An Egyptian king kept the original scripts of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides and simply forfeited a huge deposit.

240 BC

Ptolemy III borrowed them from Athens against 15 talents, had luxury copies made, sent those back and kept the originals.

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The event

• Library of Alexandriac. 285 BC · Alexandria. Under the early Ptolemies the Mouseion and its library were founded in Alexandria, aiming to collect every book in the known world. Scholars such as Euclid and Eratosthenes worked there, and the library became a symbol of ancient learning.

3rd century BC

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• 240 BC Around 240 BC, Eratosthenes measured the Earth's circumference in Egypt, while Chinese chroniclers made the first sure record of Halley's Comet.
• 240 BC The word 'geography' was coined by the first man to measure the Earth.
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