Empress Elizabeth of Russia left behind some 15,000 dresses and several thousand pairs of shoes.
She also effectively abolished the death penalty — a rarity in the 18th century.
More amazing facts
- 1739 The Koh-i-Noor diamond is said to have been named by Nader Shah.
- 1739 · 1844 A mechanical duck that 'digested' grain fooled audiences for over a century.
- 1741 · 1768 Steller's sea cow was discovered in 1741 and wiped out in just 27 years: the last was apparently killed in 1768, the year Cook set off on his first voyage.
- 1741 · 1749 · 1758 In 1749 fashionable Parisian ladies wore their hair à la rhinocéros. The cause was Clara, a rhino whom a Dutch captain toured around Europe for 17 years, from Berlin and Vienna to Versailles and Venice.
- 1742 Anders Celsius designed his scale upside down: water boiled at 0 degrees and froze at 100.
- 1745 · 1764 The Hermitage cats are older than the Hermitage.