Eight years after Magna Carta, the princes of Rus first met the Mongols and were crushed on the Kalka River.
The events
- Magna Carta1215 · Runnymede. Under pressure from rebel barons, King John of England sealed Magna Carta. The charter curbed arbitrary royal power and became a cornerstone of the ideas of the rule of law and constitutional government.
- Battle of the Kalka River1223 · Kalka River. On 31 May 1223 the Mongol generals Jebe and Subutai crushed a combined army of Rus' princes and Cumans. It was the first clash between Rus' and the Mongols; many princes, including Mstislav of Kiev, were killed.
More amazing facts
- 1147 · 1150 Moscow is first mentioned in a chronicle in 1147 — around the time Angkor Wat was being completed in Cambodia.
- 1163 · 1185 When Prince Igor marched against the Polovtsians in 1185, Notre-Dame had been under construction for 22 years.
- 1238 · 1242 The Battle on the Ice (1242) came just four years after work began on the Alhambra in Granada (1238).
- 1240 1240: in summer Alexander beat the Swedes on the Neva; in December Batu took Kiev.
- 1299 · 1903 The Ottoman state, founded around 1299, still existed when the Wright brothers made the first airplane flight: the sultanate was abolished only in 1922.
- 1324 · 1325 In 1324, Mansa Musa gave away so much gold in Cairo that its value fell.