Russia's first public railway
Trains take the public to concerts — and give Russia 'vokzal'
On 30 October 1837 the first train ran from Saint Petersburg to Tsarskoye Selo in 35 minutes. The line carried almost no freight: its Pavlovsk terminus was built as a concert 'vauxhall' after London's pleasure gardens, which is why Russians still call a railway station a 'vokzal'.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Did you know
Pushkin died after a duel in early 1837; that October Russia's first train ran from Saint Petersburg to Tsarskoye Selo, the town where he had gone to school. Share →
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Europe
- 1814–1815 Congress of Vienna — 23 years earlier
- 1833 Abolition of slavery in the British Empire — 4 years earlier
- 1839 Birth of photography: the daguerreotype — 2 years later
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Middle East
- 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay — 9 years earlier
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Africa
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Asia
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- c. 1831 Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa — 6 years earlier
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Americas
- 1822 Independence of Brazil — 15 years earlier
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Oceania
- 1851 The Australian gold rushes — 14 years later
Alive at the time
- Alexander Pushkin (aged 38)
- Charles Darwin (aged 28)
- Abraham Lincoln (aged 28)
- Karl Marx (aged 19)
- Queen Victoria (aged 18)
- Fyodor Dostoevsky (aged 16)
- Leo Tolstoy (aged 9)
- Dmitri Mendeleev (aged 3)
- Katsushika Hokusai (aged 77)
- Andrew Jackson (aged 70)