The 1490s

1490 CE54 entries

• January 4 – Anne of Brittany announces that all those who ally themselves with the king of France will be considered guilty of the crime of Lèse-majesté.
• March or April – 1490 Qingyang event, a presumed meteor shower or air burst over Qingyang in the Gansu province in Ming dynasty China. Some later accounts lists casualties of more than 10,000 people. The only date given for the Qingyang event is that it was in "the third lunar month" on the Chinese lunar calendar coinciding with a period beginning on March 12 and ending on April 19, 1490.
• May 28 – At Junnar in what is now India's Maharashtra state, the Ahmadnagar Sultanate is established by Ahmad Nizam Shah, who leads a secession of his land from the Bahmani Kingdom and defeats the Bahmani General Jahangir Khan.

1491 CE62 entries

• February 2 – At Stettin (now Szczecin in Poland) Bogislaw X, Duke of Pomerania, marries Anna Jagiellon, daughter of King Casimir IV.
• April 23 – The city of Granada, capital of the Muslim Emirate of Granada in Spain, is besieged by the armies of Castile and Aragon, ruled by the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella.
• May – The Ottoman–Mamluk War (1485–1491) between the Ottoman Empire and the Egyptian Mamluks ends.

1492 CE62 entries

1493 CE54 entries

• February 15 – Columbus begins writing his first account of his voyage to the New World, titled "Letter of Columbus, on the islands of India beyond the Ganges recently discovered", an account later printed and sold throughout Europe. His reference to the Ganges river in India confirms that he thought he had reached Asia.
• March 4 – Christopher Columbus anchors in Lisbon and completes his February 15 letter on the first voyage, conveying the news of his discoveries.
• September 24 – Christopher Columbus leaves Cádiz on his second voyage of exploration.

1494 CE60 entries

• May – Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, recognises the pretender Perkin Warbeck as rightful King of England.
• July 29 – Jan V Zatorski, ruler of the Duchy of Zator, sells the Duchy to King Jan I Olbracht of Poland for 80,000 florins, on condition that he retains his title and the right to continue to live in his castle for the rest of his life.
• November 9 – The Medici Bank becomes insolvent and the House of Medici is expelled from Florence.

1495 CE56 entries

• February 10 – King's College, Aberdeen, predecessor of the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, is founded with the issuance of the papal bull Primo Erectio Universitatis by Pope Alexander VI on the petition of William Elphinstone, Bishop of Aberdeen.
• July 3 – At the Battle of Deal, Perkin Warbeck's troops land in Kent, in support of his claim to the English crown, backed by Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy. They are routed before Warbeck himself can disembark, and he retreats to Ireland and then to Scotland.
• November 30 – An explosion at Vyborg Castle deters the Russian forces, who have invaded Sweden through Karelia.

1496 CE46 entries

• February – Pietro Bembo's Petri Bembi de Aetna Angelum Chalabrilem liber, a description of a journey to Mount Etna, is published in Venice by Aldus Manutius, the first book printed in the old-style serif or humanist typeface cut by Francesco Griffo (known from the 20th century as Bembo) and with early adoption of the semicolon (dated 1495 according to the more veneto).
• July 21 – Spanish forces under Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba capture Atella after a siege. Among the prisoners is the French viceroy of Naples, the Comte de Montpensier. King Ferdinand II of Naples is restored to his throne.
• September 7– Federico of Aragon becomes the King of Naples upon the death of his nephew, King Ferdinando II.

1497 CE62 entries

• March 3 – The Russo-Swedish War (1495–1497) ends with a six year truce signed in Russia at Novgorod. Due to gathering unrest at home, the Swedish leader Sten Sture the Elder is forced to offer a peace to Ivan III of Moscow.
• May – The Cornish Rebellion breaks out in England, incited by war taxes.
• September 7 – Second Cornish Uprising in England: Perkin Warbeck lands near Land's End; on September 10 he is proclaimed as King in Bodmin.

1498 CE55 entries

• April 14 – Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama reaches Malindi, in modern-day Kenya.
• May 30 – Christopher Columbus sets out on his third voyage to the Western Hemisphere from Sanlúcar, Spain.
• December 17 – Eight months after ascending the throne, King Louis XII of France annuls his marriage to Jeanne de Valois after 22 years so that he can marry Anne, Duchess of Brittany. The King grants his former queen the title of the Duchess of Berry.

1499 CE52 entries

• May 19 – Catherine of Aragon, the future first wife of Henry VIII, is married by proxy to his brother, Arthur, Prince of Wales.
• August – Polydore Vergil completes De inventoribus rerum, the first modern history of inventions.
• November 5 – The Catholicon is published in Tréguier (Brittany). This Breton–greek–Latin dictionary had been written in 1464 by Jehan Lagadeuc. It is the first dictionary of either French or Breton.