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...

Dom Vasco da Gama, (c.1460s-1524) was a Portuguese explorer. He was the first European to reach India by sea, linking for the first time Europe and Asia by ocean route, as well as the Atlantic and the Indian oceans entirely and definitively...

Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar was a Spanish conquistador. He conquered and governed Cuba on behalf of Spain. Diego Velázquez was born in Cuéllar 1465, in the Segovia region of Spain. He fought in Naples before moving to Seville, where he met B...

Luis Ramírez de Lucena was a Spanish chess player who published the first still-existing chess book. He was probably the son of the humanist writer and diplomat Juan de Lucena, from a family of Jews who converted to Roman Catholicism. Lu...

Mercurino Arborio marchese di Gattinara was an Italian statesman and jurist. Gattinara was a Christian, humanist, imperialist, and conservationist. He was made a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church in 1529. Gattinara initially served as t...

Ahmed Muhiddin Piri, better known as Piri Reis, was an Ottoman admiral, geographer, and cartographer. He is primarily known today for his maps and charts collected in his Kitab-ı Bahriye (Book of Navigation), a book that contains de...

Alonso de Ojeda was a Spanish navigator, governor and conquistador. Ojeda accompanied Christopher Columbus in his second voyage to the New World in 1493. He distinguished himself there by his daring in battle with the natives, towards whom,...

Moctezuma or Montezuma II was an Aztec ruler, leader of the Aztec Triple Alliance from c. 1502–1520. He is famous for being the ruler of the Aztec empire at the start of the Spanish conquest of Mexico. The portrayal of Moctezuma in histo...

Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, known as Erasmus or Erasmus of Rotterdam, was a Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, social critic, teacher, and theologian. Erasmus was a classical scholar and wrote in a pure Latin style. Among h...

Andrea Doria was a Genoese statesman, mercenary, and admiral, the foremost naval commander of his time. A member of an aristocratic family, he was orphaned at an early age and became a soldier of fortune. In 1522 he entered the service of F...

Pedro Álvares Cabral was a Portuguese noble, military commander, navigator and explorer regarded as the discoverer of Brazil. Cabral conducted the first substantial exploration of the northeast coast of South America and claimed it for Port...

Paul III, Alessandro Farnese was Pope from 1534 to 1549. He also called the Council of Trent in 1545. Born Alessandro Farnese in Canino, Latium, Italy, the peculiar day of February 29, he was descended through his mother from the Caetani fa...

Manuel I, the Fortunate, 14th king of Portugal and the Algarves. Manuel would prove a worthy successor to his cousin King John II, supporting the Portuguese exploration of the Atlantic Ocean and the development of Portuguese commerce. Durin...

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was an Italian historian, politician, diplomat, philosopher, humanist, and writer based in Florence during the Renaissance. He was for many years an official in the Florentine Republic, with responsibilit...

Guru Nanak was the founder of Sikhism and the first of the ten Sikh Gurus. His birth is celebrated world-wide as Guru Nanak Gurpurab on Kartik Pooranmashi, the full-moon day in the month of Katak, October–November. Guru Nanak has been ca...