History of the center of the Universe the center of a spherical, stationary Earth, around which the sun, moon, planets, and stars rotate. With the development of the heliocentric model by Nicolaus Copernicus in the 16th century, the sun was believed to be the center of the Universe, with the planets (including Earth) and stars orbiting it. In the early 20th century, the discovery of other galaxies and the development of the Big Bang theory led to the development of cosmological models of a homogeneous, isotropic Universe (which lacks a central point) that is expanding at all points. In religion or mythology, the "axis mundi" (also cosmic
Paris in the 16th century Beginning in 1522, wealthy Parisians loaned their money to the Bureau de Ville, the city government, which in turn made loans to the King. In exchange the King gave the city the right to collect certain taxes in Paris, and the Parisian investors received a healthy eight percent return for their loans to the city. By the second part of the 16th century, however, the Kings were so deeply in debt that wealthy Parisians refused to lend any more money; the King was forced to borrow money from Italian bankers, who received the right to receive a portion of French