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.
The events
- Extinction of Steller's sea cowc. 1768 · Commander Islands. Georg Steller described this giant sea cow, up to 8 m long, during Bering's expedition in 1741. Fur hunters killed it for meat, and by the generally accepted estimate it was gone by 1768, just 27 years after discovery, early in Catherine II's reign.
- Cook's first voyage1768–1771 · Botany Bay. Aboard HMS Endeavour, James Cook observed the transit of Venus in Tahiti, charted New Zealand and in 1770 landed at Botany Bay. He claimed Australia's east coast for the British Crown.
More amazing facts
- 1709 The brutal winter of 1709, the 'Great Frost', struck all of Europe and wore down Charles XII's Swedish army before Poltava.
- 1751 · 1762 Catherine II corresponded with Voltaire and Diderot and offered to publish the Encyclopédie, banned in France, in Riga.
- 1755 In January 1755 Moscow University was founded; that November an earthquake destroyed Lisbon and shook all of Europe.
- 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.