Diego Columbus was the 2nd Admiral of the Indies, 2nd Viceroy of the Indies and 3rd Governor of the Indies. He was the firstborn son of Christopher Columbus and wife Filipa Moniz Perestrelo, and was born in 1479/1480 in Porto Santo, Portuga...

Sebastián de Belalcázar was a Spanish conquistador. He took the name Belalcázar as that was the name of the castle-town near to his birthplace in Córdoba. According to various sources, he may have left for the New World with Christopher Col...

Joanna or Joan, nicknamed Joanna the Mad (Spanish: Juana la Loca), was the first queen regnant to reign over both the Crown of Castile (1504–55) and the Crown of Aragon (1516–55), a union which evolved into modern Spain. Besides the kingdom...

Lucrezia Borgia was the daughter of Rodrigo Borgia, the powerful Renaissance Spaniard who would later become Pope Alexander VI and Vannozza dei Cattani. Lucrezia's family later came to epitomise the ruthless Machiavellian politics and sexua...

Ferdinand Magellan was a Portuguese explorer who organised the Spanish expedition to the East Indies that resulted in the first circumnavigation of the Earth, completed by Juan Sebastián Elcano. He was born in a still disputed location i...

Jean Fleury (or Florin) (born ? - died 1527) was a French naval officer and privateer. He is best known for the capture of two out of the three Spanish galleons carrying the Aztec treasure from Mexico to Spain in 1522. This was one of the e...

Margaret of Austria was, by her two marriages, Princess of Asturias and Duchess of Savoy, and was appointed Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands from 1507 to 1515 and again from 1519 to 1530. Margaret was born as the second child and only d...

Giulio "Delminio" Camillo was an Italian philosopher. He is best known for his Theatre of Memory, described in his posthumously published work L’Idea del Theatro. Camillo notes that L’Idea del Theathro is concerned with ‘the eternal aspect...

Christian II was a Danish monarch and King of Denmark, Norway (1513 – 1523) and Sweden (1520 – 1521), under the Kalmar Union. Christian was born the son of King Hans of Denmark and Christina of Saxony, at Nyborg Castle in 1481 and succeeded...

Raphael was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Together with Michelangelo...

Count Henry III of Nassau-Dillenburg-Dietz, Lord (from 1530 Baron) of Breda, Lord of the Lek, of Dietz, etc. was a count of the House of Nassau. He was the son of Count John V of Nassau-Dillenburg and Elisabeth of Hesse. His younger brother...

Babur was a Muslim conqueror from Central Asia who, following a series of setbacks, finally succeeded in laying the basis for the Mughal dynasty of India. He was a direct descendant of Timur through his father, and a descendant also of Geng...

Martin Luther was a German priest and professor of theology who initiated the Protestant Reformation. Strongly disputing the claim that freedom from God's punishment of sin could be purchased with money, he confronted indulgence salesman J...

Ulrich Zwingli was a leader of the Swiss Reformation. While Germany struggled under the political and religious consequences of Luther's reform movement, the movement itself quickly spilled out of the German borders into neighboring Switzer...

Prince Bartholomeus Welser was a German banker. He was the head of the banking firm of Welser Brothers, who claimed descent from the Byzantine general Belisarius. They possessed great riches, and Bartholomeus was created a prince of the emp...