1038
Tangut Empire of Xi Xia founded
Li Yuanhao, ruler of the Tanguts on China's northwest frontier, proclaimed himself emperor of the Great Xia and began minting his own coins and devising a written script of nearly six thousand characters. His desert kingdom would harry the Song for two centuries until Mongols erased it from history. The Tangut script was so thoroughly destroyed that scholars could not read it again until the twentieth century.
Death of Stephen I of Hungary
The first king of Hungary, who had bound his Magyar people to Western Christianity and sent St. Gerard to evangelize the lake country, died at Szekesfehervar. His kingdom at once plunged into thirty years of pagan reaction and civil war. Rome would make him a saint within fifty years. His right hand, miraculously preserved, became Hungary's most sacred relic, still displayed in Budapest today.
Li Yuanhao proclaims the Tangut Western Xia empire
The Tangut ruler on China's northwest frontier declared himself emperor of the Great Xia, commissioning a new written script of nearly six thousand characters to assert cultural independence from the Song. His desert kingdom would harass the Chinese frontier for two centuries, controlling the Silk Road's eastern terminus until the Mongol storm erased it from history.
Song court develops fire arrows and incendiary weapons
Imperial arsenals refined gunpowder-based incendiary weapons for use against the Tangut threat on the northwest frontier. Engineers packed gunpowder into bamboo tubes attached to arrow shafts, creating the first true fire arrows capable of igniting fortifications at range. The weapons were crude but marked the beginning of gunpowder's transformation from alchemical curiosity to battlefield reality.