The Persian Tobacco Protest
All Persia quits smoking to kill a British concession
Naser al-Din Shah granted a Briton a monopoly on all Iranian tobacco. In 1891 the cleric Shirazi issued a fatwa against tobacco, and a country that smoked even in mosques stopped; even the women of the shah's harem reportedly quit. The concession was cancelled in January 1892.
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Persia's Naser al-Din Shah was one of Iran's first photographers. He set up a studio in the Golestan Palace and was photographed hundreds of times, and in 1873 he became the first modern Iranian monarch to visit Europe, keeping a travel diary. Share →
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1914–1918 World War I — 23 years later
Europe
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — 5 years earlier
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — 2 years earlier
- 1889 Van Gogh's The Starry Night — 2 years earlier
- 1895 Discovery of X-rays — 4 years later
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — 14 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — 22 years earlier
- 1877 Premiere of Swan Lake — 14 years earlier
- 1895 Popov's radio receiver — 4 years later
- 1905–1907 Russian Revolution of 1905 — 14 years later
- 1908 Tunguska event — 17 years later
Africa
- 1879 Battle of Isandlwana — 12 years earlier
- 1885 The Mahdists take Khartoum — 6 years earlier
- 1885–1908 The Congo Free State — 6 years earlier
- 1886 The Witwatersrand Gold Rush — 5 years earlier
- 1897 The British sack Benin City — 6 years later
Asia
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — 8 years earlier
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — 6 years earlier
- 1891 Discovery of Java Man — same year
- 1894–1895 First Sino-Japanese War — 3 years later
- 1894 Yersin identifies the plague bacterium — 3 years later
Americas
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — 15 years earlier
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — 12 years earlier
- 1888 Golden Law abolishes slavery in Brazil — 3 years earlier
- 1903 Wright brothers' first flight — 12 years later
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — 23 years later
Oceania
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — 2 years later
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — 2 years later
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — 20 years later
- 1912 The death of Scott's polar party — 21 years later
Alive at the time
- Queen Victoria (aged 72)
- Leo Tolstoy (aged 63)
- Dmitri Mendeleev (aged 57)
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (aged 51)
- Thomas Edison (aged 44)
- Nikola Tesla (aged 35)
- Marie Curie (aged 24)
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 22)
- Vladimir Lenin (aged 21)
- Ernest Rutherford (aged 20)