Five who began something
Rome, the Library, the Reformation, the Mongols, and the Renaissance.
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.
Under which Ptolemaic king was the Library of Alexandria founded?
Ptolemy I Soter — one of Alexander's senior generals who took Egypt at Alexander's death in 323 BC — founded the Library and its associated research institute, the Mouseion, in the early 3rd century BC. The major expansion came under his son Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who reportedly authorized agents to buy or seize every Greek-language book in the Mediterranean world.
What did Martin Luther do on 31 October 1517 that triggered the Reformation?
Luther's 95 Theses — a list of objections to the Catholic Church's practice of selling indulgences — were (by tradition) posted on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg on 31 October 1517. He did later translate the New Testament into German (published 1522) and marry the former nun Katharina von Bora (1525), but those events are not the symbolic starting point of the Reformation.
In what year was Temüjin acclaimed Genghis Khan, founding the Mongol Empire?
Temüjin was acclaimed Genghis Khan at the kurultai (tribal council) of 1206, at the age of approximately 44. 1258 is the Mongol sack of Baghdad; 1279 is the completion of the conquest of Southern Song China under Kublai Khan; 1368 is the fall of the Mongol Yuan dynasty in China.
Where is the Italian Renaissance conventionally said to have begun?
The conventional date for the start of the Italian Renaissance is the early 14th century in Florence, with the early humanists (Petrarch, Boccaccio) and proto-Renaissance painters (Giotto). The mature 15th-century Florentine Renaissance under the Medici — Brunelleschi's dome, Botticelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo's early work — is the period most associated with the term.