Sunday 11 November 2012

November 11


On November 11 (O.S. October 30) 1837, the first Russian railroad, between Saint Petersburg and Zarskoje Selo with a length of 23 km (14 mi), was opened. Construction began in May 1836, and the first test trips were carried out the same year between Tsarskoye Selo and Pavlovsk, using horse-drawn trains. The locomotive for the new railway was built by Englishman Timothy Hackworth. Because the track connected the pleasure sites of the nobility, it was called "the train to the pub." Until the construction of the Moscow – Saint Petersburg Railway in 1851, it was the only passenger train line in Russia. Nowadays it forms part of the Oktyabrskaya Railway.


Birthdays



Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (11 November 1821 – 9 February 1881), a Russian writer of novels, short stories and essays. Dostoyevsky's literary works explore human psychology in the troubled political, social and spiritual context of 19th-century Russia. Although Dostoyevsky began writing books in the mid-1840s, his most remembered are from his last years, including Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov. He wrote eleven novels, three novellas, seventeen short novels and three essays, and has been acknowledged by many literary critics as one of the greatest and most prominent psychologists in universal literature



Zinovy Petrovich Rozhestvensky (1848 – 1909), an admiral of the Imperial Russian Navy. He was in command of the Second Pacific Squadron in the Battle of Tsushima, during the Russo-Japanese War. Admiral Rozhesvensky selected the Knyaz Suvorov, one of four brand new battleships of the French-designed Borodino class, as his flagship for the voyage to the Pacific. Under Admiral Rozhestvensky's command, the Russian navy holds the record of sailing an all-steel, coal-powered battleship fleet over 18,000 miles one way, to engage an enemy in decisive battle

1 comment:

  1. I think it would be interesting to read some more information about Dostoevsky...So,some essential facts:
    Dostoevsky is considered one of the founding fathers of existentialism, and his 1864 novel Notes From Underground is seminal to the movement.

    Writers as diverse (and important!) as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Ernest Hemingway have been influenced by Dostoevsky’s work.

    Dostoevsky was a relative contemporary, but not a colleague, of the other great nineteenth-century Russian writer, Leo Tolstoy. Scholars continue to debate the level of influence each exerted upon the other’s work.

    Dostoevsky is often compared to the great Russian composer Tchaikovsky, particularly because of their mutual ability to evoke great anguish. Despite the emotional parallels in their work, the two men only met once.
    Shortly before his death, Dostoevsky famously gave a speech at the unveiling of a monument to Alexander Pushkin, a Russian author whose writing deeply affected Dostoevsky.

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