In January 1755 Moscow University was founded; that November an earthquake destroyed Lisbon and shook all of Europe.

1755

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The event

• Lisbon earthquake1755 · Lisbon. On All Saints' Day 1755 an earthquake, tsunami and fires destroyed much of Lisbon, killing an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 people. The disaster shook Enlightenment thinkers; Voltaire responded with a poem and later with Candide.

18th century

More amazing facts

• 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.
• 1751 · 1762 Catherine II corresponded with Voltaire and Diderot and offered to publish the Encyclopédie, banned in France, in Riga.
• 1755 Moscow University was founded in January 1755.
• 1769 · 1820 Antarctica was first sighted only in 1820, by the Bellingshausen–Lazarev expedition — by then Watt's steam engine was already half a century old.
• 1775 · 1776 In January 1775 Pugachev was executed in Moscow; in April the first shots of the American War of Independence were fired.
• 1776 The Bolshoi Theatre and the United States are the same age: the theatre dates from March 1776, the Declaration of Independence from July of that year.

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