* 1492 – Spain gives Christopher Columbus his commission of exploration.

* 1492 – Christopher Columbus sets sail from Palos de la Frontera, Spain.

Andrea Alciato ( May 8, 1492 – January 12, 1550 ), commonly known as Alciati ( Andreas Alciatus ), was an Italian jurist and writer.

* 1492 – Spain and Christopher Columbus sign the Capitulations of Santa Fe for his voyage to Asia to acquire spices.

Bayezid II was born in Dimetoka Palace ( now Didymoteicho ) in Thrace as the son of Mehmed II ( 1432 – 81 ) and Valide Sultan Mükrime Hatun, the daughter of Süleyman Bey, the sixth ruler of Dulkadirids, who died in 1492.

Eventually, the Knights handed Cem over to Pope Innocent VIII ( 1484 – 1492 ).

* Casimir IV Jagiellon ( 1427 – 1492 ), Polish king

* 1492 – Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to set foot on the island of Hispaniola, now Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

* 1549 – Marguerite of Navarre, wife of Henry II of Navarre ( b. 1492 )

* 1492 31 March – After conquering Granada, the Catholic Monarchs sign the Alhambra decree ordering the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, to be take effect from 31 July 1492.

* 1492 Summer – After the death of the former Duke, his son and heir, Juan Alfonso Perez de Guzman, 3rd Duke of Medina Sidonia saw his lordship over Gibraltar reluctantly renewed by the Catholic Monarchs.

* 1492 – Reconquista: the emirate of Granada, the last Moorish stronghold in Spain, surrenders.

* 1492 – Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic Monarchs enter Granada, completing the Reconquista.

* 1492 – The first grammar of the Spanish language is presented to Queen Isabella I.

Lorenzo de ' Medici ( 1 January 1449 – 9 April 1492 ) was an Italian statesman and de facto ruler of the Florentine Republic during the Italian Renaissance.

* 1492 – Queen Isabella of Castille issues the Alhambra decree, ordering her 150, 000 Jewish subjects to convert to Christianity or face expulsion.

At this time, Michelangelo sculpted the reliefs Madonna of the Steps ( 1490 – 1492 ) and Battle of the Centaurs ( 1491 – 1492 ).

Following the breakup of Mali a local leader named Sonni Ali ( 1464 – 1492 ) founded the Songhai Empire in the region of middle Niger and the western Sudan and took control of the trans-Saharan trade.

* 1492 – Peace of Etaples between Henry VII and Charles VIII.

* 1492 – Jami, Persian poet ( b. 1414 )

In 1492, Martin Behaim, a German cartographer, made the oldest extant globe of the Earth.

The Erdapfel, the oldest surviving terrestrial globe ( 1492 / 93 )

This lake, founded 1492, is the oldest reservoir of its kind in Central Europe.

The oldest surviving terrestrial globe is the Erdapfel, created by Martin Behaim in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1492.

" The oldest surviving terrestrial globe, by Martin Behaim in 1492 ( before Columbus ' voyage ), labels the entire Asian subcontinent region as " India ".

In early 1492 Dürer travelled to Basel to stay with another brother of Martin Schongauer, the goldsmith Georg.

Meanwhile the Christian kingdoms in the north began the long and slow recovery of the peninsula, a process called the Reconquista, which was concluded in 1492 with the fall of Granada.

It ended with two pages of important dates in American history, beginning with Columbus's in 1492 and ending with the battle of Yorktown in 1781.

Earlier, the guilds of writers had denounced the printing press as " the Devil's Invention ", and were responsible for a 53-year lag between its invention by Johannes Gutenberg in Europe in c. 1440 and its introduction to the Ottoman society with the first Gutenberg press in Istanbul that was established by the Sephardic Jews of Spain in 1493 ( who had migrated to the Ottoman Empire a year earlier, escaping from the Spanish Inquisition of 1492.

An important event that coincided with Innocent's pontificate was the fall of Granada in January 1492, which was celebrated in the Vatican with great rejoicings.

Ferdinand and Isabella completed the Reconquista with a war against the Emirate of Granada that started in 1482 and ended with Granada's complete annexation in early 1492.

The voyages of Christopher Columbus from 1492 to 1502 resulted in permanent contact with European ( and subsequently, other Old World ) powers, which lead to the Columbian exchange.

Henry VII made peace with France in 1492 and the war against Scotland was abandoned because of the Western Rebellion of 1497.

Two of Columbus's crewmen during his 1492 journey, Rodrigo de Jerez and Luis de Torres, are said to have encountered tobacco for the first time on the island of Hispaniola, when natives presented them with dry leaves that spread a peculiar fragrance.

In 1492 Christopher Columbus sailed from Spain on his first voyage with three ships, the Nina, the Pinta and the flag ship The Santa Maria, seeking a direct route to Asia.

By the end of the 15th century, Portugal expelled some local Jews, along with those refugees that came from Castile and Aragon after 1492.

Muslim rule in Iberia came to an end on January 2, 1492 with the conquest of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada.

The first phase of European activity in the Americas began with the Atlantic Ocean crossings of Christopher Columbus ( 1492 – 1504 ), sponsored by Spain, whose original attempt was to find a new route to India and China, known as " the Indies ".

Thus the large-scale contact with Europeans after 1492 introduced novel germs to the indigenous people of the Americas.

Beginning with the 1492 arrival of Christopher Columbus, over nearly four centuries the Spanish Empire would expand across: most of present day Central America, the Caribbean islands, and Mexico ; much of the rest of North America including the Southwestern, Southern coastal, and California Pacific Coast regions of the United States ; and though inactive, with claimed territory in present day British Columbia Canada ; and U. S. states of Alaska, Washington, and Oregon ; and the western half of South America.

In 1492, the citizens of Guelders, who had become disenchanted with the rule of Maximilian, ransomed Charles and recognized him as their Duke.

Beginning in 1492 with the voyages of Christopher Columbus, the Kingdom of Spain sought to establish missions to convert the pagans in Nueva España (" New Spain ", consisting of the Caribbean, Mexico and most of what today is the Southwestern United States ) to Roman Catholicism in order to facilitate colonization of these lands awarded to Spain by the Catholic Church, including that region known as Alta California.

The history of the United States as covered in schools and universities typically begins with either 1492 and Columbus, or — especially in recent years — with the prehistory of the Native peoples.