King Sejong promised that a wise man could learn his alphabet in a morning and a fool in ten days.

1446

So says the 1446 book introducing Hangul; before that, Koreans wrote in difficult Chinese characters.

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The event

• King Sejong promulgates Hangul1446 · Hanseong. King Sejong the Great of Korea promulgated the Hunminjeongeum, a phonetic alphabet created under his direction in 1443. The simple Hangul script let literacy spread beyond the elite schooled in Chinese characters.

15th century

More amazing facts

• 1445 Haast's eagle hunted moa up to 15 times its own weight.
• 1446 · 1450 The Korean alphabet and Gutenberg's press are the same age: King Sejong proclaimed Hangul in 1446, and around 1450 Mainz began printing with movable type.
• 1449 · 1457 A Chinese emperor was captured by nomads and later became emperor again.
• 1450 · 1564 Ivan Fyodorov's Apostol (1564), the first precisely dated Russian printed book, came out more than a century after Gutenberg's press.
• 1450 Machu Picchu and Gutenberg's press are the same age: around 1450 the Incas were building their mountain estate while Mainz printed its first books.
• 1450 · 1453 When Constantinople fell in 1453, Gutenberg was already printing in Mainz: the last Roman Empire vanished in the first years of the printed book.

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