Discovery of X-rays
Invisible rays let doctors see inside the body
On 8 November 1895 Wilhelm Röntgen discovered invisible rays that pass through flesh. An image of his wife's hand amazed the world and within a year the rays were used in medicine. Röntgen received the first Nobel Prize in Physics.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1914–1918 World War I — 19 years later
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — 23 years later
- 1920 League of Nations founded — 25 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1895 Popov's radio receiver — same year
- 1905–1907 Russian Revolution of 1905 — 10 years later
- 1908 Tunguska event — 13 years later
- 1917 October Revolution — 22 years later
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — 22 years later
Middle East
- 1905–1911 Persian Constitutional Revolution — 10 years later
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — 13 years later
- 1908 Young Turk Revolution — 13 years later
- 1915 Armenian genocide — 20 years later
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — 21 years later
Africa
- 1885 The Mahdists take Khartoum — 10 years earlier
- 1885–1908 The Congo Free State — 10 years earlier
- 1886 The Witwatersrand Gold Rush — 9 years earlier
- 1897 The British sack Benin City — 2 years later
- 1904–1908 The Herero and Nama genocide — 9 years later
Asia
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — 12 years earlier
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — 10 years earlier
- 1894–1895 First Sino-Japanese War — 1 year earlier
- 1894 Yersin identifies the plague bacterium — 1 year earlier
- 1896–1898 Philippine Revolution — 1 year later
Americas
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — 19 years earlier
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — 16 years earlier
- 1888 Golden Law abolishes slavery in Brazil — 7 years earlier
- 1903 Wright brothers' first flight — 8 years later
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — 19 years later
Oceania
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — 2 years earlier
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — 2 years earlier
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — 16 years later
- 1912 The death of Scott's polar party — 17 years later
Alive at the time
- Queen Victoria (aged 76)
- Leo Tolstoy (aged 67)
- Dmitri Mendeleev (aged 61)
- Thomas Edison (aged 48)
- Nikola Tesla (aged 39)
- Marie Curie (aged 28)
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 26)
- Vladimir Lenin (aged 25)
- Ernest Rutherford (aged 24)
- Winston Churchill (aged 21)