The first matryoshka doll
Russia's most 'ancient' souvenir dates only from the 1890s
The first matryoshka was turned in the 1890s by Vasily Zvyozdochkin to a design by the painter Sergey Malyutin of the Mamontovs' Abramtsevo circle. The set had eight dolls, the largest holding a rooster. In 1900 it won a bronze medal at the Paris World's Fair and became a symbol of Russia.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Did you know
The matryoshka is younger than the Eiffel Tower. The tower opened in 1889, the first nesting doll was made in the 1890s — and it too found fame in Paris, winning a medal at the 1900 World's Fair. Share →
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
Europe
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — 9 years earlier
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — 6 years earlier
- 1895 Discovery of X-rays — same year
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — 10 years later
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — 24 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
- 1915–1917 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)