Scotland and the Antarctic

Section 8: Appendix

World history during the heroic age of Antarctic exploration

The exploration of the Arctic and Antarctic were taking place in a world very different from today. Here are a few of the events of the heroic age.

The 1890s

Klondike gold rush

Forth rail bridge opened

Zip fastener invented

Keir Hardie elected as the first Socialist MP

Electric chair first used

US 7th Cavalry kill 153 Minnconjou Sioux at Wounded Knee

Tchaikovsky dies

First ascent of Mount Kenya made by Mackinder

Herman Melville - author of Moby Dick - dies

X-rays discovered

Olympic Games revived after 1,500 years

Boer War

1900-1910

First flight of the Zeppelin airship

Allies march on Peking (Beijing)

Coca-Cola arrives in Britain

First Nobel prizes

First aircraft flight made by the Wright brothers

Queen Victoria dies

Women's suffrage movement

Boy Scout movement founded by Baden Powell

London hosts the Olympic Games

Trans-Siberian Railway completed

San Francisco earthquake

Albert Einstein publishes his theory of relativity

Peary reaches the North Pole

1911-1920

Amundsen reaches the South Pole

Titanic hits iceberg and sinks

The Ford Model-T becomes the first assembly-line car

First world war, 1914-18

Lusitania sunk

Battle of the Falkland Islands

Revolution in Russia

Spanish influenza claims more lives than the first world war

British Summer Time introduced

League of Nations formed

Ernest Rutherford splits the atom

Prohibition in USA - sale and consumption of alcohol is banned