The first universities in the Americas are 85 years older than Harvard.
San Marcos in Lima and the Royal University of Mexico were founded in 1551; Harvard in 1636.
More amazing facts
- 1545 · 1571 Silver from Potosí (1545) made the Spanish peso the first truly global currency: from 1571, Manila galleons carried it across the Pacific to China.
- 1547 Ivan IV's nickname Grozny meant 'formidable' or 'awe-inspiring' rather than 'terrible' in the modern sense; the English word 'terrible' once meant the same, but its sense has drifted.
- 1555 · 1561 Ivan the Terrible did not blind the architects of St Basil's Cathedral.
- 1555 · 1557 St Basil's Cathedral and the Süleymaniye Mosque were going up at the same time: Sinan built the mosque in 1550–1557 and Moscow raised the cathedral in 1555–1561, so for a couple of years both were building sites.
- 1556 · 1584 Ivan the Terrible, the Mughal emperor Akbar and Elizabeth I were contemporaries: from 1558 to 1584 all three reigned at the same time.
- 1556 · 1605 The Mughal emperor Akbar assembled a library of 24,000 volumes but apparently could not read himself.