1478

January–December

• January 14 - Novgorod surrenders to Ivan III, Grand Prince of Moscow.
• January 15 - Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York is married to Anne de Mowbray, 8th Countess of Norfolk.
• February 18 - George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence, convicted of treason against his older brother Edward IV of England, is privately executed in the Tower of London.
• April 26 - The Pazzi Family attack Lorenzo de' Medici, and kill his brother Giuliano, during High Mass in Florence Cathedral.
• May 14 - The Siege of Shkodra begins.
• November - Eskender succeeds his father Baeda Maryam, as Emperor of Ethiopia, at the age of six.
• November 1 - The Spanish Inquisition begins.
• December 28 - Battle of Giornico: Swiss troops defeat the Milanese.

  Date unknown

• Lorenzo de' Medici becomes sole ruler of Florence.
• The Demak Sultanate gains independence from Majapahit, after a civil war.
• The Fourth Siege of Krujë, Albania by the Ottoman Empire, concludes and results in the town's capture, after the failure of three prior sieges.
• Vladislav II of Bohemia makes peace with Hungary.
• Possibly the first reference to cricket, in "criquet", as discovered in France by Rowland Bowen in the 20th century. It has been dismissed by some and presaged with Edward II's "Creag" by others.
• Mondino de Liuzzi's Anathomia corporis humani, the first complete published anatomical text, is first printed.