The Cottingley Fairies
Two girls photograph fairies, and Conan Doyle believes them
In 1917 cousins Elsie, 16, and Frances, 9, took photos of themselves with 'fairies' by a stream. Sherlock Holmes's creator Arthur Conan Doyle hailed them as proof that fairies exist. Only in the early 1980s did the cousins admit the fairies were cardboard cut-outs copied from a children's book.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
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Even after confessing, one of the Cottingley cousins would not fully back down. In the early 1980s they admitted the fairies were cardboard, but Frances insisted to the end that the fifth and last photo was genuine. Share →
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1914–1918 World War I — 3 years earlier
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — 1 year later
- 1920 League of Nations founded — 3 years later
- 1939–1945 World War II — 22 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917 October Revolution — same year
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — same year
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — 12 years later
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — 19 years later
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 24 years later
Middle East
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — 9 years earlier
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — 2 years earlier
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — 1 year earlier
- 1916–1918 The Arab Revolt — 1 year earlier
- 1917 Balfour Declaration — same year
Africa
- 1897 The British sack Benin City — 20 years earlier
- 1904–1908 The Herero and Nama genocide — 13 years earlier
- 1922 Discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb — 5 years later
- 1935–1937 Italy invades Ethiopia — 18 years later
Asia
- 1896–1898 Philippine Revolution — 21 years earlier
- 1911–1912 Xinhai Revolution — 6 years earlier
- 1923 Great Kantō earthquake — 6 years later
- 1931 China floods — 14 years later
- 1934–1935 Long March — 17 years later
Americas
- 1910–1920 Mexican Revolution — 7 years earlier
- 1913 Ford's moving assembly line — 4 years earlier
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — 3 years earlier
- 1914 Death of Martha, the last passenger pigeon — 3 years earlier
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — 12 years later
Oceania
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — 24 years earlier
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — 24 years earlier
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — 6 years earlier
- 1912 The death of Scott's polar party — 5 years earlier
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 19 years later
Alive at the time
- Thomas Edison (aged 70)
- Nikola Tesla (aged 61)
- Marie Curie (aged 50)
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 48)
- Vladimir Lenin (aged 47)
- Ernest Rutherford (aged 46)
- Winston Churchill (aged 43)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 39)
- Albert Einstein (aged 38)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 36)