The World in 1905 the year a clerk rewrote physics

Russia's Baltic fleet sailed about 18,000 miles to reach Japan, out of the Baltic, round Africa and across the Indian Ocean. The voyage took seven months. The battle at the end of it was over in two days.

Life back then

Nobody had a refrigerator. Kitchens kept an icebox instead, a wooden cupboard with a block of ice in the top and a drip pan underneath. The ice was sawn from frozen lakes in winter, packed in sawdust and hauled around by cart all summer, and a card in the window told the iceman how big a block to bring. Milk and meat would not keep, so somebody shopped nearly every day. A mild January anywhere in the ice trade pushed prices up months later.

The year in 8 events

• 🕯️Jan 22 Troops fire on a peaceful march to the Tsar's palace in St Petersburg. The day sets off a year of revolt across Russia.
• ⚓May 28 Japan destroys the Russian fleet at Tsushima. It is the first time an Asian power has beaten a European empire at sea like this.
• 🎞️Jun 19 A storefront theatre in Pittsburgh charges five cents to watch short films. Nickelodeons spread across the country.
• 🔬Jun 30 Einstein sends in the paper setting out special relativity, one of four he writes this year at a patent office in Bern.
• 🕊️Sep 5 Japan and Russia sign peace at Portsmouth in New Hampshire. Russia gives up Port Arthur and half of Sakhalin.
• ✈️Oct 5 The Wright brothers circle a field in Ohio for 39 minutes, covering 24 miles.
• 🌏Oct 16 Britain splits Bengal in two. Indians answer by boycotting British cloth and buying their own.
• 📜Oct 30 After a general strike shuts Russia down, the Tsar promises his people a parliament.

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