Five canonical dates
The things schools used to teach — and a couple of dates worth getting right.
5 questions. Pick an answer to see the explanation. Share your result at the end.
When was Rome traditionally founded?
The traditional Roman foundation date is 21 April 753 BC, when (according to legend) the twin brothers Romulus and Remus founded the city on the Palatine Hill. Archaeology suggests continuous settlement from approximately the 8th century BC, broadly consistent with the traditional date. 509 BC is the founding of the Republic; 27 BC the founding of the Empire under Augustus; 476 AD the fall of the Western Empire.
When is the Western Roman Empire conventionally said to have fallen?
The conventional date is 4 September 476 AD, when the Germanic general Odoacer deposed the last Western emperor, the teenage Romulus Augustulus. 410 was the first sack of Rome by Alaric and the Visigoths. 1453 was the fall of the Eastern (Byzantine) Empire to the Ottomans — a thousand years later. 330 was the founding of Constantinople as the new eastern capital.
Who crowned Charlemagne Emperor of the Romans, and when?
Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne *Imperator Romanorum* in St Peter's Basilica in Rome on Christmas Day, 800. The act was politically contested — the existing Roman Empire, ruled from Constantinople, did not recognise it — and established the principle that Western Christian Europe could have its own emperor. The Holy Roman Empire, which dated itself from this coronation, lasted until Napoleon dissolved it in 1806.
What major scientific work was published in 1543, conventionally marking the start of the Scientific Revolution?
Copernicus's *De Revolutionibus*, published as he was dying in 1543, proposed that the Earth orbited the Sun rather than the reverse. Galileo's *Dialogue* was 1632 (and led to his trial); Kepler's *Astronomia Nova* was 1609 (the first two laws of planetary motion); Newton's *Principia* was 1687 (and ends the Scientific Revolution rather than starting it). 1543 also saw Vesalius's *De Humani Corporis Fabrica*, the foundational text of modern anatomy.
In what year did Constantinople fall to the Ottoman Empire, ending the Byzantine Empire?
Sultan Mehmed II's army captured Constantinople on 29 May 1453, ending the thousand-year Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire. The city was renamed Istanbul and became the Ottoman capital. 1204 was the sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade. 1517 was the Ottoman conquest of Mamluk Egypt. 1683 was the failed Ottoman siege of Vienna — the high-water mark of Ottoman expansion.