Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama departed Lisbon on his second voyage to India, expanding European maritime trade routes and accelerating global exchange in the Age of Discovery.

Galileo Galilei traveled to Rome to face the Inquisition over his advocacy of heliocentrism, a moment reflecting tensions between emerging scientific inquiry and established authority.

James Oglethorpe founded the British colony of Georgia, envisioned as a buffer against Spanish Florida and as a haven for debtors, shaping early American colonial development.