The Benedictine Abbey of St. Gall, Switzerland, is founded.

The Abbey contains one of the oldest, largest and most significant medieval libraries, consisting of 2100 codices. It is the only major medieval convent library still standing in its original location. 400 of the codices in this library date before 1000 CE. These manuscripts are being made available on the Internet in a virtual library, the Codices Electronici Sangallenses.

"Saint Wilfred set to work renewing the roof and covering it with lead, whitewashing the interior walls and installing glass windows. Based on descriptions given of other churches built at a similar time it is possible to understand something of how Wilfred's restored church at York would have looked to the 7th century worshippers who entered it. The altar, within which relics were deposited, would have been decorated with purple silk hangings of intricate woven design. Upon the altar, raised by a book rest and in a jewelled binding, would stand the illuminated gospel book. The walls and probably also the testudo (a wooden partition screening the altar) would be adorned with icons painted on wooden panels depicting the types and anti-types of the Old and New Testaments. These church paintings were essential to the evangelization of England, being the only effective way of explaining the 'the new worship' to an illiterate population. Gregory the Great called them 'the books of the unlearned'. "

Under the reign of Chinese emperor T'ai Tsung (627-49) a library is erected in the Chinese capital containing "some fifty-four thousand rolls." (Carter, Invention of Printing in China, 2nd ed [1955] 37).

The Library of Maktabat al-Jami` al-Kabir (Maktabat al-Awqaf), The Great Mosque, San`a', Yemen, built in the sixth year of Muhammad's Hijra, contains about 40 Qu'rans dating from the first century of hijra. These are among the oldest Qu'rans known.

Brahmagupta writes Brahmasphutasiddhanta (The Opening of the Universe). "It contains some remarkably advanced ideas, including a good understanding of the mathematical role of zero, rules for manipulating both negative and positive, a method for computing aquare roots, methods of solving linear and some quadratic equations, and rules for summing series, Brahamgupta's identity, and the Brahmagupta's theorem."

By this time a base 10 numeral system with nine symbols is widely used in India, and the concept of zero (represented by a dot) is known.

"According to some Muslim traditions, the companions of Muhammad began recording suras in writing before Muhammad died in 632; written copies of various suras during his lifetime are frequently alluded to in the traditions. . . . At Medina, about sixty-five companions are said to have acted as scribes for him at one time or another; the prophet would regularly call upon them to write down revelations immediately after they came."