Sighting of Antarctica
Bellingshausen and Lazarev see the sixth continent
On 28 January 1820 the sloops Vostok and Mirny under Fabian von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev approached the Antarctic ice shelf. It was among the first sightings of the sixth continent, whose existence had been only a hypothesis for centuries.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Did you know
Antarctica was first sighted only in 1820, by the Bellingshausen–Lazarev expedition — by then Watt's steam engine was already half a century old.
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Europe
- 1796 Jenner's first vaccination — 24 years earlier
- 1804 Coronation of Napoleon — 16 years earlier
- 1814–1815 Congress of Vienna — 6 years earlier
- 1816 Year Without a Summer — 4 years earlier
- 1845–1852 Great Famine in Ireland — 25 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1812 Napoleon's invasion of Russia — 8 years earlier
Middle East
- 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay — 8 years later
- 1839 The Edict of Gülhane opens the Tanzimat — 19 years later
- 1839–1842 First Anglo-Afghan War — 19 years later
Africa
- 1798 Battle of the Pyramids — 22 years earlier
- 1804–1903 Usman dan Fodio's jihad and the Sokoto Caliphate — 16 years earlier
- 1805–1848 Muhammad Ali becomes ruler of Egypt — 15 years earlier
- c. 1835–1846 The Great Trek — 15 years later
Asia
- 1815 Eruption of Mount Tambora — 5 years earlier
- 1817–1824 First cholera pandemic — 3 years earlier
- 1819 Raffles founds modern Singapore — 1 year earlier
- c. 1831 Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa — 11 years later
- 1839–1842 First Opium War — 19 years later
Americas
- 1803 Louisiana Purchase — 17 years earlier
- 1810–1826 Spanish American wars of independence — 10 years earlier
- 1817 San Martín's Crossing of the Andes — 3 years earlier
- 1822 Independence of Brazil — 2 years later
- 1835 Darwin in the Galápagos — 15 years later
Alive at the time
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (aged 71)
- Napoleon Bonaparte (aged 51)
- Ludwig van Beethoven (aged 50)
- Simón Bolívar (aged 37)
- Alexander Pushkin (aged 21)
- Charles Darwin (aged 11)
- Abraham Lincoln (aged 11)
- Karl Marx (aged 2)
- Queen Victoria (aged 1)
- George III (aged 82)