History — Page 7
Surprising historical events
152 facts
The Leaning Tower of Pisa began to lean while it was still being built, on its first floors.
In 1178 the soft clay and sand underneath gave way on one side. Work stopped for almost a hundred years, and later…
Louis XIV reigned over France for 72 years, the longest reign in European history.
The 'Sun King' came to the throne in 1643, aged just four, and reigned until his death in 1715. He outlived his son…
The 1918 'Spanish flu' did not start in Spain.
During the First World War, the countries at war censored news about the disease. Spain was neutral and its press…
The Incas had no writing, but they recorded numbers and information with knots on cords called quipus.
A quipu had a main cord with dozens or hundreds of strings hanging from it. The type and position of each knot showed…
Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born on the same day: 12 February 1809.
Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, England, into a wealthy family; Lincoln was born in a log cabin in Kentucky. One…
According to Herodotus, the Persian king Xerxes had the sea whipped 300 times after a storm destroyed his bridges.
In 480 BC, Xerxes had bridges of boats built across the Hellespont strait to invade Greece. When a storm broke them…
A Roman vomitorium was not a room for vomiting, but a passageway for crowds leaving the amphitheatre.
The word comes from the Latin 'vomere', 'to spew out', because these passages poured thousands of people onto the…
Senet, played in ancient Egypt more than 5,000 years ago, is one of the oldest known board games.
The board had 30 squares in three rows of ten, and pieces moved forward when sticks or knucklebones were thrown. Over…
