8th Century facts
While investigating facts about 8th Century, I found out little known, but curios details like:
In the 8th century, Danish king Harald Wartooth, realizing he might die of old age and therefore not go to Valhalla, asked the Swedish king Sigurd for a battle. Wartooth was slain after amassing enough glory, and Sigurd was crowned king of Sweden & Denmark. 40,000 other warriors died.
An influential Islamic philosophical movement in 8th century Iraq declared the perfect human to be "of Persian derivation, Arabic faith, Hebrew in astuteness, a disciple of Christ in conduct, as pious as a Syrian monk, a Greek in natural sciences, an Indian in the interpretation of mysteries.
In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across. Here are 50 of the best facts about 8th Century I managed to collect.
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In the 8th century, under pressure from the Arabs and Byzantines to convert to either Islam or Christianity, many of the Khazar nobility converted to Judaism.
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Abuse of the smoke signal is known to have contributed to the fall of the Western Zhou Dynasty, 8th century BCE. King You of Zhou had a habit of fooling his warlords with false warning beacons in order to amuse his queen. When an actual rebellion occurred, no one came to the aid of the king.
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The world's first mental health hospital was built in Baghdad, Iraq in 705 AD. While mental health patients were being condemned, punished, and even burned in Europe, 8th and 9th century mental health patients in Iraq, Egypt, and Syria were given more proper hospitalization and treatment.
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From the 8th to the 18th century, Arab scientists experimented with marijuana for medicinal purposes and were well aware of its benefits
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Skellig Michael, the island which served as a filming location for the end of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and several scenes in The Last Jedi, was founded by a Gaelic Christian monastery between the 6th and 8th century and remained continuously occupied until abandoned in the late 12th century
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Between the 6th and 8th centuries AD, England used to be made up of Seven Kingdoms.
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The Yellow Star imposed upon Jewish citizens in Nazi Germany was not a Nazi invention but originated in Medina under Islam in the 8th century
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Jupiter's existence was first recorded in the 7th or 8th century BC by Babylonian astronomers.
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36 million people, 1/6 of the entire human population at the time died in a rebellion in China in the 8th century
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The national sport of Japan is sumo. This sport dates back as far as the 8th century as a prayer for an excellent harvest of rice. The tradition of sumo involves ancient clothing and customs.
What is true about 8th century?
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In the 8th century the Arab and Persian astronomers improved upon the armillary sphere created by the Greeks, and one such instrument is believed to have been given to Caliph Muhammad I.
During the 8th to the 14th centuries, the Central Baltic Sea was a common region for piracy from Prussia and Pomerania.
The only surviving structure of the earlier monastery is ‘Ovin's stone", the base of an 8th century cross.
More than 2,600,000 people helped build Japan's Tōdai-ji Temple in the 8th century. The huge project nearly bankrupted Japan's economy, consuming most of the available bronze of the time.
Gibraltar is a Spanish corruption of Jabal Ṭāriq, Mountain of Ṭāriq. The Rock is named in honor of Ṭāriq ibn Ziyād, who conquered it for the Umayyad Caliphate in the 8th century. - source
In the 8th century B.C., the Babylonians, believing that solar eclipses heralded the death of their king, would dress up a condemned man as the monarch to "fool" the eclipse.
The modern border of England and Wales roughly follows the path of a 176-mile-long (283km) defensive earthwork built by the English king Offa in the 8th century – Offa's Dyke
The Axial Age, the period of time from 8th to the 3rd century BCE defined by a growth of parallel but ultimately unrelated new religious and philosophical thinking in Persia, India, China, and the Greco-Roman Empire, including Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and Platonism.
Another term for the 8th power of a number is "Zenzizenzizenzic." A 16th century Welsh mathematician declared that it "doeth represent the square of squares squaredly"
Halloween began in the 8th century as a celebration of the beginning of Allhallowtide, a three day period during which Christians would take time to remember their lost loved ones, as well as saints and martyrs.