The British sack Benin City
Thousands of Benin Bronzes end up in Europe's museums
In February 1897 a British punitive expedition of some 1,200 men took the capital of the Kingdom of Benin in reprisal for the killing of a British mission. The city burned, Oba Ovonramwen was exiled, and thousands of bronze plaques and carved tusks were carried off and sold. Today the Benin Bronzes symbolise the restitution debate: in 2022 Germany transferred ownership of more than a thousand pieces to Nigeria.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1914–1918 World War I — 17 years later
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — 21 years later
- 1920 League of Nations founded — 23 years later
Europe
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — 11 years earlier
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — 8 years earlier
- 1895 Discovery of X-rays — 2 years earlier
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — 8 years later
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — 22 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1895 Popov's radio receiver — 2 years earlier
- 1905–1907 Russian Revolution of 1905 — 8 years later
- 1908 Tunguska event — 11 years later
- 1917 October Revolution — 20 years later
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — 20 years later
Middle East
- 1905–1911 Persian Constitutional Revolution — 8 years later
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — 11 years later
- 1908 Young Turk Revolution — 11 years later
- 1915 Armenian genocide — 18 years later
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — 19 years later
Asia
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — 14 years earlier
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — 12 years earlier
- 1894–1895 First Sino-Japanese War — 3 years earlier
- 1894 Yersin identifies the plague bacterium — 3 years earlier
- 1896–1898 Philippine Revolution — 1 year earlier
Americas
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — 21 years earlier
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — 18 years earlier
- 1888 Golden Law abolishes slavery in Brazil — 9 years earlier
- 1903 Wright brothers' first flight — 6 years later
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — 17 years later
Oceania
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — 4 years earlier
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — 4 years earlier
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — 14 years later
- 1912 The death of Scott's polar party — 15 years later
Alive at the time
- Queen Victoria (aged 78)
- Leo Tolstoy (aged 69)
- Dmitri Mendeleev (aged 63)
- Thomas Edison (aged 50)
- Nikola Tesla (aged 41)
- Marie Curie (aged 30)
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 28)
- Vladimir Lenin (aged 27)
- Ernest Rutherford (aged 26)
- Winston Churchill (aged 23)