Balfour Declaration
A British pledge at the root of the Palestine question
On 2 November 1917 British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour wrote to Lord Rothschild pledging support for 'a national home for the Jewish people' in Palestine, provided nothing prejudiced the civil and religious rights of its non-Jewish communities, then about 90% of the population. The pledge was written into the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine; the parties to the conflict still view it in sharply different ways.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1914–1918 World War I — 3 years earlier
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — 1 year later
- 1920 League of Nations founded — 3 years later
- 1939–1945 World War II — 22 years later
Europe
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — 12 years earlier
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — 2 years later
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — 11 years later
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — 16 years later
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — 19 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917 October Revolution — same year
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — same year
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — 12 years later
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — 19 years later
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 24 years later
Africa
- 1897 The British sack Benin City — 20 years earlier
- 1904–1908 The Herero and Nama genocide — 13 years earlier
- 1922 Discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb — 5 years later
- 1935–1937 Italy invades Ethiopia — 18 years later
Asia
- 1896–1898 Philippine Revolution — 21 years earlier
- 1911–1912 Xinhai Revolution — 6 years earlier
- 1923 Great Kantō earthquake — 6 years later
- 1931 China floods — 14 years later
- 1934–1935 Long March — 17 years later
Americas
- 1910–1920 Mexican Revolution — 7 years earlier
- 1913 Ford's moving assembly line — 4 years earlier
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — 3 years earlier
- 1914 Death of Martha, the last passenger pigeon — 3 years earlier
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — 12 years later
Oceania
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — 24 years earlier
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — 24 years earlier
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — 6 years earlier
- 1912 The death of Scott's polar party — 5 years earlier
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 19 years later
Alive at the time
- Thomas Edison (aged 70)
- Nikola Tesla (aged 61)
- Marie Curie (aged 50)
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 48)
- Vladimir Lenin (aged 47)
- Ernest Rutherford (aged 46)
- Winston Churchill (aged 43)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 39)
- Albert Einstein (aged 38)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 36)