1539
Hernando de Soto Lands in Florida
Veteran of Pizarro's Andean conquest and hungry for an empire of his own, Hernando de Soto waded ashore on the Gulf coast of Florida with six hundred men and two hundred horses. For the next three years he would march through the southeastern forests, looting towns and spreading disease wherever he went.
Mercator Prints His First World Map
A young Flemish cartographer named Gerardus Mercator published a double-hemisphere world map based on the most recent Iberian voyages. He was still twenty years away from inventing the projection that would bear his name, but the map already sold well to merchants, admirals, and curious gentlemen. His meticulous lettering style became the standard for cartographic typography and influenced map aesthetics for two centuries.
Tahmasp's Capital Moves to Qazvin
After Ottoman incursions made Tabriz unsafe, the Safavid shah Tahmasp shifted his capital east to Qazvin and poured royal patronage into a new school of Persian miniature painting. Carpets, bookbinding, and illuminated manuscripts flowered while Shia clerics deepened their grip on Iranian public life. The Qazvin school produced some of the most refined Persian miniatures, combining poetic sensibility with technical virtuosity.
First Printing Press in the Americas
A printer named Juan Pablos, sent from Seville by an Italian printshop, opened the first European-style press in the New World in Mexico City. The earliest book he produced, now lost, was a catechism in Nahuatl and Spanish. Ink and movable type had crossed the Atlantic. The press produced catechisms in both Spanish and indigenous languages, making Mexico City the New World's publishing center.
Cardano Publishes Practica Arithmeticae
The Italian polymath Girolamo Cardano published a treatise on arithmetic that hinted at solutions to cubic equations. Within a few years he would publish the full solutions in the Ars Magna, having extracted them from Tartaglia under oath. The resulting feud was Italian mathematics' most famous quarrel. His later Ars Magna included the cubic equation's general solution, one of the Renaissance's most important mathematical achievements.