Negative numbers appear for the first time…

…Réunion; he calls them Dina Margabin, Dina Arobi.

The three uninhabited islands, located five hundred miles (eight hundred and five kilometers) east of Madagascar, are encountered by chance during a Portuguese exploratory expedition of the coast of the Bay of Bengal led by Tristão da Cunha.

The expedition runs into a cyclone and is forced to change course.

Thus, the ship Cirne of the captain Diogo Fernandes Pereira comes into view of Réunion island on February 9, 1507.

They call the island "Santa Apolonia" ("Saint Apollonia") in honor of that day’s saint.

Mauritius, encountered during the same expedition, receives the name of "Cirne" and Rodrigues that of "Diogo Fernandes".

Five years later, the islands are visited by Dom Pedro de Mascarenhas, after whom the whole region will be named in 1528.

The Portuguese take no interest in these isolated islands, being that they are already established in Asia in Goa, on the coast of Malabar, on the island of Ceylon and on the Malaysian coast.

Their main African base is in Mozambique; the Portuguese navigators therefore prefer to use the Mozambique Channel to go to India.

The Comoros at the north end of the channel prove to be a more practical port of call.

Thus no permanent colony is established on the island by the Portuguese.

...establishes ports on the nearby islands of Bourbon and Île-de-France (today's Réunion and ...

Levasseur and John Taylor now perpetrate one of piracy's greatest exploits: the capture of the Portuguese great galleon Nossa Senhora do Cabo (Our Lady of the Cape) or Virgem Do Cabo (The Virgin of the Cape), loaded full of treasures belonging to the Bishop of Goa, also called the Patriarch of the East Indies, and the Viceroy of Portugal, who are both on board returning home to Lisbon.

The pirates are able to board the vessel without firing a single broadside, because the Cabo had been damaged in a storm, and to avoid capsizing the crew had dumped all of its seventy-two cannon overboard, then anchored off Réunion island to undergo repairs. (This incident will later be used by Robert Louis Stevenson in his novel "Treasure Island", where the galleon is referred to as The Viceroy of the Indies in the account given by the character Long John Silver).

The booty consists of bars of gold and silver, dozens of boxes full of golden Guineas, diamonds, pearls, silk, art and religious objects from the Santa Catarina Cathedral in Goa, including the Flaming Cross of Goa made of pure gold, inlaid with diamonds, rubies and emeralds.

It is so heavy that it requires three men to carry it over to Levasseur's ship.

The treasure is so huge (estimated one hundred million pounds in 1968) that the pirates do not bother to rob the people on board, something they normally would have done.

When the loot is divided, each pirate receives at least fifty thousand golden Guineas (adjusted for inflation to 2008: seven million five hundred thousand pounds), as well as forty-two diamonds each.

Levasseur and Taylor split the remaining gold, silver, and other objects, with Levasseur taking the golden cross.

Levasseur is eventually captured near Fort Dauphin, Madagascar, then taken to Saint-Denis, Réunion and at 5 p.m. on July 7, 1730, hanged for piracy.

Slavery is abolished in Réunion on December 20, 1848 (this day will be celebrated every year since 1981).

"Île de la Réunion" was the name given to the island in 1793 by a decree of the Convention Nationale (the elected revolutionary constituent assembly) with the fall of the House of Bourbon in France, and the name commemorates the union of revolutionaries from Marseille with the National Guard in Paris, which took place on August 10, 1792.

In 1801, the island was renamed "Île Bonaparte", after First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte.

During the Napoleonic Wars, the island was invaded by a Royal Navy squadron led by Commodore Josias Rowley in 1810, who used the old name of "Bourbon".

When it was restored to France by the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the island retained the name of "Bourbon" until the fall of the restored Bourbons during the French Revolution of 1848, when the island was once again given the name "Île de la Réunion".