Volta's pile, the first battery
For the first time, current flows through a wire steadily
Alessandro Volta stacked discs of zinc and copper separated by brine-soaked card and got a steady current. He reported the battery to the Royal Society in London in 1800; the unit of voltage, the volt, is named after him.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 18th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1783 Russian annexation of Crimea (1783) — 17 years earlier
- 1812 Napoleon's invasion of Russia — 12 years later
Africa
- 1798 Battle of the Pyramids — 2 years earlier
- 1804–1903 Usman dan Fodio's jihad and the Sokoto Caliphate — 4 years later
- 1805–1848 Muhammad Ali becomes ruler of Egypt — 5 years later
Asia
- 1815 Eruption of Mount Tambora — 15 years later
- 1817–1824 First cholera pandemic — 17 years later
- 1819 Raffles founds modern Singapore — 19 years later
Americas
- 1776 US Declaration of Independence — 24 years earlier
- 1787 US Constitution — 13 years earlier
- 1791–1804 Haitian Revolution — 9 years earlier
- 1803 Louisiana Purchase — 3 years later
- 1810–1826 Spanish American wars of independence — 10 years later
Oceania
- 1788 First Fleet arrives in Australia — 12 years earlier
Alive at the time
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (aged 51)
- Napoleon Bonaparte (aged 31)
- Ludwig van Beethoven (aged 30)
- Simón Bolívar (aged 17)
- Alexander Pushkin (aged 1)
- Immanuel Kant (aged 76)
- Alexander Suvorov (aged 70)
- James Watt (aged 64)
- George III (aged 62)
- Thomas Jefferson (aged 57)