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The Hapsburg dynasty that will rule Spain until 1700 is founded February 23 upon the death of Ferdinand V of Castile and León (Ferdinand II of Aragon) at Madrigalejo at age 63. Ferdinand's 16-year-old grandson succeeds to the throne; a student in Flanders, his accession unites Catalonia and Valencia with the kingdoms of Ferdinand, and he will reign until 1556 as Carlos I (see Holy Roman Empire, 1519).
Giuliano de' Medici dies at Florence March 17 at age 36 (approximate), having been given the title duc de Nemours by the French last year.
Pope Leo X deposes Francesco Maria della Rovere, nephew of the late Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, from the ducal throne of Urbino. Count Baldassare Castiglione, now 39, returns to Mantua and marries a teenage girl with whom he will find considerable happiness until her death after bearing their third child (see 1503; Nonfiction, 1528).
Bohemia's Ladislas II dies at Buda March 13 at age 59 after a weak reign of 45 years as king of Bohemia and 26 as king of Hungary as well. His son Louis is still not yet 10 but was crowned king of Hungary in June 1508 and of Bohemia in May 1509 to assure the succession, he will marry Maria of Austria in mid-January of next year, and he will reign until 1526 as Louis II, king of both countries but with little or no part in affairs of state.
The Battle of Marjdabik north of Aleppo August 24 gives the Ottoman sultan Selim a victory over Egypt's Mamelukes, whose sultan al Ghury considers artillery a dishonorable weapon. The sultan is betrayed, he dies on the battlefield, and Selim takes Aleppo with his cannon, defeating an army of close to 14,000. He enters Damascus September 26 and moves on to Cairo (see 1517).
The Cambodian king Chan I is crowned at Pursat; having succeeded his late uncle Dharmarajadhiraja, he has suppressed rebellions instigated by a pretender to the throne and will reign until his death in 1566, reorganizing the army and holding the Siamese at bay.
Bengal's Husayn Shah Ala ad-Din annexes Orissa to his expanded realm (see 1498).
The Castilian regent Francisco Cardenal Jiménez de Cisneros forbids importation of slaves into Spanish colonies (see 1515). Bartolomé de Las Casas is appointed to head a commission to investigate the condition of Indians and sails for America in November, but he initially favors importation of blacks from Africa as slaves, and Carlos I in Flanders grants his courtiers licenses to import slaves into Spanish colonial islands (see 1519).
De Rebus Oceanicus et Novo Orbe by the Italian historian and royal chronicler Peter Martyr, now 67, is the first published account of the European discovery of America in 1492.
Spanish explorer Juan Díaz de Solís sights South American territory in February that will later become Uruguay and discovers the mouth of the Río de la Plata (see 1515). He calls the river's estuary the Fresh Sea (Mar Dulce), but Guaraní (or Charrua) tribesmen kill him and all but one of his men when he tries to land near the mouth of the Paraná, and they eat the Spaniards in plain sight of the crewmen who remain aboard ship (see 1536; Cabot, 1526).
The Spanish captain general Pedro Arias Dávila sends out expeditions headed by Hernan Ponce and Bartolomé Hurtado to establish colonies in what later will be Costa Rica and Nicaragua.
Portuguese explorers arrive by sea in Vietnam; Dominican missionaries will visit the area in 1527, and a Portuguese port and trading center will be established in 1835 at Faifo (later Hoi An) south of what will become Da Nang.
Augsburg merchant Jakob Fugger II, now 57, gains the support of England's Henry VIII by granting him loans of various kinds.
Charles, duc de Bourbon, returns to France as a conquering hero in the wake of last year's Battle of Marignano but finds that he does not have enough money left to pay his creditors. He asks François I to reimburse him for the funds he laid out, the king is having trouble repaying his own war debts, and he promises to repay Bourbon in the future when he receives taxes and tributes from his new Italian conquests (but see 1518).
A smallpox epidemic sweeps across the Yucatán Peninsula, decimating the Maya.
The Concordat of Bologna between France's François I and Pope Leo X rescinds the Pragmatic Sanction of 1438 and strengthens French royal power. It gives the French king freedom to choose bishops and abbots, and it removes the principle of the 1431-1449 Council of Basel that made the pope subordinate to an ecumenical council.
Poetry: Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto, who will complete a final version in 1532.
Painting: Baldassare Castiglione by Raphael (see 1528); The Tribute Money by Titian; The Lion of Saint Mark by Vittore Carpaccio. Giovanni Bellini dies at Venice November 29 at age 86.
Theater: The Ship of Hell (Auto de la Barca do Inferno) by Gil Vicente; Magnyfycence by John Skelton is an English morality play.
Spanish missionary Fra Tomas de Berlanga introduces wheat, oats, and bananas into the Santo Domingo colony on Hispaniola. Grain will not thrive in the West Indies, but bananas will become a major export of the islands.
De Orbo Nove by Peter Martyr Anglerius uses Martyr's Latin word maizium for the "corn" discovered by Christopher Columbus's men in 1492 (they found tobacco on the same day) (see 1511). Most of the world will use variations such as maize for the grain that Americans will call corn.
The Portuguese plant maize in China, where foods from the Americas, including peanuts (they will be mentioned for the first time in 1538) and sweet potatoes, will be adopted more quickly, and more widely, than in Europe, Africa, or other parts of the world.
Hispaniola's inspector of gold mines presents Spain's young king Carlos I with six loaves of sugar—the first sugar grown in the New World to reach Europe.
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