1162
Genghis Khan born on the Onon River
A Mongol chieftain's son was born clutching a blood clot in his fist - an omen, his people said, of greatness. He was named Temujin after a Tatar his father had just killed. The traditional date is uncertain, but Mongol memory placed his birth around this year. The child would grow up amid hardship, betrayal, and steppe violence, emerging from the margins of the nomadic world to conquer the largest contiguous empire in history.
Thomas Becket consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury
Henry II's worldly, ambitious chancellor was installed as primate of England and almost immediately underwent a conversion so severe his king thought him insane. He gave up hunting, started wearing a hair shirt, and began defending ecclesiastical privileges he had formerly attacked. The transformation from royal servant to ecclesiastical champion astonished contemporaries and set the stage for one of the most dramatic confrontations between church and state in medieval history.
Milan razed by Barbarossa
After a two-year siege, Frederick's army entered Milan and, on imperial orders, began systematically dismantling the city. The inhabitants were scattered to four unfortified villages. The destruction, meant as an object lesson to the Lombard cities, made Milan the symbol of civic resistance to empire. Within a decade the Milanese would return, rebuild their walls, and join the Lombard League that would humiliate Barbarossa at Legnano.
Death of Geoffrey of Monmouth
The Welsh-descended cleric who had given Europe King Arthur, Merlin, and the Prophecies of Merlin died shortly after his appointment as bishop of St Asaph. He had never managed to visit his see because of Welsh wars. His fictions were by then being copied and adapted across Christendom, spawning the Arthurian romance tradition that would captivate courts from London to Palermo.