May 1476: In May 1476 Columbus was a crew member of a convoy of ships that left the Greek island of Chios bound for Lisbon, England and Flanders. The convoy was attacked by a French and Portuguese war fleet near the southern Portuguese port of Lagos. Columbus's ship was wrecked and he drowned. This results in Colombus not partitioning the Spanish crown to find a faster route to India, delaying the European colonization of the New World.
9 December 1476: On his 29th birthday the Chenghua Emperor of Ming China realizes that he is falling to the influence of the Eunuchs while they shower him with gifts. With this realization Chenghua decides he must take action in order to re-establish control of his court and his government, and thus he purges the Eunuchs inside the Ming Court. The most powerful and influential Eunuch, Wang Zhi escaped the Ming court and the Emperor's wrath. Upon hearing of Zhi's escape Chenghua ordered his forces to pursue Zhi and kill him. Upon meeting Zhi, Chenghua's army discovered he was leading a peasant rebellion. This made the Emperor livid, and he took out his anger on random court nobles who he deemed as "disobedient." This lead to the nobility to rebel against the Emperor under Zhi's leadership. To suppress this rebellion, the Chenghua Emperor himself went to the battlefield and the two forces clashed. After a long battle, both the Chenghue Emperor and Wung Zhi died, and Chenghue's son Honghzi succeeded him becoming the new Emperor. Hongzhi reversed the oppressive policies of his fallen father, giving the nobility and the common people more freedoms as well as lowering taxes. With the Ming Court purged of inept and influential officials the Hongzhi Emperor replaces the former court with a Confucian meritocracy, bringing in effective and competent administrators and officials. Hongzhi's reforms end up strengthening the Ming Dynasty, entering it into a new era of prosperity.