No one sits on the Ashanti kingdom's sacred throne.
Legend says the Golden Stool descended from the sky to the first king around 1701 and holds the soul of the nation.
The event
More amazing facts
- 1698 · 1772 Beards in Russia stayed taxable for 74 years.
- 1698 · 1705 Under Peter the Great bearded men carried a token stamped “Money received”, proof of paying the beard tax. Top merchants paid 100 rubles a year; peasants paid a kopeck each time they entered a town.
- 1699 · 1700 Russia's shortest year lasted four months.
- 1700 · 1800 In the 18th century Britons’ sugar intake more than quadrupled, from about 4 lb a year per person in 1700 to about 18 lb in 1800.
- 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.