Leonardo da Vinci begins an unprecedented series of detailed anatomical drawings, based on corpses dissected in Rome

Venice's annexation of Cyprus completes a useful chain of islands stretching to the eastern Mediterranean

On the death of Matthias Corvinus, in 1490, the Habsburgs recover Vienna from the Hungarians

Savonarola, the new prior of San Marco, is a stern critic of both the pope in Rome and the Medici in Florence

The army of Ferdinand and Isabella besieges and takes the city of Granada, completing the long reconquest of Spain from the Muslims

Torquemada persuades Ferdinand and Isabella to expel from Spain all Jews (about 160,000) who will not convert to Christianity

Bayazid II, the Turkish sultan, makes a special point of welcoming in Istanbul the Jews expelled from Spain

Rodrigo Borgia, elected pope as Alexander VI, already has four illegitimate children and possibly sires three more while pope

The world's first globe is published by Martin Behaim without showing America, in the very year of Columbus' voyage

Christopher Columbus, together with the brothers Martin and Vicente Pinzón, sails west from Palos in Spain

John I Albert summons the first recorded sejm, a parliament representing the whole of Poland

Columbus returns to Spain, landing at Palos with news of his great discoveries

Pope Alexander VI draws a line through the Atlantic, dividing new discoveries between Spain (west) and Portugal (east)

The Nuremberg Chronicle integrates text and pictures in an ambitious history of the world

In negotiations about the New World at Tordesillas, the king of Portugal insists on a new demarcation line which later brings him Brazil

Charles VIII, king of France, marches through the Alps with an army of 30,000, to claim the throne of Naples

Piero de' Medici and his brothers flee from Florence, after a mob ransacks the Medici palace

Charles VIII captures Naples in February and is crowned there in May, but is forced back across the Alps before the end of the year

Dürer, the first great artist to tackle the complexities of printing, becomes a master of woodcut and engraving

The type faces known as roman and italic are created in Venice by the printers Nicolas Jenson and Aldus Manutius

Philip, heir to Austria, marries Joanna, a daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, in the second of the great Habsburg marital alliances

Savonarola, in the carnival before Lent, urges the people of Florence to throw playing cards and lewd images on a great bonfire of vanities

Henry VII commissions the Italian navigator John Cabot to cross the Atlantic in search of new territories for England

John Cabot, searching for a trade route to China, probably reaches Newfoundland

The Florentine mob, weary of puritanism, attacks the convent of San Marco and drags Savonarola away to be hanged and burnt