The Centennial Light
A light bulb burning in a fire station since 1901
A carbon-filament bulb, now glowing at about 4 watts, was hung in a Livermore fire station in 1901 and has hardly been switched off since. It is in Guinness World Records, and a webcam lets anyone watch it.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Did you know
A bulb in a Livermore fire station has been lit since 1901 and has hardly ever been off. When it was moved to a new station in 1976 it went dark for about 22 minutes; rather than unscrew it, they cut the cord. Share →
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1914–1918 World War I — 13 years later
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — 17 years later
- 1920 League of Nations founded — 19 years later
Europe
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — 15 years earlier
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — 12 years earlier
- 1901 First Nobel Prizes — same year
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — 4 years later
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — 18 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1895 Popov's radio receiver — 6 years earlier
- 1905–1907 Russian Revolution of 1905 — 4 years later
- 1908 Tunguska event — 7 years later
- 1917 October Revolution — 16 years later
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — 16 years later
Middle East
- 1905–1911 Persian Constitutional Revolution — 4 years later
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — 7 years later
- 1908 Young Turk Revolution — 7 years later
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — 14 years later
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — 15 years later
Africa
- 1885 The Mahdists take Khartoum — 16 years earlier
- 1885–1908 The Congo Free State — 16 years earlier
- 1886 The Witwatersrand Gold Rush — 15 years earlier
- 1897 The British sack Benin City — 4 years earlier
- 1904–1908 The Herero and Nama genocide — 3 years later
Asia
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — 18 years earlier
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — 16 years earlier
- 1894–1895 First Sino-Japanese War — 7 years earlier
- 1894 Yersin identifies the plague bacterium — 7 years earlier
- 1896–1898 Philippine Revolution — 5 years earlier
Oceania
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — 8 years earlier
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — 8 years earlier
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — 10 years later
- 1912 The death of Scott's polar party — 11 years later
Alive at the time
- Queen Victoria (aged 82)
- Leo Tolstoy (aged 73)
- Dmitri Mendeleev (aged 67)
- Thomas Edison (aged 54)
- Nikola Tesla (aged 45)
- Marie Curie (aged 34)
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 32)
- Vladimir Lenin (aged 31)
- Ernest Rutherford (aged 30)
- Winston Churchill (aged 27)