Template:Are You Sure/May 10

• ... that Jesuit priest, mathematician, and astronomer Matteo Ricci became the first European to enter the Forbidden City of Beijing in 1601 when he was invited to become an adviser to the imperial court of the Wanli Emperor; and that this honor was in recognition of Ricci's scientific abilities, chiefly his predictions of solar eclipses, which were significant events in the Chinese world; and that Ricci was given free access to the Forbidden City but never met the reclusive Wanli Emperor, who, however, granted him patronage, with a generous stipend and supported Ricci's completion of the Zhifang Waiji, China's first global atlas?