Finale Emilia, Bassa Modenese. The clock is added to the future Clock Tower. The same one that would be destroyed by the 2012 earthquake and which would become its symbol when, for a few hours, it remained half standing, with its clock broken. The clock was moved from a nearby, unsafe tower.

The Portuguese landed in New Guinea. Western New Guinea was claimed by the Netherlands in 1828, while the eastern part was claimed by Germany and Great Britain in 1884.

Jubilee celebrated by Clement VII; the plague and the emergence of Martin Luther’s movement caused few pilgrims to arrive

Peasants’ War in Europe: popular peasant uprising

Kochi, Kerala, India. Vasco da Gama died and was buried here in the Church of San Francisco. The coffin containing the Portuguese navigator’s body was later moved to Lisbon in 1539.

Giovanni da Verrazzano explores the eastern coast of North America between Florida and Cape Breton.

Pedro de Alvarado, a student of Cortes, crowns the conquest of the Inca Empire with the capture of the city of Santiago de los Caballeros (now Antigua, Guatemala).

Milan. Salai (real name Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno), a student of Leonardo da Vinci, was killed by an arrow at the age of about 44. Several paintings by Leonardo da Vinci were found among his belongings, possibly including the Mona Lisa (La Gioconda) and Leda and the Swan. The Gioconda later reappeared in France at the Louvre.

The tomato was introduced to Europe, but remained a botanical garden curiosity until Italians began eating it in the 19th century.

Charles V orders two Dutch monks to be burned at the stake because they had supported Luther’s ideas; during his reign another 2,000 Dutch people die for their ideas.

We finally have the certainty that the surface of the world is not infinite or, worse, that it does not end abruptly somewhere: Magellan’s expedition returns from its voyage around the world

Juan Sebastian Elcano returns to Spain and completes the circumnavigation of the globe begun by Magellan. Four years earlier, five ships had set sail, but only the Victoria returned home. Only 18 of the 264 sailors on board survived the voyage.

The Ottoman Turks under Suleiman the Magnificent conquer the island of Rhodes and drive the Knights Hospitaller of St. John from the Aegean Sea.

The Fortress or White City of Belgrade, the advanced bastion of Christianity, falls to the soldiers of the Ottoman Sultan Seluiman (Suleiman the Magnificent). In the confusion of the battle, Louis II, King of Hungary, drowns in a trench ditch. By the end of the day, the throne is vacant (Louis has no children), and the two thousand Hungarian prisoners are exterminated by the Ottomans, who thus remain in complete control of the field.

Luther Challenges the Diet of Worms. On this day, Martin Luther, the main architect of the Protestant Reformation, challenges the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V by refusing to recant his writings. Luther had been summoned to Worms, Germany, before the assembly of the Holy Roman Empire to answer charges of heresy. A professor of biblical exegesis at the University of Wittenberg, Germany, Luther had formulated his 95 Theses in 1517 against the Church’s corrupt practice of selling indulgences. He published other equally controversial and innovative theological writings, and his fiery words inflamed reformers across Europe. In 1521, the Pope excommunicated him, and Luther was summoned to the Diet of Worms before the emperor to defend his positions. Refusing to recant his ideas, he was declared an outlaw and a heretic, but he gained the protection of several powerful German princes. He died in 1546, but his ideas significantly changed Western thought.

Martin Luther is brought before Charles V at the Diet of Worms and asked to recant his ideas.

Luther is now popular throughout Germany

Pedro de Alvarado, Cristobalde Olid and Gonzalo de Sondoval cut the three main access routes to Tenochtitlan

Gerolamo Cardano enrolled at the University of Pavia. Shortly thereafter, he began writing his book on gambling, the first treatise on chance.

Smallpox epidemic among the Aztecs of Central America, caused by the arrival of the Spanish. The plague reaches Mexico with an infected slave from Cuba, already occupied by the Spanish. It will kill half the Aztecs, including Emperor Cuitlahuac.

Swedish uprising in Stockholm: Danish bloodbath

Papal bull Exsurge Domine attributing 41 doctrinal errors to Luther

Pedro de Alvarado, left by Cortes in Tenochtitlan, under an excuse massacres 8,000-10,000 Aztec nobles with cannon fire; when Cortes learns of this, he marches back to the capital; and organizes the retreat from the city, now besieged by the enraged Aztecs.

Hernan Cortes arrives in Tecnochtitlan (now Mexico City), the Aztec capital; Montezuma welcomes him to the royal palace; after a week, Cortes takes Montezuma hostage and rules through him.

Frankfurt. Charles V is proclaimed Holy Roman Emperor. He will come to dominate a vast territory encompassing all of Central Europe, including Germany, Bohemia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Northern Italy, Emilia, Tuscany, Southern Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Americas, and possessions in Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. He will die on January 16, 1556.

Leonardo da Vinci died at Clos Luce in France, near the Château d’Amboise, on the Loire River, and was buried in the church of Sainte-Florentin. His last work, on the study of the areas of right-angled triangles, ends with the words “et cetera. Why the soup gets cold.”

Leonardo Da Vinci writes his will

Among Martin Luther’s 95 Theses was a rejection of the celibacy of friars, priests, and nuns. Protestantism would, in fact, approve and even encourage the marriage of priests, as sex was a human need and a divine gift. Luther himself married a nun, with whom he had seven children.

Protestantism is born: Martin Luther nails his 95 theses to a door of the castle church in Wittenberg; Luther was a 34-year-old theology professor and Augustinian monk.

The Portuguese, in an anti-Turkish operation, allied themselves with the Shah of Persia to control the Persian Gulf, but the Ottomans controlled Aden and the naval blockade failed.

Rumors spread in Spain of a powerful and wealthy kingdom in the Mexican interior in Central America. Only four years later, the Aztec capital was a heap of ruins, the Aztec Empire a thing of the past, and the Spaniard Hernana Cortes reigned over a vast empire in Mexico. Just a decade later, Francisco Pizarro discovered the Inca Empire in South America (never discovered by the Aztecs in millennia of civilization) and completely conquered it in 1532. The powerful (militarily and commercially) Asian empires of the time—China, Japan, India, Turkey, and so on—quickly learned of the Spanish and later Portuguese fortunes in the Americas, but no conquering or trading expedition was ever sent in that direction for centuries. The first Asian expedition to conquer the Americas took place in June 1942, when the Japanese Navy conquered the islands of Kiska and Attu off the coast of Alaska. The Asian empires would never get any closer to the American mainland. It’s not that they weren’t capable. The Asians simply weren’t interested. What made the difference was that Europeans had an insatiable desire to explore and conquer, driven, according to evolutionist Yuval Noah Harari, by a “culture of awareness of ignorance,” compared to the “awareness of wisdom” of most previous cultures, which therefore didn’t encourage exploration to discover the unknown.

Thousands of indigenous people in the Spanish colony of Cuba perished in the heavy labor they were subjected to, so much so that the indigenous population was in danger of disappearing. They were nomadic by nature and unaccustomed to methodical agricultural work. Thus, a few years later, the Spanish Emperor, Charles V, authorized the annual importation of a certain quota of black African slaves, as they were stronger and more suitable for field work. Thus began the question of slavery in the Americas.

Almost all the European powers join together in an alliance against Venice.