A well by the Acropolis held 190 potsherds bearing Themistocles' name, written in just 14 hands.

471 BC

They seem to have been prepared to hand out to voters at an ostracism, more like modern how-to-vote cards than outright fraud.

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The event

• The first ostracism487 BC · Athens. Once a year Athenians could scratch the name of the most dangerous politician on a potsherd, an ostrakon; with a quorum of 6,000 votes he went into exile for ten years. The first victim was Hipparchus in 487 BC, and the word 'ostracism' lives on.

5th century BC

More amazing facts

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• 480 BC · 479 BC Confucius died in 479 BC — one year after the Greeks defeated the Persian fleet at Salamis.
• 480 BC Persia was met at Thermopylae not by 300 Spartans but by some 7,000 Greeks, about 300 of them Spartans.
• 480 BC · 1914 The US postal motto “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night…” is Herodotus, describing the Persian couriers of the 5th century BC. In 1914 it was carved on New York’s main post office.
• 479 BC More than 100,000 of Confucius's descendants lie in his family cemetery at Qufu.
• 458 BC · 1788 Cincinnati, Ohio, is named after a Roman who lived about 2,200 years before it was founded.

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