Year 1496 (MCDXCVI) was a leap year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events January–December February – Pietro Bembo's Petri Bembi de Aetna Angelum Chalabrilem liber, a description of a journey to Mount Etna, is published in Venice by Aldus Manutius, the first book printed in the old-style serif or humanist typeface cut by Francesco Griffo (known from the 20th century as Bembo) and with early adoption of the semicolon (dated 1495 according to the more veneto). February 24 – King Henry VII of England signs the commercial treaty Intercursus Magnus with Venice, Florence, and the cities of the Hanseatic League and the Netherlands. March 5 – Henry VII of England issues letters patent to Italian-born adventurer John Cabot and his sons, authorizing them to discover unknown lands. March 10 – Christopher Columbus leaves Hispaniola for Spain, ending his second visit to the Western Hemisphere. During his time here he has forcibly subjugated the island, enslaved the Taíno, and laid the basis for a system of land grants tied to the Taíno's enslavement. June 12 – Jesus College, Cambridge, is founded. July – Spanish forces under Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba capture Atella after a siege. Among the prisoners is the French viceroy of Naples, the Comte de Montpensier. Ferdinand II of Naples is restored to his throne. August 5 – Bartholomew Columbus, brother of Christopher Columbus, formally founds the city of Santo Domingo (first settled in March) on Hispaniola (in the modern-day Dominican Republic), making it the oldest permanent European settlement in the New World. September 21–25 – James IV of Scotland invades Northumberland, in support of the pretender to the English throne, Perkin Warbeck. October 20 – Joanna of Castile, second daughter of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, heiress to Castile, marries the archduke Philip, heir through his mother to the Burgundian Netherlands, and through his father to the Holy Roman Empire. December 5 – King Manuel I of Portugal issues a decree ordering the expulsion of "heretics" from the country. Date unknown – Jan de Groote, a Dutchman, obtains a grant for the north ferry from the mainland of Scotland to Orkney, from King James IV of Scotland. Births March 18 – Mary Tudor, Queen of Louis XII of France, daughter of Henry VII of England (d. 1533) May 12 – King Gustav I of Sweden (d.