Maximilian was born in Vienna as the son of the Emperor Frederick III and Eleanore of Portugal. He married (1477-1482) the heiress of Burgundy, Mary, the only daughter of Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy. Through this marriage, Maximilian...

Adrian VI served as Pope of the Roman Catholic Church and its Eastern Churches in communion with the Holy See from 1522-1523 until his death. He was born under very modest circumstances in the city of Utrecht, which at that time was capi...

Jakob Fugger of the Lily also known as Jakob Fugger the Rich or sometimes Jakob II. Fugger was a major merchant, mining entrepreneur and banker of Europe between ca. 1495-1525. He was a descendant of the Fugger merchant family located in th...

Juan de la Cosa was a Spanish cartographer, conquistador and explorer. He made the earliest extant European world map to incorporate the territories of the Americas that were discovered in the 15th century, sailed with Christopher Columbus...

Fray Nicolás de Ovando y Cáceres was a Spanish soldier from a noble family and a Knight of the Order of Alcántara. He was Governor of the Indies (Hispaniola) from 1502 until 1509. His administration is perhaps best known for its brutal trea...

Johann Froben was a famous printer and publisher in Basel. He was friends with Erasmus, who lived in his house when in Basel, and not only had his own works printed by him from 1514, but superintended Froben's editions of Jerome, Cyprian, T...

Muhammad XII, known as Boabdil (a Spanish corruption of the name Abu Abdullah), was the twenty-second and last Nasrid ruler of Granada in Iberia. He was also called el chico, the little, or el zogoybi, the unfortunate. Son of Abu l-Hasan Al...

Vicente Yáñez Pinzón was a Spanish navigator, explorer, and conquistador, the youngest of the Pinzón brothers. Along with his older brother Martín Alonso Pinzón who captained the Pinta, he sailed with Christopher Columbus on the first voyag...

Louis XII, called "the Father of the People" was the thirty-fifth king of France and the sole monarch from the Valois-Orléans branch of the House of Valois. He reigned from 1498 to 1515 and pursued a very active foreign policy. Due to th...

Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola was an Italian Renaissance philosopher. He is famed for the events of 1486, when at the age of 23, he proposed to defend 900 theses on religion, philosophy, natural philosophy and magic against all comers...

Frederick III of Saxony, also known as Frederick the Wise, was Elector of Saxony (from the House of Wettin) from 1486 to his death. Frederick was the son of Ernest, Elector of Saxony and his wife Elisabeth, daughter of Albert III, Duke of B...

Batumöngke Dayan Khan was a Borjigin Khagan who reunited the Mongols under Chinggisid supremacy in Post-imperial Mongolia. Dayan Khan was enthroned as Great Khan of the Yuan Mongol Empire though his ancestor Toghan Temur failed to maintain...

Philippe Villiers de L'Isle-Adam was a prominent member of the Knights Hospitaller at Rhodes and later Malta. Having risen to the position of Prior of the Langue of Auvergne, he was elected Grand Master of the Order in 1521. He commanded th...

Francisco de Carvajal was a Spanish military officer, conquistador, and explorer remembered as "the demon of the Andes" due to his brutality and uncanny military skill in the Peruvian civil wars of the 16th century. Carvajal's career as...

Selim I, also known as "the Excellent," "the Brave" or the best translation "the Stern", Yavuz in Turkish, the long name is Yavuz Sultan Selim; was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1512 to 1520. He was also the first Ottoman Sultan to...