In 1895 Popov demonstrated a radio receiver in St Petersburg, and the Lumière brothers held the first paid film screening in Paris.

1895

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The events

• Popov's radio receiver1895 · Saint Petersburg. On 7 May 1895 Alexander Popov demonstrated a receiver of electromagnetic waves to the Russian Physical and Chemical Society. The day is celebrated in Russia as Radio Day; Guglielmo Marconi was developing wireless telegraphy in parallel.
• First Lumière film screening1895 · Paris. On 28 December 1895, at the Grand Café on the Boulevard des Capucines, Auguste and Louis Lumière held the first paid public screening of films with their Cinématographe. The date is widely regarded as the birth of cinema.

19th century

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• 1889 The Eiffel Tower opened in spring 1889, and in June van Gogh painted The Starry Night at the Saint-Rémy asylum.
• 1893 · 1918 Women in New Zealand have voted in parliamentary elections since 1893, a quarter of a century before those in Britain, Germany or Russia.
• 1903 · 1961 · 1969 Just 58 years separate the Wright brothers' first flight from Gagarin's, and 66 from the Moon landing — some who saw the first airplanes lived to see the Moon.
• 1908 1908: the Tunguska blast flattened 2,000 km² of Siberian forest, and the Messina earthquake killed some 80,000 people.
• 1914 Passenger pigeons once numbered in the billions, but the last one, Martha, died on 1 September 1914 — a month after World War I began.

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