Before we start, let's go back two years when the signing of the Anglo-Russian influence-sharing agreement on Iran, Afghanistan and Tibet finalized Russia's joining the Entente - a military-political alliance which also included France. The new alliance was meant to outweigh the Trilateral Union which had already been established by Germany, Austro-Hungary and Italy. Back in those days people hoped that the alliances would strengthen the overall balance in Europe guaranteeing long-lasting peace on the continent. The Europeans were optimistic about the future and underestimated the dangers inherent in the fast rising militarism and nationalistic sentiment... The Europeans had every reason to be optimistic. The 20th century had ushered in a string of impressive scientific and technological breakthroughs with railways and wireless radio and telegraph becoming routine and the discovery of the bacteria becoming an effective cure for all kinds of infections. The discovery of anesthesia gave a strong kickstart to surgery. The defense industries were also on the rise churning out ever newer and more lethal weapons meaning that the existing system of military alliances could now easily turn any minor local conflict into a conflagration of truly global proportions... The 1909 Nobel Prize for physics went to the Italian radio engineer and entrepreneur Guglielmo Marconi for his invention of wireless telegraphy. Marconi's priority remains open to question, however, because a similar invention was made at the very same time by the great Russian electrical engineer Alexander Popov. Despite his contested leadership, Guglielmo Marconi is still regarded a founding father of wireless radio communication.
Another winner of the 1909 Nobel Prize was Swiss surgeon Theodor Kocher who became a leader in the application of experimental and physiological principles to surgical problems. His most famous work was that on the physiology, pathology and surgery of the thyroid gland for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Theodor Kocher devised many new techniques, instruments and appliances that bear his name and still remain in general use.
The 1909 Nobel Prize for literature was awarded to the Swedish novelist Selma Lagerlof whose children's novel The Wonderful Adventures of Nils established her as the foremost Swedish writer.
On April 6th 1909 American Arctic explorer Robert Peary became the first man to reach the North Pole and on July 28th the French aviator Louis Bleriot made the world's first overseas flight piloting a small monoplane of his own design across the English Channel from Calais to Dover.
July 28th is also the birthday of the outstanding Russian helicopter designer Mikhail Mil whose eponimously named choppers have established more than 60 world records. 1909 saw the birth of the great Russian ballerina Galina Ulanova who excelled in a number of Tchaikovsky's ballets and whose rendition of Gizelle has yet to be equaled by modern-time dancers. Also in 1909 the famed Russian impresario Sergei Dyagilev founded his Monaco-based Russian Ballet company which made Russian ballet extremely popular in the West. He also introduced to the Western world the inimitable ballerina Anna Pavlova, choreographer Mikhail Fokin and composers Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Prokofyev. In a separate development, Zionist settlers founded the city of Tel Aviv on the sand dunes north of the Arab-populated municipality of Jaffa which, forty years later, was incorporated with what is now the Israeli capital. Tel Aviv is now a major city with a population of nearly 400,000 people. The year 1909 was the last in the life of the famous Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso who held that the criminal population exhibits a higher percentage of physical and mental anomalies than non-criminals and that these anomalies are due partly to degeneration, partly to atavism or reversion to a primitive evolutionary stage. Using his theory, Lombroso found traces of degeneration even in the great Russian author Leo Tolstoy. When the two men later met each other here in Russia, Tolstoy proved Lombroso's description of himself and the entire anthropological theory as absolutely incorrect. Getting back to Italy, Lombroso read Tolstoy's novel Resurrection where the author acidly ridiculed the main tenets of his physiognomies theory. Lombroso responded in kind portraying the great Tolstoy as a naive and limited old man.
The 20th Century: Year After Year series is prepared for you by Vladimir Zhamkin.


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