Birch bark letters
Novgorodians write each other notes on birch bark
From the 11th century, Novgorodians scratched letters on birch bark: IOUs, quarrels, a boy named Onfim's school exercises with drawings. Waterlogged soil has preserved over a thousand of them. Found since 1951, they showed literacy in Rus' was widespread, not confined to monasteries.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 11th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Europe
- 1066 Battle of Hastings — 16 years later
- 1066 Halley's Comet over England — 16 years later
Middle East
- 1025 Avicenna's Canon of Medicine — 25 years earlier
- 1054 East–West Schism — 4 years later
Africa
- c. 1070 The Almoravids found Marrakesh — 20 years later
Asia
- 1044 First gunpowder formulas in the Wujing Zongyao — 6 years earlier
- 1054 Supernova SN 1054 — 4 years later
Alive at the time
- Yaroslav the Wise (aged 72)
- Edward the Confessor (aged 47)
- William the Conqueror (aged 22)
- Omar Khayyam (aged 2)
- Henry IV (aged 0)
- Henry I (aged 42)
- Henry III (aged 34)
- Iziaslav I (aged 26)
- Vsevolod I (aged 20)
- Shen Kuo (aged 19)