Fourteenth Century History

1300 Beginning of the Renaissance. Money from Florence, Italy becomes the first international currency. Corsets for women introduced.

1302 Romeo and Juliet marries, according to Shakespeare. They were 14 years old.

1306 Expulsion of Jews from France – they were expelled several times during the century.

1311 The world’s first history, The Great Universal History, published by Rashid-Eddin of Persia.

1314 England bans football (soccer) because it’s too violent. Robert the Bruce leads the Scots to victory over the English at the Battle of Bannockburn.

1324 Pope John XXII recognizes independent Scotland with Robert the Bruce as its king.

1326 The first reference to a handgun, made in an order for iron bullets.

1328 The sawmill is invented.

1337 The Hundred Years War begins between kings of England and France for control of France. (It lasts 106 years, until 1453.)

1347 The Black Death plague begins in Europe, lasting 3 years, killing 25 million people, one third of the European population. The plague is a highly contagious fever caused by the bacillus Yersinia pestis, which is carried by fleas that infest rats.

1349 Boccaccio’s ‘Decameron’ published. Along with poet Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio is one of the fathers of the Italian Renaissance. His ‘Decameron’ elevated the status of vernacular literature, that is, in the language of the people, as opposed to Latin, the language of scholars. Expulsion of Jews from Hungary.

1350 Drinking chocolate made by Aztecs.

1360 Leaning Tower of Pisa completed.

1366 Weighing scales invented. Statues of Kilkenny belatedly forbid intermarriage of English and Irish.

1377 Richard II, still a child, made King of England.

1380 John Wycliffe begins translation of the Bible into English, finishing the (handwritten) manuscript the following year (some sources date the completion at 1384).

1387 Geoffrey Chaucer publish Canterbury Tales.

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