Cher Ami saves the Lost Battalion
A wounded pigeon stops friendly artillery fire
In October 1918 a surrounded American battalion came under fire from its own guns. The pigeon Cher Ami, shot through the breast and losing a leg, reached headquarters with a note; the shelling stopped and 194 men survived.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
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A pigeon was awarded France’s Croix de Guerre. Wounded and missing a leg, Cher Ami delivered the Lost Battalion’s note in 1918, saving 194 American soldiers from their own artillery. Share →
In besieged Paris in 1870, letters were photographed onto microfilm so a single pigeon could carry thousands at once. Dispatches came back by pigeon too, and were projected onto a wall to be copied out. Share →
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1914–1918 World War I — 4 years earlier
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — same year
- 1920 League of Nations founded — 2 years later
- 1939–1945 World War II — 21 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917 October Revolution — 1 year earlier
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — 1 year earlier
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — 11 years later
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — 18 years later
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 23 years later
Middle East
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — 10 years earlier
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — 3 years earlier
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — 2 years earlier
- 1916–1918 The Arab Revolt — 2 years earlier
- 1917 Balfour Declaration — 1 year earlier
Africa
- 1897 The British sack Benin City — 21 years earlier
- 1904–1908 The Herero and Nama genocide — 14 years earlier
- 1922 Discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb — 4 years later
- 1935–1937 Italy invades Ethiopia — 17 years later
Asia
- 1896–1898 Philippine Revolution — 22 years earlier
- 1911–1912 Xinhai Revolution — 7 years earlier
- 1923 Great Kantō earthquake — 5 years later
- 1931 China floods — 13 years later
- 1934–1935 Long March — 16 years later
Americas
- 1910–1920 Mexican Revolution — 8 years earlier
- 1913 Ford's moving assembly line — 5 years earlier
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — 4 years earlier
- 1914 Death of Martha, the last passenger pigeon — 4 years earlier
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — 11 years later
Oceania
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — 25 years earlier
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — 7 years earlier
- 1912 The death of Scott's polar party — 6 years earlier
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 18 years later
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — 23 years later
Alive at the time
- Thomas Edison (aged 71)
- Nikola Tesla (aged 62)
- Marie Curie (aged 51)
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 49)
- Vladimir Lenin (aged 48)
- Ernest Rutherford (aged 47)
- Winston Churchill (aged 44)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 40)
- Albert Einstein (aged 39)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 37)