After his death in 1464, Cosimo de' Medici acquires the posthumous title pater patriae – father of the fatherland

Mehmed II and the Ottoman Turks conquer Bosnia, where a large number of noble families convert to Islam

The Orkneys and Shetlands come into the possession of James III of Scotland with the dowry of Margaret of Denmark

The marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella unites the crowns of Aragon and Castile, creating virtually a unified Spain

Topa succeeds his father, Pachacuti, as emperor of the Incas

Maximilian, heir to Austria, weds Mary, heiress to Burgundy, in the first of the great marriage alliances which form the Habsburg empire

Ivan III, grand prince of Russia, becomes the first to deny the Mongols of the Golden Horde their annual tribute of tax

The English king Edward IV dies and his succeeded by his 12-year-old son as Edward V

The two royal princes, Edward V and his younger brother, are confined in the Tower of London by their uncle - soon to be Richard III

Richard III has himself proclaimed king by a parliament held at Westminster, and begins a short reign of only two years

Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, captures Vienna and makes the city his capital

Henry Tudor kills Richard III at Bosworth Field and takes the crown as Henry VII

Henry VII, whose mother is Lancastrian, marries the Yorkist heiress Elizabeth and thus unites the roses - in the Tudor rose

On the death of his father, James III, James IV becomes king of Scotland

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

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

On Topa's death his son Huayna Capac succeeds to the throne as Inca emperor

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

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

The 14-year-old Ismail I is enthroned as shah of a new Persian dynasty, the Safavids

The marriage of James IV, king of Scotland, to Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII, leads a century later to the Union of the Crowns

Babur captures Kabul, making it and eastern Afghanistan the first possession of the Mughal empire

On the death of his father, and as the result of the death of his elder brother Arthur, Henry VIII becomes king of England