In 138 Zhang Heng's seismoscope in Luoyang signalled an earthquake that nobody had felt.

132 · 138 · apart: 6 years

The court was sceptical, until a messenger arrived days later: there had indeed been a quake in distant Longxi.

◍ Show on the globe

The event

• Zhang Heng's seismoscope132 · Luoyang. The court astronomer Zhang Heng built the world's first seismoscope, a bronze vessel with eight dragons. When the ground shook, a ball dropped from one dragon's mouth into a toad's, showing the direction. According to the chronicle, in 138 it registered an earthquake in Longxi, some 500 km away, that no one in the capital had felt.

2nd century

More amazing facts

• 100 Roman public latrines had a sponge on a stick, the tersorium, instead of toilet paper.
• 105 · 751 China had paper by the early 2nd century, but according to tradition it reached the Islamic world only after the Battle of Talas in 751, via Chinese captives.
• 126 Roman concrete can heal its own cracks.
• 127 The coins of the Kushan king Kanishka show gods from four civilisations: Greek, Iranian, Indian and even the Sumero-Elamite goddess Nana.
• 160 · 1543 For nearly 1,400 years doctors learned human anatomy from descriptions of monkeys.
• 165 · 166 In 166, men claiming to be envoys of the ruler of Rome — probably Marcus Aurelius — reached China.

All amazing facts (1058) →