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Greek Prime Minister Venizelos orders his soldiers to invade the Ottoman Empire, now dying after World War I.

Poland. On the Lower Vistula, General Wladyslaw Sikorski threatens to isolate the Bolsheviks’ marching wing, who retreat and sign the armistice.

The law promoted by an American immigrant from Norway, Andrew Volstead, goes into effect: Prohibition. The production, trade, and consumption of any beverage with an alcohol content higher than 0.5% is banned. It will make the Mafia’s fortune.

Isaac Asimov was born in Petrovichi, near Smolensk, in the Soviet Union. In 1923, his family moved to the United States, to New York, where Isaac later completed his studies. He became the most well-known and beloved science fiction writer thanks to a combination of

The American Brested, thanks to generous funding, explores the ancient civilizations of the Middle East and brings to light the Sumerian civilization in particular, but also increases knowledge on the Babylonian, Persian, etc.

Mussolini’s revolutionary socialists dominate the national congress of the PSI which joins Lenin’s Communist International

Ireland: The Sinn Fein (We Alone) independence movement begins a guerrilla war against British occupation; the IRA (Irish Republican Army) is born.

Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-American entrepreneur and steel king in the United States, dies. His Pittsburgh steelworks produced steel for tens of thousands of buildings in dozens of American cities, starting with Chicago. He was also known as an influential philanthropist. Among other institutions, he founded Carnegie-Mellon

Florence. At Caffè Casoni, formerly Caffè Giacosa, now Caffè Cavalli, the Negroni cocktail, made with gin, red vermouth, and Campari, is invented.

Science seemed to be finished, but then Enrico Fermi turned on the atomic pile in Chicago. The world plunged into the greatest conflict of all time: World War II.

Turkey signs an armistice with the Entente at Mudhros. Revolutionary riots erupt in Vienna, and a Provisional National Council is formed to negotiate peace with the Entente.

D’Annunzio, with a formation of seven SVA planes, flies over Vienna dropping propaganda leaflets.

Entente units land at Archangel and Vladivostok, Russia, to support anti-Soviet forces.

Soviet Union. The “Provisional Instruction on Deprivation of Liberty” is made official, imposing forced labor on prisoners. This law implements Lenin’s own directives from a few months earlier, which stated: “Confiscation of all property […], detention in prison, sending to the front and to forced

Tsar Nicholas II is killed with his family in Yekaterinburg by revolutionaries

The RAF is born. The Royal Air Force (RAF) was born from the merger of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Air Service. At the beginning of the First World War, England had suffered several bombing raids, and German aces, such as Manfred von

Nobel Prize in Physics to Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck

In Boston, Edith Clarke received her degree from MIT. She was the first woman to do so. She then went to work for General Electric in Schenectady, New York. She traveled extensively, including to Istanbul, throughout Europe, including Italy, Egypt, and the Arctic. She invented

Berlin. German physician Kurt Huldschinsky, thanks to his studies on rickets, encouraged the invention and development of UV lamps.

Finland declares independence from Russia; today is a national holiday in Suomi Finland.

A fully loaded ammunition ship accidentally explodes in Halifax Harbour, Nova Scotia: 5,000 tons of TNT destroy 7 square kilometres of downtown Halifax and kill 4,000 people.

Soviet Union. Lenin proposes the following package of punishments: “confiscation of all property […], imprisonment, and sending all lawbreakers to the front and forced labor.” Immediately after the start of the October Revolution, the idea that would lead to the Gulag concentration camp system was

John T. Thompson designed and built the first portable machine gun. He was an expert marksman and gunner and wanted to help the U.S. Army infantryman fight. He completed the first working prototypes only in 1918, after the war ended. His invention ultimately played into

Gilbert S. Vernam of AT&T and Major Joseph O. Mauborgne of the US Army Signal Corps invent the first unbreakable code using long random keys

Ramanujan, alone, malnourished, depressed, and suffering from suspected tuberculosis, attempts suicide by throwing himself under the London Underground. Only the intervention of a guard stops the vehicle a few feet from the prostrate body of the mathematician. During a visit from his mentor, Hardy, the

Every Italian soldier retreated beyond the Piave River; General Cadorna was replaced by General Diaz.

Germany. Konrad Adenauer, the future German Chancellor, is promoted to First Mayor of Cologne.

Publication of Arthur Balfour’s famous letter to Lord Walter Rothschild, the “Balfour Declaration,” which established the intention to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine. It was the first concrete step taken by the Zionist movement after the programmatic manifesto written by Theodor Hertzl in

Bolshevik Coup in Russia: Vladimir Lenin seized power by overthrowing the Tsar in a dramatic coup. Widespread hunger and the catastrophic military failure of World War I had provided fertile ground for revolt. On March 15, 1917, Tsar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate in

(October 25 in the Russian calendar) Bolshevik Revolution in Russia: Nikolai Lenin (pseudonym of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov) comes to power; the entire royal family of Tsar Nicholas II is shot

The Italians retreat to the Tagliamento

October Revolution (Октябрьская революция). In Russia, the soviets seize power (October 24 in the Julian calendar adopted in Russia corresponds to November 6 in the Gregorian calendar). After the overthrow of the monarchy, Russia is convulsed for several months by conflicts between political parties and

Italian mine on the Marmolada

Wood magnate William Boeing founds the Boeing Airplane Co. in Seattle.

United States. After the Wright brothers were granted U.S. Patent 821,393 on May 22, 1906, for a “flying machine,” fierce competition erupted in the United States, quickly escalating into a patent war that included 12 major lawsuits, widespread media coverage, and an effort by Glenn

In England, Sir Frank Watson Dyson conceived the experiment to test Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity through a total solar eclipse. The experiment was performed by Arthur Eddington two years later.

(April 1, 1917 in the Russian calendar) Lenin leaves Bern for St. Petersburg aboard a train with only one sealed carriage (to avoid interference from the countries crossed)

Italian mine on Colbricon

The entry of the United States of America into the war, which was decisive for its fate

Zimmermann Telegram: German offer to Mexicans to reconquer Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona in exchange for their military intervention against the United States. The telegram was intercepted and decrypted by British intelligence in January and disclosed to the American president on February 24. The telegram

Einstein understood the importance of a space with positive curvature, as proposed by Schwarzschild several years earlier. The universe, according to general relativity, may be finite, but like the surface of a ball, that is, without boundaries.

The Mexican Constitution (of the United Mexican States – Constitución Política de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos) is proclaimed. This is the current Constitution in Mexico. It was the first constitution in history to include social rights, two years before the German Weimar Constitution. After seven

China. After Nationalist leader Sun Yat-Sen and the commander of the armed forces, Yuan Shikai, power fell into the hands of local governors and district military commanders, while the Communist Party organization maintained a sort of shadow government.

Russia. Eight million Russians have already died in World War I. The economy collapses, and with it the Tsar’s power.

Murder of Rasputin. Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin (Григо́рий Ефи́мович Распу́тин), better known as Rasputin (Pokrovskoe, January 22, 1869 – St. Petersburg, December 29, 1916), an influential Russian monk, was assassinated by the Russian nobility because of his influence over the royals. Rasputin had won the favor

The French retake Fort Duamont

Nikola Tesla is taken to court by the City of New York to pay $935 in back taxes. Tesla is forced to admit that he earns only about $350 a month, barely enough to cover his daily expenses. The judge asks him, “How do you

The Battle of Verdun, after 10 months of incessant fighting, is practically over: official French losses were 377,231, including 162,308 killed; actual estimates reach 500,000 French casualties in 10 months; the Germans admitted 377,000 losses and 200,000 killed; the total, on the French and German

On the Somme the British use tanks for the first time

Arab Revolt in Arabia, part of the Ottoman Empire.

Albert Einstein publishes General Relativity: Annalen der Physik, volume 49: “The Foundation of General Theory of Relativity”

Nazario Sauro was hanged by the Austrians in Pola. The Italian 35th Division landed in Thessaloniki.

Italian mine on Castelletto

7:30 a.m.: British attack on the Somme: 200,000 men rush against the German lines; at 7:32 a.m., thousands of German Maxim machine guns open fire: within minutes, 70,000 men will be killed, including 20,000 dead. From the book “To the Last Man”: “…the rat-rat-rat of

5:00 The Germans take possession of Fort Duamont without firing, almost, a shot.

3:45 – 4:30: Some German soldiers incredibly manage to enter Fort Duamont, unaware of each other are Kunze, Eugen Radtke and his men, Haupt

German offensive towards Fort Duamont and Verdun

Verdun: Bombing by German heavy guns (420mm Big Berthas)

Italy turns its back on Germany and Austria and enters the war against them. Five and a half million men will be mobilized out of a total population of 38 million, including 19 million males, including the elderly and children. 953,000 of them will return

The British ocean liner Lusitania, en route from New York to Liverpool, sank off the coast of Ireland after being hit by a German torpedo: 354 passengers (out of 1,099) lost their lives; it convinced many Americans to enter the war and transformed the Germans

Russo-German Eastern Front. Fritz Haber, the German chemist who synthesized and used chlorine at Ypres, Belgium, leaves for the Eastern Front to prepare the same deadly weapon of mass destruction. Chlorine destroys the blood vessels in the lungs, and the victim drowns in his own

Germany uses 125 Zeppelin airships to bomb England. Eventually, however, the British learn how to shoot them down. They load the biplane fighters’ machine guns with alternating three types of shells: tracer, armor-piercing, and incendiary. Half of the German airships are shot down, and 40%

JRR Tolkien writes the “Qenya Lexicon,” the first written work on the Elvish languages.

Emmy Noether coined the theorem of the same name: CNS for the existence of a continuous symmetry is the existence of a conserved quantity (i.e., an invariant)

Second Armenian Holocaust: 1.5 million killed by Turks during Russo-Turkish War

At the Falkland Islands Von Spee was defeated by the Englishman Sturdee

Japan declares war on Germany and besieges Tsingtao in China: the war becomes world war.

The Gantsch, a passenger ship of the Austrian Lloyd, was blown up by an Austrian mine off the coast of Pola, Istria; the minefield was clearly marked on the nautical charts, but the captain had gone away with a lady and the mate had joined

Germany declares war on Russia

The film “Cabiria” premiered on April 18, 1914, at the Teatro Vittorio Emanuele in Turin, simultaneously with the Teatro Lirico in Milan. The film was a great critical and commercial success, both in Italy and abroad: it ran for six months in Paris and for

William D. Coolidge at General Electric Research Labs uses the tungsten filament he obtained to generate X-rays for medical purposes

Zermelo’s Theorem: The game of chess is strictly determined; this is the first theorem of game theory.

J. Pierpont Morgan dies. His son, J.P. Morgan Jr., succeeds him at the helm of the financial empire.

US occupation of Nicaragua.

A harsh Balkan war definitively wears down the power of the old Turkish empire.

During the Titanic disaster, radio messages sent by Chief Radio Operator Phillips and his assistant Bride saved a third of the passengers.

Sinking of the Titanic

China. Commander Yuan Shikai succeeds Nationalist leader Sun Yat-Sen.

Rutherford introduces the nuclear atom

Secession of South China and the Nanjing Republic.