Harvard is 67 years older than St Petersburg: the Massachusetts college was founded in 1636, and Peter the Great founded his city on the Neva in 1703.
The events
- Founding of Harvard1636 · Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1636 the legislature of the Massachusetts Bay Colony voted money for a college, the first in English America. It was named after the clergyman John Harvard, who left it his library and half his estate.
- Founding of Saint Petersburg1703 · Saint Petersburg. During the Great Northern War, Peter I laid a fortress at the mouth of the Neva on land taken from Sweden. The new city became Russia's capital and its 'window on Europe', the emblem of Peter's reforms.
More amazing facts
- 1633 · 1992 The Catholic Church admitted its error in the Galileo case 359 years later.
- 1633 The Ottoman sultan Murad IV banned coffee on pain of death.
- 1633 · 1757 'And yet it moves!' first appeared in print in 1757, 115 years after Galileo's death.
- 1637 In 1637 a single tulip bulb could cost more than ten years of a skilled craftsman's wages.
- 1637 · 1718 The word "tulip" comes from "turban". The flower reached Europe from the Ottoman Empire, its name from a Persian word for turban — and the Ottomans had their own Tulip Period some 80 years after the Dutch mania.
- 1638 Russia’s first tea arrived in 1638 with the envoy Vasily Starkov, a gift to Tsar Michael from a Mongol khan.