Pyotr Chaadayev was officially declared insane for writing a philosophical essay.
After his Philosophical Letter appeared in 1836, Nicholas I had him pronounced mentally ill and the journal Telescope was shut down.
More amazing facts
- 1834 Darwin ate a new species before realising it was one. On the Beagle voyage his companions shot a rhea and had it for dinner; only then did he see it was the elusive lesser rhea, later named Darwin's rhea.
- 1834 · 1840 · 1844 Russians once rioted over potatoes.
- 1835 · 1859 Darwin spent five weeks on the Galápagos in 1835, but did not publish On the Origin of Species until 24 years later.
- 1835 · 1910 Mark Twain came in and went out with Halley's Comet.
- 1835 In 1835 a New York paper 'discovered' winged people on the Moon.
- 1837 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.