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Historama, March 12
Published: 12 March, 2010, 18:08
TAGS: Conflict, SciTech, History, Prime Time Russia, Historama
This day marks the end of a disastrous war, the test run of a revolutionary discovery and the final transfer of a Russian capital.
First radio message ever sent
Today in 1896, Russian physicist Aleksandr Popov sent the world's first-ever public broadcast.
The Morse-code message traveled 200 yards across Saint Petersburg University and read "Heinrich Hertz".
Popov had already told the world about his radio transmitter on May 7,1895, a day now officially recognised as Radio Day in Russia.
Western sources say that the Italian scientist Guglielmo Marconi first invented the radio, but his discovery came three months after Popov's – Marconi was just quicker at patenting it.
“New” Russian capital
On this day in 1918, Moscow became Russia's capital… again.
The city started life in 1147, but it was not until the late 15th century that it became the capital.
In 1712, Tsar Peter the Great moved the capital to the newly-built St Petersburg, where it stayed put until after the 1917 revolution.
Read more about Peter the Great on Russiapedia
The Bolsheviks thought Moscow was less vulnerable to anti-revolutionary forces and therefore quickly made it the capital once more.
Moscow and St Petersburg in pictures on our site
Victory and defeat
The Winter War between the Soviet Union and Finland fired its last shot on this day in 1940.
Called the Infamous War by Russian historians, the war claimed over 100,000 Soviet soldiers' lives in just five months.
Hostilities started because the USSR urgently needed to move its border away from Russia's second-largest city, Leningrad (as St Petersburg was then known), due to the Nazi threat.
While a cease-fire forced Finland to cede around a tenth of its territory, this did little to protect Leningrad, which was besieged the following year by the Nazis.
Read more about this day in Russian history in our “Russia Now” section
12.03.2010, 15:54
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