Battle of Verdun
Ten months of slaughter, and the front barely moves
On 21 February 1916 the German army attacked the fortress of Verdun, aiming to bleed France white. The fighting lasted until 18 December: the two sides lost some 700,000 killed, wounded and captured, and the front line ended up almost where it began.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1914–1918 World War I — 2 years earlier
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — 2 years later
- 1920 League of Nations founded — 4 years later
- 1939–1945 World War II — 23 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917 October Revolution — 1 year later
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — 1 year later
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — 13 years later
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — 20 years later
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 25 years later
Middle East
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — 8 years earlier
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — 1 year earlier
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — same year
- 1916–1918 The Arab Revolt — same year
- 1917 Balfour Declaration — 1 year later
Africa
- 1897 The British sack Benin City — 19 years earlier
- 1898 Battle of Omdurman — 18 years earlier
- 1899–1902 Second Boer War — 17 years earlier
- 1904–1908 The Herero and Nama genocide — 12 years earlier
- 1922 Discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb — 6 years later
Asia
- 1910 Japan annexes Korea — 6 years earlier
- 1911–1912 Xinhai Revolution — 5 years earlier
- 1919 Amritsar massacre — 3 years later
- 1923 Great Kantō earthquake — 7 years later
- 1931 China floods — 15 years later
Americas
- 1910–1920 Mexican Revolution — 6 years earlier
- 1913 Ford's moving assembly line — 3 years earlier
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — 2 years earlier
- 1914 Death of Martha, the last passenger pigeon — 2 years earlier
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — 13 years later
Oceania
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — 23 years earlier
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — 23 years earlier
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — 5 years earlier
- 1912 The death of Scott's polar party — 4 years earlier
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 20 years later
Alive at the time
- Thomas Edison (aged 69)
- Nikola Tesla (aged 60)
- Marie Curie (aged 49)
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 47)
- Vladimir Lenin (aged 46)
- Ernest Rutherford (aged 45)
- Winston Churchill (aged 42)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 38)
- Albert Einstein (aged 37)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 35)