1500

1491

1492

Columbus sails to America. He notes that the deviation of his compass from true north changed from the east to the west, an early discovery of the variation of the Earth's magnetism.

1493

Syphilis appears in Europe for the first time, in Barcelona, Spain, carried by sailors returning from South America with Columbus.

Feb 15. Columbus sends a letter describing Marino (possibly Martinique) where only women live. They are said to have gold and to live near or mate with the cannibalistic Caribs.

1494

1495

1496

1497

John Cabot (Giovanni Cabuto), exploring for England, lands on the east coast of Newfoundland

1498

Columbus reaches mainland America and names it Santa Isla.

1500

Jan 26. Vincente Yanez Pinzon discovers Brazil.

Vespucci explores Cuacao and compares the women to Amazons.

1501

1502

Cortereal's expedition into the Gulf of St. Lawrence; members of the Beothuk Nation are captured and brought to Europe.

Spanish printer Juan Pablos sets up a printing press in Mexico and produces the first printed book in the Americas, Christian Doctrine in the Mexican and Castilian Language.

Columbus' last trip to the new world, begins May 9

Florentine Amerigo Vespucci sails from Lisbon to South America. He claims to encounter women in the West Indies who eat men.

Spanish printer Juan Pablos sets up a printing press in Mexico and produces the first printed book in the Americas, Christian Doctrine in the Mexican and Castilian Language.

1503

1504

1510

Montalvo publishes Amadis of Gaul about Queen Calafia and th Amazons of California

1513

April 8. Juan Ponce de Leon lands in Florida and declares it for Spain.

A new edition of Ptolemy's Geography shows the New World as two separate continents.

1516

Italian scholar Peter Martyr's De rebus oceanicus et novo orbe/Decades of the New World discusses the discoveries in the New World for the first time.

German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller publishes his Carta Marina, a map of the world in chart form, spreading the use of the name 'America' for the new continent.

1518

Oct. 23. Diego Velasquez, Governor of Cuba, sends Cortes to explore the mainland in search of the Amazons.

1519

Cortès lands in Mexico. The Emperor sends him gifts including gold and silver discs the size of cartwheels.

Diaz describes the Valley of Mexico's gleaming towers, causeways and temples. Moctezuma's palace is indescribable. The city has waterways and floating farms, flower-covered shrines, and botanical and zoological gardens tended by 100s of specialists. Mexico is decorated with feathers, gold, silver, alabaster, jade and cornelian.

Cortès sends the Mayan 'Dresden Codex' to Charles V of Spain. It demonstrates the elaborate Mayan calendar based on the movements of the planet Venus.

1520

Smallpox is introduced into South America by Spanish conquistadors. Half the population of New Spain will be wiped out by the disease.

1521

Cortés recaptures Tenochtitlan, building his new capital on top of the old, thus destroying much of the city, using stone sculptures for landfill. The Aztec empire collapses.

1522

Cortes introduces silk worms to the New World

1524

Financed by bankers from Lyon, Giovanni da Verrazzano explored the coast of North America from Florida to Newfoundland.

Cortes writes to Charles V about an island rich in pearls and gold, inhabited only by women, who seasonally mate with men from the mainland but kill their male children.

Aztec priests formally meet with newly arrived Franciscan missionaries to debate religion. The Aztecs source their culture in laws received by their ancestors whereby for the price of blood, they receive the gifts of the earth, rain, water, flowers and minerals. They further suggest a pact between the two priesthoods to avoid unsettling the people, but are refused. Christianity will ensure that books are burned, rituals are suppressed and idolators are hung.

1525

1526

1527

1528

1529

1530

In the 1530s, the Spanish import slaves in bulk to work Mexican and Peruvian silver mines.

1531

1532

Pizarro lands in Peru

1533

1534-35

Jacques Cartier explores the St. Lawrence River and meets the Iroquois. Two of Chief Donnacona's sons accompany Cartier back to France.

1535-36

Jan 18. Francisco Pizarro founds Lima Peru

Cartier returns to Stadacona (Quebec) and sails to Hochelaga (Montreal). Donnacona's sons are with him, but when Cartier returns to France he insists they accompany him and kidnaps both them and their father. All 3 die in France.

1536

1537

Pope Paul III officially affirms that Indians are truly human and capable of receiving the Christian faith.

1538

1539

1540

Possible oldest North American print is Manual de Adultes

The potato is introduced into Europe from the Spanish colonies in South America. Sir Francis Drake reintroduced potatoes to England 158 since they didn't take this first time.

1541

Jean-Francois de La Rocque de Roberval and Cartier winter at Stadacona. They establish the first French settlement in the Americas at Charlesbourg Royal.

May 8. Hernando de Soto discovers the Mississippi River.

June 26. Pizzaro is assassinated

Dec. Captain Francisco de Orellana, separated from Spanish explorers seeking El Dorado, finds the Maranon River. They hear of Amazons and gold downstraem and eventually meet with these warrior women who are described as white and tall, equivalent in battle to 10 Indian men, by the Dominican Carvajal. The river was renamed in the popular imagination as the Amazon.

1543

French fisherman and merchants extend their reach into the Gulf of St. Lawrence and west to the Saguenay River.

1545

1546

1547

1576-78

Sir Martin Frobisher explores the Arctic and meets the Inuit. He takes an Inuk hunter back with him to England as "a token of possession" but the man dies.

1583

August 5: St. John’s Harbor - Sir Humphrey Gilbert claims Newfoundland for Queen Elizabeth I

1584

March 26: Walter Raleigh granted a patent to exploit Virginia

1598

Mesgouez de La Roche is given a commercial monopoly for trade in North America and tries to create a colony on Sable Island off Nova Scotia which fails