Einstein signed over his Nobel Prize before he had won it. Under their 1919 divorce settlement, the money from a future prize was to go to Mileva Marić, and she did get it.

1919 · 1921 · apart: 2 years

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The event

• Einstein's miracle year and relativity1905 · Bern. In 1905 patent clerk Albert Einstein published four papers on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity and mass–energy equivalence (E = mc²). Together they laid the foundations of modern physics.

20th century

More amazing facts

• 1918 The Spanish flu did not come from Spain.
• 1918 · 2012 The last veteran of World War I died in 2012, the year the Higgs boson was found.
• 1918 A pigeon was awarded France’s Croix de Guerre.
• 1919 Boston was flooded with molasses the day before the US adopted Prohibition.
• 1919 · 1958 The title of one of Africa's most translated novels comes from an Irish poet.
• 1919 · 1939 The creator of the Ilya Muromets went on to give the world the helicopter.

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