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The invention of gunpowder in the west would in time come to be associated with the end of the Middle Ages.

Between the sixth and eleventh centuries much of the wisdom of the ancients was gradually lost to the Latin world

Marco Polo was a veteran adventurer from a family of merchants who had been farther around the world than almost anyone alive.

The Mongrols pioneered the administrative tools of global empire: a world class postal system, universal law codes, military reforms, and metropolitan city planning

A phenomenon known as the "great stirring" and later as "The First Crusade". Roving bands of Christian mobs stalked the streets, burning synagogues, beating and killing Jewish families and forcing Jews to convert to Christianity or commit suicide.

Ninth century Persian mathematician al- Khwarizmi known as the "father of algebra". The etymology of algebra is a western bastardized Arabic deriving from al-jabr loosely meaning "the reuniting of broken parts."

It has sometimes been said that this Ragnar was the model for the legendary Ragnar Lodbrok star of Danish chronicles and Icelandic sagas.

Benedict's rule was simple, elegant and influential. It would become the template for western monasticsm for generations. Monks who lived under its provisions would be known as Benedictines.

The Northmen celebrated a colorful pantheon of gods such as Odin, Ull, Baldr, Thor, and Loki.

Deus vult- God wills it.
Today Deus Vult has been adopted by the alt right and white supremacists as a watchword or meme.

From the 9th century onward founding, endowing or donating to monasteries became a popular pastime for rich men and women.

Eastern Franks are today simply called Germans

A degree of popular prejudice and suspicion of the "moro" the Moor or Spanish Muslim, whose true loyalties supposedly lie in north Africa is a continuing feature of Spain's political discourse.

By the start of the sixth century, one of the most keenly attended forms of public entertainment in Constantinople was chariot racing.

More than anything else the Arab conquests laid the foundations for Islam's rise as a major world religion. In 2015 it was reported that there were 1.8 billion Muslims in the world 80-85% Sunni and 15-20% Shia.

The plague had seldom been anything more than an intense local phenomenon until somehow between 520 and 540 the disease mutated into a super lethal strain.

Emperors in Constantinople were so short of their own troops that they were forced to recruit armies from the Turks- a new nomadic group that appeared in the region around the sixty century.