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The 1450s: 1450–1459
1450–1459 · worldwide, all places
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Mehmed II dragged seventy ships overland into the Golden Horn and bombarded Constantinople's walls until they broke in May 1453. In England, Richard of York's rivalry with the Lancastrian court slid into the Wars of the Roses, and in Mainz Gutenberg printed his Bible around 1455.
Constantinople's fall ended a thousand years of Byzantium. The Turkish film Conquest 1453 stages the siege from the Ottoman side, and Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 1 dramatizes England's simultaneous collapse in France. Open the 1450s on the StoryTerra map and explore its stories by place.
8 famous stories set in the 1450s
Live snapshot of the top 8 most popular catalogue items (2026-09-05). Click any card to open this entry on the live map.
Browse 16 books and 2 movies set in the 1450s (1450–1459).
Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation
CALIBAN AND THE WITCH is a history of the body in the transition to capitalism. Moving from the peasant revolts of the late Middle Ages to the witch-hunts and the rise of mechanical philosophy, Federici investigates the…
Captive
Matthew Callahan has spent seven years struggling against the insatiable hunger for blood consuming him. Unable to stop the vampire inside from preying on humans, he keeps himself confined to a lonely existence.…
Conquest 1453
After the death of his father Murat II Mehmet II ascends to the Ottoman throne. After braving internal and external enemies he decides to complete what he was destined to do: Conquer Constantinople.
Henry VI, Part 1
Henry VI, Part 1 is an uncompromising celebration of early English nationalism that contrasts the English with the French, portrayed here as effeminate and scheming.A boy king, Henry VI, is on the English throne, and…
The Women of the Cousins' War: The Duchess, the Queen and the King's Mother
Elizabeth Woodville, The White Queen (2009), Margaret Beaufort, The Red Queen (2010), and Jacquetta, Lady Rivers, The Rivers Woman (2011) are the subjects of the first three novels in Philippa Gregory's Cousins' War…
Knowledge of Angels
It is, perhaps, the fifteenth century and the ordered tranquillity of a Mediterranean island is about to be shattered by the appearance of two outsiders: one, a castaway, plucked from the sea by fishermen, whose beliefs…
The Conclave
In 1458 five years after the fall of Constantinople to the Turk eighteen cardinals meet to elect a new pope. Rodrigo Borgia a 27 year old cardinal learns to play a very dangerous game.
Knight's Acre
When Sir Godfrey Tallboys decided to build his house he was thirty-five years old and at the very peak of his career as knight errant. The year 1451, still only eight months old, had been a wonderful one for him. He was…
The 8 stories above are just a sample of the 18 in the catalogue for this entry. For the live 1450–1459 catalogue, use the button above — or browse the whole 15th century. On the live map you can also filter by the exact time the stories take place — any year, decade or century, from BCE to the future.
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