The US postal motto “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night…” is Herodotus, describing the Persian couriers of the 5th century BC. In 1914 it was carved on New York’s main post office.

480 BC · 1914 · apart: 2394 years

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The event

• Cyrus the Great founds the Achaemenid Empire550 BC · Pasargadae. The Persian king Cyrus II overthrew the Median king Astyages and founded the Achaemenid Empire. It soon became the largest empire of its time, from the Aegean to the Indus, known for tolerance and efficient administration.

5th century BC · 20th century

More amazing facts

• 500 BC · 1847 The word 'gorilla' was coined not by zoologists but by Carthaginian sailors 2,500 years ago. Hanno described hairy wild people on an African island whom his interpreters called 'gorillai'. In 1847 the name went to the ape.
• 490 BC · 1896 Herodotus says nothing about a run from Marathon to Athens.
• 480 BC · 479 BC Confucius died in 479 BC — one year after the Greeks defeated the Persian fleet at Salamis.
• 480 BC Persia was met at Thermopylae not by 300 Spartans but by some 7,000 Greeks, about 300 of them Spartans.
• 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.

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