No one knows which gesture Roman crowds used to doom a gladiator. 'Thumbs down' comes from Gérôme's 1872 painting Pollice Verso — the Latin just means 'with a turned thumb', direction unknown.

80 · 1872 · apart: 1792 years

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The event

• The Colosseum opens80 · Rome. The Flavian Amphitheatre opened under Titus on the drained lake of Nero's Golden House. Romans called it simply 'the amphitheatre'; the name Colosseum came later, most likely from the colossal bronze statue of Nero that stood beside it.

1st century · 19th century

More amazing facts

• 79 · 200 A little over a century after Vesuvius buried Pompeii, across the ocean in Teotihuacan the Pyramid of the Sun rose — one of the largest pyramids in the world.
• 79 · 80 The Colosseum opened a year after Pompeii was buried, under the same emperor.
• 79 · 1752 The only library from antiquity to survive whole was saved by Vesuvius.
• 79 · 1592 · 1748 Pompeii was first struck in 1592, and tunnelled straight through.
• 80 A vomitorium was not a room where Romans threw up at feasts.
• 80 Gladiators were nicknamed hordearii, 'barley-eaters'. They lived on a nearly vegetarian diet of barley, beans and dried fruit thought to build strength, while legionaries got barley instead of wheat only as a punishment.

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