Eruption of Mount Pelée
A searing cloud erases the 'Paris of the Caribbean' in minutes
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On 8 May 1902 a glowing cloud of gas and ash destroyed Saint-Pierre, the 'Paris of the Caribbean', in minutes, killing about 28,000 people. Among the very few survivors was prisoner Ludger Sylbaris, shielded by the thick walls of his cell.
Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1914–1918 World War I — 12 years later
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — 16 years later
- 1920 League of Nations founded — 18 years later
Europe
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — 16 years earlier
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — 13 years earlier
- 1901 First Nobel Prizes — 1 year earlier
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — 3 years later
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — 17 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1895 Popov's radio receiver — 7 years earlier
- 1905–1907 Russian Revolution of 1905 — 3 years later
- 1908 Tunguska event — 6 years later
- 1917 October Revolution — 15 years later
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — 15 years later
Middle East
- 1905–1911 Persian Constitutional Revolution — 3 years later
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — 6 years later
- 1908 Young Turk Revolution — 6 years later
- 1915 Armenian genocide — 13 years later
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — 14 years later
Africa
- 1885 The Mahdists take Khartoum — 17 years earlier
- 1885–1908 The Congo Free State — 17 years earlier
- 1886 The Witwatersrand Gold Rush — 16 years earlier
- 1897 The British sack Benin City — 5 years earlier
- 1904–1908 The Herero and Nama genocide — 2 years later
Asia
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — 19 years earlier
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — 17 years earlier
- 1894–1895 First Sino-Japanese War — 8 years earlier
- 1894 Yersin identifies the plague bacterium — 8 years earlier
- 1896–1898 Philippine Revolution — 6 years earlier
Oceania
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — 9 years earlier
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — 9 years earlier
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — 9 years later
- 1912 The death of Scott's polar party — 10 years later
Alive at the time
- Leo Tolstoy (aged 74)
- Dmitri Mendeleev (aged 68)
- Thomas Edison (aged 55)
- Nikola Tesla (aged 46)
- Marie Curie (aged 35)
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 33)
- Vladimir Lenin (aged 32)
- Ernest Rutherford (aged 31)
- Winston Churchill (aged 28)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 24)