1905: Events and Inventions

January 22, 1905. Bloody Sunday. In St. Petersburg, 10,000 workers and their families march to the Winter Palace to petition Czar Nicholas II for better working conditions. Cossack troops fire on the unarmed crowd, killing over 100 of the demonstrators and injuring many hundreds more.

January 25, 190. Frederick Wells, a mine supervisor in Transvaal, discovers the largest diamond ever found, weighing 3106.75 carats or 1.33 lbs. Transvaal (now called South Africa) was a British colony in 1905, and the jewel eventually became part of the British Crown Jewels after it was presented to King Edward VII on his birthday in 1907. The diamond is called the Cullinan diamond or The Star of Africa.

February 17, 1905. As his carriage passes through the Kremlin gates in Moscow, Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich, the uncle of Czar Nicholas II and one his chief advisors, is killed by a bomb thrown onto his lap.

May 28, 1905. The Japanese navy sinks twelve Russian warships in the Strait of Tsushima, ending Russian hopes of winning the war with Japan at sea. The war continues to go badly for Russia on land as well, and the Czar and his government face continued civil unrest at home as peasants and workers demand the right to vote and to be democratically governed.

July 24, 1905. Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and Czar Nicholas II meet in Russia and agree to conclude a secret treaty of alliance between the two countries. They plan to invite France to join this secret defensive alliance, but Russian ministers opposed such an alliance.

August 13, 1905. Norway votes to end its union Sweden which dated back to the 1814 Treaty of Kiel. Norway becomes (again) an independent country and in November the Norwegians invite Prince Charles of Denmark to become their new king.

September 5, 1905. President Teddy Roosevelt of the United States is instrumental in bringing the Russians and the Japanese to sign the treaty of Portsmouth, ending the war in Korea and Manchuria. The Japanese and the Russians agree to withdraw from Manchuria, but the Japanese are to have free rein in Korea and in the formerly Russian ports of Dalny and Port Arthur in Manchuria.

September 7, 1905. More than 1000 people have died in the oil fields of Baku (Azerbaijan) as fighting continues between the Armenians and Tartars, encouraged by Turkish propaganda. The Russian government has not taken action to reconcile the two groups, and oil production is being destroyed by raging fires as a result of the fighting.

October 30, 1905. In a new manifesto, Czar Nicholas II promises Russians limited civil and voting rights and an elected parliament, the Duma.

October, 1905. British suffragettes Emmeline Pankhurst and Annie Kenney prefer to go to prison rather than pay fines for an assault conviction. The suffragettes say that they are tired of waiting for the right to vote and they are willing to use violence and hunger strikes in prison to gain their victory.

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