The matryoshka is younger than the Eiffel Tower.
The tower opened in 1889, the first nesting doll was made in the 1890s — and it too found fame in Paris, winning a medal at the 1900 World's Fair.
The events
- The first matryoshka dollc. 1895 · Moscow, the Children's Education workshop. The first matryoshka was turned in the 1890s by Vasily Zvyozdochkin to a design by the painter Sergey Malyutin of the Mamontovs' Abramtsevo circle. The set had eight dolls, the largest holding a rooster. In 1900 it won a bronze medal at the Paris World's Fair and became a symbol of Russia.
- Eiffel Tower1889 · Paris. Gustave Eiffel's 300-metre tower was built for the 1889 World's Fair, marking the centenary of the Revolution. It was due to be dismantled after 20 years but was saved by its use as a radio antenna.
More amazing facts
- 1888 · 1896 · 1901 Alfred Nobel read his own obituary eight years before he died.
- 1889 The Eiffel Tower opened in spring 1889, and in June van Gogh painted The Starry Night at the Saint-Rémy asylum.
- 1889 Nintendo is as old as the Eiffel Tower: it was founded in Kyoto on 23 September 1889 to make hanafuda playing cards, the same year the tower opened.
- 1889 · 1893 The Ferris wheel was America's answer to the Eiffel Tower.
- 1889 · 1890 Reporter Nellie Bly went round the world in 72 days, beating Jules Verne's Phileas Fogg.
- 1889 For 130 years the kilogram was not a formula but an object.