For five centuries nobody knew they were living in AD anything.

525 · 731 · apart: 206 years

The monk Dionysius Exiguus devised Anno Domini dating in 525; it caught on thanks to Bede (731) and Charlemagne's court.

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The event

• Dionysius Exiguus invents Anno Domini525 · Rome. In 525 the Roman monk Dionysius Exiguus, computing Easter dates, began counting years 'since the Incarnation' instead of from Emperor Diocletian. Europe had no zero then, which is why 1 BC is followed directly by AD 1.

6th century · 8th century

More amazing facts

• 525 · 628 There is no year zero because Dionysius Exiguus, inventing AD dating in 525, had no zero.
• 532 Emperor Justinian was nearly overthrown by sports fans.
• 532 · 537 Constantinople owes Hagia Sophia to rioting sports fans.
• 532 During the Nika riots it was his wife who stopped Justinian from fleeing.
• 536 · 541 536 is called one of the worst years to be alive: volcanic haze dimmed the sun across the Northern Hemisphere, and five years later the Plague of Justinian began.
• 537 Hagia Sophia remained the world's largest church for more than 500 years: consecrated in 537, it was surpassed only when the abbey church of Cluny in France was completed in the 12th century.

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