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The 1480s

641 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.

1480 CE56 entries

  • March 3 – The Treaty of Lucerne is signed between the Duchy of Milan and the Old Swiss Confederation, 15 months after the Battle of Giornico. Milan cedes the Leventina District to the Canton of Uri.
  • July 28 – Mehmed II fails in his attempt to capture Rhodes from the Knights of Rhodes.
  • October 8 – The Great Stand on the Ugra River begins as troops of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, led by the Grand Duke Ivan III and General Ivan Molodoy battle against the invading Mongol armies of the Golden Horde, led by their ruling monarch, Akhmat Khan. The invasion began after Ivan III stopped paying tribute to the Horde. The Theotokos of Vladimir icon is credited with saving Moscow. The standoff between the troops lasts five weeks before Akhmat and the Mongol troops retreat.

1481 CE56 entries

  • April 2 – King James III of Scotland gives royal assent to the six Defence of the Realm Acts and to the Benefices Act 1481, passed by his parliament in anticipation of a war with England.
  • May 21 – King Christian I of Denmark and Norway dies at the age of 55. Although his eldest son, Prince Hans of Oldenburg, is accepted as the new King of Denmark, the Riksrådet (Council of the Realm) of the Kingdom of Norway postpones its decision pending negotiations to possibly reunite with the Kingdom of Sweden.
  • December 14 – Ayas Pasha, the Ottoman Empire's sanjak of Bosnia, captures the city of Herceg Novi after a month-long siege when the Duke Vlatko Hercegović agrees to surrender.

1482 CE53 entries

  • January 25 – (5 Adar 5242) The first printing of the Torah by movable type, in the original Hebrew language, is made in Bologna, marking the first use of the Hebrew alphabet rather than the Roman alphabet in printing.
  • May 25 – German printer Erhard Ratdolt creates the first printed edition of The Elements, originally written by the Greek mathematician Euclid around 300 BC and translated from ancient Greek into Latin by Campanus of Novara in the 13th century. The date for the printing of one of the most influential books in history is printed by Ratdolt on the title page.
  • June 11 – The Treaty of Fotheringhay is signed between King Edward IV of England, and Alexander Stewart, Duke of Albany, the younger brother of King James III of Scotland, with Alexander being promised the Scottish throne in return for swearing loyalty to England and participating in an English invasion of Scotland.

1483 CE67 entries

  • January 7 – At Pau (now part of France), Queen Catalina becomes the new ruler of Navarre at the age of 14, upon the death of her older brother, the 15-year-old King Francisco Febo. Their mother, Magdalena of Valois, continues as regent of Navarre.
  • July 6 – Richard III and Anne Neville are crowned king and Queen of England, at Westminster Abbey.
  • October 29 – Battle of Una: Forces of the Kingdom of Croatia defeat the army of the Ottoman Empire.

1484 CE69 entries

  • March 26 – William Caxton, the first printer of books in English, prints his translation of Aesop's Fables in London.
  • October 31 – The "White Elephant War", which had started in 1479 with the invasion of the Kingdom of Lan Xang (now Laos) by the Dai Viet Empire (now northern Vietnam) with the Vietnamese withdrawing their troops and failing to conquer the Laotians.
  • 15 December – The city of Galway is granted a royal charter and mayoralty by Richard III of England.

1485 CE60 entries

  • January 29 – The siege of Vienna, capital of the Holy Roman Empire, is started by the Black Army of the Kingdom of Hungary in the ninth year of the ongoing Austrian-Hungarian War. Vienna is defended by a force of only 3,000 soldiers and cavalry, against 28,000 soldiers and cavalry of the Black Army, and the city falls to Hungary within four months.
  • February 3 – Three days after returning to Germany following his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, John V, Count of Nassau-Siegen founds the Franciscan monastery at his capital in Siegen.
  • August 22 – At the Battle of Bosworth Field, King Richard III of England is killed in battle by the soldiers of Rhys ap Thomas and Sir William Stanley, in the service of Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond. With the death of King Richard, the Yorkist troops retreat. King Richard's remains will lie undiscovered for 517 years until 2012when they are found during the excavation of a parking lot in Leicester.

1486 CE71 entries

  • February 16 – Archduke Maximilian I of Habsburg is elected King of the Romans at Frankfurt.
  • February 18 – Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is born in the town of Nadia, West Bengal, India, just after sunset. He is regarded as an incarnation, or avatar, of Lord Krsna, and later comes to inaugurate the sankirtana movement, or the chanting of the Holy Names of the Lord. This chanting, or mantra meditation, is first brought to the United States in 1965, by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.
  • March 10 – The government of the Free Imperial City of Köln (Cologne), now part of Germany, begins the removal of all prostitutes from the city.

1487 CE76 entries

  • March 6 – Cardinal John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury since January 21, becomes the new Lord Chancellor of England, succeeding the late Thomas Bourchier.
  • May 19 – The witch-hunters' manual Malleus Maleficarum, written by Heinrich Kramer with Jacob Sprenger, is approved by Catholic theologians from the University of Cologne and at Speyer in the Holy Roman Empire. The preface states that all readers should know that "in the year since the Birth of Our Lord 1487, in the fifth indiction, on Saturday, the 19th day of May, at five in the afternoon or thereabouts," professors Henricus Institoris and Jacobus Sprenger certified the text on behalf of Pope Innocent VIII. The preface notes that although some preachers of the Word of God claim in sermons "that sorceresses do not exist", the authors' intention is "to alleviate this ignorance" and to "exterminate the sorceresses" by "appropriate methods of sentencing."
  • July 11 – The Battle of Aldy Charrish takes place in Scotland as the Clan Mackay defeats the Clan Ross.

1488 CE69 entries

  • February 4 – Bartolomeu Dias of Portugal lands in Mossel Bay after his ships had been blown off course while sailing southeastward along Africa's coast in search of the Cape of Good Hope. After having turned northward, Dias realizes later that he had actually rounded the Cape and seen it from a distance as his ships were sailing westward to reach his prior position.
  • August 17 – The Mamluk Sultanate defeats the Ottoman Empire Army in the Battle of Aga-Cayiri fought in the Cilicia region of Asia Minor, now in Turkey.
  • August 20 – The Treaty of Sablé is signed in Sablé-sur-Sarthe by Francois, Duke of Brittany and Charles VIII, King of France, ending the "Mad War". Under the terms of the treaty, Francois agrees for the Duchy of Brittany to be a vassal of King Charles, and cedes the Duchy's territories of Saint Malo, Dinan, Fougères and Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier to the French crown. Francois also agrees that before arranging his daughter, Anne of Brittany, to be married, he will seek the King's consent. In return, Charles removes the French Army troops from Brittany.

1489 CE64 entries

  • April 6 – At Jodhpur, in what is now the state of Rajasthan in India, Rao Satal becomes the new ruler of the Kingdom of Marwar upon the death of his father, King Rao Jodha.
  • October 2 – The Rorschacher Klosterbruch, a civil war in Switzerland, comes to an end after three months when the Abbey of Saint Gall (in the canton of St. Gallen) signs a peace with the canton of Appenzell.
  • December 11 – Jeannetto de Tassis is appointed Chief Master of Postal Services in Innsbruck; his descendants, the Thurn und Taxis Family, later run much of the postal system of Europe.