Pope Sylvester II's love of mathematics earned him a sorcerer's reputation.
He brought the abacus with Hindu-Arabic digits to Europe; legend claimed he won the papacy from the Devil at dice.
More amazing facts
- 1000 One elephant bird egg held as much as 160 chicken eggs.
- 1000 · 1057 The oldest book of Rus was found only in 2000: three wax tablets with psalms from early 11th-century Novgorod.
- 1000 · 1021 Vikings reached America at about the time Polynesians reached Hawaii.
- 1002 · 1010 The two great women of Japanese classical literature did not get on. Murasaki Shikibu, author of Genji, wrote that Sei Shōnagon of The Pillow Book was 'dreadfully conceited' and littered her writing with Chinese characters.
- 1002 An Icelandic lawspeaker lost his job because his voice was too weak.
- 1004 Europe first saw the fork as a sin. When a Byzantine bride married into the Doge’s family around 1004 and ate with a golden fork, Saint Peter Damian denounced her decadence.