Cixi's Marble Boat
Navy money goes on a stone ship that cannot sail
In 1893 Empress Dowager Cixi had a pavilion in the Summer Palace rebuilt as a paddle steamer, wooden but painted to look like marble. The palace was restored largely with money meant for a new navy, and the stone boat that cannot sail is seen as a bitter irony.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1914–1918 World War I — 21 years later
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — 25 years later
Europe
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — 7 years earlier
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — 4 years earlier
- 1889 Van Gogh's The Starry Night — 4 years earlier
- 1895 Discovery of X-rays — 2 years later
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — 12 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1895 Popov's radio receiver — 2 years later
- 1905–1907 Russian Revolution of 1905 — 12 years later
- 1908 Tunguska event — 15 years later
- 1917 October Revolution — 24 years later
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — 24 years later
Middle East
- 1905–1911 Persian Constitutional Revolution — 12 years later
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — 15 years later
- 1908 Young Turk Revolution — 15 years later
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — 22 years later
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — 23 years later
Africa
- 1885 The Mahdists take Khartoum — 8 years earlier
- 1885–1908 The Congo Free State — 8 years earlier
- 1886 The Witwatersrand Gold Rush — 7 years earlier
- 1897 The British sack Benin City — 4 years later
- 1904–1908 The Herero and Nama genocide — 11 years later
Americas
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — 17 years earlier
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — 14 years earlier
- 1888 Golden Law abolishes slavery in Brazil — 5 years earlier
- 1903 Wright brothers' first flight — 10 years later
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — 21 years later
Oceania
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — same year
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — same year
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — 18 years later
- 1912 The death of Scott's polar party — 19 years later
Alive at the time
- Queen Victoria (aged 74)
- Leo Tolstoy (aged 65)
- Dmitri Mendeleev (aged 59)
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (aged 53)
- Thomas Edison (aged 46)
- Nikola Tesla (aged 37)
- Marie Curie (aged 26)
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 24)
- Vladimir Lenin (aged 23)
- Ernest Rutherford (aged 22)