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1502

Years: 1499 1500 1501 - 1502 - 1503 1504 1505

Decades: 1470s 1480s 1490s - 1500s - 1510s 1520s 1530s

Centuries: 15th century - 16th century - 17th century

Events

• January 1 - Rio de Janeiro discovered
• in Russia, Ivan II the Great attacks Livonia without success
• May 9 - Christopher Columbus leaves Spain for his fourth and final trip to the "New World"
• May 21 - Portuguese discover island of St Helena
• December 31 - Cesare Borgia imprisons two potentially treacherous allies, Vitelozzo and Oliveretto - he executes them the next morning
• Aztec ruler Auitzotl dies; Moctezuma II elected emperor
• Peter Henlein builds the first pocketwatch
• "Newfoundland" gets its name from a letter.
• Christopher Columbus lands at Trujillo and named the mainland "Honduras".
• Portuguese explorers sailed into Guanabra Bay, Brazil and mistook it for the mouth of a river which they named Rio de Janeiro.
• Wittenberg University founded.

Births

• January 7 - Pope Gregory XIII, who implements the Gregorian Calendar in 1582
• June 6 - King John III of Portugal
• John Leland - English antiquarian
• Anne Boleyn - Later second Queen consort of Henry VIII of England. Another possible year of birth is 1507.
• Cuauhtémoc, later Aztec ruler of Tenochtitlan (estimated date).

Deaths

• 2 April - Arthur Tudor (son of Henry VII of England).
• 6 May - James Tyrrell, executed; alleged murderer of the Princes in the Tower
• Auitzotl, Aztec ruler of Tenochtitlan