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Soviet Union. Lenin wrote again to the People’s Commissar of Justice: “Comrade Kursky! I hope the fundamental concept is clear […]: openly state the principle that motivates the essence and justification of terror, its necessity, its limits. Justice must not eliminate terror […] only a

Soviet Union. Lenin writes to the People’s Commissar of Justice: “Comrade Kursky! In my opinion, the shooting must be extended to all forms of activity of Mensheviks, etc.; a formulation must be found thatconnect these actions with the international bourgeoisie” (italics and spacing are Lenin’s).

Soviet Central Asia. Enver Pasha, a sort of Pan-Turkish Garibaldi, conquers Dushanbe at the head of only 200 men. He is captured and killed by the Red Army a few weeks later on the Afghan border.

Russia, Kronstadt uprising (sailors at the naval base attempt to restore Soviet power against the Bolshevik dictatorship), repressed by the Red Army

Russia, Siberia. Stalin deported thousands of Russian Jews from the Birobidzan region, on the Ussuri River in the Soviet Far East. This “promised land” was actually a desolate swamp literally infested with flies and mosquitoes. In a few years, the number of Jews in Birobidzan

The Asian republic of Tuva, nestled between Mongolia and the Soviet Union, was nominally independent; it maintained this independence until 1944 when it was integrated into the USSR.

In Italy, the two red years are coming to an end: the left is torn, with the PSI at loggerheads with the PCDI, because the communists want to “do as they did in Russia” and the socialists are against it. Meanwhile, the fascists are sharpening

There is a real general infatuation for the healing effects of radium, recently discovered by the Curies: it is found in beauty, hygiene and healing products.

The number of known asteroids has risen to 1,000. In 2020, there will be 853,561.

German meteorologist Alfred Wegener notices that the outlines of Brazil and Africa coincide and concludes that the continents must have shifted, and that there was once a megacontinent he calls Pangaea.

American Earle Dickson invents the Band-Aid

Guglielmo Marconi resigns as plenipotentiary at the Paris Peace Conference due to the unjust treatment meted out to Italy. This, in the wake of his quest for revenge, lays the foundation for Marconi’s rapprochement with d’Annunzio and then with fascism.

Kurt Reidemeister invented a technique for studying knots, in particular to demonstrate whether or not a knot can be transformed into another knot through twisting and crossing movements, but without cutting it.

Irkutsk, Siberia. Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak (Russian: Александр Васильевич Колчак) is executed by the Red Army. He was a Russian scout, admiral, and politician who commanded part of the anti-Bolshevik White Army forces during the Russian Civil War. Kolchak had lost the support of potential allies

Albert Einstein receives a letter that leaves him speechless. It comes from a German mathematician unknown to him: Theodr Kaluza. He combines gravity and electromagnetic equations by introducing a fifth dimension (in addition to the four space-time dimensions). This is the marbling of physics, as

Partition of the Ottoman Empire: Mesopotamia and Palestine to England, Lebanon and Syria to France

After the Great War, Germany’s debts were not only those owed to the victors, but also those among the victors: Great Britain owed 842 million pounds to the United States, France 550 million to the United States and 508 million to Great Britain, Italy 325

Theodor Kaluza and Oskar Klein extend Einstein’s general theory of relativity: by increasing the dimensions from 4 to 5, they manage to incorporate Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism (the fifth dimension is wrapped around itself in a bundle).

Arthur Stanley Eddington measures the curvature of starlight (1.7 arc seconds) during a total solar eclipse on an island off the coast of Nigeria, providing the first experimental confirmation of General Relativity.

Mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan dies in India after a long illness. Ramanujan, alone, had independently rediscovered countless mathematical theorems, retracing their history, unfortunately wasting considerable time rediscovering their foundations. In a long letter to Professor Godfrey H. Hardy, he listed his results, but also cited 120

Armistice that ends World War I: Collapse of the Second Reich, cession of Alsace-Lorraine and subsequent French occupation of the Ruhr; Collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia are created and Romania expands); Collapse of the Byzantine Empire which is divided between France

Marshal Diaz proclaims Italy’s victory in the conflict with the Austro-Hungarians in the First World War

Italian troops enter Trento and Trieste. Armistice between Italy and Austria-Hungary at Villa Giusti, near Padua.

Austrian retreat: the Second Battle of the Piave ends; 34,000 Austrians and 90,000 Italians remain on the field, 24,500 Austrians are taken prisoner and 100,000 are wounded.

Ernst Fetterlein, the Tsar’s codebreaker, who fled Russia after the October Revolution, was hired by the British secret service (SIS, now MI6) to work on Bolshevik codes.

Second Battle of the Piave: 60 Austrian and 56 Italian divisions face each other

Soviet Union. Mensheviks (real or alleged) are expelled from all soviets, and then many are arrested. Other streams of people are sent to the gulags: anarchists, pro-Cadet (scientists, academics, artists, writers, engineers, etc.), and the Muzhik kulaks. The overall plan “is not to wage war

Austrian mine under the Italian Dente on Pasubio: 50,000 kg of explosives (0.05 kton): the largest mine ever detonated in this sector

Cryptographers in various countries began experimenting with long, unstructured cryptographic keys (random keys—a long sequence of random numbers spanning hundreds of sheets of paper) and with one-time pad cyphers, cryptographic keys that were destroyed after use and never used again. In some ways, this was

The Germans introduced the ADFGVX encryption cipher just before the offensive they were about to begin on March 21st. Conceptually, it was nothing new, but “just” very complex, a mix of numerous substitutions and transpositions. The Allies, however, had an ace up their sleeve: the

Russia signs a separate peace. Revolutionary Russia signs the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers, seceding from its Allies and granting independence to Polish and Baltic territories, Ukraine, and Finland. Russia’s disastrous participation in World War I had contributed to the success of the

Berlin. Approximately half of children suffer from some form of rickets, a childhood disease characterized by weakening of the bones. The causes are unclear, but it is more common among the poorest and most malnourished children due to the hardships of the Great War. A

The French Gaston Julia and Pierre Fatou discovered the fractal figures later called Julia Sets: the colored points (inside the prisoner set) if subjected to the z2+c transformation remain confined in the prisoner set, the points outside it diverge to infinity.

Italian victory of Vittorio Veneto

Austrian mine against the Italian Dente on Pasubio

(October 25 in the Russian calendar) The cruiser Aurora shells the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg: the Russian Revolution begins.

Second Italian mine on the Marmolada glacier

Austrian mine on Mount Sief

Nikola Tesla, in an article in The Electrical Experimenter, describes in detail the technical characteristics of a modern military radar, decades before its practical realization.

Nikola Tesla’s tower in Wardenclyffe, Long Island, is demolished with dynamite. Newspapers speculate that the American secret services did it to prevent strategic secrets from falling into the hands of the Germans. The reality, as often happens, is simpler and sadder: Tesla, literally burdened by

Italian mine on the forepeak of Lagazuoi Piccolo

Italian mine on Mount Rotondo

Germany abandoned its Zeppelin airships and switched to Gotha bombers to bomb England. However, only 300 tons of bombs were dropped before the end of the conflict.

11:00 pm: St. Petersburg, Lenin quickly gets off the sealed train: Nikolai Cheidze, Menshevik (moderate Marxists more numerous and democratic than the Bolsheviks) welcomes his comrade

Sixth Battle of the Somme: The Italians conquer Gorizia

Austro-Hungarian General Conrad writes to German General Falkenhain seeking German support for the final push against Italy; the German responds that Italy is of no importance in the First World War and refuses to provide troops. Austria-Hungary launches the attack on Italy anyway, but must

An American plane from the Escadrille Americaine (later renamed Escadrille Lafayette) shot down its first German aircraft; it was the first American involvement in the conflict. This squadron’s contribution to the Battle of Verdun was notable, but even more notable was its contribution, through the

Sykes-Picot Agreement. The spoils of the Ottoman Empire were divided between Great Britain, France, and Russia. The latter would not receive its share following the October Revolution. The agreement was made public only on November 26, 1917, by the Bolsheviks who had just come to

Germany. A German company copied an American businessman’s idea and began mass-producing tea bags, convenient for soldiers at the front. The product was called the “Tea Bomb.”

11:00 PM. Daylight saving time goes into effect for the first time ever. It was implemented by the German government due to the embargo imposed by the Royal Navy. The United States and other countries would later follow suit. It’s an old idea that Benjamin

Italian mine on Col di Lana

Austrian mine on Col di Lana

The Italian general Cadorna establishes the Piave river as a possible last line of retreat in case of a breakthrough of the front by the Austrians

Fifth Battle of the Isonzo, this too without gains on either side

Cosmologist Karl Schwarzschild dies at just 42 from permfigo, a skin disease caused by immunodeficiency, contracted on the Russian front. A few weeks earlier, he had discovered a solution to general relativity that represents a black hole.

Completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway in Russia

Einstein inaugurated the concept of a photon with energy proportional to the frequency and momentum proportional to the frequency divided by the speed of light, the constant of proportionality, in both cases, being Planck’s constant h

Russia. Nine million men were mobilized for the war effort, but the slow and corrupt bureaucratic apparatus was unable to manage them.

Winston Churchill returned to the army after the defeat blamed on him at Gallipoli during the First World War. He served in Belgium and Northern France in various battalions.

Colorado, United States. Molybdenum was highly coveted by the war industry, especially in Germany, since cannons like Big Bertha suffered from warping at high temperatures, a defect that disappeared when the steel was molybdenum-based (which melts at 2600°C, compared to 1500°C for iron). The only

The Germans occupy Warsaw

Second Battle of the Isonzo

Troops in German South-West Africa surrender to British forces

The flamethrower was used for the first time by the Germans against the French, not far from Ypres. Shortly thereafter, they also used it against the British. The success was partial but significant.

First Battle of the Isonzo

The Germans used poison gas for the first time during the Battle of Ypres.

Guglielmo Marconi, in a letter to Minister of War Vittorio Zupelli, offered his services. He would join the Army Engineers as a reserve lieutenant, tasked with inspecting the Italian Army’s radio and telegraph equipment at the front.

Kaiser Wilhelm II authorized strategic bombing raids in southern England, but banned them from London, for fear that his relatives in the British royal family would be affected.

Italian Garibaldi volunteers fight in the Argonne alongside the Entente

Winter Offensive in Champagne

Japan submits the 21 Demands to China, which would effectively convert China into a vassal state of Japan.

Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Eastern Indian Ocean. The Germans seize control of the British submarine telegraph station on Cocos Island, operated by the Eastern Telegraph Company. The German landing party is part of the SMS Emden, under the command of German officer Hellmuth von Mucke.

Turkey, already at war with Russia, declares war on Great Britain and France

Battle of the Marne: German troops arrive at the gates of Paris; from this moment until 1918; the Germans will remain on the defensive with the only notable exception of Verdun; the French have only 300 heavy guns, the Germans have 3,500 including the fearsome

Benedict XV (Giacomo Della Chiesa) is Pope

J. Langmuir invents gas tube control: thyratrons

The trenches, the barbed wire fences, the German machine guns halt the French advance, the Germans literally mow down the French infantry and then launch a counterattack; the French retreat to the Grand Couronne.

The Panama Canal is open to navigation

German Zeppelin airships carry out the first strategic bombing raid in history. The target is Liège, Belgium. Many other bombing raids will follow, especially over southern England, first targeting military targets, then civilians, with the aim of weakening British morale. Paris will also be bombed,

The first strategic bombing raid was carried out by aircraft. It involved German Zeppelins bombing Liège, Belgium. Many other bombing raids followed, especially over southern England, first targeting military targets, then civilians, with the aim of weakening British morale.