Those who fought the Wars of the Roses never called them that.
The white rose of York was a real badge, but the red rose of Lancaster was rarely used; the name caught on after a Walter Scott novel of 1829.
More amazing facts
- 1450 · 1564 Ivan Fyodorov's Apostol (1564), the first precisely dated Russian printed book, came out more than a century after Gutenberg's press.
- 1450 Machu Picchu and Gutenberg's press are the same age: around 1450 the Incas were building their mountain estate while Mainz printed its first books.
- 1450 · 1453 When Constantinople fell in 1453, Gutenberg was already printing in Mainz: the last Roman Empire vanished in the first years of the printed book.
- 1452 · 1453 The guns that smashed the walls of Constantinople were first offered to the Byzantines.
- 1453 To take Constantinople, Mehmed II moved his fleet over land.
- 1453 Two epochs ended in the summer of 1453: the Ottomans took Constantinople in May, and in July the Battle of Castillon ended the Hundred Years' War after 116 years.