/year

The 1470s

484 sourced entries across 10 years, inside the 15th century. Each year below opens its own page; the lines under it are that year’s highest-ranked entries.

1470 CE45 entries

  • July 12 – During the Ottoman–Venetian War, the Ottomans capture the Greek island of Euboea, territory of the Republic of Venice, after a four week siege of the fortified city of Negroponte by the Sultan Mehmed II.
  • August 20 – Battle of Lipnic: Stephen the Great defeats the Volga Tatars of the Golden Horde, led by Ahmed Khan.
  • December 18 – Lê Thánh Tông leads the Đại Việt army into Champa, conquering the country in less than three months.

1471 CE52 entries

  • February 24 – In what is now south Vietnam, the Champa–Dai Viet War begins when the Dai Viet Emperor Lê Thánh Tông sends 500 warships to block the Champa Kingdom's Bay of Sa Ky, while another 30,000 troops block all entrances to the capital city of Vijaya at what is now the Quảng Ngãi Province. The Me Can citadel in Quang Na falls two days later and the Vietnamese advance.
  • April 14 – At the Battle of Barnet, Edward defeats the Lancastrian army under Warwick, who is killed.
  • July 14 – At the Battle of Shelon, the forces of Muscovy defeat the Republic of Novgorod.

1472 CE49 entries

  • January 22 – The Great Comet of 1472 passes within 0.07 astronomical units of Earth (6.507 million miles or 10.472 million km), the closest approach in recorded history for a great comet
  • March 4 – A mount of piety is established in Siena (Italy), origin of Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the world's oldest surviving retail bank.
  • June 16 – Volterra, a town in the Republic of Florence in Italy, surrenders after a siege of 25 days by Florentine soldiers under the command of Federico da Montefeltro. Because the town had rebelled against the power of Lorenzo de' Medici, da Montefeltro allows his soldiers on June 18 to pillage Volterra and to commit rape and murder of its citizens.

1473 CE58 entries

  • January 9 – Pope Sixtus IV lifts the order of interdict that had been placed by Pope Paul II on the late Bohemian King George of Poděbrady and his sons, granting absolution, after the sons convert to the Roman Catholic faith.
  • February 12 – The first complete inside edition of Avicenna's The Canon of Medicine (Latin translation) is published in Milan.
  • August 11 – At the Battle of Otlukbeli, Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II defeats the White Sheep Turkmens, led by Uzun Hasan.

1474 CE45 entries

  • February 7 – The Hungarian town of Varad is attacked by an Ottoman Empire army of 7,000 cavalry, commanded by General Mihaloğlu Ali Bey, and its inhabitants are taken prisoner.
  • August 15 – In the city of Modica on the island of Sicily, a massacre is carried out in the Jewish neighborhood of Cartellone, and 360 Jews are killed in what is later referred to as the "Massacre of the Assumption".
  • August 26 – James III, the one-year old de jure King of Cyprus, dies 20 days after his first birthday, apparently from malaria. His mother, Catherine Cornaro, who had been serving as regent since her son's birth, becomes the ruling queen of Cyprus.

1475 CE52 entries

  • June 15 – The Vatican Library in Rome is created by the papal bull Ad decorem militantis ecclesiae and names Bartolomeo Platina as the first librarian for the Vatican.
  • September 9 – The city of Köln (Cologne), already separate from the surrounding Köln is granted the status of a "free imperial city" by the Holy Roman Empire, with representation in the Imperial Diet and self-government within the Empire.
  • December – The Principality of Theodoro falls to the Ottoman Empire, arguably taking with it the final territorial remnant of the successor to the Roman Kingdom after nearly 2,228 years of Roman civilization since the legendary Founding of Rome in 753 BC.

1476 CE50 entries

  • September 6 – Matthias Corvinus, as King of Bohemia, orders the Transylvanian Saxons in his employment to assist Stephen V Báthory in the invasion of the principality of Wallachia.
  • December 12 – Philip the Upright becomes the new Elector of the Palatinate within the Holy Roman Empire, upon the death of his adoptive father, the Elector Frederick I.
  • December 22 – Beatrice of Naples marries Mathias Corvinus at Székesfehérvár, 10 days after her coronation as Queen Consort of Bohemia and Queen Consort of Hungary.

1477 CE45 entries

  • February 11 – Mary of Burgundy, the daughter of Charles the Bold and the new Duches, is forced by her disgruntled subjects to sign the Great Privilege, by which the Flemish cities recover all the local and communal rights which have been abolished by the decrees of the dukes of Burgundy, in their efforts to create a centralized state in the Low Countries.
  • February 27 – Uppsala University is founded, becoming the first university in Sweden and all of Scandinavia.
  • October 9 – The University of Tübingen, one of the 11 German Excellence Universities, is founded in Württemberg by Count Eberhard I.

1478 CE46 entries

  • April 26 – On Easter Sunday, the Pazzi family attacks Lorenzo de' Medici, the ruler of the Republic of Florence, and kills his brother Giuliano, during High Mass in Florence Cathedral. A total of 80 accused conspirators are executed. With the death of his brother and co-ruler Giuliano, Lorenzo becomes the sole ruler of Florence.
  • May 14 – The Siege of Shkodra in Albania begins. Federico Gonzaga becomes the new ruler of the independent Duchy of Mantua in Italy, three days after the death of his father, Ludovico III.
  • June 15 – The Fourth Siege of Krujë comes to an end as the Albanian city surrenders to the Ottoman Empire, which had prevented food and supplies from reaching the town for a year. After the surrender, made on a promise that the occupants would be allowed to leave, most of the men in Krujë are killed and the women and children taken away to be sold as slaves.

1479 CE42 entries

  • April 25 – The ratification of the Treaty of Constantinople in Venice ends the Siege of Shkodra after fifteen months, and brings all of Albania under the Ottoman Empire.
  • May 13 – Christopher Columbus, an experienced mariner and successful trader in the thriving Genoese expatriate community in Portugal, marries Felipa Perestrelo Moniz (Italian on her father's side), and receives as dowry her late father's maps and papers, charting the seas and winds around the Madeira Islands, and other Portuguese possessions in the Ocean Sea.
  • November 5 – Grand Admiral Gedik Ahmed Pasha of the Ottoman Navy gives the order to ravage the Greek island of Zakynthos, at the time a territory of the Republic of Venice, and the Ottoman troops destroy most of the island's churches and monasteries and many of its dwellings.