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Mahmud of Ghazni sacks Somnath
The Turkish sultan led a camel army across the Thar Desert and stormed the Shiva temple on the Gujarati coast. His men smashed the great lingam with hammers, carried away fifty thousand pounds of gold, and left perhaps fifty thousand defenders dead around the shrine. Hindu memory would keep this wound raw for centuries.
Song government formalizes paper currency
Building on Sichuan's private merchant notes, the Song court issued official jiaozi banknotes backed by state reserves of coin and goods. Printed with intricate designs to deter counterfeiting, the notes circulated across southern China and represented the world's first experiment with government-issued fiat currency, a financial innovation Europe would not attempt for six centuries.
Death of Emperor Henry II
The last Ottonian ruler, a limping, pious bureaucrat who founded Bamberg and crushed Italian revolts, died at his hunting lodge at Grone. He left no son. The German princes gathered at Kamba on the Rhine to choose a successor, ushering in the Salian dynasty and a new era. His wife Kunigunde retired to a convent, and both were eventually canonized as saints by the Church.
Conrad II elected King of Germany
A modest Salian count from the Middle Rhine was raised to the throne by German magnates at Kamba. A rough, shrewd soldier rather than a scholar, he would consolidate imperial rights, add Burgundy to the empire, and found a dynasty that would rule the German lands for a full century.