Treaty of Tordesillas

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    (Oct. 17, 1797), a peace settlement between France and Austria, signed at Campo Formio (now Campoformido, Italy), a village in Venezia Giulia southwest of Udine, following the defeat of Austria in Napoleon Bonaparte's first Italian campaign.

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    (Jan. 26, 1699), peace settlement that ended hostilities (1683–99) between the Ottoman Empire and the Holy League (Austria, Poland, Venice, and Russia) and transferred Transylvania and much of Hungary from Turkish control to Austrian.

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    (1670), pact by which Charles II of England promised to support French policy in Europe in return for a French subsidy that would free him from financial dependence on Parliament.

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    (Nov. 19, 1794), agreement that assuaged antagonisms between the United States and Great Britain, established a base upon which America could build a sound national economy, and assured its commercial prosperity.

(June 7, 1494), agreement between Spain and Portugal, which aimed at settling conflicts over lands newly discovered or explored by Christopher Columbus and other late 15th-century voyagers.

In 1493, after reports of Columbus' discoveries had reached them, the Spanish rulers Ferdinand and Isabella enlisted papal support for their claims to the New World in order to inhibit the Portuguese and other possible rival claimants. To accommodate them, the Spanish-born pope Alexander VI issued bulls setting up a line of demarcation from pole to pole 100 leagues (about 320 miles) west of the Cape Verde Islands. Spain was given exclusive rights to all newly discovered and undiscovered lands in the region west of the line. Portuguese expeditions were to keep to the east of the line. Neither power was to occupy any territory already in the hands of a Christian ruler.

No other European powers facing the Atlantic Ocean ever accepted this papal disposition or the subsequent agreement deriving from it. King John II of Portugal was dissatisfied because Portugal's rights in the New World were insufficiently affirmed, and the Portuguese would not even have sufficient room at sea for their African voyages. Meeting at Tordesillas, in northwestern Spain, Spanish and Portuguese ambassadors reaffirmed the papal division, but the line itself was moved to 370 leagues (1,185 miles) west of the Cape Verde Islands, or about 46°30 W of Greenwich. Pope Julius II finally sanctioned the change in 1506. The new boundary enabled Portugal to claim the coast of Brazil after its discovery by Pedro Álvares Cabral in 1500. Brazilian exploration and settlement far to the west of the line of demarcation in subsequent centuries laid a firm basis for Brazil's claims to vast areas of the interior of South America.

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Feb 10

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Kasparov loses chess game to computer, 1996

On this day in 1996, after three hours, world chess champion Gary Kasparov loses the first game of a six-game match against Deep Blue, an IBM computer…

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