1420 Portuguese reach the Madeira Islands. 

1427 Portuguese reach the Azores. 

1437 Henry of Portugal founds Portuguese Colonia Institute. 

1456 Portuguese reach the Cape Verde Islands. 

1487-1488 Bartholomew Diaz sails around Cape of Good Hope, South Africa. 

1492 Christopher Columbus reaches the West Indies; he is the first European to reach Americas since Vikings. 

1494  Treaty of Tordesilla. Pope divides Americas between Spain and Portugal - ignored by other  European countries. 

1496 Santo Domingo founded - it is the first European town in the Americas. 

1497 John Cabot discovers Newfoundland . 

1498 Vasco da Gama reaches India by sea by rounding Cape of Good Hope, South Africa. 

1510 First African slaves taken to America. 

1513 Vasco Nunez de Balboa reaches Pacific Ocean overland from the Atlantic. 

1519-1521  Portuguese under Ferdinand Magellan first to sail around the world (Magellan dies during the journey, killed in the Philippines in 1521 by local people, but his crew completes the
voyage). 

1519-1521 Hernan Cortes conquers the Aztecs. 

1525 Diego Ribeiro, official mapmaker for Spain, makes first scientific charts covering the Pacific. 

1535 Jacques Cartier sails up the St. Lawrence River. 

1540   Hernando de Soto discovers the Mississippi River. 

1555 Tobacco brought from America to Spain. 

1576 Martin Frobisher, English explorer, sets out to find a northwest passage to China; he reaches the
Canadian coast, and Frobisher Bay is named after him. 

1577-1580    English Seaman Francis Drake sails around the world. 

1584 Sir Walter Raleigh sends an exploring party to Virginia in North America, followed a year later by a colonizing expedition, which fails. 

1600    East India Company founded in England. 

1607 John Smith founds colony of Virginia at Jamestown. 

1608  French colony of Quebec founded. 

1609 Henry Hudson sails up Hudson River. 

1620 Pilgrim Fathers sail from England in the Mayflower to found Massachusetts. 

1625 Dutch found New Amsterdam (later New York). 

1643 Colony of Maryland established.