.

• 1487: Discovery of the Cape of Good Hope by Bartholomew Dias after his ships sail SW to escape a storm. Dias would have liked to carry on further; but his crew was worried at the lack of supplies on board – the next voyage in these waters, by Vasco da Gama, had no great difficulty in obtaining supplies from the local population – and were determined to work their way back to the supply ship.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1487: Bartolomeu Dias, a Portuguese nobleman rounds the southernmost tip of Africa, proving that it is possible to sail from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean (until then, it was presumed that Africa connected with a massive Southern Continent).-These Truths by Lepore.

• 1487: Colombo meets with Queen Isabella and although he could not convince her to finance the voyage, he completely charmed her, and became a frequent guest in the palace. 

• 1486-1502: Ahuízotl, brother of Tízoc, reigns as Aztecan Emperor (Mex City History Museo). 

• 1485-1603: The Tudor Dynasty rules England from the accession of Henry VII in 1485 to the death of Elizabeth I in 1603 (NatGeo). 

• 1485: Cão receives a 2nd commission from Portuguese King João to explore Coastal W. Africa. With two caravels and four captives, Cão sails up the river Congo and meets the Kongo King before returning to explore most of the coast of S. Africa. Cão had shown that it was possible to press on beyond the new Portuguese bases in Elmina and São Tomé, and to find a welcome in lands untouched by Islam that should be the gateway to the Indian Ocean.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1484: Columbus presents his plans to the Portuguese king for a western route to the Indies which is evaluated by a committee of experts headed by Martin Behaim. The committee decide against Columbus’ plans to sail west, correctly judging that Columbus had seriously underestimated the size of the world (Britannica).-Columbus by Armesto.

• 1484: Habsburg regent, Maximilian of Austria, demands that all foreign merchants evacuate Bruges. Many of the merchants, including wealthy Italians, move their business to Antwerp.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1483: The Spanish conquer Gran Canaria.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1483: Jose Vizinho voyages to the Gulf of Guinea and produces detailed maps of areas of the Eastern Atlantic that had been unknown to Europeans until then (Britannica).-Columbus by Armesto.

• 1482: Portuguese Commander Diogo de Azambuja leads an expedition charged by King João II to establish a colony in Coastal W. Africa. After identifying a spot 40km beyond Shama, at a place called ‘the Village of the two parts’, Azambuja meets with the local ruler, Caramansa, and establishes the colony of Elmina. Caramansa and his subjects preferred to be paid for their gold not in cowrie shells of cloth, but in slaves.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1481-1486: Tízoc, brother of Axayácatl, reigns as Aztecan Emperor (Mex City History Museo). 

• 1480s: Kathmandu Valley is divided into three kingdoms; Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Patan (British Museum).

• 1479: The Treaty of Alcáçovas (considered the precursor to the Treaty of Tordesillas) is signed between the Kingdom of Castile and the Kingdom of Portugal; the Portuguese retain their rights to the Atlantic islands, including those yet to be discovered, and along nearly all the Guinea Coast, while Castile was allowed to keep hold of the Canary Islands and a notch of the mainland opposite.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1478: Christopher Columbus, visits the Madeira archipelago, aiming to buy sugar in exchange for cloth; his business partner in Madeira was Jean de Esmerault, a Fleming.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1478: The Hansards began building the ‘House of the Easterlings’, or Oosterlingenhuis, that can still be seen (though much rebuilt) in the heart of the old trading area of Bruges.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 25 Jun, 1478: Turkish Plundering Calvaries invade and destroy Carinthia. Peasants not killed by the Turks that were involved in the revolt were later executed by the Holy Roman Empire. 

• 1478-1496: The Royal Conquest by the Crown of Castile during the reign of the Catholic Monarchs.

• 1478: Peasant’s revolt and take control of Carinthia during an uprising in Carinthia, Solvenia (Slovenia Museum). 

• 1477-1600: The Sengoku (Warring States) Period of Japan.-Ninjutsu by Zoughari.

• ~1477: The Psalms are printed in Hebrew in Italy; the complete Old Testament follows in 1488.-Atlas of the Bible by Barnes.

• 1477: The first diamond engagement ring on record is commissioned by Archduke Maximillian of Austria for his betrothed, Mary of Burgundy. 

• 22 Jun, 1476: Battle of Marten; the Swiss Federation defeats Charles the Bold. 10,000 deaths and the fall of the Burgundian Empire (Swiss Museum).

• Dec, 1476: Death of Vlad III, during a clash with the Ottomans, who behead him (NatGeo). 

• 1475: Matthias I sends Vlad III to recover Walachia for Hungary (NatGeo). 

• 11 Dec, 1474- 26 Nov, 1504: Reign of Isabella as Queen of Castille and Léon (Wiki) following the death of her half-brother King Henry ‘the Impotent’.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• Henry was not really impotent, but his half-sister, Isabella, who had married the heir to the throne of Aragon five years earlier, took the view that anyone accused of homosexuality must ipso facto be unable to father a child. So, she pushed aside the claims of Henry’s daughter Juana and seized the throne; thereupon Afonso, already Juana’s uncle, married her and invaded Castile. The contest was settled on Iberian soil, with the victory of Ferdinand and Isabella.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1474: Gibraltar is settled with converted Jews.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1474: The Utrecht Peace treaty is signed by the Hansa and English, assigning full ownership of the maritime trading site in London to the Hansa.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1473: Caxton’s Printed Page is printed by William Caxton in Bruges, Belgium; the first material ever printed in English.-Documents that changed the world.

• 1472: Portuguese ships reach the sharp bend of Africa, discovering the uninhabited islands of São Tomé and Príncipe. Within 10y, the islands had become the collection point for the thousands of slaves who were brought (and bought) from Ghana, while the nearby island of Príncipe was the major Portuguese base for trade with the Benin coast. At a rough estimate half of those who came to São Tomé died from disease and other factors within a few months of their arrival.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1472: Scotland takes ownership of the Orkneys and the Shetlands from Norway (then subject to Denmark) for a trivial reason of dynastic politics (Scotland’s King James demanded compensation for Denmark’s failure to pay the dowry promised to accompany the Danish princess whom he married).-Collapse by Diamond.

• 1471- 1493: The Inka Empire (Tawantinsuyu) doubles in size under Thupa Inka as he conquers much of Ecuador and Chile.-1491 by Mann.

• 1471: Death of Pachakuti Inka; his son and military commander, Thupa Inka, assumes control.-1491 by Mann.

• ~1470: Invention of the Harquebus, a long-barreled match lock weapon.-Atlas of War by NatGeo.

• 1470: Fall of the Chimu Kingdom with its capital at Chan Chan to the Inca. The Chimu had rules much of S. America for nearly 500 years.

• 1469: Marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, who begin the Spanish Inquisition, expel the Jews and Moors, and conduct a conquest of Grenada.-Incomplete Edu by Jones.

• 1469: Marriage of Isabella to Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Aragon.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1469-1490: The Ottoman Empire advances into the Holy Roman Empire, invading Slovenia. The nobility and clergy defend their castles while the Turks loot and kill across Carinthia. 

• 1469-1481: Axayácatl, son of Moctezuma, reigns as Aztecan Emperor (Mex City History Museo). 

• 1469-1486: Mexica ruler Axayacatl leads conquests on the coast as far as Huatulco (Mexico City Culture Museo). 

• 1467: The Governor of Iceland is killed by English raiders.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1467-1477: The Onin War is fought as a successional dispute over the Japanese shogunate that leads to Japan’s Warring States period, which lasts nearly a century (NatGeo). 

• 1467-1477: The War of Önin in Japan is fought over a conflict of succession to the shogunate between members of the Ashikaga family.-Ninjutsu by Zoughari.

• 1466: Islamic surgeon Serefeddin Sabuncuoglu presents the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II with the medical atlas Imperial Surgery, containing 140 miniatures depicting procedures such as incisions, setting fractures, and cauterizations (NatGeo). 

• 1463: The Kings of Chuzan in Okinawa began trading with lands as far distant as Java and Melaka.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1463: Inca Emperor Pachakuti dispatches an army led by his son and designated successor, Thupa Inka Yupanki. Thupa Inka descends the Moche River and paralyzes Chimor’s defenses by the simple expedient of threatening to destroy its water supply. Minchaçaman was captured, taken to Qosqo, and forced to watch Thupa Inka’s victory celebration.-1491 by Mann.

• May, 1463: The Ottoman Empire led by Sultan Mehmed II conquers Bosnia; Stephen Tomasevic, the last Bosnian King, is executed. 

• 1462: Vlad III is captured by Matthias I and imprisoned in Hungary for 12 years. The Turks ultimately prevailed because the Wallachian boyars had defected to Radu, Vlad III’s brother. Radu guaranteed the aristocracy that by siding with the Ottomans, they would regain the privileges that Vlad III had stripped from them. Radu attracted support from the Romanian population, who were tired of Vlad III’s bloodlust (NatGeo). 

• Spring, 1462: Turkish Prince Mehmed II assembles an army of 90,000 men and advances on Walachia. After conducting a series of night raids and guerrilla warfare, Vlad III employs his trademark tactic, impaling more than 23,000 prisoners with their families and putting them on display along the enemy’s route, outside the city of Targoviste. The sight was so horrifying that Mehmed II, after seeing the “forest” of the dead, turned around and marched back to Constantinople (NatGeo). 

• 1461: The Mexica under Moctezuma I defeat the Kingdom of Coixtlahuaca and moves on towards Oaxaca conquering Teposcolula, Outla, and Acatlan. The Mexica encounter great resistance in the kingdom of Yanhuitlan, whose ruler was killed by Moctezuma I. The territory continuously rebelled and had to be reconquered during the era of Tizoc, another Mexica ruler. Moctezuma I orders the repopulation of conquered cities (Mexico City Culture Museo). 

• 1461: Establishment of the Ljubljana Diocese (Slovenia Museum). 

• 1461: The Turks offer to meet Vlad for a peace parley; in reality they intended to ambush him. Vlad III responds by invading Turkish dominions south of the Danube (NatGeo). 

• 1460: Death of Henry the Navigator.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1459: Ottoman Prince Mehmed II sends an embassy to Vlad III, claiming a tribute of 10,000 ducats and 300 young boys. When the diplomats declined to remove their turbans, citing religious custom, Vlad III saluted their devotion— by nailing their hats to their heads (NatGeo). 

• 1459: Vlad III invites ~200 boyars- high ranking figures who had killed his father and older brother to an Easter Banquet. There, he has the women and the elderly stabbed to death and impaled, the men are enslaved, many dying of exhaustion while building Vlad III Poenari Castle. Vlad III creates the Viteji as a new elite, a military division comprised of battle proven farmers, and the slug, a kind of national guard. To get rid of homeless people and beggars, whom he viewed as thieves, he invited a large number to a feast, locked the doors, and burned them all alive. He exterminated Romanies or had them forcibly enlisted into the army. He imposed heavy tax burdens on the German population and blocked their trade when they refused to pay. In 1459, when the Transylvanian Saxon city of Kronstadt (today Brasov) supported a rival of Vlad III’s, the voivode’s response was savage. After initially placing trade restrictions on Saxon goods in Walachia, he had 30,000 people impaled—and reportedly dined among them so he could witness their suffering personally. He also had Kronstadt burned to the ground. Back in Walachia, he impaled Saxon merchants who violated his trade laws (NatGeo). 

• 1456: Greifswald University is founded in Germany.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1456: The Siamese attack Melaka.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 22 Jul, 1456: Reign of Vlad III over Walachia after killing Vladislav on the outskirts of Targoviste, beheading him during hand- hand combat. Vlad III begins his reign with a strict crackdown on crime, handpicking commoners for public positions to cement his power (NatGeo). 

• 8 Nov, 1456: Assassination of the last Princely Count of Celje and Captain General of Hungary, Ulrich II, at the hands of the Hunyadi family; his property passes to the Hapsburgs (Slovenia Museum). 

• 1455: Alfonso, great uncle of Cesare Borgio, is appointed Pope Calixtus III (NatGeo). 

• 1455: Ottoman Sultan Mehmed conquers Belgrade in Serbia (Walls of Constantinople Museum). 

• 1454: Ottoman Sultan Mehmed imposes taxes on the Genoese and Moldovans in the Black Sea (Walls of Constantinople Museum). 

• 1454: Mongol Esen Taish takes title of the Great Khan of the Great Yuan. 

• 1454: The 31-Line Indulgence is written by Pope Nicholas V; the very first movable type- a symbol of the transition between the eras of religious mysticism and rational enlightenment.-Documents that changed the world.

• Indulgence: In Catholicism, a reduction in the amount of punishment they will have to undergo in the afterlife for their sins. 

• 29 May, 1453: Sultan Mehmed's and his armies conquer Istanbul (IST Airport Museum).

• 1453: The Fall of Constantinople; Ottoman forces led by Mehmet II capture Constantinople leading to the fall of the Byzantine Empire and transforming the Ottomans from doughty warriors of Islam on the W. fringes of the Muslim world into Sunni emperors who saw their mission as not just the extension of Turkish power into Italy and western Europe but as the imposition of Ottoman rule over neighboring Muslim states as well.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1453: The French occupy all of Gascony.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1453: The Hagia Sophia becomes a mosque following the Ottoman Conquest of Constantinople (NatGeo). 

• 1453: Fall of Constantinople; conquered by Muslim Ottomans. The Hagia Sophia becomes a mosque (NatGeo). 

• 1453: Hundred Years War ends with French victory; hastens end of feudalism and rise of monarchies in Western Europe. 

• 1453: Dissolution of the Eastern Imperial Court. 

• 1453: Sultanın Mehmed II conquers Constantinople; rise of the Ottoman Empire (Swiss Museum).

• Apr, 1453: Ottoman Sultan Mehmed I establishes his tent at Maltepe with cannonballs in 14 batteries deployed across the imperial palace, tedikule, and silivrikapi, with the largest at Topkapi (Walls of Constantinople Museum). 

• 26 Mar- 5 Apr, 1453: Ottoman Sultan Mehmed I (aged 21) marches from Edirne to Constantinople in the company of 100K men to siege and take the city (Walls of Constantinople Museum). 

• 1453: Muslim Ottoman Turks of Central Asia use knowledge of gunpowder to conquer Constantinople (ending the Byzantine Empire); The ottomans bar Europeans from using the overland trade route to Asia. With land routes blocked, Europeans begin searching for water routes to Asia; the Great Age of Exploration begin. 

• 15c: The ruling Ethiopian Amhara’s (later known as Abyssinians) establish a tenuous hold over Eritrea.-Surrender or Starve by Kaplan. 

• 15c: The Reformation; Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, et al., fed up with Church corruption, split Western Europe into Catholic and Protestant factions.-Incomplete Edu by Jones.

• 1450s-1485: The Wars of the Roses; Henry VI is unable to control rivalries between branches of the royal family- the houses of Lancaster and York. After 1470, the Yorkists appeared triumphant, but Edward IV’s early death causes more conflict, allowing the obscure Lancastrian Henry Tudor to overthrow Richard III in 1485 and unite the rival branches of the dynasty as King Henry VIII (British Museum).

• 1485: Obscure Lancastrian Henry Tudor overthrows Richard III following the death of British King Edward IV. Henry unites the Houses of Lancaster and York ending the Wars of the Roses. He reigns as King Henry VIII (British Museum).

• 1450- 1490: Economic subjugation of the Chincha by the Inka.-1491 by Mann.

• 1490s: Pachakuti Inkas grandson visits Chincha. With him came escalating demands for land and service- the veneer of reciprocity was fading. By that point the Chincha had little alternative but to submit. They were surrounded by Inka satrapies; their economy was enmeshed with the imperial machinery; they had hundreds or thousands of people doing the empire’s bidding. The Chincha elite, afraid to take on the Inka army, always chose compliance over valor, and were rewarded with plum positions in the colonial government. But their domain had ceased to exist as an independent entity.-1491 by Mann.

• 1460: Pachakuti Inka deploys an army led by his son, Thupa Inka (‘Royal Honored Inka’) to Chincha to the valley, this one led by his son and heir, Thupa Inka Yupanki (“Royal Honored Inka”). Thupa laid out many ideas for the valley’s betterment, all of which were gratefully endorsed. Following the Inka template, the local leaders drafted the entire populace into service, dividing households by sex and age into cohorts, each with its own leader who reported to the leader of the next larger group. Thupa Inka delegated tasks to the mobilized population: hewing roads to link Chincha to other areas controlled by the Inka, building a new palace for the Inka, and tending the fields set aside for the Inka. Thupa Inka left the area in charge of his brother, who continued managing its gratitude.-1491 by Mann.

• 1450: Inkan Emperor Pachakuti dispatches an army to Chincha under Qhapaq Yupanki (Ka-pok Yu-pan-ki: ‘Munificent Honored One’). Qhapaq Yupanki provides the Chincha leadership piles of valuables, asking for a house from which the Inka could operate, and a staff of servants to cook, clean, and make the things needed by the outpost. And when Qhapaq Yupanki left, he asked Chincha to keep expressing its gratitude by sending craftspeople and goods to Qosqo.-1491 by Mann.

• 1450: Cajamarca falls to the Inka; The Inka Army led by Qhapaq Yupanki, Pachakuti’s brother, besieges the city-state of Cajamarca, in the foothills E. of Chimor. Minchaçaman, Cajamarca’s ally, rushes to his aid with an army and his ambushed by Yupanki, forcing Minchaçaman and his army to flee as Cajamarca fell to the Inka. Qhapaq Yupanki covered himself with so much glory that when he returned home to Qosqo his brother Pachakuti, sensing future trouble, executed him.-1491 by Mann.

• 1450: The Chimal capital of Chan Chan, falls to the Inka.-1491 by Mann.

• 1450: The Renaissance, a period of profound cultural and philosophical awakening starts in Italy. 

• 1450-1540: Machhu Picchu is used as a mountain top royal retreat of Incan ruler Pachakuti (Wright, unk). 

• 1450: Decline of the Hohokam culture, possibly due to a combination of factors including flooding, hydrologic degradation, population (Water Encyclopedia, unk). 

• 1450: Machu Picchu (‘Old Peak’- Quechua) is built by the Incans.-Turn Right at Machu Picchu by Adams. 

----------1450----------

• 1449-1457: The Ming are ruled by Jǐngtài (Zhengtong’s brother), 6th Ming Emperor.-China by Jaivin.

• 1449: Death of Ming Emperor Zhèngtǒng, whose forces are routed by the Mongols <100km from Beijing.-China by Jaivin.

• 1449: The Battle of Tumu in which The Mongols led by Esen Taish, with 30,000 Calvary defeat the Chinese Ming Armies with 500,000 Soldiers. 

• 1448: Vlad III (aged 16) expels Vladislav II from Walachia and ascends the throne (with Ottoman help). Vlad III lasted two months as voivode before the Hungarians reinstated Vladislav, sending Vlad III into exile; little is known about his next eight years, as he moved around the Ottoman Empire and Moldavia. Sometime during this period he seems to have switched sides in the Ottoman-Hungarian conflict, gaining the military support of Hungary. Vladislav II changed allegiances, too, and joined the Turks—a move that set up a clash between the two claimants to the throne of Walachia (NatGeo). 

• 1445: The Siamese attack Melaka.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1444: The Portuguese Crown renounces taxes on goods sent from Madeira to Portugal, greatly benefiting the Madeirans who export its sugar and wheat on an enormous scale.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1441: Destruction of Mayapán due to a rebellion, leaving the Yucatan peninsula divided into 16-24 indpependent provinces which competed for control of coastal trade routes (Mexico City Culture Museo). 

• 1440: The Printing Press is invented by Gutenberg, a German blacksmith.-These Truths by Lepore.

• 1440: “On Learned Ignorance” is written by German cleric Nicolaus of Cusa; considered the opening of the European Renaissance.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1440’s: Guttenberg invents the Printing Press. 

• 1440: Pierre Bresuire translates Livy’s (59 BCE- 17) History of Rome from its Foundations to French (Louvre Abu Dhabi Museum). 

• 1440-1469: Moctezuma Ilhuicamina reigns as Aztecan Emperor (Mex City History Museo). 

• 1439: Portuguese Henry the Navigator receives permission from the Crown to settle ‘the seven islands of the Azores’.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1439: Togon's son, Esen Taish, becomes Mongolian Prime Minister. Essen continued Mongolian unification. 

• 1438-1471: Reign of Pachacutec Yupanqui over the Incan Empire (Landesmuseum Württemberg).

• ~1438: The Inkan Empire is founded by Pachakuti.-1491 by Mann.

• 1438: The Chanka Offensive; The Chanka are defeated by the Inka under the Inkan Emperor’s son, Inka Cusi Yupanki, who captures many Chanka leaders, skinning them in celebration. Emperor Wiraqocha, who had fled during the battle, subsequently attempts but fails to kill his son, Cusi Yupanka. Wiraqocha Inka goes into Exile while Inka Yupanki returns in triumph to Qosqo, renaming himself Pachakuti (‘World-shaker’), and proclaiming that the ruling Inka families were descended from the sun. He then went about conquering everything in sight, expanding the empire over the following 25 years from the Central Highlands of Peru to Lake Titicaca and beyond.-1491 by Mann.

• 1438: Pachacutec rules as Sapa Inca and begins territorial expansion. He launches a massive building program, which includes the construction of Machu Picchu, the Koricancha sun temple in Cusco and the Capac Nan.-Turn Right at Machu Picchu by Adams. 

• 1437: The Portuguese attack Tangier; proving total disaster. Portugal was almost cornered into a position where it would trade Ceuta for one of Henry’s brothers, who had been taken captive; but Henry preferred to let him die in a Moroccan jail – he loved Ceuta more than his brother.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1435-1449: The Ming are ruled by Zhèngtǒng, 5th Ming Emperor.-China by Jaivin.

• 1434: Western Mongolian Togon Taisha reunites the Mongols khanates.

• 1434: Gil Eanes, under the patronage of the Order of Christ, works his way past the reefs of Cape Bojador, possibly the first to breakthrough into west Africa.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 24 Dec, 1434: Dresden’s Christmas Market first opens for a single day (NatGeo). 

• 1434: Treatise on the Barbarian Kingdoms of the Western Oceans is written by Zheng He.-China by Jaivin.

• 1433: Zheng He’s seventh and final voyage.-China by Jaivin.

• 1433: Death of Portuguese King João I. Prince Henry takes charge of Madeira.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia. 

• 1432: The Battle of San Romano; the Florentines defeat the Sienese near Pisa (Uffizi Gallery Guidebook). 

• 1432: The Kings of Chuzan began communicating with lands as far distant as Java and Melaka.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1431: The Tuaregs take control of Timbuktu, holding it for 38y.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1431: Joan of Arc, after an elaborate interrogation, is found guilty of heresy and burned at the stake at the age of 19.-Future of the Mind by Kaku. 

• 1431: Collapse of the Khmer Civilization, following the sacking of its capital by the Siamese kingdom of Ayutthaya.-Rivers Run Dry by Pearce.  

• 1431: “The Last Judgement” is painted by Fra Angelico, offering a vivid insight into visions of hell (NatGeo).

• 1430s: Khmer rulers relocate to Phnom Penh, abandoning the great complexes of Angkor (NatGeo). 

• 1430: Armies of the Triple Alliance defeat the Tepanecas from Azcapotzalco (Templo Major Museo). 

• 1429-1879: The Ryukyu Kingdom, centered on Okinawa, rules as a tributary kingdom of Ming China, who unified the islands to end the Sanzan period (Wiki). 

• 1429: The Ryuku Kingdom is established by Sho Hashi- the founder of the first Sho Dynasty. Capital was at Shuri Castle

• 1428: Formation of the Triple Alliance; Mexica Emperor Itzcoatl allies with two other small vassal states, overthrowing their mutual overlords and forming the Triple Alliance, with the Mexica as the most powerful. Itzcoatl’s nephew, Tlacaelel, came up with a theogony that transformed the Mexica into keepers of the cosmic order.-1491 by Mann.

• 1428: The Triple Alliance is formed by the cities of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan (NatGeo).

• 1427: The Vietnamese drive the Ming out of Vietnam.-China by Jaivin.

• 1426-1440: Itzcóatl reigns as Aztecan Emperor (Mex City History Museo). 

• 1425-1435: The Ming are ruled by Xuāndé, 4th Ming Emperor.-China by Jaivin.

• 1425: Death of the Ming Emperor Yongle, in battle against the Mongols.-China by Jaivin.

• 27 Jun, 1425- 31 Jan, 1435: Reign of Xuan-de (Yong-le’s grandson) as the 5th Ming Empire; Xuan-de suspends further naval voyages and grants Zheng He a military command at Nanjing and the building of the great Bao-en Temple at Nanjing (‘Number One Pagoda’).-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 7 Sep, 1424- 29 May, 1425: Reign of Hong-xi as the 4th Ming Empire; Hong-xi was hostile to maritime expeditions and abolished the expedition to the ‘Western Ocean’, concentrating his energies on the construction of his new capital at Beijing and on war in Mongolia.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1424: Portuguese Prince Henry the Navigator launches an assault on the Canaries that is rebuffed by the islands natives.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1422: The Gollub War; the Teutonic Knights are defeated by an alliance of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Wiki). 

• 27 Sep, 1422: The Treaty of Melno is signed between the Teutonic Knights and an alliance of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, ending the Gollub War (Wiki). 

• Aug, 1421: A Chinese naval expedition under the command of Admiral Zheng rounds the Cape of Good Hope (Robben Island Museum).

• 1420: The Venetians take over Slovenia.

• ~1420: the Little Ice Age is in full swing, and the increased summer drift ice between Greenland, Iceland, and Norway ended ship communication between the Greenland Norse and the outside world.-Collapse by Diamond.  

• 1420: João Gonçalves Zarco & Tristão Vaz, squires of Prince Henry explore the uninhabited Madeira islands.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1419: Rostock University is founded in Germany.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1419: The Siege of Ceuta; the Kingdom of Portugal siege Ceuta leading to the rise of the Empire of Portugal and the demise of the Marinid Sultanate (Wiki). 

• 1416-1458: Reign of King Alfonso V of Aragon. During his reign he sends friars to Ethiopia, dreaming up a plan for a marriage alliance between an Aragonese princess and an Ethiopian prince.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 21 Aug, 1415: The Christian Kingdom of Portugal with 45K soldiers and 200 ships (and Prince Henry the Navigator) conduct a surprise assault on the Marinid Sultanate city of Ceuta. After a day long battle, the city falls to the Christians (Wiki). The Portuguese make Ceuta into a garrison city inhabited by 2,500 soldiers, and send there all sorts of undesirables. While navigating in the Strait of Gibraltar, many ships of the Portuguese fleet were scattered by the winds and current, however the Castilian King forbid his officials from offering help.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1415-1426: Chimalpopoca reigns as Aztecan Emperor (Mex City History Museo). 

• 1415: Abyssinian forces rout Muslim forces. The ruler of Ifat, Sa’d ad-Din, was pursued and killed in his stronghold on the island off the coast of Zeila.-Somalia by Lewis.

• 1414-1429: Reign of Abyssinian King Negus Yeshaq; it is in the songs celebrating his victories over the Muslims that the name ‘Somali’ is first recorded.-Somalia by Lewis.

• Aug, 1412: The Battle of Motta; Venetian positions at Motta, Italy are attacked by a coalition of Hungarians, Germans, and Croats led by Pippo Spano. The Venetians are victorious inflicting a heavy defeat. 

• 1411: The Treaty of Ayllón is signed as a peace agreement following 2 decades of aggression between the Kingdom of Portugal and the Crown of Castile sign a treaty (Wiki). 

• 1410-1424: The Ming Empire continues to try and defeat the Mongolians.

• 1407: The county of Mömpelgard falls to Württemberg as a result of a clever marriage between Count Eberhard IV of Württemberg (r. 1417-1419) with Henriette von Montbéliard-Montfaucon (1384/1391-1444). At first, he rules only Mömpelgard, but after the death of his childless uncle, he takes over rule in Stuttgart (Landesmuseum Württemberg).

• 1407: The Ming Emperor moves the capital from Nanjing back to Beijing (British Museum).

• 1405: Ming eunuch Zheng He sets sail on the first of seven government-backed voyages to demonstrate Ming military power, expand the tribute system, and build commercial relations. Each expedition of 27K men lasted 2y, with 50-60 large ships and several hundred smaller ones (British Museum).

• 1405-1434: The Ming Voyages; 7 massive maritime expeditions led by the Eunuch Zheng He, that set out from Ming China visiting E. Africa, Yemen, Hormuz, Ceylon, Melaka and lands of the SCS.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1431- Jul, 1433: Zheng He’s 7th (and last) Voyage; the main fleet heads first for Champa and then across the SCS to Surabaya on Java (the heartlands of the Majapahit kingdom). They arrived on 7 Mar and only left Java after more than four months, they visited Sumatra next, calling in at Palembang, but only stopped there for three days. In Aug they were in Melaka, where they halt for another month, and then on to Semudera, where they remained for about 7w. They found safe anchorage in the Nicobar Islands and bought plenty of coconuts from the friendly natives. From there they sail for Cochin and Calicut, and then on to Hormuz. By Jul, 1433, the fleet was back at Liujiagang. On board were ambassadors from ten countries around the Indian Ocean.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1421-1422: Zheng He’s 6th Voyage to return the remaining envoys to their home countries from SE Asia to E. Africa (Britannica). 

• Summer, 1417- 1419: Zheng He’s 5th Voyage to return foreign envoys to their homelands, retracing his previous routes, including stops at Java, Sumatra, and E. Africa (Britannica). 

• Dec, 1412-1415: Zheng He’s 4th Voyage, ordered to set out, bearing gifts for sundry kings in the SCS and beyond. Among the places visited were Palembang and its replacement as the main trading center near the Malacca Strait, Melaka, ruled by Parameśvara. The rise of Melaka thus owed a great deal to Chinese influence, and to the patronage of Zheng He. On his return from the Indian Ocean, Zheng He would display another rare show of force and send in his troops to suppress a rebellion against the king of Semudera, thereby showing what advantages could be gained from submission to the Chinese emperor.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• Mogadishu, the 1st town Zheng He reached in Africa, was named on the sailing instructions given to him.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 6 Aug, 1409- 1 Feb, 1411: The Polish-Lithuanian- Teutonic War; the Teutonic Knights are decisively defeated by an alliance of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Wiki). 

• 1 Feb, 1411: The Peace of Thorn formally ends the Polish-Lithuanian-Teutonic War (Wiki). 

• 15 Jul, 1410: The Battle of Grunwald (‘Battle of Žalgiris’ ‘First Battle of Tannenberg’) is fought during the Polish-Lithuanian-Teutonic War. An alliance of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania decisively defeat the German Teutonic Order, led by Grandmaster Ulrich von Jungingen. Most of the Teutonic orders leadership were killed or taken prisoner. The battle shifted the balance of power in Europe and marked the rise of the Christian Polish-Lithuanian union as the dominant regional political and military force (Wiki). 

• Aug, 1409: The Teutonic Knights invade Poland (Wiki). 

• 1409-Mid, 1411: Zheng He’s 3rd Voyage; the king of Ceylon, Alagakkonara, was accused of insulting Zheng He and even of trying to assassinate him, luring Zheng inland and plotting to send his own ‘bandits’ to raid the Chinese fleet. Zheng’s way back to his ships was blocked by felled trees, though messages were sent to his fleet via unblocked roads. Zheng led his soldiers into battle across back roads and launched a surprise attack on the capital; he captured the king, who was carried back to China, although the emperor decided he was just an ignorant barbarian, and did not execute him.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1408-1409: Zheng He’s 2nd Voyage with 249 ships and the declared function to present letters of appointment to the King of Calicut, including a silver seal of office, and to present gifts of silk robes, caps and belts to the king and his chief advisers, who would be ranked in best Chinese fashion. Similarly, the rulers of territories enroute to Calicut, such as Siam, Java and Melaka, were to be honored with imperial letters.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1405- Oct, 1407: Zheng He’s 1st Voyage with 255 ships and ~27,550 men including 62 treasure ships which were built at the Lonjiang shipyard in Nanjing and floated down the Yangtze River as ships on which the gifts to China’s vassals were loaded. The fleet set out for Java, spending the winter of 1406-1407 in Calicut before heading back past Melaka, with an eye on the troubled situation in Sumatra, where a Chinese pirate named Chen Zu-yi had taken control of Palembang, the old capital of Śri Vijaya. Zheng He, determined to assert Ming authority over the SCS, attacked the pirates, who had at least 17 ships, and killed some 5K of them. ‘After this the seas were restored to peace and order’. Zheng He’s fleet arrived back in Nanjing in Oct, 1407.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1405-1433: Voyages of Chinese Commander Zheng He. The flagship was more than 300 feet long and 150 feet wide, the biggest wooden vessel ever constructed. Records claim it had 9 masts. Zheng' grandest expedition had 317 ships, an amazing figure even now. The spanish Armada, then the largest fleet in European History, consisted of just 137; the biggest was half the size of Zheng's flagship. Zheng's voyages began in 1405 and ended in 1433 and took Zheng across the Indian Ocean as far as Southern Africa.-1493 by Mann.

• 1405: Zheng He sets out on a series of expeditions to explore the known Chinese world. His fleet carried 28,000 soldiers and sailors in over 300 ships, with his nine-masted flagship being the largest ship ever built in the age of sail. As it traveled from Asia to Arabia and Africa, the massive fleet cowed some kingdoms into submission and defeated the few that chose to fight. By the end of the voyages, Admiral Zheng He had created the first transoceanic empire, a ring of some thirty vassal states with China at the center. Zheng He was the second son of a lowly rebel captured by Ming Dynasty forces and castrated at the age of eleven. The young eunuch had been trained as a soldier. But by navigating the perilous politics of the age, he rose to distinguish himself, eventually becoming taijian, grand director of the palace servants.-Ghost Fleet by Singer. 

• 1405: The Yongle emperor of China ordered a massive naval armada, the largest the world had ever seen, to explore the world.-Physics of the Future by Michio Kaku.

• The flagship of their commander, Zheng He, was more than 300 feet long and 150 feet wide, the biggest wooden vessel ever constructed. Records claim it had 9 masts. Zheng' grandest expedition had 317 ships, an amazing figure even now. The spanish Armada, then the largest fleet in European History, consisted of just 137; the biggest was half the size of Zheng's flagship. Zheng's voyages began in 1405 and ended in 1433 and took Zheng across the Indian Ocean as far as Southern Africa.-1493 by Mann. 

• Zheng He was the second son of a lowly rebel captured by Ming Dynasty forces and castrated at the age of eleven. The young eunuch had been trained as a soldier. But by navigating the perilous politics of the age, he rose to distinguish himself, eventually becoming taijian, grand director of the palace servants. Zheng He was remembered for none of this, though, for it was at sea where the eunuch reshaped Asia and went on to become one of history’s greatest admirals. Starting in 1405, Zheng He set out on a series of tours of the world then known to China. His fleet carried twenty-eight thousand soldiers and sailors in over three hundred ships, with his nine-masted flagship being the largest ship ever built in the age of sail. As it traveled from Asia to Arabia and Africa, the massive fleet cowed some kingdoms into submission and defeated the few that chose to fight. By the end of the voyages, Admiral Zheng He had created the first transoceanic empire, a ring of some thirty vassal states with China at the center.-Ghost Fleet. 

• 1404: Melaka’s founder and rajah, Parameśvara, is made king, legitimizing his position as master of the Malacca Strait and of the trade route linking the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1403-1424: Reign of Yong-le (Yung-lo ‘Perpetual Happiness’) over the Ming Dynasty; Yong-le was a ruthless and extravagant ruler with grandiose plans for naval expeditions, land campaigns, the beautification of Beijing, and the active patronage of culture. He rebuilt the Grand Canal linking Beijing to the Chinese rivers assuring the capital of regular grain supplies.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• Mid 1421- Sep, 1422: 41 Ming Treasure Ships set out for vassal states, returning with envoys from Siam, Semudera, and Aden.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1403-1424: Reign of the 3rd Ming Emperor, Yongle, over China. Yongle moves the capital to Beijing in 1403 and used some 100K artisans and 1M forced laborers to build the Beijing Capital complex between 1406-1420, on the site where Khubilai Khan had once built his famous palace (NatGeo). 

• 1420: Construction of the Gate of Divine Prowess (‘Shen-wumen’) at the NE entrance to China’s (Purple) Forbidden City (NatGeo). 

• 20 Jul, 1402: The Battle of Ankara (Angora); The Timurid Empire led by Timur decisively defeats Ottoman forces led by Sultan Bayezid I, leading to the Ottoman Interregnum (Wiki). 

• 1402-1413: Fetret Era (Interregnum); the sons of the defeated Bayezid struggle for the throne (IST Airport Museum).

• 1402: The Battle of Ankara; Timur defeats Yildirim Bayezid (IST Airport Museum).

• 1402: Castilian colonization of the Canaries begins with the expedition of the French explorers Jean de Béthencourt and Gadifer de la Salle, nobles and vassals of Henry III of Castile, to the island of Lanzarote. From there, they went on to conquer Fuerteventura in 1405 and El Hierro.

• 1402-1425: The Ming are ruled by Yǒnglè (aka Zhū Dì), 3rd Ming Emperor. Yongle commissions more than 2K scholars in Nanjing to produce a compendium of all knowledge, the Yongle Encyclopedia, which consisted of 22,937 chapters in 11,095 string-bound volumes. Yongle personally led five separate military campaigns and commissioned the first expeditions of the intrepid eunuch admiral Zhèng Hé.-China by Jaivin.

• 1402- 1414: Reign of Parameśvara as the founder of the Malacca Sultanate (Wiki). 

• 1402: Ming Emperor Jianwen is killed by his uncle, Zhū Dì, who then executes every member of the advisor’s family to ten degrees of kinship, along with 870 of his associates, and takes the title of Yǒnglè (eternal joy), moving the Ming capital to his base in old Khanbalik and renaming it Beijing (Northern Capital).-China by Jaivin.

• 1402: The Black Death reaches Iceland.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• ~1400: A long pause in voyaging out of Hawai’i begins.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1400: The Normans seize Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, with the intention of setting up an independent lordship there.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1400: Peak of the Mali Empire.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1400s: The Berbers invade and take over Timbuktu, only to be ousted later by the Songhai Empire which thrive until 1591 before failing to Moroccan forces (NatGeo).  

• ~1400-1420: Collapse of the Greenland Viking Colonies Eastern Settlement is complete.-Collapse by Diamond.  

• ~1400: Palm Trees disappear on Easter Island.-Collapse by Diamond.  

----------1400----------

• 1398-1402: The Ming are ruled by Jiànwén, 2nd Ming emperor.-China by Jaivin.

• 1399: Zhū Dì rides S. from Khanbalik with 50K men to remove his nephew from the throne.-China by Jaivin.

• 1397: Norway, Sweden, and Denmark join under one King, who neglects Norway as the poorest of his three provinces.-Collapse by Diamond.  

• 1397: Pomeranian Duke Erik is crowned King over a united Nordic union.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1396: 12 Greenland falcons are said to have constituted the ransom paid for the crusading son of the duke of Burgundy when he is captured by the Ottomans.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1396: The Ottoman Empire conquers Bulgaria. 

• 1395: The Catalonian Rebellion in Spain.-1491 by Mann.

• 1394: The Hapsburgs depart Switzerland, resettling in Austria to control the Brener Pass (Swiss Museum).

• 1394: The Teutonic Knights expel the Vitalienbrüder from Gotland; 15y later, they sell the island to the Nordic queen and Erik.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1392: The Danish siege Stockholm. This siege was a dramatic moment in a war of succession that would, by the start of the 15c, see a personal union of the three Scandinavian kingdoms.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1391-1415: Huitzilihuitl reigns as Aztecan Emperor (Mex City History Museo). 

• 14th Century: Italian literature was, by requirement, divided into 2 categories: tragedy, representing high literature , was written in formal Italian; comedy, representing low literature, was written in vernacular and geared toward the general population.-Inferno by Dan Brown.

• 1390: “The Canterbury Tales” are written by Geoffrey Chaucer, who had traveled widely in France and Italy on diplomatic business. The tales are the first book written in English, and the story of the squire relates a romantic and fanciful tale about the life and adventures of Genghis Khan.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1389-1398: Reign of Parameśvara as the last King of Singapore (Wiki). 

• 1389: The Battle of Kosovo; the Ottoman Empire defeats the Serbian Army in Kosovo Polje. 

• 1388: The Battle of Döffingen; the Swabian League is defeated by Burgrave Frederick V of Hohenzollern. 

• 1380s: Rise of Phillip the Bold as Duke of Burgundy.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1386-1400: “The Canterbury Tales” are penned by Chaucer as tales-within-a-tale being shared by 29 pilgrims enroute the shrine of Saint Thomas à Becket in Canterbury; a bard’s-eye view of social classes, economic brackets, and personality disorders in medieval England.-Incomplete Edu by Jones.

• 9 May, 1386: The Treaty of Windsor, a political alliance signed between Portugal and England at Windsor seals the marriage of King John I of Portugal (House of Avis) to Philippa of Lancaster.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1385: The ruler of the great Lithuanian duchy, extending all the way across Belarus and much of Ukraine, acceptes Christianity, as part of a marriage treaty with his Polish neighbors.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1385- 14 Aug, 1433: Reign of Portuguese King João I.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1384: The Castilian siege of Lisbon.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1383: The Battle of Aljubarrota; the House of Avis, assisted by English archers (Wiki) seize the throne of Portugal, to prevent it from failing into the hands of their hated neighbors, the Castilians.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1380s: Rise of the Aviz dynasty in Portugal.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 14c: The Hawaiian Islands become secluded from the rest of the Polynesian world for unknown reasons.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.    

• 1382: Trieste on the Adriatic Sea comes under Hapsburg rule (Slovenia Museum).

• 1381: The Peasants Revolt (The ‘Wat Tylers Rebellion’, ‘Great Rising’) in England; a major uprising across large parts of England due to socio-economic and political tensions generated by the Black Death in the 1340s, high taxes from the conflict with France during the 100y war, and instability in London.-Incomplete Edu by Jones.

• 1381: The Peasants Revolt in England.-1491 by Mann.

• 1380: Spread of Islam after Karim ul' Makdum and Shari'ful Hashem Syed Abu Bakr, Arab traders from Malacca arrive in Sulu and establish the Sultanate of Sulu. Islamic influence spreads throughout the Philippines Archipelago. 

• 1380: Winchelsea is sacked by Castilian raiders.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1379: The Skrælings kill 18 Norse Greenlanders and enslave two boys.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 26 Aug, 1379: Assassination of Genoese Emissary Janus Imperiale after coming to the court of Edward III with a proposal that Southampton should be declared a staple port for foreign merchants seeking wool, however the King had already established Calais, which he had brought under English rule, as the port for wool exports.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1379: A single sentence in Icelandic annals mentions states “The skraelings assaulted the Greenlanders, killing 18 men, and captured two boys and one bondswoman and made them slaves” suggesting a partially violent end to the Greenland Viking Colonies Western Settlement.-Collapse by Diamond.  

• 1378: The Revolt of Ciompi in Florence.-1491 by Mann.

• 1377: Construction of the earliest clock known with a wooden movement is recorded on an invoice for a tower clock in Ghent (British Museum).

• 14 May, 1377: The Battle of Reutlingen; the Swabian League defeats an Imperial Army. 

• 4 Jul, 1376: The Second Swabian League is formed by 14 city states; this time they are not recognized by the Emperor and seen as a rebellion. 

• 1372-1391: Acamapichtli reigns as Aztecan Emperor (Mex City History Museo). 

• 1372: Defeat of the Swabian League by Count Eberhard II of Würtemberg. 

• 1371: The Ottoman Empire takes Macedonia, the first in a series of territorial expansions.  

• 1370s: The king of Siam sends several embassies to China, loaded with remarkable gifts, such as six-legged turtles and elephants.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1370-1507: The Timurid dynasty, founded by Timur, who claims connections to both Genghis Khan and the Prophet Muhammad, rules over Central Asia (British Museum).

• 1370: The Hansa cities make peace with the Danes at Stralsund.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 9 Apr, 1370- 14 Feb, 1405: Reign of Timur the Lame (Tamerlane) over the Mongol holdings in central Asia, a Turkic warrior who claimed descent from Genghis Khan. He sought to revive the Mongol Empire, conquering much of its former territory from India to the Mediterranean, slaughtering, torturing, and humiliating without reason. After seizing the sultan of the Ottoman kingdom of Turkey, he forced him to watch as his wives and daughters served Timur naked at dinner and, in some reports, satisfied his sexual demands. The descendants of Timur became known as the Moghuls of India.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• Late 14c: Timur leads military campaigns across Western, South, and Central Asia, the Caucasus, and S. Russia, defeating the Khans of the Golden Horde, the Mamluks of Egypt and Syria, the emerging Ottoman Empire, and the late Delhi sultanate of India, emerging as the most powerful ruler in the Islamic World.

• Mid 14c: The Polynesians reach the limit of their spread across the Pacific.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 23 Jan, 1368- 24 Jun, 1398: Reign of Hung Wu-ti (Hongwu) as the founding emperor of the Ming (‘light’) Dynasty following the fall of the Yuan Dynasty. Hung Wu-ti is determined to reclaim Chinese sovereignty over the entire expanse from Java and Cambodia to Korea and Japan. Hung Wu-ti bans Chinese merchants from trading overseas, reverting to the old system of tributary embassies. The Chinese withdrawal, paradoxically, opens up the seas.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1369: First Ming Emperor, Hung Wu-ti, delivers a reprimand to the Japanese in Kyushu, complaining of Japanese piracy.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1368-1399: The Ming are ruled by Hóngwǔ (aka Zhu Yuanzhang), 1st Ming  Emperor. Paranoid about challenges to his authority and sensitive to insult, he had tens of thousands of scholar-officials and generals, including former allies, executed on charges ranging from corruption to treason.-China by Jaivin.

• 1393: A Ming census shows a population of ~70M.-China by Jaivin. 

• 1370: Ming Emperor Hóngwǔ dispatches his fourth son, Zhū Dì (aged 10), to the ruins of Khanbalik, to rebuild the old Yuan capital into a garrison city for defense against Mongol incursions.-China by Jaivin.

• 1368-1644: The Ming Dynasty rules China from its capital in Nanjing (later moved to Beijing).-China by Jaivin.

• By the 1570's, as the Wanli reign began, more than 90% of Beijing's tax revenue arrived as lumps of shiny metal- therefore, the Chinese had to switch to trade with Spain.-1493 by Mann.

• To get the silver necessary to keep business going, merchants turned to Wokou. Businesspeople sold silk and porcelain to brutal men with silver, then turned around and used the silver to pay their taxes, which in turn was spent on military campaigns against those brutal men. The Ming Government was at war with its own money supply- p139.-1493 by Mann.

• 1368- 23 May, 1370: Reign of Toghun Temür over the N. Yuan dynasty and the Mongolian Plateau following its overthrow by the Red Turban Rebellion which established the Ming dynasty (Wiki). 

• 1368: Galeazzo II Visconti, Lord of Milan, commissions a fortified structure, later the Castle of Milan, to be built besides the city walls (Milan Street History). 

• 1368: Rise of the Ming Empire following the Red Turban Rebellion; the Great Khan Toghun Temür escapes with some 60K Mongols, however the 400K left behind are captured, killed, and absorbed by the Ming.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1368: Fall of the Yuan Dynasty & Rise of the Ming Dynasty; the Red Turbans led by peasant monk Zhū Yuánzhāng overrun Khanbalik and announce the founding of the Ming (‘bright’) dynasty. The people under the Yuan had been pushed to the limit by taxation, overinflation, natural disasters including the flooding of the yellow river, famine, plague, and the bubonic plague, combined to have killed an estimated 90% of people’s throughout Central Asia at the time.-China by Jaivin.

• 1364: Carniola becomes a duchy of Slovenia (Slovenia Museum). 

• 1358: The Jacquerie Revolt in France.-1491 by Mann.

• 1358: The French Peasants Insurrection (‘Jacques’) occurs in response to economic hardships brought about by the Black Death and the 100 years’ war.-Incomplete Edu by Jones.

• 1358: Treaty of Zadar; the Venetians surrender all of their Dalmatian territories. Hungary regains control of Zadar when it is given to King Louis I of Hungary as a gift. 

• 1357: The Bastille Castle opens to protect Paris’ Eastern gate against English invaders during the 100 Years War (NatGeo). 

• 1357: The 8 towered Bastille is built to protect Paris against English invaders during the Hundred Years’ War. Intended to fortify the city’s eastern gate, the Port Saint-Antoine, the Bastille was surrounded by a moat and equipped with a series of dungeons. Over time, though, its purpose evolved, and it became a state prison—and a potent symbol of royal overreach and the suppression of free speech (NatGeo). 

• 1356-1862: The Hanseatic League dominates maritime trade in the Baltic and North Sea. The Hansa (Hanse) were a confederation of merchants from towns along the shores of the Baltic and the North Sea, and across great swathes of the N. German hinterland that had become a major naval power by the 14c.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1356: The first Diet is held at Lübeck.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1356: Inflation devalues Mongol currencies to near zero following years of waning confidence in the Mongol administration.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1350: The Mixtec take control of the Zapotec in the Monte Alban valley. The two societies lived, through a combination of economics, warfare, and intermarriage.-1491 by Mann.

• 1350: Western Settlement’s “Farm Beneath the Sands” is abandoned and buried under glacial outwash sand.-Collapse by Diamond.  

• 29 Aug, 1350: The Battle of Winchelsea; The English destroy the Castilian fleet as its returning from Flanders; possibly the first naval battle in the west in which cannon were used.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1350: A third settlement of New Zealand begins with the arrival of a whole fleet of canoes.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• Mid 14c- End 16c: The Great Wall, China’s bulwark against external threats, is repaired and extended. The mighty structure stretches over ~9000km. It is ~8m high and up to 3.5m wide across the top, so that its crown can also be used as a road (Landesmuseum Württemberg).

• 1350: Emergence of the city of Ayutthaya (Ayudhya, near modern Bangkok), by the king of Siam and would remain a center of power and a focal point for the trade of the SCS until it is sacked by the Burmese in 1767.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

----------1350----------

• 1349: Satto seizes power over the Kingdom of Chuzan (Okinawa).-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1349-1350: The Black Death in Scandinavia kills approximately half of Norway’s population. Collapse by Diamond.  

• 1349: Strasbourg Massacre; 

• 1348: The Order of the Garter is established to formalize the concept of chivalry across Europe (British Museum).

• 1348-1350: Yersinia Pestis, arrived from China, decimates Eurasia for a second time killing a third of the population. Over a 5y period we can track a course from Russia to Constantinople, to Messina, to Genoa, Marseille, Bordeaux, and finally London. All these ports acted as points from which radiation of the plague could crawl inland. En route, it claimed the lives of some 5M people.-Brief History by Rutherford.  

• 1348-1350: Bubonic Plague, the Black Death, ravages Europe killing an estimated 40% of the population. 

• 1347-1351: Height of the Black Death in Europe; the bacterium Yersinia pestis, carried by fleas living as parasites on rats and other small rodents, kills at least 1/3 of Europe’s population (NatGeo). 

• 1350: Death of King Alonso XI of Castile from plague while besieging the fortress of Gibraltar (NatGeo).

• 1348: Death of Leonora, wife of the Portuguese King of Aragon from plague (NatGeo). 

• 1346: Caffa, a commercial trading post run by Genoese merchants is besieged by the Mongol Army, among whose ranks are a growing number of plague sufferers (NatGeo). 

• 1347-1351: The Black Death in Europe, a classic virgin- soil epidemic, created a pulmonary version of bacillus Yersinia pestis, killing possibly a third of its victims.-1491 by Mann.

• 1347-1351: The Black Death strikes first the Mediterranean and then Europe, killing ~50% of the population. Manpower shortages stimulate an active slave trade out of the Canaries, operated by Catalans and Castilians who kidnapped islanders without compunction.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1346-1355: No ships are known to have reached Greenland.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1343: Hanseatic traders are first described as ‘the merchants of the Hansa of the Germans’.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1343: Catalan King James III is deposed by his cousin, the King of Aragon.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1342: Bengalese governors declare independence, resulting in the creation of the rival Bengal Sultanate (British Museum).

• 1342: Norwegian priest Ívar Bárdarson visits Greenland’s Western Settlement. He found that it contained only ‘horses, goats, cattle and sheep, all wild, and no people, either Christian or heathen’. It has long been assumed that the smaller settlement had therefore ceased to exist by 1342.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• Jul, 1341: Catalan Majorca King James III deploys an Italian funded expedition from Lisbon to the Canaries with 3 vessels to access the gold of sub-Saharan Africa and create an island empire embracing both the Balearics and the Canaries. The voyage of 1341 marks the first time medieval western Europeans had come into contact with isolated Stone Age societies.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• A dark aspect of the Portuguese voyage of 1341 was that it planted in the mind of European merchants the notion that primitive folk could be carried away without compunction and enslaved. Nothing is known of the fate of the four Canarians who were brought back to Lisbon; but documents from the late 14c often speak of Canary islanders who were working as slaves on estates in Majorca, in 1345.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1340-1375: Reign of King Valdemar IV Atterdag over the Danes, who draws together the Hansa cities in relentless attempts to overwhelm Visby and Gotland, to create a base there for Baltic expansion.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1340-1375: Reign of Danish King Valdemar IV Atterdag (‘Return of the Day’), known for his reunion of Denmark after the bankruptcy and mortgaging of the country to finance wars under previous rulers (Wiki). 

• 1370: The Hansa cities make peace with the Danes at Stralsund.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1362-1368: Hansa states Sweden and Norway, ally against Valdemar for retribution, sending a fleet and an army to ravage the coasts of Denmark. They succeed in capturing and pillaging Copenhagen and forcing Valdemar out of Denmark (Wiki). The Danes cede to the Hansa the towns that controlled traffic through the narrow passage of the Øresund – Helsingborg, Malmö.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1361: The Danes, led by Danish King Valdemar IV Atterdag invade and defeat the Gotlanders, killing 1800 men in front of their city. Valdemar demands (and receives) large amounts of silver and gold, before returning to Denmark (Wiki). 

• 1340: The Pratica della mercatura (Practice of Marketing) is published as a commercial handbook by Florentine merchant Francesco Balducci Pegolotti. In it, he stresses that the routes to Mongol Cathay were “perfectly safe, whether by day or by night.”-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1340: Fall of the Genoese city of Kaffa to the Mongols, who catapulted the bodies of Black Death victims over the walls, deliberately creating an epidemic and forcing the Genoese to flee; their ships spread the disease to every port they visited.-1491 by Mann.

• 24 May, 1337- 19 Oct, 1453: The Hundred Years War; a series of conflicts in Western Europe between the House of Plantagenet and its cadet house of Lancaster, the rules of the Kingdom of England, and the House of Valois over the right to rule the Kingdom of France. The French House of Valois and its allies defeat the Kingdom of England resulting in the separation of the English and French monarchies and marked a decline in chivalry and feudalism. 

• 1415-1453: The Edwardian War (Ph. III); 

• 17 Jul, 1453: The Battle of Castillon; the French defeat the English at Castillon; England loses all their French territories except Calais. Castillon is seen as the end of the 100 (116y) years war. 

• 1431: Joan of Arc, after an elaborate interrogation, is found guilty of heresy and burned at the stake at the age of 19.-Future of the Mind by Kaku. 

• 12 Oct, 1428- 8 May, 1429: The Siege of Orleans is the French Army’s first major military victory over the English following their crushing defeat 13 years earlier at the Battle of Agincourt (1415) and the first while Joan of Arc is with the Army. 

• Northern France was decimated by English troops and the French monarchy was in retreat, a young girl named Joan of Arc from Orléans claimed to have divine instructions to lead the French army to victory. With nothing to lose, Charles VII allowed her to command some of his troops. To everyone’s shock and wonder, she scored a series of triumphs over the English. 

• 25 Oct, 1415: The Battle of Agincourt; the vastly outnumbered English under King Henry V defeat a numerically superior French force- thanks again to English longbowmen, killing more than 6000 french soldiers including thousands of prisoners. The English take the French Port city of Normandy. 

• 1369-1389: The Caroline War (Ph. II); 

• 19 Sep, 1370: The Massacre of Limoges; the English defeat the French at Limoges. 

• 1337-1360: The Edwardian War (Ph. I); 

• 19 Sep, 1356: The Battle of Poitiers and the end of the Edwardian Phase of the 100 years war; the numerically superior French are defeated by the English, again in thanks to the English Longbowmen. The French King is captured and his son, the Dauphin, Charles, is left to rule. 

• 1355: Edward (the Black Prince) of England lands at Bordeaux while his ally, the Duke of Lancaster lands at Normandy with a second force. The New French King, John II, marches against the combined English force. 

• 26 Aug, 1346: The Battle of Crecy; The numerically superior French are defeated by the English Army, in thanks to English Longbowmen. Following the French loss, the English take the port of Calais. 

• Crecy was the first documented use of a cannon on the battlefield; the cannon was used by the English against the Genoese Mercenaries near Crécy in N. France.

• 1346: Edward III invades France through Normandy, taking the Port of Caen and burning and pilling a path of destruction through N. France. King Phillip VI raises an army to defeat him. 

• 1337: French King Phillip VI starts the 100 yr (116years) war between France and England by taking over the English duchy of Guienne.

• 1336: Genoese explorer Lançalotto Malocello reaches the Canary Islands; his name is commemorated in that of one of the easternmost islands- Lanzarote.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1336-1573 CE: Muromachi/Ashikaga Dynasty (Japan)

• Ended in 1573 when the 15th and last shogun of this line, Ashikaga Yoshiaki was driven out of the capital in Kyoto by Qda Nobunaga.

• 1465-1573: Known as the Sengoku period or Warring States Period.

• Daimyo: Feudal Lords

• 1467: The Ōnin War broke out over who would succeed the ruling Shogun. During the Warring States period, Daimyo fought among themselves for control of the country. Some of the most powerful daimyo of the era were Uesugi Kenshin, Takeda Shingen, and Date Masamune. One enduring symbol of this era was the ninja, skilled spies and assassins hired by daimyo.

• In 1543: A chinese trading vessel was blown off course and landed in the Japanese Island of Tanegashima (South of Kyushu). The 3 Portuguese traders were the first Europeans to set foot in Japan. Soon European traders introduced many new items to Japan, most importantly the musket. By 1556, Japan's Daimyo were already using about 300,000 muskets in their armies.

• 1429: King Sho-Hashi unites Island into one Ryuku Kingdom. 

• 1335: The Mongols of the Persian Ilkhanate disappear, either killed or absorbed into the much larger population of their former subjects.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 19 Jul, 1333- 10 Sep, 1368: Reign of Toghun Temür over the Yuan Dynasty of China; considered the last khan of the Mongol Empire. 

• 1331: The Swabian League of Cities is first formed when 22 Imperial Cities of the former Duchy of Swabia banded together in support of Emperor Louis IV, who in return promised not to mortgage any of them to any imperial vassal. 

• 1331: Bubonic Plague, believed to have originated in present-day Kyrgyzstan, sweeps through Central Asia.-China by Jaivin.

• 1330-1400: Plague ravishes Eurasian human populations, decreasing the African population from 80M to 68M, the Asian population from 238M to 201M (China from ~123M to 65M), and the European population from 75M to 52M, with total populations falling from 450M to between 350-375M.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1350: Plague crosses the N. Atlantic from the Faeroe Islands to Iceland and Greenland, killing ~60% of Icelandic Settlers; probably the single most important factor in the final extinction of the struggling Viking colony in Greenland.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• Jun, 1348: Plague reaches England.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1348: Plague ravages the port cities of Italy. When the Genovese and other refugees fled the port by boat, they took the disease with them to Constantinople, from where it easily spread to Cairo in Egypt and to Messina in Sicily.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1348: The Tuscan city of Pistoia bars entry to people from plague infected areas, bans the importation of used textiles, and forbids the sale of fruit or the slaughtering of animals that might cause the smell of death, which they suspect as contributing to the spread of the disease.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 14 Feb, 1349: Strasbourg authorities’ herd 2K Jews to the Jewish Cemetery outside the city to begin a mass burning. Some Jews were allowed to save themselves by confessing their crimes and converting to Christianity, the city outlawed the presence of any Jew in the city.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• City after city picked up the practice of publicly burning Jews to thwart the epidemic…In the Christian parts of Spain, the people initiated similar persecutions against the resident Muslim minority, driving many of them to seek refuge in Granada and Morocco.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• Jul, 1348: Pope Clement VI issues a Papal Bull protecting the Jews and ordering the Christians to stop their persecutions; the campaign against them escalates.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1347: The Black Death enters Europe from Asia at the Crimean port of Kaffa (modern Feodosia); a trading post established by merchants from Genoa primarily for the exports of Russian slaves to Egypt.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1345: Plague reaches the capital of the Golden Horde at Sarai on the lower Volga.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1338: Plague crosses from China over the Tian Shan Mountains, wiping out a Christian trading community near lake Issyk Kul in Kyrgyzstan.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1331: Chroniclers record that 90% of the people of Hopei Province had died. By 1351, China had reportedly lost between half to two-thirds of its population to the plague.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1328-1332: At least 4 members of the Golden Family occupy the throne, and one, the 7yo Rinchinbal Khan, had it for only two months in 1332.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1325: Founding of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan.-These Truths by Lepore.

• 1325: Tenochtitlan is founded as the Aztec Capital in Lake Texcoco atop an island that emerged atop a muddy promontory. Using water resistant ahuejote trunks, piles were sunk to bear heavy buildings and to construct the causeways that linked the island to terra firma; Iztapalapa to the South; Tepeyacac to the N, and Tlacopan to the West (Mexico City Culture Museo). 

• 1321: The Divine Comedy is written by Dante’s Alighieri’s. Split into three part- Inferno, Purgatori, and Paradiso, the long poem recounts the authors journey among the damned in hell, guided by the Roman poet Virgil. Later, he is reunited with his beloved, Beatrice, who guides him up to purgatory, and then to Paradise, where, in a moment of ecstasy, Dante glimpses God. Although it recounts an actual physical journey, The Divine Comedy is also an allegory of the soul’s progress through sin (hell), penitence (purgatory), and redemption (paradise), the last being the joyful ending promised in the title (NatGeo). 

• 1320: “Abandon all hope ye who enter here”; Dante Alighieri's Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso is completed; describing Dante’s brutal descent into the underworld, journey through purgatory (where your soul is purged of all sin), and eventual arrival in paradise. Dante’s pit was constructed in 9 distinct levels, the 9 rings of hell, into which sinners were cast in accordance with the depth of their sin.-Inferno by Dan Brown.

• Seven Deadly Sins (saglia): superbia- pride, avarita- greed, gula- glutton, luxuria- lust, ira- envy, anvidia- wrath, acedia- sloth. 

• May, 1321: Founding of the Aztec Empire (NatGeo). 

• 1317: Genoese Admiral Manuel Pessagno is hired to organize the construction of a fleet.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 23-24 Jun, 1314: Battle of Bannockburn; the Scots under Robert the Bruce defeat the English Army under King Edward II in the First War of Scottish Independence.-21 Lessons by Harari.

• 1313: In Mongol-occupied Persia, Rashid al-Din publishes the first known book on Chinese medicine to be published outside of China.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1311: English King Edward II, suspends his father’s law, the Carta Mercatoria, to collect money for wars in Scotland. However, the Hansards insist on their tax exemption.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.  

• 1309-1377: The popes live in Avignon, France (Wiki). 

• Fri, 13 Oct, 1307: (Friday the 13th); French King Philip the Fair and Pope Clement V accuse the Knights Templar of heresy and other charges, arresting, torturing, burning, and killing any that could be found. 

• Fri, 13 Oct, 1307: The Knights Templar are accused of Heresy by French King Phillip IV, who may have been targeting their land and money. Many are arrested and killed (NatGeo). 

• 1303: English King Edward I issues the Carta Mercatoria, levying higher taxes on foreign vice native merchants.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1302: Creation of the États généraux (Estates General) in France as the Kings national advisory institution.-French Revolution by Davidson.  

• 1300: Rise of Singapura.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia. 

• 1300: Roman Law, based on the principles of Justinian’s Corpus Jurus Civilis, begins replacing Feudal law throughout Europe; spread by law students trained at the U. of Bologna.-IWM by Heathcote. 

• 1300: The last radiocarbon dates from farms of the Greenland Viking Colonie’s Qorlortoq Valley of Eastern Settlement.-Collapse by Diamond.  

• 1300s: Westminster Palace in London becomes the center of the medieval England (British Museum).

• 1300-1521: The Mesoamerican Post-classical period; marked by militarism in all aspects of life (Mexico City Culture Museo). 

• 1300: The Ottoman Empire develops in Asia Minor and expands swiftly through vast areas that had previously been part of the Byzantine Empire. By the end of the 14c, the Ottomans had already reached the walls of Belgrade in the Balkans (Landesmuseum Württemberg).

----------1300----------

• Late 13c: In prophetic writings, Arnau de Vilanova ascribes an eschatological role for Aragonese Kings, including the renovation of the Church, the conquest of Jerusalem, and the creation of a united world-wide empire. This programme was borrowed from the late 12c biblical divinations of Abbot Joachim of Fiore, who was one of the most influential sources of Late Medieval Chiliastic traditions- Joachimism.-Columbus by Armesto. 

• 13c: Cahokia is razed by a catastrophic earthquake, knocking down the entire western side of Monks Mound. The city is empty by ~1350.-1491 by Mann.

• 1299-1922: The Ottoman Empire rules much of SE Europe, W. Asia, and N. Africa (Wiki). 

• 9 Sep, 1296-1436: Construction of the Florence Cathedral. It began in the Gothic style to a design of Arnolfo di Cambio and was completed by 1436, with the dome engineered by Filippo Brunelleschi (Wiki). 

• 26 Mar, 1296- 1 May, 1328: The First War of Scottish Independence; Scotland gains independence from England. 

• 1 May, 1328: The Treaty of Edinburgh- Northampton is signed granting independence to the Scottish from England following Robert Bruce’ invasion of North England.

• 1320: The Declaration of Arbroath; the Pope affirms Scottish Independence from England. 

• 1314: The Battle of Bannockburn; Scotland gains De facto independence. 

• 25 Mar, 1306: Robert Bruce is crowned King Robert I of Scotland. 

• 3 Aug, 1305: Wallace is captured at Robrotyston (near Glasgow) and executed 20 days later by hanging, followed by drawn/quartering. 

• May, 1303: The English invade Scotland, again, seeking to subdue the country. 

• Jul, 1301: English King Edward launches his 6th Campaign into Scotland, aiming to Conquer Scotland in a two pronged attack. 

• 22 Jul, 1298: The Battle of Falkirk; with the help of long range bowmen, the English defeat Wallace’ Scot Army, soon after returning to England. The defeat ruins Wallace military reputation and Robert Bruce and John Comyn succeed Wallace as the Guardians of the Kingdom of Scotland. 

• 3 Jul, 1298: The English invade Scotland, intending to crush Wallace and his army. 

• Jan, 1298: France and England conclude a peace agreement that leaves Scotland without a French ally. English King Edward concentrates his forces to attack the Scots. 

• 11 Sep, 1297: The Battle of Stirling Bridge; Moray and Wallace’ armies defeat the Earl of Surrey’s Army, however Moray is KIA. 

• May, 1297: Rise of William Wallace after killing Sir William Haselrig, the English Sheriff of Lanark., 

• 1297: Scotland erupts in open revolt; Andrew Moray and William Wallace emerge as the first significant Scottish patriots. 

• Apr, 1296: Battle of Dunbar; the English Army defeats the Scottish Army and goes on to arrest hundreds of Scottish Nobility. 

• 1296: England Invade Scotland. 

• 1296: A Mongol Invasion Army attacks Okinawa but is repulsed. 

• 1295: Swedish king Birger conquers the Karelians in S. Finland.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1294: Death of Mongol Khan Kublai (aged 79); his grandson Temür succeeds him (NatGeo). 

• 1294-1295: The Collection of Treatises on Astrology is penned in Baghdad under the Ilkhanid Dynasty (Louvre Abu Dhabi Museum).

• 1294: Death of Kublai Khan. The Mongol Empire, at this point, had fractured into four separate khanates. 

• 1292-1293: The Mongol conquest of Java succeeds in killing the Javanese King but ends in failure after several leaders are killed in a trap.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1293: Mongol forces kill the King of Java, conquering the islands with apparent ease, before falling into a trap. Believing that they were preparing for a ceremonial submission by the new king, the Mongol leaders were lured into an ambush. Many of the leaders were killed and the remaining troops retreated in humiliation from the island.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1292: The Mongol fleet sets sail for Java with 1K ships and 20K soldiers.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1292: The Mongols launch a naval expedition against Java.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 17 Jun, 1291: End of the Great Crusades following the fall of Acre. 

• 1291: Mamluk forces eject the Crusaders from their strongholds (British Museum).

• 1291: The Vivaldi brothers from Genoa explore the African coast looking for a sea route to India, disappearing somewhere off the coast.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1291: The Siege of Acre; the crusaders are defeated and flee the Holy Land for Cyprus. King Phillip IV of France, who funded much of the crusade, is heavily in debt to the Templars (NatGeo). 

• 1290s: Fifty Courtesies for the Table is written by Fra Bonvicino da Riva (NatGeo). 

• 1290: The Jewish population of England is expelled.-21 Lessons by Harari.

• 26 Sep, 1290: Death of Scottish Queen Margaret, Maid of Norway from disease, leaving no heir to the throne of Scotland and pushing the country ever closer to civil war. 

• 1289: The Battle of Campaldino; the Guelphs defeat the Ghibellines (NatGeo). 

• 1289: Khubilai Khan dispatches an envoy to Java to request submission. Fearing that the Mongols might be planning on taking away Javanese control of the valuable spice trade from the Molucca Islands, the Javanese king branded the face of the envoy and sent him back to Khubilai, who ordered the preparation of an armada to capture Java.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• May, 1288: Pope Nicholas IV issues a papal bull calling for construction of a new mother church at Assisi for his Franciscan order.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1287: The Battle of Bạch Ðằng; the defenders of Ðại Việt attack a Mongol naval invasion force with blazing arrows, destroying the Mongol fleet.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 19 Mar, 1286: Death of Scottish King Alexander III after falling off his horse. The Scottish throne passes to his wife, Margaret, Maid of Norway.

• 1285: Al-Mansuri Hospital opens in Cairo by the Sultan Qalawun, perhaps the best in the Islamic world (NatGeo). 

• 1284: The Mongol Yuan ban private foreign trade. Despite strict penalties, the ban last 10y; and is reimposed 20y later, only to be followed by its relaxation, reinstatement and final relaxation (1323).-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1281-1923: The Ottoman Caliphate lasts for 662 years with 41 Sultans (Al Fahidi Coin Museum). 

• 1281: Khubilai Khan launches an expedition to discover and map the source of the Yellow River, which the Mongols called the Black River. The expedition opens up a route from China into Tibet and uses this to include Tibet and the Himalayan area in the Mongol postal system. This new connection connects Tibet commercially, religiously, and politically.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1280s: The Mongol army marches through Indochina meeting with success in Burma, Annam in N. Vietnam, and Laos. Several of the SE Asian kingdoms, including the rulers of Champa in S. Vietnam and Malabar on the coast of India, voluntarily submit to Mongol rule.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1281: Majorcan & Genoese ships begin to regularly reach London from the Med.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• Spring, 1281: The Second Mongol Invasion of Japan; following the beheading of Mongol ambassadors sent to Japan, the Mongols invade Hakata Bay by Sea and Land with a conscripted force of former Song soldiers. After the Mongol ships lash themselves together, a typhoon strikes killing 10K men and sinking some 400 ships. Having failed a second time to take Japan, Khubilai turns his attention to Vietnam and Java. In the case of Vietnam, his excuse for conquest was that the kingdom of Ðại Việt had offered refuge to leading members of the Song government.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• At the outset, Hakata Bay became the scene of intense fighting on sea and on land, as the Japanese ships and ground troops harried the much larger invasion force that had come by way of the islands of Tsushima and Iki, while a second wave of attackers gathered at the western tip of Kyushu, off the island of Takeshima.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• Korean ships arrived in Tsushima; the islanders tried to escape to the hills, but the cries of their children gave away their hiding places, and the Koreans ruthlessly massacred the islanders. The invaders then bombarded the inhabitants of Iki, the next island between Korea and Japan, with exploding ceramic spheres launched from catapults.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• Summer, 1281: Second Mongol Conquest of Japan; The Mongol fleet suffers ~100K casualties in storms off Japan while waiting for separate fleets to link up for an attack into Hakata Bay.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1279: Mongol delegates sent to Japan are executed, both sides prepare for war. The Mongols prepare to invade from two directions, with another Korean fleet of about the same size as the first. Following it would come the main fleet from China with 3,500 ships manned by 60K sailors to transport 100K soldiers; and this time they were coming in summer, instead of sailing in the fall.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1281: The Mongols second invasion of Japan.-Ninjutsu by Zoughari.

• 1281: The Mongols second failed invasion of Japan (NatGeo).

• 1279: The Mongols led by Kublai Khan defeat the Song Empire and establish the Yuan Dynasty in China. 

• 1279: Mongol Yuan forces conquer the Song Dynasty of Southern China.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1279: Mongol forces led by Khubilai Khan defeat the Song Empire (British Museum).

• 1279: Fall of the Southern Song in China to Kublai Khan (NatGeo). 

• 1279: Fall of the Song Dynasty; a Mongol fleet destroys a Song fleet of nearly 900 vessels (of which only nine escape destruction or capture). The Admiral commits suicide after tossing the child emperor into the sea, extinguishing the Song Dynasty.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1277: Genoese ships first learn how to pass through the dangerous waters of the Strait of Gibraltar and sail on towards Flanders.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1277: The Chinese port of Quanzhou surrenders to the Mongols.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1277: Khubilai Khan posthumously confers Chinese names on his ancestors and builds a larger temple with eight chambers: one for the founders of the family, Yesugei Baatar and Hoelun, another for Genghis Khan, one for each of Genghis Khan’s four sons, and one each for Güyük Khan and Möngke Khan.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1276: Mongol troops overtake the Sung capital at Hangzhou, and over the next few years they wipe up the small pockets of local resistance.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1275-1300: A major drought strikes the Anasazi at Mesa Verde, causing them to abandon their cliff houses by 1300 (Wright, unk).

• 1275: Chinese explorer Rabban Bar Sauma travels the Silk Road to Baghdad, Constantinople, and France, meeting with Khans, Kings, and a Pope (NatGeo).

• Late 1200s: The Sumatran kingdom of Pasai converts to Islam (British Museum). 

• 1275: The ruler of the E. Java Kingdom of Singhasari, deploys his forces against Jambi, sacking their capital.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia. 

• 1275: Rise of the Yuan Dynasty after the Mongols under Khubilai Khan conquer the Southern Song Capital at Hangzhou.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• Oct, 1274: The First Mongol Invasion of Japan; a joint attack by the Navy’s and Armies of the Mongol Empire and their vassal, the King of Koryŏ; 900 ships with thousands of men sail to Hakata Bay. The Mongols are said to have nailed the naked corpses of Japanese women to the thwarts of their ships. They set Hakata on fire but the Japanese put up a tough resistance and repulse the invading force. The Japanese build a 20km wall defending Hakata Bay.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• At the imperial court in Kyoto, it was argued that the prayers of the Shintō priests at the great shrine of Ise had persuaded the gods to send the great black cloud that emerged out of a clear sky; out of it sped the arrow of the gods that roared like a typhoon, while the sea rose up in a great mountain of a tsunami and crushed the invasion fleet into splinters. It has been argued that ‘the bakufu became a truly national power only after this war’.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1274: The Mongols first invasion of Japan.-Ninjutsu by Zoughari.

• Mid- 1270s: Marco Polo travels the Silk Road to China meeting the Mongols (NatGeo). 

• 1274: First Mongol Conquest of Japan; Mongol Khan Khubilai assembles an armada of ~900 ships to transport an army of 23K Korean and Chinese infantry and an unknown number of Mongol horsemen to take Japan. 

• Nov, 1274: The Mongol force sails from Korea to Japan, capturing Tsushima Island and then Ika Island before sailing into Hakata Bay and landing its forces and animals. The Mongols slaughter the Japanese warriors before the Japanese retreated to a fortress. The Mongols reload the ship and that night, a terrific storm below across the ocean. The Kamikaze, or Divine Wind, shatter many of the boats against the rocks and shore killing ~13K soldiers, most by drowning. The Japanese execute the Mongol envoys by chopping off their heads, spilling their blood, and displaying the severed heads for public mockery.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1274: The Mongols first failed invasion of Japan (NatGeo). 

• 1273: Fall of the fortified city of Xiangyang in S. China to the Mongols (NatGeo). 

• ~1274: Venetian Marco Polo arrives in Khanbalik with his merchant father. At the time, Europeans knew China as “Cathay,” from the word “Khitan.”-China by Jaivin.

• 1272: Mongol Khan Khubilai orders the building of his new capital at Zhongdu, connecting it by canal to the Yellow River. The Mongols called the place Khanbalik, the City of the Khan. His Chinese subjects called it Dadu, the Great Capital, and it grew into the modern capital of Beijing. At the heart of the city, however, Khubilai created a Mongol haven where few foreigners, including Chinese, could enter. Behind high walls and guarded by Mongol warriors, the royal family and court continued to live as Mongols. The large open areas for animals in the middle of the city had no precedent in Chinese culture. This Forbidden City constituted a miniature steppe created in the middle of the Mongol capital. During the Mongol era, the whole complex of the Forbidden City was filled with Gers. While Khubilai and his successors maintained public lives as Chinese emperors, behind the high walls of their Forbidden City, they continued to live as steppe Mongols.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1270s: Khubilai Khan founds the Mongolian National University in Khanbalik (1271), the Office for the Stimulation of Agriculture under the authority of eight commissioners who sought ways to improve farmers’ lives and their yields, introduced a paper currency, created primary schools for universal basic education of all children in order to make everyone literate, created hospitals and training centers, and establishes a national history office, commissioning the compilation of complete histories of the Jurched, Khitan, and Sung.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1271: Khubilai Khan (1215-1294) declares himself China’s emperor, founding the Yuan Dynasty (British Museum).

• 1271: Formation of the ‘Da Yuan’ (Great Origins) Mongol dynasty in China.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1271-1368: The Mongol Yuan Dynasty rules China.-China by Jaivin.

• 1271: The Yuán dynasty is established by Khublai Khan with its white-walled capital, Khanbalik, near the ruins of the Jin (and former Liao) capital (Beijing).-China by Jaivin.

• 1271: Mongol Khan Kublai establishes himself as emperor of the Yuan, meaning “Great Origin (NatGeo). 

• 1271-1288: Venetian explorer Marco Polo travels the Silk Road to China. 

• 1274: Marco Polo arrives in China. 

• End 13c: A sea route from the Med to the North Sea opens, closely linked to the surge in demand for fine wool in Italy.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1270: Buddhism spreads in the Ryukyu Islands after a Monk named Zenkan supposedly shipwrecks there.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1270: The Seventh Crusade, led by King Louis IX, hopes to conquer the Nile Valley and turn Egypt into a Christian bulwark. However, they are defeated at the Battle of Mansoura; most of the Crusaders are taken captive. 

• 1270: Seventh Crusade- Louis IX attacks Tunis and dies.

• 1269: Khubilai khan founds the Mongolian language school to create a single alphabet that could be used to write all the languages of the world. He assigned this task to the Tibetan Buddhist lama Phagspa, who presented the khan with a set of 41 letters derived from the Tibetan alphabet. Khubilai Khan made Phagspa’s script the empire’s official script, but rather than force the system on anyone, he allowed the Chinese and all other subjects to continue using their own writing system as well in the hope that the new script would eventually replace the old by showing its superiority.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1269: 70 Mongols and Korean Emissaries arrive in Tsushima, Japan, demanding an answer to the Khans letter from the Shogun, who deigns not to answer.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1268: The Japanese shogun receives a letter from the Mongol Khan threatening of war if the Japanese did not agree to cordial relations: ‘it will lead to war, and who is there who likes such a state of things? Think of this, O king!’.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1268: The Mongols send an envoy to Japan demanding their surrender, the Japanese refuse.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1267-1279: The Mongol Conquest of the Chinese Song; fall of the Chinese Song Dynasty and rise of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty under Kublai in China (NatGeo). 

• 1267: Mongol Khan Kublai resumes his military campaigns against the Song dynasty in southern China (NatGeo). 

• 1266: Death of Mongol Khan Arik Boke, mysteriously but conveniently for Khubilai.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1264: Kublai defeats Arigböge, assuming total control of the Mongols (NatGeo). 

• 1262: Battle of Hausbergen; The citizens of Strasbourg violently rebel against the bishops rule, making Strasbourg a free imperial city. 

• ~1262: Al-Dhahir Bibers Al Bunduqdari restores the Abbasid Caliphate (Al Fahidi Coin Museum).

• 1262: Iceland accepts the authority of the King of Norway on condition that the Norwegians send six ships a year to the island.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1262: Icelanders invite Norway’s king to govern them, reasoning that a distant king was less of a danger to them, would leave them more freedom.-Collapse by Diamond.  

• 1261: The Empire of Nicaea recaptures Constantinople from the Latin Empire, proclaiming the reinstatement of the Empire (Wiki). 

• 1261: Greenland accepts Norwegian rule.-Collapse by Diamond.  

• 1260-1264: Kublai battles Arigböge for the title of Mongol Khagan (NatGeo). 

• 1260-1264: The Toluid Civil War in Mongolia is fought between two brothers Ariq Böke and Kublai. Ariq surrenders to Kublai. 

• 1260: Battle of Ain Jalut; The Mongols are defeated by Mameluke Calvary in one of the first major battlefield uses of the primitive firearm. 

• 1260: The Battle of Ain Jalut; the Mamluks employ the first cannon in history against the Mongols (according to Arab Historian Ahmad Y. al-Hassan). 

• 1260: Mamelukes defeat a small occupying force of Mongols. 

• 1260: Möngke Khan's brother, Ariq Böke in Mongolia, tries to usurp the Khan. Kublai, brother to Möngke, returns from fighting the Song to fight against his brother. This leads to a debilitating fragmentation of the Mongol Empire. 

• 1260: Mamluk forces defeat a Mongol expeditionary force (British Museum).

• 1 Mar, 1260: Mongols led by Hülegü take Damascus.

• 1260s: The Mongol Empire is divided into four primary zones of political administration; 1) Khubilai ruled over China, Tibet, Manchuria, Korea, and E. Mongolia, 2) The Golden Horde ruled over the Slavic countries of E. Europe, 3) Hülegü ruled over the Ilkhanate (the ‘vassal empire’ from Afghanistan to Turkey), and 4) Traditional Mongols occupied the central steppe, which became known as Moghulistan encompassing from Kazakhstan and Siberia in the N. and across Turkistan in Central Asia to Afghanistan in the South.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1260-1294: Reign of Khubilai, grandson of Genghis, as 5th Khan of the Mongol Empire. Khubilai founds China’s Yuan dynasty following the conquest of the Song and the subsequent unification of China. Khubilai builds a Chinese capital, takes Chinese names, and establishes a Chinese administration.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• Jun, 1260: Arik Boke, Möngke’s youngest brother, is proclaimed Great Khan at a kurultai in Karakorum.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1260-1264: The Toluid Civil War is fought as a war of succession following the death of 4th Mongol Khan Möngke between his younger brothers Khubilai and Ariq Böke. The episode marked the beginning of the fragmentation of the Mongol empire.

• 1264: Arik Boke surrenders to Khubilai at Shangdu following a harsh winter (1263) that destroys his power base.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1260: Khubilai summons a kurultai in his own territory, proclaiming him Great Khan. To win the loyalty of his Chinese subjects, Khubilai proclaims himself emperor, choosing the title of Zhongtong (Chung-t’ung), meaning “central rule.” After cutting off the food supply to Karakorum, he sends his Army to capture the city. Arik Boke fought hard but withdrew. Khubilai summoned another kurultai on Mongolian territory to decide the fate of Arik Boke and to ratify himself as the legitimate khan without the taint of his earlier election on Chinese soil. Despite the overwhelming military might of Khubilai’s army, the Golden Family refused to attend.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 13c: Rise of Bergen, with 5-10K inhabitants, as an important center of royal power and of North Sea Trade. Bergen establishes itself as the major port of Icelandic Trade.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• Mid 13c: The Saga of Eirík the Red is written.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1261: Greenland accepts the authority of the King of Norway.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1260: Castilian King Alfonso launches a fleet against Salé, failing to capture the port opposite modern Rabat that for centuries was seen as a hive of pirates.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1260: The Mongols capture the Nizari Ismaili stronghold of Masyaf Castle, ending the Assassins (NatGeo).

• Jan, 1260: Mongols led by Hülegü take Aleppo.

• 1260: Kublai proclaims himself Khagan and begins dealing decisively with Arigböge, who had also claimed the Mongol Khan throne. Kublai’s accession marked the beginning of the splintering of the Mongol lands into sub-khanates: the Golden Horde on the Volga, the Chagatai Khanate in Central Asia, the Ilkhanate based in Iran, and the Chinese territories ruled by Kublai himself (NatGeo). News reached Kublai that another of his brothers, Arigböge, also wanted to proclaim himself emperor. Kublai, then age 45, hastily made his way to his residence at Shangdu (later immortalized as Xanadu. After consulting his advisers, Kublai decided to cement his claim by casting the I Ching, an ancient Chinese system of divination with links to both Confucianism and Taoism. The solemn rite revealed that Kublai would achieve sublime success if he persevered along the correct path (NatGeo). 

• 1259: Significant volcanic activity likely chills the atmosphere and shortens growing seasons (Wright, unk). 

• 1259: Death of Möngke, the fourth Mongol great khan and the rise of Kublai (NatGeo). 

• 11 Aug, 1259: Mongol Möngke Khan dies (most likely from dysentery) while fighting against the Song in Southern China. News of his death halts all on-going Mongol conquests who return to Mongolia. 

• 11 Aug, 1259: Death of Möngke Khan in battle during an assault on Diaoyu fortress.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1259: The Fire Lance, a hollow bamboo tube loaded with a stone pellets and gunpowder behind it, is used by the Chinese. 

• 1258: Mongol Commander Hülegü and his forces go on to fight and win in Syria, Palestine, Gaza, and begin preparations to attack the Mamelukes in Egypt. 

• Jan-Feb, 1258: Mongol Commander Hülegü attacks and destroys Baghdad- In a 40 day free-run of Baghdad, the Mongols slaughter hundreds of thousands, decimate the city, burn the archives of Islam (the house of Wisdom), and loot everything. 

• 10 Feb, 1258: Surrender of Baghdad Caliphate- Considered the end of the Islamic Golden Age.

• 1256-1353: The Ilkhanid dynasty, established by Hulagu Khan, rules over Iran and Central Asia (British Museum).

• 1256: The Mongols capture the Nizari Ismaili stronghold at Alamut Castle (NatGeo).

• 1255: The Catholic church sanctions the torturing of people suspected of heretical beliefs.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1255: Hülegü, brother of the Great Khan of the Mongols, launches an offensive against the Nizari to neutralize attacks by the order (NatGeo).1251: Batu holds a Kurultai in Turkmenistan to choose the new Khan and elects Möngke Khan as the 4th Great Khan. A number of Mongol tribes disagree and after an assassination attempt, Möngke violently quells any rebellions and leads the Mongols, although now fracturing, back into conquest. Möngke sends armies to China to fight the Song and West towards the Middle East to Fight the Islamic caliphates. 

• May, 1253-1260: The Mongol conquest of the Arab states of the Middle East is led by Hülegü with his army of the Right.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 3 Sep, 1260: The Battle of Ayn al-Jalut; an Egyptian Mamluk slave army defeats a Mongol detachment at the Springs of Goliath, near the Sea of Galilee (modern Israel), marking the westernmost border of advance of the Mongols.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1259: Damascus surrenders to the Mongols. When the Mongols left Baghdad and headed further west toward Damascus, the Crusader knight Bohemond of Antioch came out with his army to attack Damascus from the Mediterranean side, and he brought supplies and food to help the Mongols. Similarly, the Seljuk sultan sent his army from Anatolia to join the Mongol assault.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 29 Jan- 10 Feb, 1258: The Mongols siege and capture of Baghdad.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 10 Feb, 1258: The Caliph surrenders and is locked up without food or water for 3 days and then ordered to eat the gold looted from the city. When he could not, the Mongols condemn him to death, wrapping him and his followers in carpets or sewn sacks and either kicking them to death or trampling them with horses.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 5 Feb, 1258: Mongols forces break through the walls of Baghdad. Hülegü orders the people of Baghdad to surrender their weapons, leave all their goods, and march out of the city. Rather than comply with the order, the defending army tries to escape, but the Mongols gave chase and cut them down.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• Jan, 1258: The Mongols encircle Baghdad, occupying extensive suburbs beyond the city walls. Baghdad fills to its maximum with refugees.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• Nov, 1257: Unconvinced of the Caliph’s power to speak for either God or the entire Muslim population, Hülegü began to march toward Baghdad.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1253-1257: Mongol Campaign against the Nizari Ismailis, a heretical Muslim sect of Shiites more commonly known as the Assassins, who were holed up in hundreds of unconquered mountain fortresses stretching from Afghanistan to Syria, the most important of which was Alamut, the Eagle’s Nest, in northern Persia. 

• Spring, 1257: Recognizing defeat, the Imam requests to travel to Karakorum to meet with Möngke. He and his party are refused to see him and are escorted out to the mountains and stomped to death.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 19 Nov, 1256: Imam of the Nizari Ismailis surrenders to the Mongols. Hülegü parades him from Ismaili castle to Ismaili castle to order his followers to surrender.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• May, 1253: Hülegü, with his Army of the right, depart to conquer Baghdad, the Arab cultural and financial capital, while Khubilai, and his army of the left, heads out to conquer the Song Empire.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 13c: Emergence of Florence, made famous through the quality of its cloth.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1252: Florence launches a gold coinage.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1252: Founding of Stockholm.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• Feb, 1252: Death of Mongol regent Sorkhokhtani.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1 Jul, 1251-11 Aug, 1259: Reign of Möngke, eldest son of Genghis’ teenaged son Tolui with his wife Sorkhokhtani, and 4th Khan of the Mongol Empire. He was the first Khan from the Toluid line and made significant reforms to improve the administration of the empire during his reign. Under Möngke, the Mongols conquered Iraq and Syria as well as the Kingdom of Dali (modern Yunnan) as the entire energy of the state was redirected toward the conquest of the Sung dynasty and the Arab states of the Middle East. Hülegü, the brother with the best military training, was assigned to take the Army of the Right with the plan to attack the Arab cities of Baghdad, Damascus, and Cairo while Möngke and Khubilai led the Army of the Left to conquer the Sung Dynasty. Möngke’s youngest brother Arik Boke, remained in Mongolia to manage the Empire. The Mongol Empire reached its greatest extent under Möngke Khan, who was the last of Genghis Khan’s descendants to be acknowledged and accepted as Great Khan by the whole of the Mongol Empire.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1254: Möngke Khan hosts a debate in Mongolia between Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. The religious scholars had to compete on the basis of their beliefs and ideas, using no weapons or the authority of any ruler or army behind them. They could use only words and logic to test the ability of their ideas to persuade. Their debate ranged back and forth over the topics of evil versus good, God’s nature, what happens to the souls of animals, the existence of reincarnation, and whether God had created evil. No side seemed to convince the other of anything. Finally, as the effects of the alcohol became stronger, the Christians gave up trying to persuade anyone with logical arguments, and resorted to singing. The Muslims, who did not sing, responded by loudly reciting the Koran in an effort to drown out the Christians, and the Buddhists retreated into silent meditation. At the end of the debate, unable to convert or kill one another, they concluded the way most Mongol celebrations concluded, with everyone simply too drunk to continue.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1253: Möngke Khan creates a Department of Monetary Affairs to control and standardize the issuance of paper money. Möngke allowed each nation under its control to mint coins, but established a universal measured based on the Sukhe, a silver ingot divided into 500 parts. So long as the Mongols maintained control of money, they could let merchants assume responsibility for the movement of goods without any loss of government power.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1 Jul, 1251: Möngke (43yo) is declared Grand khan at a second kurultai in Karakorum. Members of the Ögedei lineage attempt a coup but are captured and condemned to death. Two of the princes had their mouths stuffed with stones and dirt until they died while the regent Oghul Ghaimish Khatun captors had rawhide sewed around her hands and was stripped naked for public ridicule before being wrapped in felt and drowned with another senior woman from the family. A third woman from their family was wrapped in a blanket and kicked to death. In all, Möngke executed 77 people within or close to Ögedei’s lineage.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1251: Death of Güyük, the third Mongol Khan; Möngke, son of Genghis’s son Tolui, succeeds him (NatGeo). 

• 1250: Sinhalese Kings rule Sri Lanka (British Museum).

• 1250-1517: The Mamluk (their name reflecting their origin as slaves) rule over Egypt and Syria from their capital at Cairo (British Museum).

• 1250-1521: Decline of the Toltec city of Tula during the Mesoamerican Postclassical period (Mexico City Cultural Mueso). 

• 1250: The Mexica (Aztecas) move into the basin around Lake Texcoco and Teotihuacan following the collapse of the Toltec Empire. The Mexica sought a place to live, until one of the priests had a vision in a dream in which the Mexica’s patron deity instructed his people to look in the swamp for a cactus, atop which “you shall see an eagle … warming itself in the sun.” And the god called out to them, he said to them, “Oh Mexica, it shall be there!” (But the Mexica did not see who spoke.) For this reason, that they call it Tenochtitlan.-1491 by Mann.

• 1250-1270: Mongolia suffers a lowering of temperatures. In a fragile ecological zone such as Mongolia, a change of only a few degrees in annual temperature severely reduces the small amount of precipitation, restricts the growth of the grass, and thereby weakens or kills the animals.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1250-1516: The Mamluke State; founded by Sultan Ezz Eddine Aibak after Shajarat Al’dur resigns from her throne and is elected by statesmen. The Mamluke Bahri-state continues ruling the country until 1382 when the Bourji-Mamluke took power and recognized the Abbasid Caliphate in Egypt (Al Fahidi Coin Museum).

• 1250: Möngke, Sorkhokhtani’s eldest son, is elected Mongol Khan at a kurultai called by Batu Khan near Lake Issykul in the Tian Shan Mountains outside of Mongolia. The Ögedei family boycotts the election on grounds that a legitimate election had to be held in Karakorum, Mongolia.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1250: Mayapán, based in Cozumel, emerges as a Maya Kingdom following the decline of Chichen Itza and begins trading with various Maya cities of the Yucatan and Qroo. 

• 1250: Four fiery mountains near the equator erupted and their ash quickly entered the atmosphere and spread across the globe, blocking sunlight. As a result, so the scientists say, temperatures fell and glaciers expanded. The reflective properties of ice intensified the cooling effect, and temperatures sank even further. On average, it became 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit cooler, which is a whole lot when you consider the consequences that a warming of 3.5 degrees is predicted to have today. It wasn’t until 1800 that things began to gradually warm up again. 

• 6 Apr, 1250: The Battle of Fariskur, the last Battle of the 7th Crusade; Louis IX is taken prisoner by Baibars Mamluk Army (NatGeo). 

----------1250----------

• 1248-1254: The Sixth Crusade

• 15 Aug, 1248: The Koln Cathedral foundation stone is laid by Archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden.  

• 1322: The Koln Cathedral Eastern Arm is completed under the direction of Master Gerhard. 

• 1248: Mongol Khan Güyük dies (from either poisoning or alcoholism) and his wife becomes empress regal. 

• 24 Aug, 1246- 20 Apr, 1248: Reign of Güyük, eldest son of Ögedei, as 3rd Khan of the Mongol Empire. His reign was one of horrible revenge in which is unleashed a crude campaign to consolidate power and eliminate rivals, his soldiers hunt down and kill everyone connected with Fatima, his mother’s advisor, whom he has rolled in a felt blanket and drowned in a river with all her orifices of her body sewn shut.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 20 Apr, 1248: Death of Güyük (43yo), 3rd Khan of the Mongol Empire after leaving his family stronghold to conduct a surprise attack on Batu Khan in Russia.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• Nov, 1246: Mongol Khan Güyük asks Pope Innocent IV: “How do you know whom God absolves and to whom He shows mercy? How do you know that God sanctions the words you speak? God had given the Mongols, not the pope, control of the world from the rising sun to the setting sun. God intended for the Mongols to spread his commandments and his laws through Genghis Khan’s Great Law. Come to Karakorum with all your princes in order to pay homage to the Mongol khan.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 22 Jul, 1246: Friar Giovanni of Plano Carpini, a 65yo cleric and one of the disciples of Saint Francis of Assisi, arrive at the Mongol court as an agent and spy for Pope Innocent IV, commissioned to find out as much as possible about these strange people who had threatened Europe.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1246: Mongol Kurultai takes place regardless of Batu or not and they elects Batu’s cousin and rival Güyük, son of Ögedei, is elected Khan. 

• 1245: Papal mission are sent to the Mongols

• 1243: Fall of the Anatolian Seljuks following their invasion by the Mongols (IST Airport Museum).

• 1242-1246: Ebuskun, wife of Genghis Khan’s second son Chaghatai rules Central Asia (Turkestan) as regent.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• Dec, 1241: Death of Mongol Khan Ögedei - The Mongols stop their advance into Europe and various chasms form throughout the Mongols. Batu, grandson of Genghis Khan, boycotts the kurultai and the khan are not able to choose a replacement. Ögedei's wife rules as empress regent in the interim.

• 1241: Formation of the Hanseatic League as an association of ~100 N. German cities functioning as an independent political power. 

• 1241: The Battle of Mohi (Hungary); the Mongols use primitive firearms defeating the Hungarians.-China by Jaivin.

• 11 Apr, 1241: Mongols defeat Hungarians at the Battle of Mohi (Sajó Bridge) River. 

• 9 April, 1241: Mongols defeat poles at Leibnitz 

• 1241-1246: Yeke (Töregene) Khatun rules as regent of the Mongol nation following the death of her husband Ögedei Khan. Soon after Ögedei’s death, Toregene summoned a kurultai to elect Güyük instead of the grandson nominated by Ögedei, but she could not get a quorum of the Golden Family.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 11 Dec, 1241: Death of Mongol Khan Ögedei, reportedly in a drunken stupor. News of the death reached the Mongol forces in Europe, 4000 miles from Karakorum, within 4-6 weeks. Chaghatai died at about the same time, and thus in the mere 14y since the death of Genghis Khan, all four of his sons had died, and now the princes, Genghis Khan’s grandsons, raced home to continue their battles against each other in the quest to become the next Great Khan.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 6 Oct, 1241: Solar eclipse.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1241: Mongols move into Europe against the Hungarians. Subidai sends 30k Mongols into Poland to separate the European armies.

• 1240: The Oldest known mention of the ‘Mongols’ is made by Matthew Paris, a monk of the Benedictine abbey at St. Albans in Hertfordshire, England. Paris called them “an immense horde of that detestable race of Satan” and “like demons loosed from Tartarus (Hell- Greek).”-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• ?1240: Death of Ögödei, the second Mongol Khan; he is succeeded by his son, Güyük (NatGeo). 

• Winter, 1237- 1240: Mongols led by Subidai attack and take Russia- numerous cities fall including Kiev 

• 1237: The Livonian Brothers of the Sword are incorporated willy-nilly into the larger and better-organized Teutonic Knights.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia. 

• 1236-1241: A Mongol Eastern Campaign in Europe is led by Subodei and Jebe. They began the campaign in each territory by sending official envoys to request the capital city to surrender, join the Mongol family, and become the vassals of the Great Khan. If they agreed, the envoy offered protection to the new vassals from their enemies and allowed them to keep their ruling family and their religion. In return for such protections, the people had to agree to commit tribute of 10% of all wealth and goods to the Mongols. Few cities took the offer.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 11 Dec, 1241: Following the death of Ögedei, the Mongols withdraw from W. Europe back to their strongholds in Russia. Prior to leaving, the Mongols trade their prisoners to the Italians for goods, beginning a large and lucrative relationship between the Mongols and the merchants of Venice and Genoa. The Italians supplied the Mongols with manufactured goods in return for the right to sell the Slavs in the Mediterranean markets.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 11 Apr, 1241: The Battle of Mohi (Battle of the Sajo River); Mongol forces led by Subodei decisively defeat Hungarian forces at Mohi under King Bela. Hungarian forces gather into a densely packed camp fortified with wagons and heavy iron chains. The Mongols pull up catapults, hurling an assortment of naphtha, gunpowder, flaming oil, forcing the Hungarians to disperse but finding themselves virtually surrounded by the Mongols with one marked gap in the line left open towards Pest, a 3-day ride away. As the Hungarians retreat towards Pest, they are picked off by a waiting Mongol army. Some 10K Hungarians soldiers are killed and Pest is razed. The Mongols take control of the Great Hungarian Plains, the slopes of the N. Carpathian Mountains, and Transylvania. Mass panic across Europe ensues.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 9 Apr, 1241: The Battle of Wahlstatt (‘the Chosen Place’); Mongol forces rout a combined German, French, Polish, and Silesian force of 30K men led by Duke Henry II of Silesia. Duke Henry orders his cavalry to charge the Mongol ranks, which is repulsed, however the Mongols conduct a feigned retreat. With cries of victory, the European knights break ranks and began chasing the Mongols. Precisely when the European horses began to tire, the Mongols employ a smokescreen, cutting off the knights from the archers and infantry far behind them. The Mongols crush the Germans. The entire campaign from Kiev to Germany had been merely a Mongol diversion to keep the Europeans from sending soldiers to fend off the real Mongol objective: invading the grassy plains of Hungary. 

• The fallen Duke Henry II became a martyr as Henry the Devout, and a Benedictine monastery was built with the altar over the exact spot where, according to Christian mythology, his mother, Saint Hedwig, found his headless, naked corpse, identifying it by the six toes on his left foot.

• Late 1240: Subodei dispatches a three-pronged army of 50K toward Hungary in the S. and a smaller, diversionary force of 20K across Poland toward Germany in the N.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• Nov- 6 Dec, 1240: The Mongol Conquest of Kiev; Mongol forces take Kiev and loot/burn the city to the ground. The Kievan commander Dmitri had fought so hard, even after being abandoned by many of the city’s aristocrats, that Batu, with great appreciation of his military talent and tenaciousness, released him and let him live.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• Taking advantage of early ice to cross the rivers, Mongol envoys arrived at the gates of Kiev. Not unexpectedly, the city authorities murdered them and arrogantly pinioned the bodies above the city gate. Under the leadership of Möngke, the Mongol army amassed around the city in the early winter in what the Russian priests recorded as “clouds of Tatars.” The noise of the Mongols was said to be so loud that people inside the city could not hear one another talk. As the soldiers fought to hold the walls, the civilians sought refuge in the Church of the Virgin.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• Dec, 1237: Mongol conquest of Riazan; Mongol warriors divide and scourge the surrounding countryside, with each Mongol seizing a set number of civilians to be used for labor. Villages were burned and the remaining peasants fled to the city’s walls. When the Mongol army reached the city, they sent a woman ambassador to deliver terms and demand surrender, however she was not received for fear she was a witch. Instead of attacking the walls or Riazan, the Mongols use their massive number of conscripts to build a wall completely surrounding the already walled city. On the 21 Dec, the Mongols storm the city, killing everyone inside and burning it to the ground.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1236: Mongol forces under Subodei defeat the Bulgars on the Volga River while Möngke (eldest son of the deceased Tolui) leads another force S. towards the Kipchak Turks. Some Turks fled but others joined him. The Mongols use their territory as their base camp with a reserve of millions of animals pastured on the steppes for hundreds of miles to the East. From there, they launch a 3y campaign across what would become Russia and Ukraine.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1235: Mongol Khan Ögedei calls a kurultai and decides to attack Europe with a large force

• 1234: The Jin dynasty ( (NE China, SE Russia, DPRK) collapses with the Mongol capture of Caizhou. 

• 1230s: The Mongol army divides and pushes out in all directions conducting a China campaign against the Sung and an Eastern campaign against Europe- mostly under the command of his favored sons.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1230: Ögedei sends a Mongol force of three tumen’s (~30K soldiers), to re-assert rule in central Asia, and under the leadership of General Subodei, ally with the Sung dynasty to pick apart the remaining wealth and land of the Jurched. Ögedei increasingly uses the might of his army to make the routes safe for merchants to bring in more goods. He stations permanent garrisons to protect the roads and merchants, and he abolishes the complex system of local taxes and extortion that had added to the difficulty and expense of trade.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1229- 11 Dec, 1241: Reign of Ögedei Khan, son of Genghis Khan and 2nd Khan of the Mongol Empire. Ögedei continued the expansion of the empire that his father had begun to the borders of Southern China, the Mongol Invasions of Europe, and the Mongol Conquests of China. He participated extensively in conquests in China, Iran, and Central Asia. On his death, he was succeeded by his wife, Yeke, who ruled as regent. 

• 1229: Ögödei, son of Genghis Khan, is elected successor.-War by NatGeo.

• 1229: Ögedei is named the new Mongol Khan and each son is given a different domain throughout the steppe. The Mongols reattack northern China and sends more troops into the Middle East while making preparations to attack Europe. The Mongol Main force takes Jin and goes on to attack Chinese Song to the south. 

• 1227: Death of Genghis Khan; his burial is conducted in secret.-War by NatGeo.

• 18 Aug, 1227: Genghis Khan dies and names his third son Ögedei his successor. 

• 1227: Death of Jochi on the W. Steppe, succeeded by his son, Batu Khan.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1227: Death of Ghengis Khan while on campaign against the Tangut near the Yellow River. His sons Chaghatai and Jochi agree that neither would become Khan, with succession falling to their third brother, Ögedei. Jochi inherits the lands conquered by Subodei around the Volga River and moves to the far Western steppe.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford. 

• Winter, 1226–1227: While crossing the Gobi to make war on the Tangut, Ghengis Khan pauses to hunt wild horses but falls from his horse, sustaining internal injuries and fever. Against the advice of his wife Yesui, Ghengis Khan continues his campaign against the Tangut.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1226: Mongols fight and defeat the Xia Chinese in Western China. 

• 1226: Lübeck, the major Hansa city in the Baltic, is elevated to the special status of a free imperial city by Emperor Frederick II.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1226: Death of Genghis Khan, the first Mongol Khan; he is succeeded by his son Ögödei (NatGeo). 

• 31 May, 1223: Mongols defeat the Russians at the Battle of Kalka River. 

• 1222: The Mongol Conquest of Central Asia stops at the city of Multan, in the center of modern-day Pakistan.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1221-1223: Mongol forces under Subodei and Jebe first come into contact with Europe while pursuing the Sultan of Khwarizm.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 31 May, 1223: Battle of the Kalka River; Mongol forces under Subodei and Jebe decisively defeat a coalition of several Rus’ principalities under the command of Mstislav the Bold. After nearly two weeks of chase, the vanguard of the Russian army caught up with the Mongols on the Kalka River, which empties into the Sea of Azov, the place Jebe and Subodei had selected as most advantageous to the Mongols. The Mongols conduct a silent attack controlled and coordinated by the waving of flags. Mounted Mongol archermen raced silently towards the Russian infantry lines, pausing just short of the Slav’s hand weapons, firing their arrows straight into the Russian infantry ranks. The Mongols overtook the Russian warriors and one by one, killed the reigning princes of the Russian city-states, following them all the way back to the Black Sea. The Mongols wrap Prince Mstislav and his two sons-in-law in felt rugs, stuffing them beneath the floorboards of their ger, slowly, bloodlessly, crushing the men as the Mongols drank and sang through the night on the floor above them.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• Apr, 1223: Mongol forces led by Subodei reach the banks of the Dnieper River, N. of the Black Sea where they fight a coalition of hastily assembled troops from small kingdoms and city-states of the area- Smolenks, Galich, Chernigov, Kiev, Volhynia, Kursk, Suzdal, and some of the Kipchak. Three of the armies—from Galich, Chernigov, and Kiev—came under the command of princes, all of whom were named Mstislav. The most impressive of the three Mstislavs was Prince Mstislav Romanovitch of Kiev, the largest and richest of all the cities.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• Sep, 1222: Mongol forces under Jebe defeat Georgian forces; the Mongols charge the Georgians, fired a few volleys, and then turned to flee in a feigned retreat (Dog-Fight Strategy). The overconfident Georgian forces broke ranks and began to eagerly chase the Mongols, thinning out as the slower fell farther behind. Suddenly, Jebe’s forces led them straight into the ranks of another Mongol regiment under Subodei. While Subodei began picking off the Georgians, Jebe’s soldiers mounted fresh horses and rejoined the fight. Within hours, the Mongols had completely destroyed the Georgian Army and the small nation’s aristocracy. Subodei makes the country a vassal sate, the first in Europe.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1221: Mongol Noyan (General) Subodei discovers Europe during Genghis Khan’s invasion of Central Asia when Subodei and Jebe had circled the Caspian in pursuit of the Khwarizm Sultan. After the sultan’s death, they ask and receive permission to continue to see what lay to the north. There they discovered the small Christian kingdom of Georgia, ruled by Giorgi III the Brilliant.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1221: Francis Assisi pens Regula non bullata (Earlier Rule). It is approved by Pope Honorius III in 1223 (London National Gallery).

• 1221: During recon into Europe, Mongol Commander Subidai’s forces destroys Georgian Forces near Tbilisi. 

• 1221: After defeating the Shah, Genghis Khan sends General Subidai to chase and capture the Shah. While chasing, Subidai learns of an interesting land to the West and Genghis Khan gives him three years to recon it. 

• 1219-1223: Fall of the Khwarazm Empire to conquering Mongol Armies.-War by NatGeo.

• 1219: The Mongols rode into Khawarazm with ~100,000 Mongol warriors and 50,000 allied soldiers and engineers.-War by NatGeo.

• 1219-1237: Reign of Sultan Aladdin Kekkubad over the height of the Seljuk period (IST Airport Museum).

• 1219-1221: The Mongols fight and decisively defeat the Khwarezmian Empire. The Khwarezmian's try to fight a defensive war staying inside garrisons splitting his army. Mongols split into 5-7 columns and siege the cities using the cities own surrendered citizens as offenders. 

• 1219-1221: The Mongols decisively defeat the Khwarizm Empire, taking the cities of Bukhara, Samarkand, Otrar, Urgench, Balkh, Banakat, Khojend, Merv, Nisa, Nishapur, Termez, Herat, Bamiyan, Ghazni, Peshawar, Qazvin, Hamadan, Ardabil, Maragheh, Tabriz, Tbilisi, Derbent, Astrakhan. Genghis Khan brings all four of his sons with him on the Central Asian Campaign, hoping they would learn not only how to be better warriors, but how to work and live together.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1221: Battle of Bamiyan (a Buddhist pilgrimage site and home of the largest statues in the world)). Although the Mongols defeat the defenders, during the battle, an arrow struck and killed Genghis Khan’s favorite grandson Mutugen. The valley is eventually resettled by the Hazara (‘Ten-Thousand’- Persian), who claim to be descendants from one of Genghis Khan’s regiments of that size.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• Early, 1221: Battle of Urgench; After razing the city, the defenders continued fighting from the charred ruins. The Mongols built a damn, diverted the river, and flooded the city, killing the defenders and destroying nearly everything in the city.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• Mar, 1220: The Mongols conquer Bukhara (modern Uzbekistan) led by the Sultan of Khwarizm.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1219: Genghis Khan sends a trusted general with a detachment of soldiers to find out what had happened to his envoys to Khwarizm.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1217: Genghis Khan sends three Ambassadors to the Sultan of Khwarizm. When the caravan enters Khwarizm in the NW province of Otrar (modern S. Kazakhstan), the governor seizes the goods and kills the merchants and their drivers. Hearing of the episode, Ghengis Khan sends envoys to request that the sultan punish the local official for the attack; instead, the sultan rebuked the khan, killing some of the envoys, and mutilating the faces of the others.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• “I have the greatest desire to live in peace with you. I shall look on you as my son. For your part, you are not unaware that I have conquered North China and subjected all the tribes of the north. You know that my country is an ant heap of warriors, a mine of silver, and that I have no need to covet other dominions. We have an equal interest in fostering trade between our subjects…I ask…that our people might trade together with safety, and find in a perfect union with one another, that repose and plenty which are the chief blessings that can be wished for in all Kingdoms.”-Genghis Khan→ Khwarizm Sultan. 

• 1219: The Mongols defeat the Black Khitan; Genghis Khan orders Jebe with 20K Mongol soldiers across Asia to defend the Muslims of Balasagun against the oppression of the Black Khitan, now Guchlug, who had fled Mongolia, married the daughter of the Black Khitan and usurped his power. Jebe’s army defeated Guchlug’s army and had him beheaded near the modern border of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and China. The victory gave Genghis Khan complete control over the Silk Route.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1219: Some of the Siberian tribes that had first submitted to Mongol rule during Jochi’s invasion of 1207 quit sending tributary furs, forest products, and young women. When a Mongol envoy arrived to investigate, they found they now had a woman chief whom they called Botohui-tarhun (‘Big & Fierce)’, who had set a trap for the Mongol envoys. She sent a contingent of her troops to seal off the trail behind the men to prevent their escape, then she ambushed them from the front. Botohui-tarhun’s forces triumphed—and in the battle, her warriors killed the Mongol general. Genghis Khan gave the queen Botohui-tarhun in marriage to the second of the envoys, whom she may have already taken as her husband since she had kept him as her prisoner and had not killed him.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1218: A Mongol force led by Jebe show up in Kara-Khitai (Modern Afghanistan) to fight Küchlüg and his Neihan tribes. The fall of Küchlüg, with the help of local Moslems brought the Mongols and the Khwarezmian Empire of Central Asia (Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and more) led by Muhammad the Khwarezmian shah into battle. Genghis tried to open trade with the shah sending a caravan for trade. The shah seized the caravan and killed the Mongols escorting it. Genghis Khan delivers a message to the Shah demanding he deliver the governor responsible for this act. The Shah kills the Mongol Messengers and sends them back to Genghis Khan. 

• 1217-1229: Fifth Crusade. Mainly focused on attacking Egypt. 

• 1215: Imposition of a Crusades Tax begins. 

• 1215: Battle of Zhongdu; The Mongols, led by Genghis Khan in a bout of “glorious slaughter” raze the Jin capital to rubble, leaving its streets littered with corpses and awash in blood. Census records show a drop in the number of Jin households between 1207 and 1236 from 8.4M to 1.1M.-China by Jaivin.

• 1215: The pope bans trial by ordeal in Europe, replacing it with a new system of divine judgement: judicial torture. But in England, where there existed a tradition of convening juries to judge civil disputes—like disagreements over boundaries between neighboring freeholds—trial by ordeal was replaced not by judicial torture but by trial by jury with a judge deciding the law and a jury deciding the facts.-These Truths by Lepore.

• 1215: The Magna Carta, “Charter of Liberties,” is signed by King John of England; covering 63 clauses dealing with specific grievances, the document is the basis of Constitutional Law in the Western World. This was one of the world’s first documents proclaiming that everybody, even the king, was subject to the law. The famous 39th clause gave all “free men” the right to justice and a fair trial.-Documents that changed the world.

• Jun, 1215: The city of London is captured by rebel barons forcing King John to surrender England to the overlordship of the Pope. The Magna Carta becomes a negotiation to avert Civil War. 

• 1215: Birth of Kublai to his mother Sorghaghtani, Möngke’s brother (NatGeo). 

• 1215: Declaration of the Magna Carta. The Magna Carta Libertatum, or the Great Charter of Liberties of England was originally issued in 1215 AD. This charter is considered to be the first step towards the constitutional government of England. The Charter of Magna Carta restricted the power of the Emperor and proved the importance of a Constitution.

• 1212: The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa; Almohad power in Spain is broken following a land battle in which the kings of Castile, Aragon, Navarre and Portugal set aside their differences and launch a joint attack on the Berber empire.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1211-1215: Fall of the Chinese Jin Empire to conquering Mongol Armies; the Mongols split their army into three columns that swept around Zhongdu (near modern day Beijing), capturing it in 1215.-War by NatGeo.

• 1211- 1215: The Jin empire (NE China, SE Russia, DPRK) surrenders and opens Beijing to the Mongols offering them tribute. The Jin move their govt to the south in Nanjing which the Mongols see as a threat and fight/take Beijing (jangdu)- killing over a million people. The Golden king commits suicide and the citizens of Beijing do not resist. Fires, looting, murder, rape. Successive relief forces are entirely decimated. 

• 1211-1214: Mongol-Jurched War; the Mongols cross the Gobi Desert and invade the Jurched. Rather than face a prolonged siege and war, the Jurched agreed to a settlement with the Mongols, giving them massive amounts of silk, gold, 3K horses, and 500 young men and women. To seal the arrangement, the Golden (Jurched) Khan recognized himself as a vassal of Genghis Khan and gave him one of his royal princesses as a wife. As soon as the Mongols withdrew, the Jurched reneged, evacuating Zhongdu and fleeing S. to Kaifeng. The Mongols followed, defeated the Jurched and looted the city.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1210: A Jurched delegation arrives at the Mongol encampment to proclaim the ascension of a new Golden Khan demanding the submission of Genghis Khan and the Mongols as a vassal nation. In response, Genghis Khan returns to his home on the Kherlen River and summons a kurultai -Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1210s: British King John levies taxes higher than any previous King, keeping so much in his castle that it was difficult for anyone to pay him. When his noblemen fell into his debt, he took their sons hostage, even having one noblewoman and her son starved to death in a dungeon and a clerk crushed to death.-These Truths by Lepore.

• 1210: The Mongols meet during their annual Kurultai to develop siege warfare to better attack the Jin. 

• 1209: Pope Innocent III hires a mercenary army for a crusade against the Cathars, a heretical sect in southern France, after the assassination of the papal legate Innocent had sent to counter their unorthodox beliefs. The papal forces crush town after town until they came to the Cathars stronghold in Béziers. The mercenaries tear through the streets, killing Cathars and Catholics alike (NatGeo). 

• 1209: The University of Cambridge is founded in the UK.

• 1209: The Mongols cross the Gobi and attack the Jin in Northern China.

• 1207-1209: Mongol conquest of the Tangut (Western Xia Dynasty); the Mongols learn a new type of warfare against walled cities, moats, and fortresses and force the Tangut Emperor Renzong to submit to vassal status.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1207: Genghis Khan deploys his eldest son, 28yo Jochi and his tumen on a campaign into Sibir (modern Siberia) to secure the submission of the forest tribes and the reindeer herders. Jochi returns successfully with thousands of new recruits for the Mongol army, as well as tribal leaders with whom Genghis Khan negotiates a number of alliance marriages, including one with Jochi’s daughter. In addition to people, Jochi brings back valuable tribute, including rare furs such as black sable, hunting birds, and other forest products. However, expansion into the N. offered little attraction beyond furs and feathers.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1206-1209: Genghis Khan conquers and unites the Steppe Tribes

• 1206: The Mongol Yassa Code: The Great Law of Genghis Khan, which functioned as a supreme law, or a common law over everyone. The code forbade the kidnapping of women, the abduction and enslavement of any Mongol, declared all children legitimate, whether born to a wife or a concubine, forbade the selling of women into marriage, and outlawed adultery (Mongol adultery did not include sexual relations between a woman and her husband’s close relatives, nor those between a man and female servants or the wives of other men in his household). It made animal rustling a capital offense, requiring anyone finding a lost animal to return it to its owner on penalty of death (which included a massive lost and found system), codified existing ideals by forbidding the hunting of animals between Mar-Oct during breeding time, placed limits on hunting and specified how animals should be hunted as well as the manner of butchering, so as to waste nothing. The law promoted all religions and exempted religious leaders and their properties from taxation and public service (which was later extended to a range of professions including essential public workers, undertakers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, and scholars). The law codified the election of Khan by kurultai, and, in probably the first of its kind anywhere in the world, decreed complete and total religious freedom for everyone. The law recognized group responsibility and group guilt. The solitary individual had no legal existence outside the context of the family and the larger units to which it belonged; therefore, the family carried the responsibility of ensuring the correct behavior of its members. A crime by one could bring punishment to all. Genghis Khan made it clear that his Great Law applied as strictly to the rulers as to everyone else.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1206: An Islamic sultanate is established in Delhi, heralding a long line of Turkic rulers in India (British Museum).

• 1206: Genghis Khan is proclaimed ruler of the unified Mongol clans.-War by NatGeo.

• 1206: Genghis Khan is named the leader of the Steppe, he introduces the Yassa: Code of Laws. 

• 1204-1206: Genghis Khan battles and defeats his main rival, his old soul brother. 

• 1204: The Rep. of Venice captures Corfu and from 1204 to 1502 slowly takes the remaining Ionian Islands (Wiki). 

• 12-15 Apr, 1204: The Sack of Constantinople during the 4th Crusade. Crusader armies capture, loot, and destroy parts of Constantinople, leading to the establishment of the Latin Empire (Frankokratia- Latin Occupation) under Baldwin of Flanders, crowned as Emperor Baldwin I. Most of the Byzantine Empire's territories are divided up among the Crusaders. Byzantine aristocrats also established a number of small independent splinter states, one of them being the Empire of Nicaea (Wiki). 

• 4th Crusade leader Boniface founds the Kingdom of Thessalonica, a vassal state of the new Latin Empire. The Venetians found the Duchy of the Archipelago in the Aegean Sea. 

• Mar, 1204: Leaders of the 4th Crusade with the agreement of the Venetian Empire decide on an outright conquest of Constantinople to settled debts, drawing up a formal agreement to divide the Byzantine Empire between them (Wiki). 

• 5 Feb, 1204: Alexios Doukas declares himself Byzantine Emperor Alexios V, and executes previous emperor Alexios IV 3 days later (8 Feb) by strangulation. Alexios V attempts to negotiate with the crusaders for a withdrawal from Byzantine territory without payment, but they refuse in order to avenge Alexios IV and to receive the money that was promised (Wiki). 

• 25 Jan, 1204: Death of Byzantine Co-Emperor Isaac II; riots set off around Constantinople leadig to the deposition of Emperor Alexios IV, who turns to armies of the 4th crusade for help (Wiki). 

• 1 Aug, 1203: Following the siege of Constantinople (1203), the pro-Crusader Alexios Angelos is crowned Emperor Alexios IV of the Byzantine Empire. He attempts to pacify the city, but riots between anti-Crusader Greeks and pro-Crusader Latins breaks out, lasting until November, during which time most of the populace begins to turn against him (Wiki). 

• 1202: The Battle of Collestrada is fought between Assisi and Perugia. Assisi is taken prisoner and released the following year (London National Gallery).

• 1202: Leonardo of Pisa introduces Arabic numerals into Europe.-Incomplete Edu by Jones.

• 1202: Zadar is reconquered and sacked by the Crusaders. 

• 1200's: Arrival of Islam to Indonesia

• 1202-1204: The 4th Crusade. 

• 17 Jul, 1203: Crusaders take Constantinople and put Alexius IV on the throne.

• This crusade was called for yet again by a pope (specifically Pope Innocent III) with the intention to reconquer Jerusalem from Muslim rule. However, following the trend, the crusade failed as the army lost their initial goal and ended up occupying Constantinople, the capital of the (Christian) Byzantine empire. This mess was brought about by hidden agendas and with politics masquerading as piety. The Crusaders looted and razed cities, including Christian ones. These side missions occurred despite veto from the Pope and were to raise funds to repay Venice for the loan of fleets and to fuel the Crusade. Many also broke their vows to respect the women of Constantinople and assaulted them. The fighting and instability in Constantinople prevented Crusaders from furthering their journey to Jerusalem. 

• 1201: Albert von Buxhövden arrives in Latvia with 23 ships and 500 crusaders and establishes a trading center at Riga. This also becomes the base for the crusading brethren, whose mission was to convert the local Livs (a people related to the Finns and the Estonians), if need be by force.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• ~1200: The Greenlanders’ Saga is written. In the Saga we learn that new land to the W. of Greenland was first spied out by Bjarni Herjólfson, who was trying to reach Greenland from Iceland in around 985 but was blown off course.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• ~1200: The Mixtec begin to assume control of key Zapotec sites through conquest and political alliances (British Museum).

• 1200: Formation of the Malla dynasty, which eventually rules over the Kathmandu valley (British Museum).

• 1200: The Inuit first encounter the Norse Greenlanders.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1200: The Armenians split into those who accept loose papal authority and those who reject it.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1200: The Orkneyinga Saga is written, one of the liveliest of all the Icelandic sagas.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia

• 1200: The Tahitians begin building terraces and laying out orchards where they cultivate breadfruit.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1200: The Inuit enter NW Greenland from Canada.-Collapse by Diamond.  

• 1200: New Zealand is first settled by Polynesians.-Collapse by Diamond.  

• ~1200: Polynesian’s have reached every habitable scrap of land in the vast watery triangle of ocean whose apexes are Hawaii, New Zealand, and Easter Island.-Collapse by Diamond.

• 1200's: Rise of Banks; The Knights Templar establish outposts all over Europe supporting the Crusades, granting crusaders and travelers certified papers in exchange for deposits; similar to a debit card.-Man v. Markets by Hirsch.

• 1200: Founding of the Inca Dynasty.-Turn Right at Machu Picchu by Adams. 

• ~1200: Sheikh Isaq immigrates to Somalia from Arabia, settling to the W. of the Darod at Mait, and marries into the Local Dir Somali. His descendants, the Dir clans, expand from there.-Somalia by Lewis.

• ~1200: The original Inka migrate to Qosqo, possibly from Lake Titicaca.-1491 by Mann.

• 1200: Fall of the Toltec Empire in Mesoamerica due to internal dissension.-1491 by Mann.

• 13c: The Mongols conquer Kyivan Rus (NatGeo). 

----------1200----------

• ~12c-13c: Expansion of Arab Immigration throughout Somalia southerly down both the Shebelle River and the coastline, most likely due to mounting population pressure exacerbated by a series of severe droughts. The Darod and Isaq grow in numbers and territory forcing the Dir to vacate the NE region of Somaliland to the West and South. In the west, the powerful ‘Ise and Gadabursi clans pushed gradually, and not without many setbacks, into what is today Harar Province of Ethiopia and the Jibuti Republic.-Somalia by Lewis.

• The Somali Dir, Darod, and later the Isaq, begin pressing upon their Oromo neighbors. The Oromo were increasingly thrust westwards and southwards and ultimately into Ethiopia.-Somalia by Lewis.

• Apr, 1199: Death of King Richard the Lionheart of England, shot by an arrow in his left shoulder.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1198: Order of Teutonic Knights begins with base in Acre. 

• 1194: The king of England lifts all taxes and tribute on Cologne merchants.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1193: Death of Saladin. 

• 1192-1333: The Kamkura Period in Japan; the Samurai class rise to power.-Ninjutsu by Zoughari.

• 1192: The Teutonic Order (aka Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem) is founded as a military order in Acre, Jerusalem to aid crusaders. 

• End 12c: Beheading of Adeni Jews; all Jews of Yemen were forced to accept Islam. The few who resist are beheaded and the head of the Adeni Jews embraces Islam. This event stirs the Jewish world.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1191: Prince Archbishop Adalbert III reopens the salt mine in Durrnberg bei Hallein (now Bad Durrnberg), which had not been used since Celtic times. Salzburg’s’ experiences a boom (Hohensalzburg Museum). 

• 1191/2: Prince Yaroslav III of Novgorod enters into a treaty with the Gotlanders and the Germans.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1189-1192: Third Crusade

• The Third Crusade (1189–1192), also known as The Kings’ Crusade, was focused on reconquering the Holy Land from Saladin, a military leader who unified Muslim forces in Egypt and Syria. Saladin had reconquered almost every Crusader city and built a powerful base dangerously close to the Christian Roman Empire. Upon hearing this news, Pope Gregory VIII called for a new crusade to the Holy Land. Three powerful kings heeded the call: Emperor Frederick Barbarossa of Germany, King Henry II of England and King Philip II of France. Unfortunately, two of them died – Frederick Barbarossa and Henry II of England (who was succeeded by Richard the Lionheart). The fighting reached a stalemate, and a compromise was reached; the Ramla Reconciliation, signed in 1192 , granted safe passage for Christian pilgrimages through the Muslim land of Tyre to Jaffa. While the campaign was successful in capturing the important cities and reversing some of Saladin’s conquests, it ultimately failed to recapture Jerusalem.

• 2 Oct, 1187: Saladin retakes Jerusalem.

• 1187: Egyptian forces led by Saladin, the Egyptian ruler, retake Jerusalem and re-establish it as a Muslim city.-Atlas of the Bible by Barnes.

• 1187: Invasion of Sweden by Estonian raiders who sack cities as far away as Sigtuna, on Lake Mälaren.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1187: Battle of Horns of Hattin; Crusading forces in Jerusalem are defeated by Saladin, Sultan of Egypt and Syria (NatGeo). 

• 1186: Zadar places itself under the protection of Bela III, King of Hungary and Croatia. 

• 1185: The Minamoto clan eliminates their Taira enemies and establishes the first shogunate, or military dictatorship, with Minamoto Yoritomo as its leader. The shogunate system would last for 700 years. The daimyo, regional feudal lords, swore loyalty to the emperor, who was largely a ceremonial and religious figure. It was shogunate founder Yoritomo and his successors who wielded true executive power (NatGeo). 

• 1185: Kamakura becomes the seat of Japanese government; maritime trade within the Japanese archipelago flourishes, including Tea and Sake. Suspicion of outsiders led the Japanese government to control the number of times a merchant could visit Japan – Chinese visitors were limited to one trip every 3y and trips overseas by Japanese traders were strongly discouraged.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1185-1333/1336 CE: Kamakura Dynasty (Japan)

• Governed by the Kamakura Shogunate officially established in 1192 in Kamakura by the first Shogun, Minamoto no Yoritomo

• Known for the emergence of the Samurai.

• Establishment of Feudalism in Japan.

• Ended with the Kenmu Restoration (1333-1336).

• The samurai armies of the whole nation were mobilized in 1274 and 1281 to confront two full-scale Mongol invasions by Kublai Khan. The japanese fought the Mongols to a standstill in Kyushu on both occasions until the Mongol Fleet was destroyed by the typhoons called kamikaze (divine wind).

• 1185: The Ionian Islands are captured by William II of Siciliy (Wiki). 

• 1184: The Battle of Sumanoura (aka the second battle of Uji) in Japan.-Bushido by Nitobe. 

• 1183-1377: Malayu Kingdom based out of Srivijaya, Sumatra. 

• May, 1182: Massacre of the Latins; a massacre of the Roman Catholic or “Latin” inhabitants of Constantinople by the usurper Andonikos Komnenos and his supporters. The Massacre affects political relations between W. Europe and the Byzantine Empire, and led to the sack of Thessalonica by the Normans (Wiki). 

• 1181: Khmer King Jayavarman VII rises to power, reviving Khmer fortunes after the kingdom is invaded by the neighboring Cham and making Buddhism the state religion (NatGeo).  

• Late 12c: Mongolia; The great expanse of the steppe N. of the Gobi falls under the rule of three major tribes. The center was controlled by Ong Khan and his Kereyid tribe, the W. was dominated by the Naiman tribe under their ruler Tayang Khan, and the Tatars occupied the area to the east as vassals of the Jurched of N. China under their ruler Altan Khan.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1180: Styria becomes a duchy of Slovenia (Slovenia Museum). 

• 12c: Zen Buddhists spread knowledge of tea-drinking, as an aid to contemplation. At first, tea was drunk after steeping the leaves, or part of a brick of powdered tea, in water; tradition attributes the arrival of whisked matcha, powdered green tea drunk thick and strong, to the traveller Eisai, who had tasted something similar in China at the end of the twelfth century.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.    

• 1180s: The Red Sea is closed to non-Muslims after Crusader lord Reynaud de Châtillon launches a fleet on the Red Sea with the aim of attacking Mecca and Medina, and of launching pirate raids on traffic passing through the Red Sea. Although Reynaud’s activities were suppressed, his pirates came dangerously close to Medina.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1177-1184: The ‘Battle of the Atlantic’; Admiral Dom Fuas Rouphinho launches Portuguese ships into the Atlantic leading attacks on the Almohad al-Andalus, down the coastline from Seville to Ceuta.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1184: The Almohads attack Lisbon by sea, but are unable to take the city.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1181: The Almohads capture 20-40 of Dom Fuas’s Portuguese ships, killing him in the process.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1180: Capture of the Almohad flagship and 8 other vessels by the Portuguese.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1175: Temujin’s father, Yesugei, is poisoned by Tatar’s, leaving his family impoverished.-War by NatGeo.

• 1172-1250: The Ayoubid State; Al Ayoubi declares his independence from Egypt after Al-A’dhed Al Fatimi’s death in 1171. The state ends the reign of Toranashah Bin Al Saleh Ayoub, when the Mamluke reign began their domination which was further enforced by Al-Dhahir Bibars Al Bunduqdari’s reign (Al Fahidi Coin Museum).

• 1172: The English invade Ireland. 

• 1170: Assassination of Thomas Becket by the Catholic Church in Canterbury Cathedral.-Incomplete Edu by Jones.

• 1167: The First European account of the Nizari Ismaili Muslim Sect (aka the Hashishim, “the Assassins”) with their headquarters at the Persian Castle of Alamut is written by Spanish Rabbi, Benjamin of Tudela after traveling through Syria. He told of a mysterious leader, the Old Man of the Mountain, who led a sect of warriors who dwelled in a hidden mountain fortress (NatGeo).  

• 1165-1194: Reign of Toghrul (Ong Khan) over the Keraites (Wiki). 

• 1164: Norwegian Christian King Olva receives his sainthood from Pope Alexander III, and the site of the battle – along with Trondheim’s cathedral, where Olav's tomb remains – has been a place of pilgrimage ever since (NatGeo). 

• 1162-1206: Rise of Temujin, ‘Genghis Khan’, and the unification of Mongolia.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1206: Genghis Khan; Temujin summons a kurultai near the headwaters of the Onon River near his sacred mountain of Burkhan Khaldun. He names his people Yeke Mongol Ulus (‘Great Mongol Nation’). He abolishes inherited aristocratic titles in lineages, clans, and tribes. All such offices belonged to the state, not to the individual or his family, and they would be distributed at the will of the new ruler. For himself, Temujin rejects the older tribal titles such as Gur-Khan or Tayang Khan and chose instead, ‘Chinggis Khan’ (‘Genghis Khan’- Persian). After decades of internecine warfare, Mongolia is unified.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1205: Jamuka’s followers, desperate and resigned to defeat, seize him and delivered him to Temujin. Rather than reward the men who brought Jamuka to him, Temujin has them executed in front of the leader whom they had betrayed.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• “Now, when the world is ready for you, what use is there in my becoming a companion to you? On the contrary, sworn brother, in the black night I would haunt your dreams, in the bright day I would trouble your heart. I would be the louse in your collar, I would become the splinter in your door-panel. Kill me and lay down my dead bones in the high ground. Then eternally and forever, I will protect the seed of your seed, and become a blessing for them.”-Jamuka. 

• 1204: The Battle of Chakirmaut (Battle of the 13 Sides); the final battle for control of Mongolia is fought between Tayang Khan and Temujin at the base of the Altair mountains. Temujin orders a moving bush formation (‘Tumbleweed Formation) with dispersed squads of ten advancing from different directions followed by a Moving Bush (‘Lake Formation’), in which a long line of troops advanced, fired arrows, and then was replaced by a next line, attacking in waves and causing the Naiman to spread out. Once the Naiman had spread out over a lone ling, Temujin regrouped and conducted a chisel formation, narrow across the front but deep, channeling maximum force to one point, easily defeating the remaining Naiman. Tayang Khan is killed but his son Guchlug flees to the distant Tian Shan Mountains of the Black Khitan, while Jamuka disappears into a forest.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• The few remaining bands of Merkid were quickly swallowed by the growing Mongol nation, and the 40yo Jamuka lived as an outcast bandit with a small number of followers who fed themselves on wild animals. In Temujin’s long quest for control of the Mongol clans, Temujin had defeated every tribe on the steppe and removed the threat of every aristocratic lineage by killing off their men and marrying their women to his sons and other followers. Temujin now ranked as undisputed ruler of a vast land, controlling everything from the Gobi in the south to the Arctic tundra in the north, from the Manchurian forests in the east to the Altai Mountains of the west.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1203: Temujin requests a marriage between Ong Khan’s daughter and his eldest son, Jochi (if Ong Khan accepted the proposed marriage, it would be acknowledgment of Temujin as the favorite over Jamuka). The marriage would put him in the strongest position to succeed Ong Khan as the future ruler of the central steppes. Only about one day’s ride from Ong Khan’s court, Temujin learns that the wedding invitation was a plot against him. Ong Khan had assembled his army secretly and intended to kill him and wipe out his family.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1203: Temujin re-organizes his Mongol warriors into squads (arban) of ten ordered to live and fight together as brothers; no one of them could leave the other behind in battle as a captive; forcing them into new units that no man could desert or change, under penalty of death, thereby breaking the power of the old-system lineages, clans, tribes, and ethnic identities.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford. 

• Ten of the squads formed a company (zagun), of one hundred men, with one selected as their leader. Ten companies formed a battalion (mingan), of one thousand men. Ten battalions formed an army (tumen), of ten thousand men. The leader of each was chosen by Temujin. At the time of reorganization, Temujin reportedly had 95x mingan, but since some of the units were not staffed to capacity, the total number of troops may have been ~80K.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• All members of the tribe—regardless of age or gender—had to perform a certain amount of public service. If they could not serve in the military, they were obliged to give the equivalent of one day of work per week for public projects and service to the khan; caring for the warriors’ herds, gathering dung for fuel, cooking, making felt, repairing weapons, singing and entertaining the troops.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1202: Ong Khan (Toghrul) sends Temujin on campaign to plunder the Tatars in the East. While on campaign, Temujin takes the aristocratic Tatar Yesugei and her elder sister Yesui as wives. After this battle, the Mongols took in so many Tatars, many of whom rose to great prominence, that the name Tatar became synonymous with, and in many cases better known, than the name Mongol.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford. 

• 1201: Temujin and his forces defeat the Tayichiud after being warned by Jelme that he was walking into a trap. Jelme is later entrusted with some of the most important expeditions of the Mongol conquests.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1201: In a challenge to Temujin and Ong Khan, Jamuka summons a kurultai that confers upon him the honored title of Gur-ka or Gur-khan (Chief of all chiefs, khan of all khans).-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford. 

• ~1200: The main rivals to the Mongol confederation are the Naimans to the West, the Merkids to the North, the Tanguts to the South, and the Jin to the East (Wiki). 

• 1197: Temujin and his followers attack the Jurkin, defeating them. Temujin takes Avarga, which serves as his base of operations for the remainder of his life.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• Winter, 1196: The Kereyid ruler Ong Khan and Temujin with his followers set out on their campaign against the Tatars; their raid brings quick successes, yielding sophisticated manufactured good from the Chinese Empire.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1187: Battle of Dalan Balzhut; Forces of Temujin are decisively defeated by the armies of Jamaka, who has 70 young male captives boiled alive in a cauldron (Wiki). 

• 1186: Temujin is elected khan of the Mongols. Jamaka is threatened by the rise and gathers his forces to attack Temujin (Wiki). 

• May, 1181: After breaking winter camp for summer pastures, Jamuka rides alone, unwilling to share his leadership role with Temujin. Later in the day, when Jamuka stops to pitch camp, Temujin and his entourage flee in secret. The rift between the two evolves into two decades of warfare as Temujin and Jamuka both rise in stature as leading Mongol warriors.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1179: Birth of Jochi (‘visitor’, ‘guest’), first son of Borte and Temujin.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1178-1181: Temujin and Jamuka with his Jadaran warriors, rescue Borte. Temujin joins his small camp to that of Jamuka’s.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1178: The Mongol Merkid tribe abduct Borte, wife of Temujin, to avenge the kidnapping of Temujin’s mother, Hoelun, by his father Yesugei nearly 20y earlier. Temujin flees SW along the Tuul River seeking the help of Ong Khan and his Kereyid tribe, who provides him with the support of his sworn anda, Jamuka, of the Jadaran clan, who readily agrees to help fight the Merkid.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1175: Death of Temujin’s father, Yesugei, poisoned by Tatar’s, leaving his family impoverished.-War by NatGeo.

• 1162: Birth of Temujin, later Genghis Khan, on the Mongolian Steppe.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• ~1162: Temughen (Genghis Khan) is born on the Mongolian Steppe. 

• 1162: Temujin, later Genghis Khan, is born to the Borjigin clan on the Mongolian Steppe.-War by NatGeo.

• 1161: The song Dynasty introduced what would become the first modern paper currency: the huizu- p134.-1493 by Mann.

• The first European bank notes appeared in 1661, 5 centuries later- p134.-1493 by Mann.

• 1160: Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa attempts to conquer the Lombard City of Cremona in the N. of modern Italy. He institutes an escalating series of violent acts of terror, beheading prisoners and playing with the heads outside the city walls, kicking them like balls. The defenders of Cremona then brought out their German prisoners on the city walls and pulled their limbs off in front of their comrades. The Germans gathered more prisoners and executed them in a mass hanging. The city officials responded by hanging the remainder of their prisoners on top of the city walls. Instead of fighting each other directly, the two armies continued their escalation of terror. The Germans then gathered captive children and strapped them into their catapults, hurling them over the city walls.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1159: Lübeck is re-founded under Henry the Lion, the duke of Saxony and one of the greatest German princes.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.    

• 1157: End of the Great Seljuk Empire following the death of Sultan Sencer. The Anatolian Seljuks are Its sole remaining heirs. Their rulers concentrate on consolidating their power in Anatolia (IST Airport Museum).

• 1153: The Schöntal monastery is founded by Cistercian monks (Landesmuseum Württemberg).

• 4 Mar, 1152: Frederick Barbarossa (‘Frederick I’, ‘Redbeard’) is elected as King of Germany in Frankfurt and crowned 5 days later on the 9th of March in Aachen. 

• May, 1152: Marriage of Henry II & Eleanor of Aquitaine granting the English rights in Gascony.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1152: Marriage of English King Henry II & Eleanor of Aquitaine.-Incomplete Edu by Jones.

• 1150: The second settlement of New Zealand by Toi.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.    

----------1150----------

• 1145-1149: The Second Crusade is launched in response to the fall of the County of Edessa in 1144 to the forces of Zengi, which had been founded during the First Crusade by King Baldwin I of Jerusalem in 1098 (Wiki).  

• 1148: Fall of Lisbon; crusaders with 164 ships set off from Dartmouth, England and attacks the Almohad caliph, a revivalist movement originating among the Berbers of the Atlas Mountains, occupying Lisbon.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.    

• Convinced that an attack on Lisbon would serve the purposes of a grand crusade which was being fought not just in Syria but in the Wendish lands bordering Germany and in the Muslim lands bordering Catalonia, the crusaders eagerly joined a Portuguese expedition against Lisbon and, after great violence, forced the city’s surrender; predictably, this was followed by its sack, and even the bishop of the Mozarabic Christians whom they found within its walls was slaughtered.6 The capture of Lisbon gave the Portuguese a superb base in southern Iberia; in the thirteenth century the weakness and then collapse of the Almohad Empire in Spain and north Africa left them free to chip away at the Algarve, and they were masters of Silves by 1242.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.

• 1147: Wends Campaign; Abotrite ruler, Niklot, attacks Lübeck; but is resisted.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.    

• 1144: The Second Crusade

• In 1144 CE, a crusader state by the name of the Country of Edessa fell to a Muslim civilisation called Zengi. This gave impetus to the second crusade, instigated by Pope Eugenius III and St Bernard of Clairvaux gain; there were similar sentiments of preventing a Christian land from falling into the hands of heathens. This crusade was the first crusade to be led by European kings, namely Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany. However, the crusade was plagued with disagreements between its leaders and had an unclear goal. As a result, instead of responding to the loss of the Country of Edessa, the army attacked their ally Damascus. The crusade ended ultimately with a Muslim win, further division within the Christian states and eventually the fall of Jerusalem.

• 31 Aug, 1142: Founding of the Haudenosaunee (aka five nations) during a total solar eclipse in upstate NY after Deganawidah (‘the peacemaker’) and Ayenwatha of the Onondaga persuade the Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, and Mohawk to form an alliance based in the Finger Lakes of NY instead of constantly fighting.-1491 by Mann.

• 1140s: Qadiriya, Islam’s oldest order, is founded in Baghdad by Sayyid ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani.-Somalia by Lewis.

• 1140: Chacoan civilization (present day N. New Mexico) begins to dissolve, perhaps due to a series of severe droughts (NatGeo). 

• 1138: The Maulbronn monastery is founded by Cistercian monks (Landesmuseum Württemberg).

• 1138: Talks between the Song and Jin collapse. Song commander Yue Fei was preparing to march N. at last when jealous rivals at court accused him of plotting a rebellion. During his interrogation, he proved his loyalty, showing them a tattoo on his back, “Serve the country with undying loyalty (jīngzhōng bàoguó).”Unmoved, Yui Fei is garroted in his cell.-China by Jaivin.

• 1135-1180: A major drought strikes the central and SW USA impacting the Anasazi at Mesa Verde and leading to the decline of Chaco Canyon development in modern NM (Wright, unk).

• 1135: The siege of Aden by the Kish (Qays), who hope to seize the port and customs house. After several months, two large ships belonging to Ramisht of Siraf are boarded by Adeni troops who attack the Kish from the rear, dispelling them.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.    

• 1128: The Song establish a Chinese Colony in Korea.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.    

• 1127-1279: The S. Song Dynasty rules S.China.-China by Jaivin.

• 1127: The Jin advance on the Song capital of Kaifeng. The Song use gunpowder (invented during the Tang) in weapons including “thunderclap bombs” (firecrackers), to no avail. The Jin kidnap the Song emperor and ransack Kaifeng, raping and enslaving at will. The Song Dynasty moves S becoming the S. Song Dynasty.-China by Jaivin.

• 1126: The Song capital at Kaifeng is captured by the Jurchen, N. nomads. The Jurchen create an empire of their own in large tracts of N. China, with the result that the now Southern Song court moves from Kaifeng to Hangzhou.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.     

• 1125: The Jin conquer the Liao (with little help from the Song), demanding a remittance of silver and silk from the Song in return for a portion of the Liao’s territory.-China by Jaivin.

• 1125: Founding of the Jurched Dynasty ruling much of Manchuria and inner Mongolia from their capital city of Zhongdu (modern Beijing).-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1123: The Reconquista, the struggle between the Christians and Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula. 

• 1122: The Song ally with the Jin against the Liao dynasty, on which they staged a joint attack, agreeing to divide the territory of the Liao between them.-China by Jaivin.

• 1119: Founding of the Knights Templar as a religious order of unmarried men to defend the Kingdom of Jerusalem and protect Christian pilgrims during the Crusades (NatGeo). 

• 1119: The Templars, formerly the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon are founded following the first crusade by a small band of knights who dedicated themselves to protecting pilgrims enroute to Jerusalem. There were four divisions: a) Knights- heavy cavalry, b) Sargent’s- light calvary, lower social class than knights, c) Farmers- administer property of the order, d) Chaplains- ordained priests who saw to spiritual needs of the order. They form their headquarters in Tomar, Portugal at the Convento de Cristo. Named after the Qubbat es-Sakhrah (Dome of the Rock) on the Templum Domini (temple mount) in Jerusalem, they were identified by a white surcoat with a distinct red cross above the heart/chest. 

• 1119: Formation of the Knights Templar when Baldwin II, King of Jerusalem, charges a group of knights to protect all Christian pilgrims to the Holy Lands. The Templars were recognizable by their white robes marked with a red cross (NatGeo). 

• 1115-1234: The Jin Dynasty rules N. China, controlling vast coal and iron ore deposits. Having learned advanced ironmongery from the Song, they sell Iron to the Mongols.-China by Jaivin.

• 1115: Fall of the Mixtec city of Tilantongo; 4-Wind, allied with the Zapotec and several rebel groups besiege and defeat Tilantongo. In a mirror image of the past, the captured 8-Deer was forced to bow to 4-Wind, who personally disembowels him and marries his daughter. Shortly after, 4-Wind abandons the Zapotec allies who had helped him achieve the throne, aligns Tilantongo with the Toltec empire to the N, and attacks the Zapotec. Ultimately the Ñudzahui under his lead took over much of Oaxaca, forcing the Zapotec states to pay tribute.-1491 by Mann.

• 1113-1150: Reign of Khmer King Suryavarman II who constructs Angkor Wat (‘city of temples’- Khmer) as a vast funerary temple where his remains would rest for eternity. Heavily influenced by Hinduism, the site was originally called Vrah Visnuloka (‘sacred dwelling of Vishnu’) and dedicated to the three Hindu deities: the namesake Vishnu, Shiva, and Brahma (NatGeo). 

• 1102: The Hohenstaufen monastery is founded in Lorch by Benedictine Monks (Landesmuseum Württemberg).

• 1102: Croatia and Hungary join as a federation. 

• 1100-1600: Dating suggests three phases of construction and reconstruction of Ahu Nau Nau at Anakena, the first phase around A.D. 1100 and the last phase ending around 1600. The earliest ahu were probably platforms without any statues, like Polynesian marae elsewhere.-Collapse by Diamond.  

• 1100: Abandonment of Xochicalco in the Valley of Morelos due to internal struggles (Mexico City Culture Museo).

• 12th Century: The Hindu-Arabic Numeral system based on ten symbols (0-9) is first used in Europe and the Middle East.-Joy of X by Strogatz.

• Early 12th Century: Chichimec leader Xolotl guides his people from N. Mesoamerica to the fertile lands of central Mexico in Tenayuca, which becomes the capital of the Chichimecs, whose first dignitaries are Xolotl, Nopaltzin, and Tlotzin. The capital is later moved to Texcoco under the reign of Quinatzin. The following leader, Techotlata, expanded the Chichimec hegemony in the Texcoco region until Tezozomoc, ruler of the enemy Tepanecs of Azcapotzalco, conquered the people of Texcoco. Chichimec culture later regained its importance with prince Nezahualcoyotl when, alongside with the Mexicas, formed the powerful triple alliance (Mexico City Culture Museo). 

• 1100s: Rise of Chivalry in Europe as a shared model of the accomplished and educated man during the Middle Ages (Louvre Abu Dhabi Museum).

• 1100s: The predominantly Hindu Sena Dynasty rules much of Bengal (British Museum).

• 1100-1400: The Mediterranean becomes a theatre for contest between the Genoese, the Pisans, the Venetians and eventually the Catalans.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.    

• 1100-1126: The Song Dynasty is ruled by Huīzōng, 8th Song Emperor.-China by Jaivin.

• 1100: A Destructive El Nino event leads to widespread drought across S. America.-1491 by Mann.

----------1100---------

• 1099: The Christian Army of the First Crusade captures Jerusalem and establishes a state there; new churches are built and mosques converted into churches.-Atlas of the Bible by Barnes.

• 1099: The Christian Alliance takes Jerusalem from the Fatimid Muslims, establishing the Kingdom of Jerusalem (NatGeo). 

• Jun, 1098: The Crusaders take Jerusalem and leave a token force of knights and infantry to defend Palestine. 

• 1096: Crusaders capture Ionic. The Seljuks move the capital to Konya (IST Airport Museum).

• 1096-1291: The Crusades; backed by the Catholic Church, European Christians launch eight separate missions to take the Holy Land (NatGeo). 

• 1291: The Last European crusader stronghold falls to the Mamluks (NatGeo). 

• 1217: The Fifth Crusade sets out for the Holy land (NatGeo). 

• 1212: The Children’s Crusade (NatGeo). 

• Early 1200s: Pope Innocent III proclaims two “local” European crusades: One was the struggle against Almohad Muslim rulers in Spain; the other was the campaign to destroy Catharism, a Christian heresy popular in southern France (NatGeo). 

• 1187: Saladin, Ayyubid sultan, and his forces retake Jerusalem (NatGeo). 

• 1187: The Battle of Hattin; Crusaders lose the relic of the True Cross (NatGeo). 

• 1095: The First Crusade is launched by Pope Urban II to retake the holy land, scheduled for the following summer (NatGeo).

• 1192: Saladin signs a peace treaty with King Richard I. 

• Apr, 1192: Italian Crusader Conrad of Montferrat is stabbed to death by two members of the Nizari Ismaili, the Assassins, while preparing for his coronation as King of Jerusalem in Tyre (NatGeo). 

• 1096-1099: The First Crusade, proclaimed by Pope Urban II in 1095, begins to "free the holy land" from Muslim Control. 

• The Crusades were a series of religious wars in Europe and Western Asia initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Catholic Church between the 11th and 17th centuries. 

• Oct, 1096: The Peoples Crusade (the first crusade) is annihilated in a Turkish Ambush at the Battle of Civetot. 

• 15 Jul, 1099: Crusaders seize and sack Jerusalem. 

• The First Crusade (1095–1099), was called for by Pope Urban II in 1095 to aid the Byzantine Empire who had recently lost land to the Turkish Muslims who (according to Thomas Madden’s The Concise History of The Crusades),  had been committing sacrilege against Christian artefacts and followers. (“The Council of Clermont”, p8.) Reclaiming the Holy land, Jerusalem, was also part of the agenda. The first crusade was successfully mobilized and ended with the re-establishment of Christianity in the lands the Byzantine Empire had lost, including the prized Jerusalem. The region was then split between the crusaders to create the Crusader states, also referred to as the Latin States.

• 1096-1272: The Crusades are fought between European Christians and Middle Eastern Muslims.-War by NatGeo.

• 1270-1272: Eighth Crusade; King Louis again leads a crusade but dies upon reaching Africa. His army returns to Europe.-War by NatGeo.

• 1248-1254: Seventh Crusade; King Louis IX of France briefly captures Damietta in Egypt before being captured and ransomed himself, forcing the surrender of Damietta.-War by NatGeo.

• 1228-1229: Sixth Crusade; Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II temporarily regains Jerusalem.-War by NatGeo.

• 1217-1221: Fifth Crusade; Crusaders attempt to take Egypt but fail.-War by NatGeo.

• 1202-1204: Fourth Crusade; Crusaders place Baldwin of Flanders on the throne in Constantinople.-War by NatGeo.

• 1189- 1192: Third Crusade; Richard I (Lionheart), Frederick I (Barbarossa), and other leaders retake Acre and other coastal cities.-War by NatGeo.

• 2 Oct, 1187: Fall of Jerusalem; Saladin and his Muslim Army retake the city of Jerusalem.-War by NatGeo.

• 1187: Battle on the Horns of Hattin; Muslim leader Saladin retakes crusader-occupied cities; Saladin had united several Muslim territories in the 1170’s and 1180’s. In 1187 after a Christian leader broke a truce, Saladin declared war and besieged the crusader city of Tiberias near the Sea of Galilee. Jerusalem’s King Guy marched his 20,000 soldiers across the desert and was defeated by Saladin’s army, 30,000 strong. Saladin reconquers Acre, Ascalon, and then proceeds to Jerusalem.-War by NatGeo.

• 1147-1149: Second Crusade; Louis VII of France, Conrad III of Germany, and Baldwin III of Jerusalem attempt to take Damascus but fail.-War by NatGeo.

• 1096-1099: First Crusade; Crusaders take Jerusalem and establish Crusader States.-War by NatGeo.

• 15 Jul, 1099: Fall of Jerusalem; Crusaders defeat the Turks and take the city.-War by NatGeo.

• 1099: Battle of Jerusalem; the Crusaders reach Jerusalem with only 1500 mounted men and 12,000 infantry. Jerusalem’s governor had poisoned the wells around the city. Relief arrived in the form of 6 European Ships. Using scavenged wood and the timber of the ship’s themselves, the crusaders built ladders, catapults, and siege towers, retaking the city.-War by NatGeo.

• 1098: Fall of Antioch; the Crusader Bohemond bribes a Turkish guard into admitting them over the walls, Europeans pour into the city, capturing Antioch.-War by NatGeo. 

• 1097: Battle of Antioch; Crusaders advance into Anatolia and are reduced to eating dogs, rats, and even seeds picked out of manure in the parched lands.-War by NatGeo.

• 1096: The University of Oxford is founded in the UK. 

• 1095: The Council of Clermont; Pope Urban II issues a challenge- Western warriors should take up the cross, become soldiers of god, and reclaim the Holy Land from the Muslims. Struggling to control their unruly flocks, the Catholic Church under Pope Gregory VII and his successor, Pope Urban II, decide to divert popular energies to a useful goal- retaking Jerusalem and the lands around it.-War by NatGeo.

• 1095: Byzantine Emperor, Alexios I Komnenos, requested military support from the Coucil of Piacenza for the firt with Seljuk Turks. Later that year, Pope Urban II proclaims the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont forming the first of the crusades, the Peoples Crusade. 

• 1093-1103: Reign of Norwegian King Magnus III, who transforms the predatory and diffuse raiding of the Vikings into a coordinated project.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.    

• 1090-ish: The Incoherence of the Philosophers is published by Hamid al-Ghazali; at the time the greatest intellectual exploration and discoveries on earth were taking place in and around Baghdad. Then, almost overnight, that changed. A brilliant scholar named Hamid al-Ghazali—now considered one of the most influential Muslims in history—wrote a series of persuasive texts questioning the logic of Plato and Aristotle and declaring mathematics to be ‘the philosophy of the devil.’ This began a confluence of events that undermined scientific thinking. The study of theology was made compulsory, and eventually the entire Islamic scientific movement collapsed.-Origin by Brown.

• 1092: Assassination of Vizier Nizam al-Mulk, a powerful member of the Seljuk Sultanate, by the Nizari Ismaili, the assassins (NatGeo). 

• 1090: Song ship restrictions are lifted; thereafter ships could set out from any prefecture that was willing to issue permits.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.    

• 1090: The Nizari Ismaili led by Hasan capture Alamut Castle from the Sunni Seljuks (NatGeo). 

• 1085-1100: The Song Dynasty is ruled by Zhézōng (Shénzōng’s son), 7th Song Emperor.-China by Jaivin.

• 1080: Founding of Novgorod (‘New City’), dedicated to the Norwegian king, St Olaf.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.    

• 1078: Emir Süleiman captures Iznik, an important Roman and later Byzantine city on Istanbul's doorstep, making the city his capital. In this way Anatolia became a province of the Great Seljuk Empire (IST Airport Museum).

• Late 11c: Construction of the Castle Württemberg, for which the House of Württemberg is named (Landesmuseum Württemberg).

• 1076: The Muslim Berber armies of the Almoravids destroy the 500y old Ghana Empire along the Upper Niger and the Senegal Rivers, on the territory of what is now Mali (Landesmuseum Württemberg).

• 1075-1308: Anatolian Seljuks Period (IST Airport Museum).

• 1074: A century-long Chinese ban on the export of Cu cash is abolished, enabling Chinese merchants to satisfy strong foreign demand for Chinese bullion.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.    

• 1071: The Battle of Manzikert; the Seljuks defeat Byzantine forces. The victory was taken as a signal by Turkish chieftains to set about conquering Anatolia (IST Airport Museum).

• 1071: The Muslims destroy Christian shrines in Jerusalem and cut off the Pilgrim routes. The European powers with whom the Muslim rule of the Holy City had long been a sore point, decide to invade.-Atlas of the Bible by Barnes.

• 1071: Christian Territories including Jerusalem are captured by Seljuk Turks.-War by NatGeo.

• 1071: One of the earliest known forks is used in Europe Byzantine princess, Theodora Anna Doukaina, in Venice (NatGeo). 

• 1070: Abu Bakr ibn Umar founds Marrakesh as the Almoravid Capital (Wiki). 

• 1070: Bergen, Norway is founded by King Olaf the Tranquil.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.    

• 1068-1085: The Song Dynasty is ruled by Shénzōng, 6th Song Emperor.-China by Jaivin.

• 25 Dec, 1066: William of Normandy becomes William I, King of England.-War by NatGeo.

• 14 Oct, 1066: Battle of Hastings; Norman armies defeat the English. Harold took up position on the hill of Senlac, near the town of Hastings. Norman archers showered the English with arrows; the English shield wall held them back. Eventually, Norman forces wore down the axe-wielding English, and Harold himself was killed, apparently by an arrow through the eye. By the end of the day, the Normans had won.-War by NatGeo.

• 28 Sep, 1066: Duke William and his Army land in Pevensey in England.-War by NatGeo.

• 25 Sep, 1066: Battle of Yorkshire; English forces under King Harold defeats invading Norsemen in Yorkshire; Harold faced a new threat, his brother and bitter enemy Tostig had joined forces with Harald Hardrada, king of Norway, to invade the North of Britain. Harold marched his soldiers at speed to York to meet the invaders. At one point the English advance was supposedly held off by a single Viking, who reputedly killed 40 enemies defending Stamford Bridge until an English soldier who floated under the bridge stabbed him through a chink in the planks. Harold then hustles his troops down to Southern England to meet William’s Army.-War by NatGeo.

• 20 Sep, 1066: The Battle of Fulford Gate; Norwegian forces under Norwegian King Harald III (‘Harald Hardrada’) and his English ally Tostig Godwinson defeat Northern Earls Edwin and Morcar, gaining Fulford and later York.-War by NatGeo.

• Apr, 1066: Halley’s comet appears in the skies and is seen as a bad omen for England.-War by NatGeo.

• 5 Jan, 1066: Death of English Kish Edward the Confessor. The Witan, the council of Anglo-Saxon leaders, names Harold Godwinson King.-War by NatGeo.

• 14 Oct, 1066: The Battle of Hastings. William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy defeated the last Anglo-Saxon king Harold II. William the Conqueror established the Norman Empire and to protect his empire, he rewarded all his Norman supporters who fought for him in the war with large piece of land of England. He divided all land of England in manors and established the feudal system and manoralism.

• 14 Oct, 1066: The Battle of Hastings and the end of the Viking Raids; William the Conqueror (William of Normandy) led French-speaking descendants of former Viking raiders to conquer England.-Collapse by Diamond.  

• The reason why William was able to defeat the English king Harold at Hastings on England’s southeast coast on October 14 was that Harold and his soldiers were exhausted. They had marched 220 miles south in less than three weeks after defeating the last Viking invading army and killing their king at Stamford Bridge in central England on September 25.

• 25 Sep, 1066: The Battle of Stamford Bridge; the English Army under King Harold Godwinson defeats an invading Norwegian force led by Norwegian King Harald Hardraða (‘hard ruler’) and Tostig, the brother of the English King who was challenging his claim to the throne. Both Hardrada and Tostig are killed in battle, along with many of the Norwegian Invaders.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.    

• 1065-1080: Reign of King Olav the Quite over Norway.-Collapse by Diamond.  

• 1064: Harold Godwinson is shipwrecked in Normandy; According to Norman accounts- Harold swears an oath to uphold William’s claim to the English throne.-War by NatGeo.

• 1055: The Seljuks, recent Sunni converts, take Baghdad (NatGeo). 

• 11c: The Compass is invented in China.-These Truths by Lepore.  

• 1056: The Welfen monastery is founded in Weingarten by Benedictine Monks (Landesmuseum Württemberg).

• 1054: The Schism between Eastern and Western Christianity occurs when Pope Leo IX (1049-1054) and Patriarch (of Constantinople) Michael Cerularius (1043-1058) excommunicate each other.-Atlas of the Bible by Barnes.

• 1054: The Pope of Rome excommunicates the Patriarch of Constantinople, henceforth splitting the church into Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox divisions.-Incomplete Edu by Jones.

• 1054: The Great Schism of the Catholic Church due to several issues namely Filioque- the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son as well as the father (NatGeo). 

• 11c: The Roma (‘Gypsies’) migrate on several occasions to Europe from NW India.-Brief History by Rutherford.  

• 1050s-1147: The Almoravid Dynasty; a Berber Muslim Dynasty centered in the territory of present-day Morocco with its capital at Marrakesh that stretches over the W. Maghreb and Al-Andalus. The Dynasty emerges from a coalition of the Lamtuna, Gudala, and Massufa, nomadic Berber tribes living in modern Mauritania and the W. Sahara (Wiki). 

----------1050----------

• 1042: Edward the Confessor becomes King of England (according to Normal claim- Edward promised William to be his heir).-War by NatGeo.

• 1040: Weihenstephan brewery is founded by Benedictine monks. It is the oldest continually functioning brewery in the world (NatGeo). 

• 1038-1157: The Seljuq State; originally Turks who ruled Afghanistan, Persia, some territories in Anatolia, Iraq, Syria, and the Arabian Peninsula. The state was founded by Taghrol Bek and divided into the Seljuqs of Damascus (1075-1117), the Seljuqs of Kerman (1041-1188), and the Seljuqs of Rum (Anatolia) (1077-1307) (Al Fahidi Coin Museum).

• 1035: William the Bastard (cousin to English King Edward the Confessor) becomes duke of Normandy.-War by NatGeo.

• 1030: Death of Norwegian Christian King Olav Haraldsson, killed by a Viking army. His death became the rallying cry for the spread of Christianity and a turning point in the struggle for a unified Norway, with the battle marking the beginning of the end for Viking Norway and its feuding chiefs (NatGeo). 

• 11c: Norwegian King Magnus Barelegs transforms the predatory and diffuse raiding of the Vikings into a coordinated project.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.    

• 1028-1035: English/Danish King Cnut assumes the Norwegian Throne, reigning as the King of the N. Sea Empire (Wiki). 

• 1031: Scottish King Malcolm II submits to Cnut (Wiki).

• 1018: English King Cnut dually assumes the Danish Throne (Wiki).

• 1016: Cnut, a Danish Prince, is crowned English King (Wiki).

• 1025: The king of Chola launches a violent attack on Śri Vijaya. Although the attack did not result in permanent occupation, Śri Vijaya was no longer able to count on its tribute-bearing dependencies in northern Sumatra and the western Malay peninsula.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.    

• 1025: The Canon of Medicine is written In Baghdad by Ibn Sina (Avicenna), as a five-volume work encompassing all known medical knowledge of the time (NatGeo). 

• 1022: The King of Norway enters into a commercial treaty with Iceland, guaranteeing the shipment of woolen cloth in return for grain.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.    

• 1016: The Śri Vijayans deploy their fleet against Java, scoring a victory in the battle for command of the trade routes across the South China Sea.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.    

• 1015-1028: Reign of Olav II Haraldsson as King of Norway; Olav II spent years on Viking raids before being baptized Christian, returning to Norway as ‘Righteous King following Gods Will.’ Olav II united Norway and played a fundamental role in establishing universal Christian Law (Tromso Troll Museum). 

• 1014: Battle of Clontarf; Irish King and High Priest Brian Boru leads his armies to victory over the Norsemen at Clontarf (though he himself dies in battle).-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.    

• 1014: Byzantine Christian emperor Basil defeats the Bulgarians. Basil has 15K Bulgarian war captives blinded, leaving one man out of each 100 with one eye in order that he might lead the other 99 homeward and thereby spread terror.-Ghengis Khan by Weatherford.

• 1007: Carinthia becomes a duchy of Slovenia (Slovenia Museum). 

• 1004: The Vikings Vinland colony in North America; Thorfinn Karlsefni and Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir are among the first immigrant party to North America where they have a son, Snorri Thorfinnsson, born in Vinland, and the first person of European ancestry to enter the world in the Americas. There were constant skirmishes between the Vikings and the Skraeling, and after a scuffle prompted by a loose rampaging Viking bull, the Norsemen decided that though the land might be choice and good, there would be always war and terror overhanging them, from those who dwelt there before them.-Brief History by Rutherford.  

• 1000: Virtually all the land suitable for farms in both Western and Eastern Settlements had been occupied, yielding an eventual total Greenland Norse population estimated at around 5,000: about 1,000 people at Western Settlement, 4,000 at Eastern Settlement.-Collapse by Diamond.  

• 1000: Forced abandonment of the Vikings’ most remote colony of Vinland. The two preserved Norse sagas describing Vinland say explicitly that it was abandoned because of fighting with a dense population of Native Americans far too numerous to be defeated by the few Vikings able to cross the Atlantic in ships of those times.-Collapse by Diamond.  

• 1000: Greenland Viking Expeditions establish a 10-year colony at Vinland (Modern Newfoundland), which is teeming with Native Americans whose presence forced the Vikings to depart after only a decade. The two preserved Norse sagas describing Vinland say explicitly that it was abandoned because of fighting with a dense population of Native Americans far too numerous to be defeated by the few Vikings able to cross the Atlantic in ships of those times.-Collapse by Diamond.  

• ~1000: Collapse of Tiwanaku and Wari, possibly due to a Mega El-Nino induced drought. Tiwanaku is later united under the Inka while Wari is absorbed by Chimor, which are both later unified under the Inka.-1491 by Mann. 

• 11-12c: Kyiv is the capital of the medieval state Kyivan Rus, which includes Ukraine, Belarus, and parts of Russia.-Smithsonian American History Museum.

• 11c: Rise of the Toltec Empire in Mesoamerica.-1491 by Mann.

• ~1000: Discovery of N. America (Vínland) by the Norse; Leif Eiríksson, son of Greenland colony founder Eirík the Red, is blown off course, landing in Northern N. America. Leif and his men came first to the land Bjarni had considered worthless; it was given the name Helluland (‘the land of slabs of rock’). Further south, they discovered white sandy beaches that fringed a flat, forested interior; this land they called Markland (‘the land of forests’). After another two days at sea, they reached an island and a headland; ‘in this country, night and day were of more even length than in either Greenland or Iceland’, and the river they saw teemed with salmon. There was an abundance of rich grass, and when one day a German slave named Tyrkir staggered back to their camp drunk from eating too many wild grapes they decided to call this land Vínland, ‘the land of wine’. They built some large houses, and wintered in Vínland.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.    

• A second expedition, led by Leif’s brother Þorvald, returns to Leif’s houses in Vínland, and the prospects for settlement seemed good, until they found three skin-covered boats that lay upturned on a beach, with three men underneath each boat. There is no evidence these men meant any harm, but they killed 8, though 1 escaped; and then they realized that there was some sort of settlement not far off, and before long they came under attack from a swarm of skin-boats, manned by people they called ‘Skrælings’ (wretches), a term that they also came to apply to the Inuit. After establishing limited trade, the Skrælings turned troublesome and were caught trying to steal weapons. Before long a battle broke out between the Norse and the Skrælings, and the Norwegians decided to return to Greenland.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.    

• Another attempt at settlement in Leif’s camp followed later, and now Freydis, the illegitimate daughter of Eirík the Red, went out with the colonists. However, this time the trouble that flared was between the settlers themselves, with one group being reproved for storing their wares in the houses Leif had built. They set up their own settlement not far from Leif’s original one, but Freydis had them killed, and when she found that none of her male companions would kill her victims’ womenfolk, she took an axe and murdered five women as well, for which she was never punished in Greenland.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.    

• ~1000: The Qingling (aka Ashab Mosque) is built in China, the country’s oldest.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.    

• 1000: The Inuit first enter NW Greenland by way of kayak.-Boundless Sea by Abulafia.    

• ~1000: Sheikh Isma‘il Jabarti settles in Somaliland from Arabia and marries into the Local Dir Somali. His descendants, the Darod clans, expand from there.-Somalia by Lewis.

• ~1000: Collapse of Mayan Civilization, possibly due to a drought induced mega El- Nino event, striking millions into land poorly suited for intensive farming.-1491 by Mann. 

• 1000: Buddhism is fully established in Tibet with monastic traditions, promoting a simple and disciplined life. These include the Gelugpa order, founded by Tsongkhapa (1357-1419), whose spiritual descendant is still revered in the person of the Dalai Lama (British Museum).

• 1000-1038: Reign of King Stephen I (King St. Stephen) as the 1st King of Hungary (Wiki). 

• ~1000: The West Saxon Gospels biblical manuscript is produced.-Atlas of the Bible by Barnes.

• 1000: Construction of Cahokia (near modern St. Louis); an earthen structure covering 15 acres and rising to a height of ~30m. Atop the mound was the temple for the divine kings, who arranged for the weather to favor agriculture. Fields of maize rippled out from the mound almost as far as the eye could see.-1491 by Mann.

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