In 1637 a single tulip bulb could cost more than ten years of a skilled craftsman's wages.

1637

That was the peak of Dutch tulip mania — the market crashed that same February.

◍ Show on the globe

The event

• Tulip mania1637 · Haarlem. In the winter of 1636–37 the Dutch traded tulip bulbs still in the ground through contracts signed in taverns, and prices for rare varieties soared. In February 1637 the market collapsed within days — though modern historians doubt it ruined many people.

17th century

More amazing facts

• 1633 · 1992 The Catholic Church admitted its error in the Galileo case 359 years later.
• 1633 The Ottoman sultan Murad IV banned coffee on pain of death.
• 1633 · 1757 'And yet it moves!' first appeared in print in 1757, 115 years after Galileo's death.
• 1636 · 1703 Harvard is 67 years older than St Petersburg: the Massachusetts college was founded in 1636, and Peter the Great founded his city on the Neva in 1703.
• 1637 · 1718 The word "tulip" comes from "turban". The flower reached Europe from the Ottoman Empire, its name from a Persian word for turban — and the Ottomans had their own Tulip Period some 80 years after the Dutch mania.
• 1638 Russia’s first tea arrived in 1638 with the envoy Vasily Starkov, a gift to Tsar Michael from a Mongol khan.

All amazing facts (1058) →