For centuries Europeans ate Egyptian mummies as medicine.
Apothecaries sold powdered 'mummia' for bruises and illness, and King Francis I of France was said to carry some with him at all times.
More amazing facts
- 1492 1492: Granada fell in January, Columbus reached the Americas in October, and in November the Ensisheim meteorite fell in Alsace — one of Europe's oldest witnessed falls.
- 1492 The oldest surviving globe was made in 1492, and America is not on it. Martin Behaim finished his "Erdapfel" in Nuremberg before Columbus returned; between Europe and Asia it shows only ocean and islands.
- 1494 · 1497 Ivan III's law code (1497) appeared three years after Spain and Portugal divided the world between them at Tordesillas.
- 1494 Leonardo da Vinci's maths teacher is the "father of accounting". In 1494 Luca Pacioli was the first to describe double-entry bookkeeping in a printed book — the debit-and-credit system still used today.
- 1495 · 1505 The most visited stretch of the Great Wall of China is younger than the walls of the Moscow Kremlin.
- 1498 In Calicut, Vasco da Gama's gifts were laughed at. He brought the ruler cloth, hats, coral, sugar and honey, and courtiers said even the poorest merchant from Mecca would offer more.