Cambridge University is as old as Genghis Khan's empire.
Runaway Oxford scholars began teaching in Cambridge in 1209, just three years after Temüjin was proclaimed Genghis Khan.
The events
- Cambridge founded by Oxford runaways1209 · Cambridge. In 1209, after a clash between townsfolk and students, two Oxford scholars were hanged and a group of academics fled to Cambridge. Thus began the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world, Oxford's eternal rival.
- Temüjin proclaimed Genghis Khan1206 · Onon River. An assembly of Mongol nobles at the headwaters of the Onon proclaimed Temüjin Genghis Khan, supreme ruler of all the Mongols. Within decades the state he created became the largest contiguous land empire in history.
More amazing facts
- 1200 · 1215 While England was sealing Magna Carta, whole churches were being cut out of rock in Ethiopia.
- 1202 The Fibonacci numbers became famous through a puzzle about rabbits.
- 1204 · 1797 · 1815 The bronze horses of St Mark's in Venice are crusader loot.
- 1206 · 1227 The grave of Genghis Khan, founder of the largest contiguous empire in history, has never been found.
- 1206 · 1279 At its height the Mongol Empire was almost one and a half times the size of modern Russia.
- 1206 Al-Jazari's elephant clock put a whole world into one machine: Greek waterworks, an Indian elephant, Chinese dragons, an Egyptian phoenix and the driver's Islamic turban.