Korean monks printed the Jikji with movable metal type in 1377, some 70 years before Gutenberg's press.
The events
- Jikji, printed with movable metal type1377 · Cheongju, Korea. In 1377 the Heungdeok temple in Cheongju printed 'Jikji', a collection of Buddhist teachings, using movable metal type. It is the oldest surviving book printed this way, nearly 80 years older than the Gutenberg Bible. Only the second volume survives, held by the National Library of France in Paris, and Korea has long sought its return.
- Gutenberg's printing pressc. 1450 · Mainz. In Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg developed printing with movable metal type on a press. His Bible appeared around 1455; printing made books cheap and accelerated the spread of knowledge, the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution.
More amazing facts
- 1324 · 1325 In 1324, Mansa Musa gave away so much gold in Cairo that its value fell.
- 1337 · 1380 The Battle of Kulikovo (1380) fell in the middle of the Hundred Years' War, which had been raging for 43 years and had 73 more to go.
- 1347 · 1348 Ibn Battuta witnessed the Black Death: in 1348 he was in Damascus, where, he wrote, thousands were dying each day.
- 1405 · 1498 Zheng He's first fleet sailed in 1405, 93 years before Vasco da Gama reached India.
- 1411 · 1429 Rublev's Trinity (1411 or 1425–1427) and Joan of Arc's relief of Orléans (1429) belong to the same generation.
- 1450 · 1564 Ivan Fyodorov's Apostol (1564), the first precisely dated Russian printed book, came out more than a century after Gutenberg's press.