15th century in the context of "Banking"

Factory was the common name during the medieval and early modern eras for an entrepôt – which was essentially an early form of free-trade zone or transshipment point. At a factory, local inhabitants could interact with foreign merchants, often known as factors. First established in Europe, factories eventually spread to many other parts of the world. The origin of the word factory is from Latin factorium 'place of doers, makers' (Portuguese: feitoria; Dutch: factorij; French: factorerie, comptoir).

The factories established by European states in Africa, Asia and the Americas from the 15th century onward also tended to be official political dependencies of those states. These have been seen, in retrospect, as the precursors of colonial expansion.

Sikhs (Gurmukhi: ਸਿੱਖ, romanized: Sikkh, Punjabi pronunciation: [sɪkkʰ]) are an ethnoreligious group and stateless nation originating from the Indus Valley Civilization. They are most predominantly followers of Sikhism an ethnic religion that originated in the late 15th century in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, based on the teachings of Guru Nanak. The term Sikh has its origin in the Sanskrit word śiṣya, meaning 'seeker', 'disciple' or 'student'.

According to Article I of Chapter 1 of the Sikh Rehat Maryada ('code of conduct'), the definition of Sikh is: Any human being who faithfully believes in

In the Holy Roman Empire, the collective term free and imperial cities (German: Freie und Reichsstädte), briefly worded free imperial city (Freie Reichsstadt, Latin: urbs imperialis libera), was used from the 15th century to denote a self-ruling city that had a certain amount of autonomy and was represented in the Imperial Diet.

An imperial city held the status of imperial immediacy, and was subordinate only to the Holy Roman Emperor, as opposed to a territorial city or town (Landstadt), which was subordinate to a territorial prince – be it an ecclesiastical lord (prince-bishop, prince-abbot), or a secular prince (duke (Herzog), margrave, count (Graf), etc.).

The Christianization of Lithuania (Lithuanian: Lietuvos krikštas) occurred in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, initiated by the Lithuanian royals Jogaila, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, and his cousin Vytautas the Great. It signified the official adoption of Catholic Christianity by Lithuania, the last pagan country in Europe. However, Lithuania's first ruler to be baptised was Mindaugas in 1250s. This event ended one of the most complicated and lengthiest processes of Christianization in European history.

Year 1500 (MD) was a leap year starting on Wednesday in the Julian calendar. It was the last year of the 15th century. The year 1500 was not a leap year in the proleptic Gregorian calendar.

The year 1500 was seen as being especially important by many Christians in Europe, who thought it would bring the beginning of the end of the world. Their belief was based on the phrase "half-time after the time", when the apocalypse was due to occur, which appears in the Book of Revelation and was seen as referring to 1500. This time was also just after the Old World's discovery of the Americas in 1492, and therefore was influenced greatly by the New World.

Ultramarine is a deep blue pigment which was originally made by grinding lapis lazuli into a powder. Its lengthy grinding and washing process makes the natural pigment quite valuable—roughly ten times more expensive than the stone it comes from. Between the 14th and 15th centuries, it was as expensive as gold in Europe.

The name ultramarine comes from the Latin word ultramarinus. The word means 'beyond the sea', as the pigment was imported by Italian traders during the 14th and 15th centuries from mines in Afghanistan. Much of the expansion of ultramarine can be attributed to Venice which historically was the port of entry for lapis lazuli in Europe.