February 2– Acting on rumors of a rebellion in England, led by a person posing as Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick, King Henry VII convenes a meeting of the Privy Council at Sheen Palace in Richmond, to discuss a response to the situation. The first measure is to bring Edward, son of the last Earl of Warwick, out of imprisonment at the Tower of London and to parade him through London to dispel the rumors.
February 8– Arrest warrants for treason are issued by the English Privy Council for Henry Bodrugan, John Beaumont and other persons accused of having traveled to the counties of Devon and Cornwall to "stir up sedition and rebellion.
February 26– At the insistence of Cardinal Rodrigo de BorjaPope Innocent VIII, authorizes a Christian crusade and against the Muslim Moors, to start on September 1 and to be funded for one year.
March 27– Pope Innocent VIII issues an order designating the Roman Catholic Archbishop of St. Andrews, Robert Blackadder, as the Primate of All Scotland, outraging the bishops in Glasgow and the rest of Scotland.
April 27– In Spain, the town of Vélez in Muslim Granada becomes the first conquest by the invasion by Christian Castile and Aragon, surrendering after 10 days.
After failed attempts by King Ferdinand of Aragon to negotiate Granada's surrender of the city of Malaqa, the siege of Málaga begins, with the Granadan General Hamet el Zegri defending against a larger contingent of Aragonese and Castilian troops. At the same time, the Spanish fleet blocks the harbor and all access to Malaga from the sea. The city surrenders after three months.
The Kingdom of Portugal dispatches Pêro da Covilhã and Afonso de Paiva across Europe and Africa to inquire about a sea route to India, as well as to inquire about the enigmatic Prester John. Covilha reaches Ethiopia but is not allowed to leave, while de Paiva is never heard from again.
May 19– The witch-hunters' manual Malleus Maleficarum, written by Heinrich Kramer with Jacob Sprenger, is approved by Catholic theologians from the University of Cologne and at Speyer in the Holy Roman Empire. The preface states that all readers should know that "in the year since the Birth of Our Lord 1487, in the fifth indiction, on Saturday, the 19th day of May, at five in the afternoon or thereabouts," professors Henricus Institoris and Jacobus Sprenger certified the text on behalf of Pope Innocent VIII. The preface notes that although some preachers of the Word of God claim in sermons "that sorceresses do not exist", the authors' intention is "to alleviate this ignorance" and to "exterminate the sorceresses" by "appropriate methods of sentencing."
July 9– The Khanate of Khazan surrenders after a siege of seven weeks, and Khazan becomes a vassal of the Russians in the Grand Principality of Moscow.
August 13– The siege of Málaga ends, when the Spanish take the Granadan city. Most of the 11,000 surviving residents are taken prisoner and then sold into slavery in Castile and Andalusia.
October 1– Royal assent is given by King James III of Scotland to acts passed by the Scottish Parliament, including the Royal Burghs Act 1487 (requiring annual meetings of the commissioners of Scotland's town governments); the annexation of Lochmaben Castle; the Sea Fishing Act (regulating the herring industry); and the Goods of Convicts Act (allowing the confiscation of possessions of persons arrested for trespassing).
November 9– The second parliament of King Henry VII assembles at Westminster with John Mondurant as Speaker of the House of Commons. The parliament lasts for slightly more than five weeks.
December 8–Bartolomeu Dias and his crew, sailing southward along the African coast in the caravelsSão Cristóvão and São Pantaleão arrive at what is now Namibia's Walvis Bay, which Dias calls O Golfo de Santa Maria da Conceição.
December 16– The war between Hungary and Austria is ended with an armistice signed at Sankt Pölten between Duke Albert III of Saxony (on behalf of the Holy Roman Empire) and Hungary's King Matthias Corvinus.
December 18– The second parliament of King Henry VII is dissolved in England after 39 days.
↑Gerald Prenderghast, Richard III and the Princes in the Tower: The Possible Fates of Edward V and Richard of York (McFarland, 2017) p.108 ISBN 9781476625904
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↑"Inquisition", by Joseph Bloetzer, in The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 8, ed. by Charles Herbermann (Robert Appleman Co., 1910
↑Joseph F. O'Callaghan, The Last Crusade in the West: Castile and the Conquest of Granada (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) p.155 ISBN 9780812209358
↑Bradley, S. (2019). John Morton: Adversary of Richard III, Power Behind the Tudors. Amberley Publishing. pp.51–52. ISBN978-1-4456-7963-1.
12Alexeev, Yuri (2003). Petrov, Alexey (ed.). «И многих татар топили...». Судовые рати Ивана III ['And many Tatars were drowned...'. Ivan's III Naval Troops]. Rodina. Medival Rus' (in Russian) (12): 44–47.
↑Mackay, Christopher S. (2009). The Hammer of Witches: A Complete Translation of the Malleus Maleficarum (1 volume). Cambridge University Press. pp.74–76. ISBN978-0-511-53982-4.
↑Wyatt, David K.; Wichienkeeo, Aroonrut, eds. (1995). Chiang Mai Chronicle. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books. ISBN974-7047-67-5.
12Moal, Laurence (2009). "Nantes en 1487: une ville en résistance"[Nantes in 1487: A city in resistance]. Mémoires de la Société d'histoire et d'archéologie de Bretagne (in French). 87: 75–98.
↑Mote, Frederick W. (1998). "The Ch'eng-hua and Hung-chih reigns, 1465—1505". In Mote, Frederick W.; Twitchett, Denis C (eds.). The Cambridge History of China Volume 7: The Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644, Part 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p.343. ISBN0521243327.
↑Abel Fontoura Costa, Às portas da Índia em 1484 (Imprensa da Armada, 1935) p.31
↑Július Bartl, et al., Slovak History: Chronology & Lexicon. Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 2002) p.206 ISBN 0-86516-444-4
↑Jose Rogelio Alvarez, ed. (2003). "Templo Mayor". Enciclopedia de Mexico (in Spanish). Vol.XIII. Mexico City: Sabeca International. ISBN978-1-56409-063-8.
↑Paul Philip Mariani, China's Church Divided: Bishop Louis Jin and the Post-Mao Catholic Revival (Harvard University Press, 2025) ISBN 978-0-674-29765-4.