Last great auks killed
Collectors pay for rarity — fishermen kill the final pair
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On 3 June 1844 fishermen on the Eldey stack off Iceland killed the last confirmed pair of great auks for a dealer, crushing their egg. The rarer the flightless bird became, the more collectors paid for its skins and eggs.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Did you know
In May 1844 Morse sent the first telegram from Washington to Baltimore; ten days later the last pair of great auks was killed in Iceland.
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1853–1856 Crimean War — 9 years later
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — 17 years later
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — 23 years later
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — 25 years later
Middle East
- 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay — 16 years earlier
- 1839 The Edict of Gülhane opens the Tanzimat — 5 years earlier
- 1839–1842 First Anglo-Afghan War — 5 years earlier
Africa
- c. 1835–1846 The Great Trek — 9 years earlier
- 1847 Liberia declares independence — 3 years later
- 1869 Opening of the Suez Canal — 25 years later
Asia
- 1819 Raffles founds modern Singapore — 25 years earlier
- c. 1831 Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa — 13 years earlier
- 1839–1842 First Opium War — 5 years earlier
- 1853–1854 Commodore Perry's Black Ships — 9 years later
- 1868 Meiji Restoration — 24 years later
Americas
- 1835 Darwin in the Galápagos — 9 years earlier
- 1838–1839 Trail of Tears — 6 years earlier
- 1846 First public demonstration of ether anaesthesia — 2 years later
- 1846–1848 Mexican–American War — 2 years later
- 1861–1865 American Civil War — 17 years later
Oceania
- 1851 The Australian gold rushes — 7 years later
Alive at the time
- Charles Darwin (aged 35)
- Abraham Lincoln (aged 35)
- Karl Marx (aged 26)
- Queen Victoria (aged 25)
- Fyodor Dostoevsky (aged 23)
- Leo Tolstoy (aged 16)
- Dmitri Mendeleev (aged 10)
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (aged 4)
- Katsushika Hokusai (aged 84)
- Andrew Jackson (aged 77)