Count Fyodor Tolstoy so exasperated Krusenstern on Russia's first voyage round the world that he was put ashore in Kamchatka — after teaching the ship's orangutan to pour ink over the captain's log. He came home tattooed and nicknamed 'the American'.
More amazing facts
- 1801 · 2006 Ceres was counted as a planet for half a century.
- 1803 The land Napoleon sold the US in 1803 now lies in 15 American states and two Canadian provinces.
- 1804 1804: Napoleon crowned himself emperor, while the former slaves of Haiti, having beaten his army, declared independence — the first nation founded by a slave revolt.
- 1804 · 1900 In 1804 a medical student drank yellow fever patients' vomit to prove the disease was not contagious.
- 1804 · 1821 Napoleon stood about 1.69 m, average for a Frenchman of his day. The 'short' myth came from French inches being longer than English ones, and from 'the little corporal', a term of affection rather than of size.
- 1805 Admiral Nelson's body came home from Trafalgar in a cask of brandy.