1345
Yellow River shifts course catastrophically
The great river abandoned its northern channel and carved a new path to the sea south of the Shandong Peninsula, drowning thousands of villages and displacing millions of peasants. The Yuan court's attempt to redirect the river back using conscript labor would ignite the Red Turban rebellions that destroyed the dynasty.
Bardi and Peruzzi banks collapse in Florence
The two great Florentine banking houses failed when Edward III defaulted on his enormous war loans. Florence reeled. Villani called it 'a worse defeat than the city had ever suffered in war.' Thousands of depositors were ruined and credit froze across the Mediterranean. International credit had become an instrument of war finance, and war had finally broken it.
Aztecs forge the Triple Alliance with Texcoco and Tlacopan
The Mexica of Tenochtitlan joined with two lakeside city-states to overthrow their Tepanec overlords at Azcapotzalco. The resulting Triple Alliance would become the engine of Aztec imperial expansion, dividing tribute and conquered territories among three capitals on the shores of Lake Texcoco. Mesoamerica's last great empire was taking shape in the volcanic basin of central Mexico.
Stefan Dušan crowned Tsar at Skopje
On Easter Sunday in his Macedonian capital, the Serbian king proclaimed himself emperor of Serbs and Romans, the first Slavic ruler to claim such a title since Symeon of Bulgaria four centuries earlier. He elevated the archbishopric of Pec to a patriarchate to perform the coronation, infuriating Constantinople and widening the schism between Serbian and Greek Orthodoxy.
Sergius of Radonezh withdraws into the Russian forest
A young Muscovite nobleman retreated into the birch forests north of Moscow to live as a hermit. Disciples gathered, and the hermitage became the Trinity Monastery, the spiritual heart of Russian Orthodoxy. Sergius would bless Dmitri Donskoy before Kulikovo and become Russia's most beloved saint - a monk who shaped an empire.