The fraction 355/113 gives pi correct to six decimal places, and China had it 1,100 years before Europe.

480 · 1585 · apart: 1105 years

Zu Chongzhi found it in the 5th century; in Europe the Dutchman Adriaan Anthonisz arrived at it only in 1585.

◍ Show on the globe

The event

• Zu Chongzhi calculates pic. 480 · Jiankang (Nanjing). By inscribing a polygon with 24,576 sides in a circle, the mathematician Zu Chongzhi found that pi lies between 3.1415926 and 3.1415927. Nobody calculated it more precisely for nearly 900 years.

5th century · 16th century

More amazing facts

• 476 · 1453 The Eastern Roman Empire outlived the Western one by almost 1,000 years: Rome fell in 476, Constantinople only in 1453.
• 476 · 499 Twenty-three years after the Western Roman Empire fell, India's Aryabhata wrote that the sky only appears to move — it is the Earth that rotates.
• 476 The last Western emperor bore the names of Rome's founder and its first emperor: Romulus Augustus.
• 525 · 731 For five centuries nobody knew they were living in AD anything.
• 525 · 628 There is no year zero because Dionysius Exiguus, inventing AD dating in 525, had no zero.
• 532 Emperor Justinian was nearly overthrown by sports fans.

All amazing facts (1059) →