With the fall of Constantinople to the Muslims, Venice tried to gain time and protect its main interest, namely maritime trade: it negotiated and obtained a new treaty from Muhammad, with which the Ottomans promised protection to Venetian trade and colonies.

Constantinople. The Ottomans under Sultan Mehmet II besiege the city. The last Greek emperor appeals in vain for military aid from his historic Venetian ally, but relief is scarce and arrives late. When the city falls on May 29th, several Venetian citizens and sailors distinguish themselves in its defense to the last. Many are killed in battle, and many more are captured and beheaded by the vengeful sultan.

Leonardo was born in Vinci, the illegitimate son of Ser Piero, a notary, and Caterina

Gutenberg prints the Bible in Latin (1282 pages) and thus invents the printing press.

Over the course of three centuries, approximately 40,000 people were executed for witchcraft (almost all by hanging), a quarter of whom were men.

During the Middle Ages, until 1450, the flow of technology and know-how was clearly from China and Islam to Europe. From 1450 onward, the flow gradually reversed, from Europe to China. For Islam, this turning point was around 1500.

The Muslim traveler Ibn Battuta, a native of Tangier, Morocco, visits the major cities of the Afro-Asiatic macro-civilization: Timbuktu, Cairo, Zanzibar, Baghdad, Bukhara, Delhi, Sumatra, and Beijing. At the time, European culture was not yet dominant globally, either in terms of far-reaching influence or population.

Lorenzo de Medici, known as the Magnificent, was born in Florence, son of Pietro di Cosimo the Elder and Lucrezia Tornabuoni.

Uzbekistan. The astronomical observatory built by Ulan-Beg, grandson of Tamerlane, is set ablaze by a mob incited by fundamentalist mullahs. Ulan-Beg is captured and beheaded with a scimitar. Fortunately, one of his students, Mohamed Taragi, saves nearly all of his writings and takes them to Turkey. From there, they are transported to Oxford, England, where they are translated into Latin in 1665. In 1908, the observatory is rediscovered by a Russian archaeologist under Tsarist Russia. His tomb still lies beneath two fir trees in front of the entrance to the gigantic sextant.

Johan Gutenberg, with the help of investor Joham Fust, opens a printing shop in Mainz

Hunyadi was defeated by the Ottomans in Kosovo, after having withstood for three days the assault of the Turks, four times more numerous than his army.

Luca Pacioli: Florentine mathematician, friar, and friend of Leonardo da Vinci

Botticelli was born in Florence

Korea. King Sejong invented the Korean Han’gul alphabet, inspired by Chinese logograms and Mongolian and Tibetan Buddhist alphabetic scripts, adding new inventions such as grouping multiple letters into square blocks to represent words. It is therefore an example of the invention of writing through “idea diffusion,” albeit with original features.

Sultanate of Mehmet II (Mehmet II, called ﺍلفاتح, Fātiḥ, “The Conqueror”). He will conquer Constantinople. And he will be an enlightened ruler, recognizing, in addition to Sunni Islam, the Greek Orthodox, the Jews, and the Armenians (but not allowing the conversion of a single Muslim).

Humanist Lorenzo Valla demonstrates the falsity of the Donation of Constantine, the document that legitimized the temporal power of the popes.

Nicholas of Cusa enunciates the Cosmological Principle in his Learned Ignorance. He states that the universe appears the same from every point of view. In essence, he says that ours is not a privileged point of view. Isaac Newton, two centuries later, would add that Nature is simple and uniform.

South America, beginning of the Inca expansion

Galleys for the Mountains: Venice sends a massive fleet to challenge the Milanese. Six galleys and 25 smaller vessels are sent up the Adige River to Verona and then almost to Rovereto, then towed 25 kilometers over the mountains with 120 oxen per galley to the northern tip of Lake Garda. It takes 15 days and 2,000 oxen. This feat earns Venice universal admiration.

Andrea del Verrocchio: Florentine sculptor and artist. Leonardo da Vinci’s first employer.

Portuguese sailor Gil Eanes, on behalf of King Henry, rounded Cape Bojador, in what is now Western Sahara. This was considered the end of the world for sailors: no one who had rounded it had ever returned. He then continued, passing Cape Blanc, the island of Arguim, Cape Verde, Dakar, and the great Gambia River. Henry financed the mission and shared the profits upon his return with Gil. Henry was Grand Master of the Order of Christ, a military monastic order that inherited the role and vast estates of the more famous Order of the Templars, suppressed in Europe in 1312.

Ming Mission in Florence

Piero da Vinci: Leonardo da Vinci’s father. A notary, he never married Leonardo da Vinci’s mother, nor recognized her son Leonardo as legitimate. He subsequently fathered 11 children by four other wives.

China. Haijin Decree: Ocean voyages are strictly prohibited. Building a ship carries the death penalty. Admiral Zheng He’s logbooks are destroyed. For more than half a millennium, until Deng Xiaoping at the end of the 20th century, China withdraws into itself.

Venice. The island of Lazzaretto was used as a hospital for the sick, also to reduce the spread of the disease in Venice. From 1485, a quarantine was also instituted for ships suspected of carrying the Black Death, or Bubonic Plague.

Beijing. The Forbidden City is completed.

Hundred Years’ War: “Island of France and Anjou” Phase

Battle of Agincourt: It’s Saint Crispin’s Day. King Henry V of England and his troops, having landed in Normandy, are heading toward Calais. The French muster tens of thousands of soldiers to stop them. The battle takes place at Agincourt, in a narrow passage between two woods, with muddy terrain that severely limits the French’s movement. English archers pepper the French troops with arrows (hundreds of thousands in a few minutes), disadvantaged by their large numbers and their compact size. It’s a massacre: more than 10,000 Frenchmen die, including 125 princes and more than 800 knights; only 25 Englishmen fall. The French customarily amputate the index and middle fingers of captured Englishmen from their right hands to prevent them from shooting again. Since then, the English have held up their index and middle fingers as a sign of defiance to their adversaries. William Shakespeare drew inspiration from the event for his Henry V and then Kenneth Branagh for the homonymous film

Portugal decides not to halt the expulsion of the hated Moors (Muslims) from the Iberian Peninsula, but to continue the war in Africa. A huge expedition of 45,000 men on 200 ships, led by the king and all his sons, seizes Ceuta, opposite Gibraltar. The king is less enthusiastic than his third son, who will become known as Henry the Navigator. Madeira and the Azores are soon occupied, and the production of sugar and fine wine (the grapes will be brought from Cyprus) will be based there.

The painter Giovanni da Modena in the Cathedral of San Petronio in Bologna painted a tiny fresco where Mohammed is in Hell

Beginning of the current European-American era according to Rudolf Steiner. Anthroposophy has its own concept of history: according to Rudolf Steiner, our current era falls within the post-Atlantean period, since in his view, the disaster that supposedly struck Atlantis in 7227 BC was a significant turning point in human history. Steiner divides this post-Atlantean period into seven epochs.

Samarkand is ruled by Ulugh Beg on behalf of his father. Ulugh Beg builds an astronomical observatory, which improves upon Greek and Islamic astronomical tables. Ulugh Beg inherits the entire kingdom from his father in 1447 but manages to rule for only two years before being captured in an internal revolt and foreign invasion, after which he is beheaded.

Tamerlane dies. During his lifetime, he temporarily succeeded in reviving the glory of the Mongol hordes, while inflicting incredible oppression on Persia, Anatolia, India, and Central Asia. He also succeeded in hybridizing Sharia with Yasa. His only failure: the failed (re)conquest of China.

Genoa. Birth of Leon Battista Alberti, one of the leading figures of the Renaissance: painter, composer, poet, philosopher, and author of a treatise on flies and an oratory at his dog’s funeral. Alberti also proposed a simple but highly effective trick in information encryption: switching between two or more encryption alphabets to confuse decryption. This was the first significant advance in encryption in over a thousand years, during which decryption had always held the upper hand. Alberti, however, did not fully develop the concept, which would be developed later by Johannes Tothemius, then Giovanni Porta, and finally Blaise de Vignere, whose name the final form would be called: Vignere Cypher. He uses as many as 26 different encryption alphabets, each shifted by one letter from the previous one, making the system impervious to letter-frequency analysis, the weakness of previous ciphers. His work culminates in his Traicté de Chiffres of 1586. Ironically, this is the same year that Thomas Phelippes cracked the secret code in Mary Queen of Scots’ letters. If Mary had read the treatise and used the Vigneré Cypher, Phelippes would not have been able to crack her code, and Mary would not have been beheaded. In any case, the Vigneré Cypher would remain largely unknown for another two centuries.

Baghdad. Timur orders 5,000 soldiers to detach themselves from his army and attack the city to collect tribute. Despite fierce resistance, Baghdad falls and is sacked, the population massacred. Outside the walls, 120 towers are built of decapitated heads. Even women and children are not spared.

Damascus, Syria. After a siege of a few weeks, Timur captures and sacks the city.

Jubilee celebrated by Pope Boniface IX who however remained locked away in the Vatican for fear of conspiracies