1503
year
Year 1503 (MDIII) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar.
Events
January–March
January 20 – Seville in Castile is awarded exclusive rights to trade with the New World.
January 24 – Construction of the Henry VII Chapel at Westminster Abbey begins in the perpendicular Gothic style, the final stage of English Gothic art.
February 13 – Challenge of Barletta: Thirteen Italian knights defeat thirteen French knights, near Barletta.
February 23 – Third Italian War: Battle of Ruvo – The Spanish defeat the French in Italy.
March 15 – Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama and sailors of his Portuguese India Armada become the first Europeans to sight the Seychelles islands as Thomé Lopes notes the discovery of what will later be called Silhouette Island.
April–June
April 2 – The Kingdom of Cochin (ruled by a Portuguese-installed raja, Unni Ramman Koyil II in modern-day India's Kerala state) is invaded by 50,000 Nair troops of the Zamorin of Calicut.
April 21 – Third Italian War: Battle of Seminara – Spanish forces under Fernando de Andrade de las Mariñas defeat the French under Bernard Stewart, 4th Lord of Aubigny, who is captured, in Calabria.
April 28 – Third Italian War: Battle of Cerignola – Spanish forces under Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba defeat the French under Louis d'Armagnac, Duke of Nemours, who is killed, in Apulia. This is considered to be the first battle in history won by gunpowder small arms.
The public source identifies “1503” as year. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around year.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6141. The first chronological checks are 1503.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “1503” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.