In 1494 Leonardo da Vinci started working for Ludovico Sforza, the duke of Milan.

Dendrologists, who study the growth patterns and structures of trees, say that Leonardo's Rule of Trees is spot on.

On 24 February 1848 news came from Paris that King Louis-Philippe had abdicated.

On 18 February 1478, George, duke of Clarence was murdered in the Tower of London on the orders of his brother Edward IV, king of England. Families!

Biographies have been written about Louise of Savoy and her children Marguerite of Angoulème and Francis I but few, if any, point out their cruel sides.

Marguerite was born in 1492 in Angoulême. Her mother, Louise of Savoy, was sixteen. Her father, Charles, Count of Angoulême, a member of the House of Valois-Angoulême, was thirty-three.

In 1483 two little girls arrived at Chateau Amboise to be brought up by the Regent of France, Anne of Beaujeu.

Louis XI’s daughter, Anne of France, was born when he was the Dauphin living on charity in the splendid Court of the duke of Burgundy.