The moment
After a siege of nearly two months, Sultan Mehmed II's army broke through the land walls on 29 May 1453. The last emperor, Constantine XI, died in the fighting, and Mehmed rode to Hagia Sophia and made it a mosque. The thousand-year Roman empire of the East was gone; the next year the sultan installed Gennadios II as patriarch, and the Orthodox church lived on under Ottoman rule.
People: Mehmed II, Constantine XI, Gennadios II Scholarios