1250 Gun invented in China.

1252 The flioria gold coins created in Florence - it would become the first international currency.

1268 Invention of eyeglasses, according to some sources; others date it as 1285 or 1289.

1270 Eighth (final) Crusade.

1271 Marco Polo leaves Venice for China, where he would live and prosper for 17 years, returning to Venice where he died in 1323.

1273 Thomas Aquinas stops after 7 years of working on Summa Theologica, the basis of Catholic teaching.

1280 The first mechanical clocks made.

1282 The Mafia begins operating in Sicily, Italy.

1284 University of Cambridge founded.

1289 The first mention of reading glasses (spectacles) is found in a 1289 manuscript when a member of the Popozo family wrote: "I am so debilitated by age that without the glasses known as spectacles, I would no longer be able to read or write."

1290 Windmill invented. Jews expelled from England. (Jews arrived in England in 1066 as financiers for the then new French king William)

1293 Marco Polo starts writing The Travels of Marco Polo

1295 Glassmaking starts in Italy.