More context:
I’m presently writing curriculum for early middle school. These students tend to have a limited grasp of US history and even less of world history.
In attempting to connect our present world with the late 1400s, I’m focusing on massively significant events that occurred during that time (e.g. invention of the printing press) or happened as an immediate result (the Columbian Exchange)
The aim here is to have students know US history in the context of world history.