The most chaotic Olympic marathon
The leader rides in a car, the champion is fed rat poison
The first man home in the 1904 Olympic marathon, Fred Lorz, had ridden part of the way in a car. The real winner, Thomas Hicks, was dosed with strychnine, brandy and egg by his trainers and almost carried over the line. Cuba's Andarín Carvajal ate rotten apples and took a nap mid-race.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1914–1918 World War I — 10 years later
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — 14 years later
- 1920 League of Nations founded — 16 years later
Europe
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — 18 years earlier
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — 15 years earlier
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — 1 year later
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — 15 years later
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — 24 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1905–1907 Russian Revolution of 1905 — 1 year later
- 1908 Tunguska event — 4 years later
- 1917 October Revolution — 13 years later
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — 13 years later
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — 25 years later
Middle East
- 1905–1911 Persian Constitutional Revolution — 1 year later
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — 4 years later
- 1908 Young Turk Revolution — 4 years later
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — 11 years later
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — 12 years later
Africa
- 1885 The Mahdists take Khartoum — 19 years earlier
- 1886 The Witwatersrand Gold Rush — 18 years earlier
- 1897 The British sack Benin City — 7 years earlier
- 1904–1908 The Herero and Nama genocide — same year
- 1922 Discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb — 18 years later
Asia
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — 21 years earlier
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — 19 years earlier
- 1894–1895 First Sino-Japanese War — 10 years earlier
- 1896–1898 Philippine Revolution — 8 years earlier
- 1911–1912 Xinhai Revolution — 7 years later
Oceania
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — 11 years earlier
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — 11 years earlier
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — 7 years later
- 1912 The death of Scott's polar party — 8 years later
Alive at the time
- Leo Tolstoy (aged 76)
- Dmitri Mendeleev (aged 70)
- Thomas Edison (aged 57)
- Nikola Tesla (aged 48)
- Marie Curie (aged 37)
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 35)
- Vladimir Lenin (aged 34)
- Ernest Rutherford (aged 33)
- Winston Churchill (aged 30)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 26)