Mendeleev corrected the discoverer of an element he had never seen.

1875

Lecoq de Boisbaudran found gallium in 1875 and measured its density at 4.7 g/cm³. Mendeleev wrote to tell him to measure again — and was right.

◍ Show on the globe

The event

• Mendeleev's periodic table1869 · Saint Petersburg. In 1869 Dmitri Mendeleev arranged the known chemical elements by atomic weight and properties into a periodic system. He left gaps in his table and predicted the properties of undiscovered elements, gallium, scandium and germanium, which were soon found.

19th century

More amazing facts

• 1874 · 1900 Max Planck was told not to study physics because almost everything had already been discovered.
• 1874 · 1879 Edison did not invent the light bulb: about twenty inventors made incandescent lamps before him, including Russia's Alexander Lodygin, patented in 1874.
• 1876 · 1877 Bell wanted people to answer the telephone with a sailor's 'Ahoy!'. What stuck was 'Hello!', suggested by Thomas Edison in 1877.
• 1876 The telephone and the end of samurai swords arrived together: Bell patented the telephone in March 1876, and on 28 March Japan banned carrying swords in public.
• 1876 On the very day Custer died at the Little Bighorn, Bell was showing off the telephone.
• 1876 The telephone was invented twice on the same day. On 14 February 1876 both Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray filed papers for similar devices at the patent office, and who came first was fought over in court for years.

All amazing facts (1058) →