1485
Battle of Bosworth Field
Henry Tudor landed in Wales, marched east, and met Richard III in a Leicestershire meadow. The Stanleys, watching from a nearby hill, refused to commit until Richard charged alone at Henry's standard. Hacked down in the mud, the last Plantagenet died fighting. Henry was crowned under a thornbush with Richard's fallen circlet.
Ak Qoyunlu Fragments
The White Sheep confederation dissolved into competing successor polities across Iran and Iraq after decades of internal struggle. The resulting political vacuum would soon be filled by a Safavid movement emerging from the Azerbaijani heartland, built on Shia messianism and Turkmen military muscle. Without Uzun Hasan's charismatic leadership, the confederation's diverse ethnic components could not hold together.
Caxton Prints Le Morte d'Arthur
William Caxton edited and printed Sir Thomas Malory's vast prose retelling of the Arthurian cycle. Malory had written it in prison. The printing gave English its foundational myth in fixed, shareable form: the Round Table, the Grail, Lancelot and Guinevere, a king asleep on an island waiting to return. Malory composed the work while imprisoned for robbery and attempted murder, and its meditation on loyalty and betrayal may reflect his own circumstances.
Sweating Sickness Strikes England
A mysterious disease appeared in London shortly after Bosworth: sudden sweating, fever, collapse, and death within hours. Whole households died in a day. It vanished as abruptly, returned in five later epidemics across sixty years, and then disappeared from history. Nobody today knows what it was. Modern epidemiologists have proposed hantavirus and relapsing fever, but no identification has been made, leaving the disease an enduring medical mystery.
Sweating Sickness Arrives
A strange plague appeared in England during Henry Tudor's army's march south from Milford Haven. Sudden sweating, fever, collapse. Whole households died within hours. Physicians had never seen it. It would return in five epidemics and then vanish from the historical record. Molecular biology still cannot identify it. Its association with Henry Tudor's invasion army led some to view it as an ill omen for the new dynasty.
Venice Acquires Rovigo
The Serenissima extended its mainland empire in the Polesine region after a brief war with Ferrara. Venice was systematically trading naval power for territorial depth as the Ottomans squeezed its eastern trade routes. The future of the Republic was being re-anchored on Italian soil rather than the Aegean. The acquisition reflected Venice's pivot toward the Italian mainland as Ottoman pressure squeezed its eastern trade routes.