The Ottoman admiral Piri Reis drew a map showing the coast of South America in 1513.
He wrote that his sources included a map by Columbus that has since been lost.
More amazing facts
- 1514 · 1516 Raphael painted a memorial fresco for an elephant.
- 1514 · 1516 After the elephant’s success, Portugal’s king decided to send the pope a rhinoceros too. But early in 1516 the ship sank off Italy and the chained rhino drowned: the very animal Dürer had immortalised.
- 1515 The most famous rhinoceros in art was drawn by a man who never saw one. Dürer worked from a sketch, adding armour plates and an extra horn — and rhinos were drawn his way for over 200 years.
- 1515 · 1793 The iron maiden is not medieval: it was dreamed up in the late 18th century.
- 1517 In 1517 both Christendom and Islam changed course: in January the Ottomans took Cairo and soon became masters of Mecca and Medina, and in October Luther published his Ninety-five Theses.
- 1519 · 1521 While Magellan's expedition circled the globe, Cortés fought the Aztecs.