The 1907 Tiflis bank robbery, also known as the Erivansky Square expropriation, was an armed robbery on 26 June 1907[a] in the city of Tiflis (present-day Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia) in the Tiflis Governorate in the Caucasus Viceroyalty of the Russian Empire. A Bolshevik group "expropriated" a bank cash shipment to fund their revolutionary activities. The robbers attacked a bank stagecoach, and the surrounding police and soldiers, using bombs and guns while the stagecoach was transporting money through Erivansky Square (present-day Freedom Square) between the post office and the Tiflis branch of the State Bank of the Russian Empire. The attack killed forty people and injured fifty others, according to official archive documents. The robbers escaped with 241,000 rubles.
The robbery was organized by a number of top-level Bolsheviks, including Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Maxim Litvinov, Leonid Krasin, and Alexander Bogdanov; and committed by a party of revolutionaries led by Stalin's early associate Simon Ter-Petrosian, also known as "Kamo" and "The Caucasian Robin-Hood". Because such activities had been explicitly prohibited by the 5th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) only weeks previously, the robbery and the killings caused outrage within the party against the Bolsheviks (a faction within the RSDLP). As a result, Lenin and Stalin tried to distance themselves from the robbery. (Full article...)
Serving in the Baltic Sea during World War I, Slava was the largest ship of the Russian Gulf of Riga Squadron that fought the German High Seas Fleet in the Battle of the Gulf of Riga in August 1915. She repeatedly bombarded German positions and troops for the rest of 1915 and during 1916. During the Battle of Moon Sound in 1917, Slava was badly damaged by the German dreadnoughtSMS König, significantly increasing her draft. The shallow channel made it impossible to escape and she was scuttled in the Moon Sound Strait between the island of Muhu (Moon) and the mainland. The Estoniansscrapped her during the 1930s. (Full article...)
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Stravinsky in the early 1920s
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (17 June [O.S. 5 June] 1882 – 6 April 1971) was a Russian composer and conductor with French citizenship (from 1934) and American citizenship (from 1945). He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century and a pivotal figure in modernist music.
The Borodino-class battlecruisers (Russian: Линейные крейсера типа «Измаил») were a group of four battlecruisers ordered by the Imperial Russian Navy before World War I. Also referred to as the Izmail class, they were laid down in late 1912 at Saint Petersburg for service with the Baltic Fleet. Construction of the ships was delayed by a lack of capacity among domestic factories and the need to order some components from abroad. The start of World War I slowed their construction still further, as the imported components were often not delivered and domestic production was diverted into areas more immediately useful for the war effort.
Three of the four ships were launched in 1915 and the fourth in 1916. Work on the gun turrets lagged, and it became evident that Russian industry would not be able to complete the ships during the war. The Russian Revolution of 1917 halted all work on the ships, which was never resumed. Although some consideration was given to finishing the hulls that were nearest to completion, the three furthest from completion were sold for scrap by the Soviet Union during the early 1920s. The Soviet Navy proposed to convert Izmail, the ship closest to completion, to an aircraft carrier in 1925, but the plan was cancelled after political manoeuvring by the Red Army cut funding and she was eventually scrapped in 1931. (Full article...)
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The Jeannetteexpedition of 1879–1881, officially called the U.S. Arctic Expedition, was an attempt led by George W. De Long to reach the North Pole by pioneering a route from the Pacific Ocean through the Bering Strait. The premise was that a temperate current, the Kuro Siwo, flowed northwards into the strait, providing a gateway to the hypothesized Open Polar Sea and thus to the pole.
This theory proved illusory; the expedition's ship, USS Jeannette and its crew of thirty-three men, was trapped by ice and drifted for nearly two years before she was crushed and sunk north of the Siberian coast. De Long then led his men on a perilous journey by sled, dragging the Jeannette'swhaleboat and two cutters, eventually switching to these small boats to sail for the Lena Delta in Siberia. During this journey, and in the subsequent weeks of wandering in Siberia before rescue, twenty of the ship's complement died, including De Long. (Full article...)
Largest European specimen, a male at Südostbayerisches Naturkunde- und Mammut-Museum, Siegsdorf
The woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) is an extinct species of mammoth that lived from the Middle Pleistocene until its extinction in the Holocene epoch. It was one of the last in a line of mammoth species, beginning with the African Mammuthus subplanifrons in the early Pliocene. The woolly mammoth began to diverge from the steppe mammoth about 800,000 years ago in Siberia. Its closest extant relative is the Asian elephant. The Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi) lived alongside the woolly mammoth in North America, and DNA studies show that the two hybridised with each other. Mammoth remains had long been known in Asia before they became known to Europeans. The origin of these remains was long a matter of debate and often explained as being remains of legendary creatures. The mammoth was identified as an extinct species of elephant by Georges Cuvier in 1796.
The appearance and behaviour of this species are among the best studied of any prehistoric animal because of the discovery of frozen carcasses in Siberia and North America, as well as skeletons, teeth, stomach contents, dung, and depiction from life in prehistoric cave paintings. The woolly mammoth was roughly the same size as modern African elephants. Males reached shoulder heights between 2.67 and 3.49 m (8 ft 9 in and 11 ft 5 in) and weighed between 3.9 and 8.2 t (3.8 and 8.1 long tons; 4.3 and 9.0 short tons). Females reached 2.3–2.6 m (7 ft 7 in – 8 ft 6 in) in shoulder heights and weighed between 2.8–4 t (2.8–3.9 long tons; 3.1–4.4 short tons). A newborn calf weighed about 90 kg (200 lb). The woolly mammoth was well adapted to the cold environments present during glacial periods, including the last ice age. It was covered in fur, with an outer covering of long guard hairs and a shorter undercoat. The colour of the coat varied from dark to light. The ears and tail were short to minimise frostbite and heat loss. It had long, curved tusks and four molars, which were replaced six times during the lifetime of an individual. Its behaviour was similar to that of modern elephants, and it used its tusks and trunk for manipulating objects, fighting, and foraging. The diet of the woolly mammoth was mainly grasses and sedges. Individuals could probably reach the age of 60. Its habitat was the mammoth steppe, which stretched across northern Eurasia and North America. (Full article...)
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Manuscript miniature, part of double portrait with Empress Maria, Vatican Library
Manuel I Komnenos (Greek: Μανουήλ Κομνηνός, romanized: Manouḗl Komnēnós; 28 November 1118 – 24 September 1180), Latinized as Comnenus, also called Porphyrogenitus (Greek: Πορφυρογέννητος; "born in the purple"), was a Byzantine emperor of the 12th century who reigned over a crucial turning point in the history of Byzantium and the Mediterranean. His reign saw the last flowering of the Komnenian restoration, during which the Byzantine Empire experienced a resurgence of military and economic power and enjoyed a cultural revival.
Eager to restore his empire to its past glories as the great power of the Mediterranean world, Manuel pursued an energetic and ambitious foreign policy. In the process he made alliances with Pope Adrian IV and the resurgent West. He invaded the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, although unsuccessfully, being the last Eastern Roman emperor to attempt reconquests in the western Mediterranean. The passage of the potentially dangerous Second Crusade through his empire was adroitly managed. Manuel established a Byzantine protectorate over the Crusader states of Outremer. Facing Muslim advances in the Holy Land, he made common cause with the Kingdom of Jerusalem and participated in a combined invasion of FatimidEgypt. Manuel reshaped the political maps of the Balkans and the eastern Mediterranean, placing the kingdoms of Hungary and Outremer under Byzantine hegemony and campaigning aggressively against his neighbours both in the west and in the east. (Full article...)
Of mixed Russian and French heritage, Trubnikova was orphaned at an early age and subsequently raised by a wealthy relative. She married at 19, and she and her husband, Konstantin, had seven children. In adulthood, Trubnikova hosted a women-only salon in Saint Petersburg which became a center of feminist activism. She also maintained international connections to fellow feminists in England, France, and other countries. Alongside Anna Filosofova and Nadezhda Stasova, whom she mentored, Trubnikova was one of the earliest leaders of the Russian women's movement. (Full article...)
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A natural diamond crystal
Diamond is a solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Diamond as a form of carbon is tasteless, odourless, strong, brittle solid, colourless in pure form, a poor conductor of electricity, and insoluble in water. Another solid form of carbon known as graphite is the chemically stable form of carbon at room temperature and pressure, but diamond is metastable and converts to it at a negligible rate under those conditions. Diamond has the highest hardness and thermal conductivity of any natural material, properties that are used in major industrial applications such as cutting and polishing tools. They are also the reason that diamond anvil cells can subject materials to pressures found deep in the Earth.
Because the arrangement of atoms in diamond is extremely rigid, few types of impurity can contaminate it (two exceptions are boron and nitrogen). Small numbers of defects or impurities (about one per million of lattice atoms) can color a diamond blue (boron), yellow (nitrogen), brown (defects), green (radiation exposure), purple, pink, orange, or red. Diamond also has a very high refractive index and a relatively high optical dispersion. (Full article...)
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Tennessine is a synthetic chemical element; it has symbolTs and atomic number 117. It has the second-highest atomic number and joint-highest atomic mass of all known elements and is the penultimate element of the 7th period of the periodic table. It is named after the U.S. state of Tennessee, where key research institutions involved in its discovery are located (however, the IUPAC says that the element is named after the "region of Tennessee").
The discovery of tennessine was officially announced in Dubna, Russia, by a Russian–American collaboration in April 2010, which makes it the most recently discovered element. One of its daughter isotopes was created directly in 2011, partially confirming the results of the experiment. The experiment itself was repeated successfully by the same collaboration in 2012 and by a joint German–American team in May 2014. In December 2015, the Joint Working Party of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP), which evaluates claims of discovery of new elements, recognized the element and assigned the priority to the Russian–American team. In June 2016, the IUPAC published a declaration stating that the discoverers had suggested the name tennessine, a name which was officially adopted in November 2016. (Full article...)
Although musically precocious, Tchaikovsky was educated for a career as a civil servant as there was little opportunity for a musical career in Russia at the time and no system of public music education. When an opportunity for such an education arose, he entered the nascent Saint Petersburg Conservatory, from which he graduated in 1865. The formal Western-oriented teaching that Tchaikovsky received there set him apart from composers of the contemporary nationalist movement embodied by the Russian composers of The Five with whom his professional relationship was mixed. (Full article...)
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King Władysław II Jagiełło, detail of the Triptych of Our Lady of Sorrows in the Wawel Cathedral, Kraków
The Last Day of Pompeii is an oil painting on canvas completed by the Russian artist Karl Bryullov between 1830 and 1833. The painting is based on sketches the artist completed in 1828 while visiting Pompeii, a city destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. It is now held in the State Russian Museum.
A Boyar Wedding Feast is an oil-on-canvas painting created by Russian artist Konstantin Makovsky in 1883. The boyars were members of the highest rank of the feudal aristocracy of Russia in the 16th and 17th centuries, and a wedding was an important social event. In this painting, the guests are depicted toasting a newlywed couple. They stand at the head of the table, where the groom sees his bride without her veil for the first time; she appears timid and bashful as the men toast for the first kiss. Behind the couple, the Lady of Ceremony gently urges on the bride. A roasted swan is being brought in on a large platter, the last dish to be served before the couple retires to the bedroom. The work is in the collection of the Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens, in Washington, D.C.
Ivan Goremykin (1839–1917) was a Russian prime minister during World War I. A politician with archconservative views, after some time in the Ministry of Justice, he transferred to the Ministry of the Interior in 1891. He held the rank of prime minister from May to July 1906 and again from 1914 to 1916; during both terms his effectiveness was strongly limited by opposition from the State Duma. In the aftermath of the October Revolution, Goremykin was recognized as a member of the Tsarist government and killed by a street mob.
Although James Clerk Maxwell made the first color photograph in 1861, the results were far from realistic until Prokudin-Gorsky perfected the technique with a series of improvements around 1905. His process used a camera that took a series of monochrome pictures in rapid sequence, each through a different colored filter. Prokudin-Gorskii then went on to document much of the country of Russia, travelling by train in a specially equipped darkroomrailroad car.
This photo of the Nilov Monastery on Stolobny Island in Tver Oblast, Russia, was taken by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky in 1910 before the advent of colour photography. His process used a camera that took a series of monochrome pictures in rapid sequence, each through a different coloured filter. By projecting all three monochrome pictures using correctly coloured light, it was possible to reconstruct the original colour scene.
An aerial view of the Field of Mars, a large park in central Saint Petersburg, Russia, pictured in 2016. It is named after Mars, the Roman god of war. The park's history goes back to the 18th century, when it was converted from bogland and named the Grand Meadow. Later, it was the setting for celebrations to mark Russia's victory over Sweden in the Great Northern War. Its next name, the Tsaritsyn Meadow, appears after the royal family commissioned Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli to build the Summer Palace for Empress Elizabeth. It became the Field of Mars during the reign of Paul I. Towards the end of the 18th century, the park became a military drill ground, where they erected monuments commemorating the victories of the Russian Army and where parades and military exercises took place regularly. After the February Revolution in 1917, the Field of Mars became a memorial area for the revolution's honoured dead. In the summer of 1942, as the city was besieged by the German army in the Siege of Leningrad, the park was covered with vegetable gardens to supply food. An eternal flame was lit in the centre of the park in 1957, in memory of the victims of various wars and revolutions.
Kombat (Russian for 'battalion commander') is a black-and-white photograph by Soviet photographer Max Alpert. It depicts a Soviet military officer, armed with a TT pistol, raising his unit for an attack during World War II. This work is regarded as one of the most iconic Soviet World War II photographs, yet neither the date nor the subject is known with certainty. According to the most widely accepted version, it depicts junior politruk Aleksei Gordeyevich Yeryomenko, minutes before his death on 12 July 1942, in Voroshilovgrad Oblast, now part of Ukraine. The photograph is in the archives of RIA Novosti, a Russian state-owned news agency.
A Chechen man prays during the First Battle of Grozny, January 1995. The flame in the background is coming from a gas pipeline which was hit by shrapnel.
The current main building of the Moscow State University in Sparrow Hills, Moscow, Russia. Designed by Lev Rudnev and completed by 1953, the 240-metre (790 ft) tall structure was the tallest building in Europe until the completion of the Messeturm in 1990.
Maxim Gorky (1868–1936) was a Russian political activist and writer who helped establish the Socialist Realism literary method. This portrait dates from a trip Gorky made to the United States in 1906, on which he raised funds for the Bolsheviks. During this trip he wrote his novel The Mother.
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–81; depicted in 1872) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and philosopher. After publishing his first novel, Poor Folk, at age 25, Dostoyevsky wrote (among others) eleven novels, three novellas, and seventeen short novels, including Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880).
January 25, 1721 - Peter established the Holy Synod, a body of ten clergymen chaired by a secular official, that was to head the Russian Orthodox Church in lieu of the Patriarch of Moscow.
January 28, 1725 - Peter died of urinary problems. He failed to name a successor; one of Peter's closest advisers, Aleksandr Menshikov, convinced the Imperial Guard to declare in favor of Peter's wife Catherine I.
Kurnik (Russian: курник; "chicken pirog"), also known as wedding pirog or tsar pirog, is a dome-shaped savoury Russian pirog (loosely, a pie) usually filled with chicken or turkey, eggs, onions, kasha or rice, and other optional components. Sometimes filled with boiled rooster combs, this pirog originated in Southern Russia, especially in Cossack communities, and was used as a "wedding pirog" in the rest of the country. It is dome-shaped, unlike any other non-sweet pirog. In special cases, it was served to tsar himself. Even today, this pirog is served on special occasions in most of Russia. (Full article...)
Eduard Anatolyevich Streltsov (Russian: Эдуа́рд Анато́льевич Стрельцо́в, IPA:[ɨdʊˈartɐnɐˈtolʲjɪvʲitɕstrʲɪlʲˈtsof]ⓘ; 21 July 1937 – 22 July 1990) was a Soviet footballer who played as a forward for Torpedo Moscow and the Soviet national team during the 1950s and 1960s. A powerful and skilful attacking player, he scored the fourth-highest number of goals for the Soviet Union and has been called "the greatest outfield player Russia has ever produced". He is sometimes dubbed "the Russian Pelé".
Born and raised in east Moscow, Streltsov joined Torpedo at the age of 16 in 1953 and made his international debut two years later. He was part of the squad that won the gold medal at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, and came seventh in the 1957 Ballon d'Or. The following year, his promising career was interrupted by allegations of sexual assault shortly before the 1958 World Cup. Soviet authorities pledged he could still play if he admitted his guilt, after which he confessed, but was instead prosecuted and sentenced to twelve years of forced labour under the Gulag system (abolished in 1960 and replaced by prisons). The conviction was highly controversial, with many pointing to conflicts between Streltsov and government officials. (Full article...)
Ukrainian PresidentVolodymyr Zelenskyy announces that Ukraine has captured two North Korean soldiers in healthy condition in Kursk Oblast, Russia, for the first time since North Korea entered the war, as the two previous North Korean prisoners of war died of their injuries shortly following their capture. (Reuters)
... that Russia launched an Iranian satellite into orbit just three weeks after Putin and Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei vowed to cooperate against the West?
... that the founder of the Guide to the Free World, helping people leave Russia after its invasion of Ukraine, said she was told: "It's good that you get out of Russia, but a pity that you won't be shot"?
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