History · Rung 3 of 10

Who is who

A person is not a date, it is a stretch: they are born, they live and they die, and things happen meanwhile. Placing that stretch in its century is what later lets you ask who they could have met, what they could have read, and what had not happened yet when they wrote what they wrote.

Where this sits

This is where the ladder starts: nothing is needed before it.

Exercises from this rung

Generated by the app, from easiest to hardest

  1. Solimán el Magnífico

    • XVII
    • XV
    • XIV
    • XVI

    Why Solimán el Magnífico (1494–1566), an Ottoman sultan. Born in the XV century and died in the XVI. In the West he is “the Magnificent”, in his own empire “the Lawgiver”: he reordered Ottoman law and left it written for three hundred years.

    easier

  2. Ada Lovelace

    • XIX
    • XX
    • XXI
    • XVII

    Why Ada Lovelace (1815–1852), the first programmer. Born in the XIX century. She wrote, for a machine never built, what is considered the first program. And she saw what its inventor did not: that it would serve for more than numbers.

    in between

  3. Carlomagno

    • VII
    • VIII
    • VI
    • X

    Why Carlomagno (748–814), emperor of the Franks. Born in the VIII century and died in the IX. He learned to read late and never wrote well. Even so he gathered at his court the scholars who saved, by copying, much of the Latin we still have.

    harder