1403
Yongle Encyclopedia Commissioned
The new Ming emperor ordered every book in China copied into a single reference work. Over two thousand scholars assembled eleven thousand handwritten volumes encompassing medicine, astronomy, drama, and Buddhist scripture. It remained the world's largest encyclopedia for six hundred years, until Wikipedia surpassed it. No printed edition was ever produced, and its eventual loss to fire remains an irreplaceable catastrophe for Chinese scholarship.
Battle of Shrewsbury
Henry IV and his son Prince Hal met the rebel Percys on a field of pea plants that turned to mud under cavalry. Hotspur, visor raised for a breath of air, took an arrow through the mouth. The fifteen-year-old prince, shot in the face, refused to leave the line. Shakespeare would later dramatize the battle in Henry IV, Part 1, making Hotspur one of English literature's most vivid figures.
Ottomans Move Capital to Edirne
During the interregnum, rival Ottoman claimants consolidated the sultanate's administration at Edirne, the old Roman Adrianople. It would remain the effective capital until Mehmed II moved it to Constantinople fifty years later. The move quietly Europeanized Ottoman statecraft and accelerated its Balkan orientation. Grand mosques and palaces built over following decades would rival Constantinople's, making Edirne a fitting imperial seat.
Joseon Korea Casts Movable Type
King Taejong's metalworkers poured bronze into clay molds and produced hundreds of thousands of reusable characters, a half-century before Gutenberg's press. The foundry at Gyeyangso turned out Confucian classics in editions faster and cleaner than any scribe. The state, not the market, drove the innovation. Though Korean printing never achieved European-scale distribution, its metallurgical sophistication was unmatched anywhere in the world.