According to the chronicle, Prince Vladimir rejected Islam over its ban on wine: 'Drinking is the joy of the Rus'. He chose the Greek faith after envoys described a service in Constantinople: 'We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth.'

986 · 988 · apart: 2 years

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The event

• Christianization of Kievan Rus'988 · Kiev. Grand Prince Vladimir of Kiev adopted Byzantine Christianity and had the people of Kiev baptised in the Dnieper. The conversion tied Rus' to the Orthodox world of Byzantium and shaped its culture, literacy and statehood for centuries.

10th century

More amazing facts

• 978 · 1016 Æthelred the Unready's nickname is a pun. His name meant 'noble counsel'; Old English unræd meant 'ill counsel'. Only later, as the word fell out of use, did 'unræd' turn into 'unready'.
• 987 · 988 Rus was baptised in 988, a year after Hugh Capet became King of France.
• 988 · 1021 Thirty-three years after the Christianization of Rus', Vikings were cutting wood in Newfoundland — tree rings date it precisely to 1021.
• 999 Pope Sylvester II's love of mathematics earned him a sorcerer's reputation.
• 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.

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