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1476 CE

This year falls in the High and Late Middle Ages (c. 1000–1500 CE). Trade grows across Eurasia, and in the thirteenth century the Mongols build the largest connected land empire in history. The Black Death kills a large share of the people of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa from the 1340s, and the era closes with the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the first European voyages to the Americas.

Within fifteen years

Philosopher · Early modern period · ChinaWang Yangming1472–1529Chinese thinker and general who founded the Neo Confucian school of mind, teaching the unity of knowledge and action. He put down rebellions while writing philosophy. He lived 1472 to 1529.

Philosopher · Early modern period · ItalyNiccolò Machiavelli1469–1527Florentine diplomat and author of The Prince and the Discourses on Livy. Effectual truth over imagined republics; republican institutions in the Discourses.

Ruler · Early modern period · EnglandHenry VIII1491–1547King of England from 1509 to 1547, born in 1491, who broke with Rome and made himself head of the Church of England. His six marriages and the quest for a male heir drove the break; the dissolution of the monasteries followed. England's navy and its sense of separateness from Europe date much to his reign.