The Oirat Mongols defeat the Ming Dynasty army in the Battle of Tumu Fortress and capture the Zhengtong Emperor of China; the latter is officially deposed while his brother ascends as the Jingtai Emperor the following year.

Albert III Achilles, margrave of Brandenburg, had received the Principality of Ansbach on the division of territory that followed his father's death in 1440.

Although possessed of meager resources, he had soon taken a leading place among the German princes and is especially prominent in resisting the attempts of the towns to obtain self-government.

Albert had formed a league in 1443 directed mainly against Nuremberg, over which members of his family had formerly exercised the rights of burgrave.

It was not until 1448, however, that he had found a pretext for attack.

On August 13, 1449, Albert captures Castle Lichtenau, a Nuremberger possession, in the course of what will later be known as the First Margrave War.

Hunyadi, having withdrawn his battered army after the Second Battle of Kosovo, returns to Serbia in 1449 to lead a successful punitive expedition against the Ottomans.

Abdal-Latif Mirza does not remain loyal to his father.

Angry over the fact that he is to be passed over in the transfer of rule of Samarkand, he revolts while Ulugh Beg is marching to retake Khorasan.

He defeats his father at Dimashq, near Samarkand, in the fall of 1449.

Ulugh Beg later decides to surrender himself, and Abdal-Latif Mirza grants him permission to take a pilgrimage to Mecca, but while Ulugh Beg is on his way he is ordered murdered by his son and is beheaded in October.

(Eventually, his reputation will be rehabilitated by his relative, 'Abdullah (1450–1451), who will place Ulugh Beg's remains in the tomb of Timur in Samarkand, where they will be found by archeologists in 1941.)

This earns Abdal-Latif Mirza the infamous nickname "Padarkush" (from Tajik "patricide").

A few days later he also has his brother 'Abd al-'Aziz killed.

In this manner he becomes ruler of Transoxiana.

Pisanello lives from December 1448 until the end of his life in Naples, where he enjoys great repute at the Aragonese court.

The poet Porcellio even writes an ode in his honor.

He may have lived five or six years longer, but there is no more mention of him in the records.

Bernardo Rossellino, a noted Florentine architect who had worked on the Duomo from 1441-44, works with Leon Battista Alberti on the Palazzo Rucellai in Florence from 1446 to 1451.

Bernardo’s sculpture reveals a clarity of form visible in his major work, the tomb of Leonardo Bruni in Santa Croce, Florence, executed in 1444-47, for which he employs a triumphal arch to create a new type of sepulchral monument.

Rogier van der Weyden, official city painter of Brussels, visits Ferrara in 1449, where the Flemish master's characteristically tense linearism influences the young local painter Cosimo Tura, whose aesthetic is grounded in the illusionistic, antiquarian style of the Paduan artist, collector, and art dealer Francesco Squarcione.

Henry, King John's fifth son, is now the first and only of the House of Aviz.

Mistrusted by King Afonso V and the Duke of Braganza's sons as a member of the House of Aviz, and mistrusted by his dead brother's friends who have never accepted his betrayal (and rejected by his old sister Isabella, in Burgundy), Henry retreats to his land in Sagres, the southernmost and westernmost tip of Portugal—and Europe.

Here, living a secluded and religious life, he will concentrate his efforts on the sailing expeditions of his men, becoming worldly renowned as discoverer of never before seen oceans and coasts (Madeira, Azores, the African coast to Guinea, and, after his death, Cape Hope, India, Japan, Canada, Brazil, etc.).

Sforza has in the meantime also received the seigniory of other cities of the duchy, including Lodi, and starts to carefully plan the conquest of the ephemeral republic, allying with William, the third son of Marquess John Jacob of Montferrat.

Sforza, who has secretly negotiated with Venice during the entire campaign, now switches sides, renouncing his Milan connection and allying himself with Venice.

Refused entry by the Milanese in answer to his treachery, Sforza besieges the city.