The 'sealed train' that took Lenin from Switzerland across Germany in 1917 was not truly sealed: passengers got off, for example to spend a night in Frankfurt.

1917

The 'sealed' story was a political cover agreed by both sides.

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The event

• February Revolution1917 · Petrograd. Strikes and bread riots in Petrograd in February 1917 grew into an uprising joined by the garrison. Nicholas II abdicated, the monarchy fell, and power passed to the Provisional Government, which shared it uneasily with the Petrograd Soviet.

20th century

More amazing facts

• 1916 The first countries to put their clocks forward for summer were wartime Germany and Austria-Hungary, on 30 April 1916.
• 1917 · 1983 Even after confessing, one of the Cottingley cousins would not fully back down.
• 1917 The October Revolution happened in November: 25 October 1917 in the Julian calendar Russia then used was 7 November in the Gregorian one, so the USSR celebrated 'October' every 7 November.
• 1917 The cruiser Aurora never shelled the Winter Palace: on 25 October 1917 it fired a single blank shot as the signal for the assault.
• 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.

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