The University of Oxford is older than the Aztec Empire.
Teaching at Oxford was under way by 1096 and the university grew rapidly after 1167. The Aztec capital Tenochtitlan was founded in 1325, and the Aztec Empire itself formed in 1428.
Why is this true?
Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second oldest still operating anywhere, after Bologna. Cambridge was founded by scholars who left Oxford after a dispute in 1209.
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More about history
History keeps producing facts that ruin your sense of time. A war shorter than a lunch break, an empire that overlaps with the invention of the fax machine, a queen who lived closer to the Moon landing than to the pyramids. The entries here favour events with solid documentation, and each one explains the context that makes the surprise make sense rather than leaving it as a bare curiosity.