1354
Ottomans cross the Dardanelles at Gallipoli
An earthquake collapsed the walls of Gallipoli during a winter storm. Suleyman, son of Orhan, slipped his men across the strait under cover of the chaos and refused to leave, fortifying the ruined walls before Byzantine relief could arrive. The Ottomans now had a permanent European foothold. Within a generation they would push north to Plovdiv and Adrianople.
Ibn Battuta returns to Morocco and dictates the Rihla
Twenty-nine years after leaving Tangier, the Moroccan traveler returned home for good and was commissioned by the Marinid sultan to dictate the story of his journeys. The resulting Rihla, ghostwritten by the Andalusian scholar Ibn Juzayy, would become the medieval world's most expansive single account of three continents, describing courts, cities, and customs from West Africa to China.
John Cantacuzenus abdicates and becomes a monk
The Byzantine emperor, widely blamed for inviting Ottoman mercenaries onto European soil during the civil war, resigned the purple and took monastic vows as the monk Joasaph. He spent his remaining twenty-nine years on Mount Athos writing a self-justifying history. John V Palaiologos resumed sole rule of a Constantinople sliding toward terminal decline.
Cola di Rienzo killed by a Roman mob
Brought back to Rome by the cardinal legate as senator, Cola alienated the people by raising taxes. A crowd stormed the Capitol, dragged him out, and stabbed him to pieces beside the lion of Saint Mark. The body was hung up by the feet and burned. Roman republicanism would not return for centuries.