Leonardo da Vinci paints the Mona Lisa
Mona Lisa, oil painting on a poplar wood panel by the Italian painter, draftsman, sculptor, architect, and engineer Leonardo da Vinci, is probably the world’s most-famous painting.
Good News Links
Michelangelo begins painting frescoes on ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
The frescoes, which take up the entirety of the vault, are among the most important paintings in the world.
Hieronymus Bosch paints “The Garden of Earthly Delights”
The Garden of Earthly Delights is considered Bosch’s seminal masterpiece and the most successful and outstanding of his creations.
Vasco da Gama becomes first European to discover Seychelles
On 15 March 1503, Vasco da Gama, crossing from India to East Africa, sighted what was almost certainly Silhouette Island and the next day, Desroches Island. The granitic islands began to appear on Portuguese charts as the Seven Sisters.
Rodrigo de Bastidas becomes the first European to explore the Isthmus of Panama
A year later Christopher Columbus on his fourth voyage, sailing south and eastward from upper Central America, explored Bocas del Toro, Veragua, the Chagres River and Portobelo (Beautiful Port) which he named.
Jacob Nufer of Switzerland performs the first known Cesarean Section birth with both mother and baby surviving
Perhaps the first written record we have of a mother and baby surviving a cesarean section comes from Switzerland in 1500 when sow gelder, Jacob Nufer, performed the operation on his wife. The mother lived and subsequently gave birth normally to five children, including twins. The cesarean baby lived to be 77 years old.
Spanish colonists found the city of Santo Domingo
Dating from 1493, when the Spanish settled on the island, and officially from 5 August 1498, Santo Domingo became the oldest European city in the Americas.
Christopher Columbus arrives in the Americas
After sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus sights a Bahamian island, believing he has reached East Asia.
The A-Ma Temple is completed in Macau
The A-Ma Temple is a temple to the Chinese sea-goddess Mazu located in São Lourenço, Macau, China. Built in 1488, the temple is one of the oldest in Macau and thought to be the settlement’s namesake.
Migrating Bantu peoples establish the Maravi Confederacy in modern-day Malawi
Maravi was a kingdom which straddled the current borders of Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia, in the 16th century. The present-day name ” is said to derive from the Chichewa word “malaŵÔ, which means “flames”.