Gleaming white Greek statues and temples were originally painted in bright colours.

447 BC

The paint had weathered off long before the 18th century, so Europe fell for bare marble the ancients never saw. Traces of paint survive on the Parthenon too.

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The event

• Construction of the Parthenon447 BC–432 BC · Athens. At Pericles' initiative a temple to Athena Parthenos rose on the Athenian Acropolis, designed by Ictinus and Callicrates with sculpture overseen by Phidias. The Parthenon became the high point of classical Greek architecture.

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.
• 450 BC 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.
• 440 BC Herodotus wrote that in India gold was dug up by ants bigger than foxes.

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