1500

Year 1500 (MD) was a leap year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar. The year 1500 was not a leap year in the proleptic Gregorian calendar. The year was seen as being especially important by many Christians in Europe, who thought it would bring the beginning of the end of the world. Their belief was based on the phrase "half-time after the time", when the apocalypse was due to occur, which appears in the Book of Revelation and was seen as referring to 1500. This time was also just after the Old World's discovery of the Americas in 1492, and therefore was influenced greatly by the New World. Historically, the year 1500 is also often identified, somewhat arbitrarily, as marking the end of the Middle Ages and beginning of the early modern period. The end of this year marked the halfway point of the 2nd millennium, as there were 500 years before it and 500 years after it. January 5 – Duke Ludovico Sforza recaptures Milan, but is soon driven out again by the French. January 26 – Spanish navigator Vicente Yáñez Pinzón reaches the northern coast of Brazil. February 5 – Ludovico Sforza's Swiss mercenary army retakes the city of Milan from the French during the Second Italian War. February 17 – Battle of Hemmingstedt: The Danish army fails to conquer the peasants' republic of Dithmarschen. March 9 – Pedro Álvares Cabral, with a fleet of 13 ships, departs Portugal on a voyage to the New World. March 11 – The Parliament of Bohemia adopts a new constitution that limits the power of King Vladislav II and subsequent Bohemian monarchs. Miroslav Buchvaldek, Československé dějiny v datech ("Czechoslovak History and Data") (Svoboda, 1987) March 24 – The day after departing the Cape Verde Islands with the rest of Cabral's fleet, Vasco de Ataíde and his 150 crewmates die when their ship goes down in a storm. April 22 – Portuguese navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral and his crew on 13 vessels become the first Europeans to discover Brazil, anchoring at Monte Pascoal and naming the country Vera Cruz. Cabral claims the land for the Kingdom of Portugal.