Lebedenko's Tsar Tank
9-metre wheels — and it got stuck on its very first test
Engineer Lebedenko won over Nicholas II with a wind-up model powered by a gramophone spring. The real machine had front wheels almost 9 m across, but in tests in August 1915 its small rear roller sank in soft ground. It rusted in the forest for six more years before being scrapped.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
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Russia's Tsar Tank was tested in 1915, a year before the first British tanks went into battle on the Somme. But the machine with its 9-metre wheels got stuck on its first trial and never saw combat. Share →
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1914–1918 World War I — 1 year earlier
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — 3 years later
- 1920 League of Nations founded — 5 years later
- 1939–1945 World War II — 24 years later
Europe
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — 10 years earlier
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — 4 years later
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — 13 years later
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — 18 years later
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — 21 years later
Middle East
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — 7 years earlier
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — same year
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — 1 year later
- 1916–1918 The Arab Revolt — 1 year later
- 1917 Balfour Declaration — 2 years later
Africa
- 1897 The British sack Benin City — 18 years earlier
- 1904–1908 The Herero and Nama genocide — 11 years earlier
- 1922 Discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb — 7 years later
- 1935–1937 Italy invades Ethiopia — 20 years later
Asia
- 1896–1898 Philippine Revolution — 19 years earlier
- 1911–1912 Xinhai Revolution — 4 years earlier
- 1923 Great Kantō earthquake — 8 years later
- 1931 China floods — 16 years later
- 1934–1935 Long March — 19 years later
Americas
- 1910–1920 Mexican Revolution — 5 years earlier
- 1913 Ford's moving assembly line — 2 years earlier
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — 1 year earlier
- 1914 Death of Martha, the last passenger pigeon — 1 year earlier
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — 14 years later
Oceania
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — 22 years earlier
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — 22 years earlier
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — 4 years earlier
- 1912 The death of Scott's polar party — 3 years earlier
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 21 years later
Alive at the time
- Thomas Edison (aged 68)
- Nikola Tesla (aged 59)
- Marie Curie (aged 48)
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 46)
- Vladimir Lenin (aged 45)
- Ernest Rutherford (aged 44)
- Winston Churchill (aged 41)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 37)
- Albert Einstein (aged 36)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 34)