1497

Events 
 July 8 – Vasco da Gama leaves Lisbon, Portugal for is first trip through the Cape of Good Hope to India.
 Spanish Empire: Melilla is captured by Castile.
 Girolamo Savonarola, priest and leader of Florence, Italy burns what he believes is immoral art in Piazza della Signoria. Savonarola is excommunicated and burned alive in that same location later in the same year.

 Deaths 
 February 6 – Johannes Ockeghem, Belgian composer (b. 1410)