The best-known story of Alfred the Great — hiding from the Vikings in 878, he let a peasant woman's cakes burn and got a scolding — is a legend, first written down a century after his death.
More amazing facts
- 859 · 1096 Al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, the world's oldest operating place of learning, was founded by a woman, Fatima al-Fihri, 237 years before teaching began at Oxford.
- 862 · 863 According to the chronicle, the Varangians were invited to Rus' in 862, and in 863 Cyril and Methodius set out for Moravia with a Slavic alphabet.
- 868 · 1450 The oldest dated printed book, China's Diamond Sutra of 868, is almost 600 years older than the Gutenberg Bible.
- 875 · 1010 Two medieval would-be aviators blamed their crashes on the same thing: forgetting a tail.
- 897 In 897 a pope put his predecessor's corpse on trial.
- 900 Japan's oldest surviving tale is about a girl from the Moon.