Xerxes whips the sea
A storm wrecks his bridges, so the king has the sea flogged
Xerxes built two bridges across the Hellespont, but a storm destroyed them. According to Herodotus, the king had fetters thrown into the strait, the water given three hundred lashes and branded with hot irons. The new bridges were made of 674 ships tied together.
Wikipedia (English) · 5th century BC
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Europe
- 490 BC Battle of Marathon — 10 years earlier
- 480 BC Battle of Thermopylae — same year
- 480 BC Battle of Salamis — same year
Asia
- c. 500 BC Sun Tzu's The Art of War — 20 years earlier
- c. 483 BC Death of the Buddha — 3 years earlier
- 479 BC Death of Confucius — 1 year later
Alive at the time
- Confucius (aged 71)
- Leonidas I (aged 60)
- Xerxes I (aged 38)
- Sophocles (aged 17)
- Pericles (aged 15)
- Herodotus (aged 4)
- Phidias (aged 0)
- Heraclitus (aged 55)
- Themistocles (aged 44)