The word "assassin" comes from a nickname for the Nizari Ismailis of Alamut.
Their targeted killings so alarmed the crusaders that the word entered European languages. In 1256 the fortress surrendered to the Mongols.
More amazing facts
- 1250 · 1260 · 1517 The Mongols were stopped at Ain Jalut by former slaves.
- 1250 · 1905 Colonial Rhodesia refused for decades to admit that Great Zimbabwe was built by Africans.
- 1250 · 2012 The moai of Easter Island may have "walked". Island tradition says the statues walked on their own, and in 2012 researchers showed how: 18 people with ropes rocked an upright 5-tonne replica forward.
- 1257 For decades scientists saw traces of one of the biggest eruptions in thousands of years in Greenland and Antarctic ice without knowing where the volcano was. Only in 2013 was it found: Samalas on Lombok, 1257.
- 1258 Chroniclers say that when the Mongols took Baghdad in 1258, the Tigris ran black with ink. So many books from the city's libraries, including the House of Wisdom, were thrown into it.
- 1260 The Middle Ages' most famous children's drawings were left by a Novgorod boy named Onfim.