When a cat died in an Egyptian house, everyone in it shaved off their eyebrows, Herodotus wrote in the 5th century BC. Diodorus claimed that killing a cat, even by accident, could get you lynched.

450 BC

◍ Show on the globe

The event

• Pelusium and the sacred cats525 BC · Pelusium, Nile Delta. Cambyses’ victory at Pelusium gave Egypt to Persia. Seven centuries later the writer Polyaenus claimed that Cambyses placed cats and other sacred animals before his army, and the Egyptians dared not shoot.

5th century BC

More amazing facts

• 480 BC · 479 BC Confucius died in 479 BC — one year after the Greeks defeated the Persian fleet at Salamis.
• 479 BC More than 100,000 of Confucius's descendants lie in his family cemetery at Qufu.
• 471 BC A well by the Acropolis held 190 potsherds bearing Themistocles' name, written in just 14 hands.
• 458 BC · 1788 Cincinnati, Ohio, is named after a Roman who lived about 2,200 years before it was founded.
• 447 BC Gleaming white Greek statues and temples were originally painted in bright colours.
• 440 BC Herodotus wrote that in India gold was dug up by ants bigger than foxes.

All amazing facts (1059) →