If you were going to be sent back 500 years tomorrow, so you had one day to prepare, what would you make sure you knew about? I’m talking 21st century knowledge that will give you a massive upper-hand half a millenium in the past.
Physics.
Sanitation and trauma medicine.
Genetically modified crops.
History. I’d want to make sure that I’d hightail it out of areas soon to be afflicted with the Black Plague or in the midst of an Inquisition.
Agricultural knowledge pertinent to where I was going to live.
I figure all the rest is something I can eventually figure out, so long as I don’t starve in the meantime.
Cultivating marijuana for medicinal, recreational use and trade.
Yeh, mon.
Chemistry. Especially chemistry related to medicine.
I’m with PunditLisa. Knowledge of History in the 21st century would be knowledge of the future 500 years ago. You could hook up with the powerful kings of the time and amaze them with your predictive powers.
Of course I would have to tell the king that my predictive powers would not work properly unless I was provided with a constant source of debauchery and sin.
I teach History, and 1505 is not a time period which would thrill me to be sent to. I’d get burned as a witch in a second, or as a heretic. The Reformation hasn’t happened yet, and the Renaissance is only pretty from far away. I wouldn’t trust the Chinese emperors of the period, and the East gets hit with a couple of major earthquakes that year. The Aztecs still rule Mexico, and North America is filled with not very nice Indiges.
If I had to go, could I pick the spot? Amsterdam. Enlightened for the period people, and a better than average chance of surviving for a heretic wizard. 
Guns and plenty of bullets, a polaroid camera with plenty of film so I could tell people I captured their souls, a video camera and a mini dvd player so again I could record people play it back and tell them I have captured their souls, Good running and walking shoes, lots of batteries of all sizes, a bike, a motorcylce or car if possible, a history book, a book of inventions, a stab proof vest, a laser pointer to blind enemies without killing them, a stun gun to stun enemies, a bullhorn, a flashlight.
Ok sorry I just read the OP again so out of all the stuff i said up there I’d just want to know about what historical events happen about the time and area I’d be going to and what inventions came about at the time. Also their attitudes on a wide variety of subjects including religion so I don’t get hung as a witch or something.
Burn the witch!!!
How to manufacture antibiotics.
Find out who was thought of at the time as the world’s smartest person (Erasmus?).
Bone up on their ideas, figure out how to get to them. They are the only one who could remotely handle your superior intelligence without wanting to burn you at the stake. Having a handle on what they are thinking will help you get in their good graces. They will help ease your entry into society. After that, ever so slowly introduce them to some of the things you know. Untold riches follow.
Language. English (study old syntax, and I might just be able to fake being a foreigner), French, German, and Latin if I was going to Europe. Can’t pass myself off as some kind of technological wizard if I can’t even speak to anyone.
I’d be vaccinated against, well, everything!
I think that learning glassblowing & lens-grinding techniques would be good. Lucrative way to earn a living.
Also, I’d learn how to magnetize metal. Lodestones were rare & expensive, & creating magnets = creating compasses.
civil engineering techniques, in particular sanitation systems and plumbing. Herbalism, so I could identify and cultivate medicinal plants. Simple chemistry that would allow me to produce quantities of sulfuric, nitric and hydrochloric acids. Metallurgy too. Industrial engineering so I could design steelmaking and other types of plants.
Well, assuming I have a photographic memory, which is the only way I could learn enough of any subject to survive…
If I was going to try to just stay alive, which would be my main goal:
Religous practices of the predominant church in the area I’d be put into - most likely Latin?
Latin refresher - to understand others in the church
Medicinal hers - to save myself from stupid things to die of like an infected flea bite and to be useful
- with that info, I’d hie me to the nearest convent and pretend to be a mute, pious woman who wanted to become a nun
- in that situation I wouldn’t care if the sisters had me cleaning shit houses, I’d be alive, maybe have access to books and not be required to interact that much with others in the real world
History and language so I could get somewhere interesting and interact freely. Personally I’d rather not stand out, but enough knowledge to back the right horse, so to speak, in terms of finding a comfortable, relatively prosperous position would be a Very Good Thing. I’m not ambitious, I just like my creature comforts. Ooh. How to brew superior ale might be a handy thing to know, or perhaps a high degree of skill preparing exotic foods so I could get a place in a rich person’s kitchen. Roof over the head and all.
The best way to use the recipe for reinforced concrete.