1418
Sejong the Great Crowned in Joseon Korea
The twenty-one-year-old fourth son, passed over only because his brothers renounced their claims, took the Korean throne. He would invent an alphabet, build rain gauges, commission star maps, and standardize music. Korean historians still date their golden age to the morning he put on the dragon robe. His creation of Hangul, designed so a wise man could learn it in a morning, remains one of history's greatest acts of linguistic engineering.
Le Loi Raises the Lam Son Uprising
In the forested hills of Thanh Hoa province, a Vietnamese landowner named Le Loi began organizing armed resistance against the Ming Chinese occupation that had swallowed his country. His small band survived years of near-annihilation in mountain caves, eating roots and ambushing supply trains before gathering enough peasant support to challenge Chinese garrisons directly. The insurrection that would liberate Vietnam and found the Le dynasty had started with a handful of desperate fugitives.
Paris Massacre of Armagnacs
Burgundian partisans and the Paris mob systematically slaughtered several thousand Armagnac partisans locked in city prisons. Bodies floated in the Seine for days. The English conquest was weeks away. France's capital was already, self-destructively, making Henry V's victory inevitable through its own civil hatred. The massacre exposed the factional hatred consuming France during Charles VI's madness, reducing politics to rival gangs preferring murder.