People from all over the world are in the tiny town of Lotus in El Dorado County looking for something that's out of this world, but leave it to a stay-at-home mom walking her dog to find a precious meteorite.
The origins of the great civilization known as the Byzantine Empire can be traced to 330 A.D., when the Roman emperor Constantine I dedicated a ânew Romeâ on the site of the ancient Greek colony of Byzantium.
The Western Empire ceased to exist in 476 CE when the Goths took control, but the Empire continued on in the east, with its capital in Constantinople and was commonly known as the Roman Empire. 1  Rome began as a kingdom around 800 BCE and was then a republic, before becoming an empire. The first Roman Emperor was Octavius, who took the imperial name Augustus. He became emperor in 31 BCE. The Roman Empire split into a Western Roman Empire and an Eastern Roman Empire in 395 CE. The Western Empire ended in 476 CE. The Eastern Empire, or Byzantine Empire, ended in 1453. Depending on how you define the Roman Empire: The united empire lasted 426 years; The Western Empire lasted a further 81 years, for a total of 507 years