University of Oxford

The University of Oxford, in England, is the oldest university in the English-speaking world. Nobody knows exactly when it was founded, but there was teaching in Oxford by 1096, and it grew quickly from 1167.^[1] This makes it older than the Aztec Empire: the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, was founded around 1325, by which time Oxford had been teaching for more than two hundred years. Oxford has no foundation date because nobody thought to write one down, an oversight that historians find very Oxford.

Cambridge

In 1209, after a dispute between the scholars and the townspeople of Oxford, some of the scholars left and settled in Cambridge, where they began teaching. The University of Cambridge therefore began as a group of people leaving Oxford.^[2] The two universities have been rivals ever since, and hold an annual boat race to settle matters, which it never does.

Old and older

Oxford is not the oldest university in the world; universities in Bologna, in Italy, and in parts of the Islamic world and North Africa are older. But it is old enough that some of its colleges own things, rights and customs dating back many centuries, some of which nobody fully remembers the reason for.

• Teaching at Oxford: by 1096.
• Cambridge: 1209 (from Oxford).
• Tenochtitlan founded: c. 1325.
• Foundation date written down: no; see yesterday.

See also

• Great Pyramid of Giza – a better example of old
• Printing press – which arrived much later
• Yesterday – when it was presumably founded

References

1. Gown, G. (1996). Nobody Wrote It Down. Quad Press.
2. Town, T. (1209/2001). We Left. Fictional reprint.
3. Spire, D. (2010). “Older Than Tenochtitlan”. Comparative Chronology 1096: 1.