Lowercase Latin letters go back to the handwriting of Charlemagne's scribes.
Renaissance humanists found Carolingian minuscule so 'classical' they mistook it for ancient Roman and based their scripts — and later printed type — on it.
The event
More amazing facts
- 800 When Charlemagne was crowned emperor in 800, Borobudur — the world's largest Buddhist temple — was being built on Java.
- 800 The Slavic word for 'king' comes from the name Charles — Charlemagne's, or perhaps his great-grandson Charles the Fat's: Latin Karolus became Russian korol', Polish król and Slovak kráľ.
- 800 Charlemagne, patron of a great revival of learning, probably never mastered writing himself.
- 800 Medieval tourists in Sri Lanka covered a wall with poems about beauties.
- 800 · 874 The Vikings were not the first in Iceland.
- 802 · 810 Charlemagne had an elephant.