William of Orange

Person · 1533 CE – 1584 CE · in Europe

William the Silent, Prince of Orange, led the Dutch revolt against Philip II of Spain from 1568. Murdered in Delft in 1584, he is remembered as the father of the nation, and the Dutch royal house descends from him.

Related

• The Tower of Babel (c. 1563 CE): Bruegel's tower rising in tiers beside a Flemish harbour like a half-built Colosseum, swarming with workers, as the Bible's story of human pride. It hangs in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
• Bruegel, The Hunters in the Snow (1565 CE): Pieter Bruegel’s weary hunters and their dogs trudge home above a valley where villagers skate on frozen ponds. Painted in the hard winter of 1565 in Antwerp, it is one of a series of the months.
• The Garden of Earthly Delights (c. 1500 CE): Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych runs from Eden through a garden crowded with naked revellers and giant fruit to a nightmare hell. Its meaning is still argued over.
• Eighty Years' War (1568–1648 CE): The revolt of the Netherlands against Habsburg Spain, which began in 1568. It produced the independent Dutch Republic, recognised by the Peace of Münster in 1648.
• Brouwer Route (1611–1799 CE): Pioneered by Hendrik Brouwer in 1611, this Dutch East India Company route ran east from the Cape of Good Hope in the Roaring Forties before turning north to Java, cutting the voyage to Batavia by months.
• Abel Tasman’s voyage to Tasmania and New Zealand (1642–1643 CE): Sailing for the Dutch East India Company from Batavia via Mauritius, Abel Tasman became the first European to reach Tasmania and New Zealand, then continued to Tonga and Fiji before returning to Batavia.
• Philip the Good (1396 CE – 1467 CE): Duke of Burgundy from 1419, who by inheritance, purchase and conquest gathered Flanders, Brabant, Holland, Zeeland and Hainaut under one ruler: the start of the Burgundian Netherlands. His court at Brussels and Bruges patronised Jan van Eyck.
• Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla (1753 CE – 1811 CE): Catholic priest who launched the Mexican War of Independence; captured and executed in 1811, he is honoured as the Father of the Nation.
• American Revolutionary War (1775–1783 CE): War in which thirteen British colonies, aided by France, won independence and formed the United States of America.
• US Declaration of Independence (1776 CE): Adopted by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia on 4 July 1776, it declared the thirteen colonies independent and asserted natural rights.

Around the same time and place

• Leonardo da Vinci (1452 CE – 1519 CE): Italian Renaissance polymath born in Vinci, painter of the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, whose notebooks record studies in anatomy, engineering and flight.
• Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 CE – 1543 CE): Polish astronomer and canon of Frombork in Royal Prussia who proposed a Sun-centred model of the universe in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, published in 1543, the year of his death.
• Michelangelo (1475 CE – 1564 CE): Florentine sculptor, painter and architect of the High Renaissance. He carved the Pietà and David, painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling and the Last Judgement, and designed the dome of St Peter's.
• Mona Lisa (c. 1503 CE): Leonardo da Vinci began this portrait of Lisa Gherardini in Florence around 1503 and kept working on it for years. It hangs in the Louvre and is among the most famous paintings in the world.
• Ninety-five Theses (1517 CE): In 1517 Martin Luther circulated his 95 theses against the sale of indulgences in Wittenberg. The dispute that followed launched the Protestant Reformation.
• Copernican heliocentrism (1543 CE): Nicolaus Copernicus, a canon at Frombork, published De revolutionibus in 1543, placing the Sun rather than the Earth at the centre of the universe. It began the Scientific Revolution.
• Galileo Galilei (1564 CE – 1642 CE): Italian astronomer and physicist born in Pisa who pioneered experimental science and telescopic astronomy. Condemned by the Inquisition in 1633, he spent his last years under house arrest near Florence.
• William Shakespeare (1564 CE – 1616 CE): English playwright and poet from Stratford-upon-Avon whose plays, performed in London, include Hamlet, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in English.

More on Wikipedia.