The Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, who ruled almost all of India, wanted his burial paid for with money earned sewing caps and copying the Quran.
His simple grave lies open to the sky.
More amazing facts
- 1703 · 1739 · 1833 Peter the Great never spoke of cutting a 'window to Europe'. The phrase is Pushkin's, from The Bronze Horseman (1833), and as he noted himself, the image came from the Italian writer Francesco Algarotti.
- 1704 Pushkin's great-grandfather came to Russia as a boy, a 'gift' for Peter I. African-born Abram Gannibal became the tsar's godson, a military engineer and a general — and his great-grandson Russia's greatest poet.
- 1705 · 1742 · 1758 Edmond Halley predicted that a comet would return in 1758 but did not live to see it. He died in 1742; the comet came back on schedule and was named after him.
- 1709 The brutal winter of 1709, the 'Great Frost', struck all of Europe and wore down Charles XII's Swedish army before Poltava.
- 1709 · 1718 The pirate republic in the Bahamas was ended by the man who rescued the real Robinson Crusoe.
- 1712 Sweden once had a 30 February.