Other Considerations

1438 Pachacutec founds the Inca empire

1440 to 1449
Johann Gutenberg, b Mainz (Germany) about 1398, and Lauren Janszoon Koster invent printing with movable type, probably independently of the Chinese; however, the inventions of paper and printing with blocks, essential to printing with movable type, had both most likely been learned as a result of diffusion to Europe from China

1454
Navigator Americus Vespucius, one of the first to recognize that North and South America are new continents was born

Johann Gutenberg prints the 42-line Bible at Mainz (Germany), inaugurating the era of movable type

1473
Michelangelo paints the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel

1485
Henry VII becomes the first Tudor ruler of England

1492
Christopher Columbus, b Genoa (Italy), 1451, reaches an island in the West Indies on Oct 12

1494
The first paper mill appears in England

1498
Venetian printer Ottaviano dei Petrucci (b 1466) invents a way of printing music using movable type

1500
Leonardo da Vinci draws a whell-lock musket, the first known appearance of a gun in the West