Plus more amazing facts about universities that may change your historical perspective.
As early as 1096, teaching had already started in Oxford, England, setting the stage for the establishment of the oldest university in the English-speaking world, writes Smithsonian Magazine. Over the next century, the University of Oxford grew rapidly, welcoming an influx of students after 1167, when England’s Henry II banned his subjects from attending the University of Paris amid his ongoing feud with Thomas Becket, an English archbishop who’d sought refuge in France.
By 1264, Oxford had grown into a full-fledged university, complete with student housing at the school’s three original halls of residence: University, Balliol and Merton Colleges.
However, Oxford is far from the world’s oldest continuously operating institution of higher education. That title, according to UNESCO and Guinness World Records, goes to the University of al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, Morocco, which was founded as a mosque in 859. Italy’s University of Bologna, established in 1088, holds the record for the oldest institution of its kind in the Western world.
Despite its nearly 1,000-year history, Oxford in many way feels like a product of our time - probably because you can still enroll there. In contrast, the Aztec civilization of central Mexico feels anchored in the more distant past - and archaeologists continue to dig up Aztec ruins. But the dawn of the Aztec civilization, marked by the founding of the city of Tenochtitlán at Lake Texcoco - now Mexico City - didn’t occur until 1325, 229 years after teaching began at Oxford.
Spanish forces and their Indigenous allies captured Tenochtitlán in 1521, bringing the Aztec Empire’s reign to a close after less than a century. And, just to round off the historical facts today, the White House - whose cornerstone was laid in 1792 - has been standing longer than the Aztecs presided over their capital.
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