Cacao beans were money for the Aztecs, and they were counterfeited.

1521

Spanish chroniclers described fakes: the insides were removed and the empty husks filled with earth or wax.

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The event

• Fall of Tenochtitlan1521 · Tenochtitlan. After a long siege, Hernán Cortés's Spaniards and their Tlaxcalan allies took the Aztec capital, already ravaged by smallpox. The Aztec Empire fell, and Mexico City, capital of New Spain, rose on its ruins.

16th century

More amazing facts

• 1519 · 1521 While Magellan's expedition circled the globe, Cortés fought the Aztecs.
• 1519 · 1522 The first sailors to circle the globe "lost" a day. Returning in 1522, they found their log was one day behind the calendar, although they had kept it without a gap.
• 1520 For centuries Europeans searched for Prester John, a legendary Christian king — and concluded he ruled Ethiopia.
• 1521 · 1697 The last independent Maya kingdom fell only in 1697, 176 years after Tenochtitlan, when Peter the Great was already ruling Russia.
• 1521 · 1544 The Italian pomodoro means “golden apple”: the botanist Mattioli used the name in 1544, perhaps because the first tomatoes in Europe were yellow. “Tomato” comes from the Aztec word tomatl.
• 1522 Rats once had a lawyer.

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