Mittelalter
19 cards from across every topic, each citing a source. Tap one to open it in the feed.
- "Arabic numerals" are an Indian invention.
The signs 0 to 9 emerged in India between the 1st and 4th centuries, the place-value system around 600. Arab and …
- An hour used to be longer in summer than in winter.
Until the late Middle Ages, Europeans divided the time between sunrise and sunset into twelve hours, however long the …
- How a medieval trebuchet hurled stones 300 metres.
A counterweight trebuchet is a lever on an axle: the short arm carries a box holding several tonnes of stones or earth …
- How a monk turned a hymn into "do re mi".
In the 11th century Guido of Arezzo used the hymn "Ut queant laxis": each of its first six half-lines starts one scale …
- How old shirts turned into books.
European paper was made from linen and hemp rags until the 19th century. At Fabriano a waterwheel drove three wooden …
- How our year count began, and why there's no year 0.
In 525, the monk Dionysius Exiguus in Rome wanted to calculate Easter tables and counted years from his estimate of …
- Medieval people already knew the Earth was round.
Educated people had known the Earth was a sphere since Aristotle in the 4th century BC; medieval textbooks such as …
- Nobody reached 30 in the Middle Ages – that's a maths error.
The low life expectancy of past eras is an average dragged down by high infant mortality. Among the English peerage it …
- Oxford University is older than the Aztec Empire.
Teaching in Oxford is documented from 1096; the university grew rapidly after 1167, when English students had to leave …
- Tally sticks: medieval receipts that burned down Parliament.
Before paper was common, debts were cut as notches into a wooden stick, which was then split lengthwise: creditor and …
- The fork was considered indecent in Europe for centuries.
In Byzantium the table fork was common by the 4th century and in Italy from the 11th. In northern Europe it caused …
- The iron maiden is younger than the steam engine.
No source mentions an iron maiden before the 19th century. The famous Nuremberg version went on show from about 1802 …
- The medieval chastity belt is a museum fake.
There is no credible evidence for chastity belts before the 15th century – so crusaders cannot have used them. The …
- The pandemic that killed every second European.
Between 1346 and 1353, the Black Death, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, raged through Europe, North Africa and …
- The word algorithm is a man's name.
Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi worked in 9th-century Baghdad. His book on calculation appeared in Latin as "Algoritmi …
- Vikings never wore horned helmets. Blame Wagner.
Not a single Viking helmet with horns has ever been found; warriors of the years 800 to 1050 wore plain iron or leather …
- Why 'quarantine' literally means 'forty days'.
In 1377 the port city of Ragusa, today's Dubrovnik, ordered ships arriving from plague areas to wait in isolation for …
- Why rich merchants were nicknamed 'pepper sacks'.
In the Middle Ages, pepper travelled thousands of kilometres from India to Europe, through many hands and customs …
- Zero as a number is only 1,400 years old.
Earlier systems knew zero at most as a placeholder; Roman numerals didn't even have that. In 628, the Indian …