1446
Hunminjeongeum Published
Sejong's treatise explaining the new Korean alphabet was printed and distributed, a royal manifesto disguised as a linguistic pamphlet. 'The sounds of our country's language are different from those of China,' it began. No monarch anywhere had so openly admitted that ordinary people deserved a writing system of their own.
Brunelleschi Dies in Florence
The architect of the dome that still crowns Florence died and was buried beneath the very pavement of the cathedral he had roofed. His epitaph, in Latin, noted that the genius of Filippo Brunelleschi had conquered the gigantic skies. Tuscan masons for generations would measure themselves against his impossible ribbed ceiling.
Nuristani Peoples Resist Islamic Conversion
In the remote Hindu Kush valleys of what is now eastern Afghanistan, the Nuristani peoples maintained their polytheistic religion against increasing pressure from surrounding Muslim kingdoms and raiding parties. Their carved wooden temples and elaborate ancestor cults would survive another four and a half centuries until the Afghan king Abdur Rahman Khan forcibly converted them in 1896. They were the last pagan holdouts in the greater Central Asian world.
King's College Chapel Begun
Henry VI laid the foundation stone for the chapel of his Cambridge college, a building that would take ninety years to complete and rise through three dynasties of English kings. Its fan-vaulted ceiling remains one of the masterpieces of late Gothic architecture in stone, supported by nothing but precisely cut voussoirs.