1905
Einstein's miracle year
A twenty-six-year-old Swiss patent clerk, unable to get a university job, published four papers in twelve months. One explained the photoelectric effect, one proved atoms exist, one redefined space and time, and one noted that mass and energy are the same thing. No one else in physics has ever had such a year.
Togo annihilates Russians at Tsushima
The Russian Baltic fleet had sailed eighteen thousand miles to save the war. In the straits between Korea and Japan, Admiral Togo crossed their T and sank or captured nearly every ship in a single afternoon. A non-European navy had destroyed a European great power at sea. The age of white supremacy in Asia began to end.
Bloody Sunday at the Winter Palace
A priest led thousands of St. Petersburg workers, carrying icons and petitions, toward the Tsar's gates. The Imperial Guard opened fire. Hundreds fell in the snow. The father image of Nicholas II died with them. Revolution swept the empire that year, and though it was crushed, the crack in the ice had opened.
October Manifesto creates a Duma
Pressured by the 1905 Revolution, Tsar Nicholas II issued a manifesto promising civil liberties and a legislative assembly, the State Duma. It was the first step toward constitutional monarchy in Russia, and Nicholas regretted it immediately. He would spend the next twelve years trying to take the powers back, dissolving assemblies and manipulating elections until the monarchy itself dissolved in 1917.
Sinn Fein founded in Dublin
Arthur Griffith established a new Irish nationalist movement whose name meant Ourselves Alone. It proposed withdrawal from the British Parliament and self-reliance through Irish institutions. For years it was a minor party of dreamers dismissed by the mainstream. After the 1916 Easter Rising and the British executions that followed, it would become the vehicle for Irish independence and the dominant force in Irish politics.
Salvation Army spreads globally
By 1905 William Booth's Salvation Army had become one of the largest humanitarian organizations in the world, feeding the poor on every continent. Its brass bands and uniforms became familiar on city streets. A new model of urban evangelical charity had arrived, and it would outlast the Victorian reformers who inspired it.