1492
Fall of Granada
After a ten-year siege, the last Muslim ruler of al-Andalus, Muhammad XII Boabdil, handed the keys of the Alhambra to Ferdinand and Isabella and rode weeping out of the city. Eight hundred years of Iberian Islam ended in a handshake in a courtyard of fountains and carved plaster. Europe's southwest changed civilization overnight.
Columbus Makes Landfall
A lookout named Rodrigo de Triana spotted moonlit surf on a Bahamian island just after two in the morning. By daybreak, Columbus had landed on Guanahani, claimed it for Castile, and called its Taino inhabitants Indians, thinking himself off the coast of Asia. The Atlantic world had just been rewritten forever.
Columbus Sails from Palos
Three small ships, the Santa Maria, the Pinta, and the Nina, dropped down the Tinto river on a morning tide with ninety men and Isabella's signed commission. Columbus believed Japan lay three thousand miles west. He was wrong by about twelve thousand miles. The Atlantic had never been crossed by Europeans on purpose.
Alhambra Decree
Ferdinand and Isabella signed an edict giving Spain's Jews four months to convert or leave. Between eighty and two hundred thousand left, carrying the language of medieval Castile into Ottoman Salonika, Amsterdam, and Fez, where their descendants would still speak it five hundred years later. Spain lost its oldest international community in a single season.
Lorenzo de Medici Dies
The Magnificent died at forty-three at the villa of Careggi, attended, some claimed, by the fanatical friar Savonarola, who refused him absolution. His weaker son Piero inherited Florence. Within two years the family would be expelled. Italy's golden equilibrium, built on Lorenzo's diplomacy, collapsed within a decade of his burial.
Rodrigo Borgia Elected Alexander VI
The Valencian cardinal, nephew of Callixtus III, bought the papal throne with cartloads of silver distributed to his fellow cardinals. Alexander VI would be remembered for his poisonings, his children Cesare and Lucrezia, his political ruthlessness, and a genuine, disconcerting administrative competence. The Borgia pontificate had begun. Despite his notorious life, Alexander proved an effective administrator whose division of the New World reshaped global geography.
Nebrija's Castilian Grammar Published
Antonio de Nebrija presented the first grammar of a European vernacular language to Queen Isabella. When she asked what it was for, he reportedly answered: language has always been the companion of empire. The Castilian grammar appeared the same year Spain took Granada, expelled its Jews, and reached America. The grammar appeared the same year Spain took Granada, expelled its Jews, and reached America, and Nebrija called language the companion of empire.