On August 6, 1961, at nine o'clock in the morning Moscow time, Soviet cosmonaut German Titov ascended into low-Earth orbit on the Vostok-2 spacecraft and spent 25 hours and 11 minutes there, circling the Earth 17 times. German Titov proved that man can live and work in space. The astronaut took the first photographs of the Earth, had lunch and dinner in zero gravity for the first time, and even managed to sleep. This was the second manned space flight, but the first 24-hour flight. 
The first Internet server appeared
August 1991 became an important and significant day in the life of all users of the World Wide Web - the first Internet server appeared.
The WWW (World Wide Web) project began its existence much earlier - in 1989, when British scientist Tim Berners-Lee, working at the European Nuclear Research Laboratory, first published his ideas and proposals for creating a worldwide computer network. However, detailed development of the project began only a year later, when Tim gained access to a NeXT computer, which became the first Internet server, browser (Internet page viewer) and web editor.
Only after this did it become possible to translate Berners-Lee's ideas into reality. In 1991, the project was finalized and presented to the CS committee. It was then, on August 6, 1991, that the first Internet server appeared and the standard for WWW (World Wide Web) pages was approved.
The last boxing fight took place without gloves
On August 6, 1889, the last bare-knuckle fight took place between two American boxers, John Sulpivan and Mitchell Kippraywipp.
Since 1920, boxing has become a permanent Olympic discipline, and at the same time the popularity of boxing throughout the world is growing. Boxing has come a difficult path from primitive fist fighting, an original martial arts, to modern rules that shaped it as a sport. And starting from 2018, a holiday dedicated to this sport is celebrated - International Boxing Day. 
Born on this day
August 6, 1856 - Apollinary Vasnetsov, Russian artist, master of historical painting, art critic.
August 6, 1904 - Tikhon Rabotnov, Soviet and Russian ecologist and geobotanist, Honored Professor of Moscow State University
August 6, 1970 - Night Shyamalan, Indian-American film director and screenwriter
August 6 – Day of the Russian Railway Troops
August 6 – International Day of Doctors of the World for Peace
Events of August 6 that happened around the world, in different years
The Day of the Railway Troops of the Russian Federation is celebrated every year on August 6. It was first established by Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 1040 of July 19, 1996. Currently established by Decree No. 549 of July 18, 2006, Decree No. 1040 has become invalid.
It is dedicated to the day of the formation of special military formations for the protection and operation of the St. Petersburg - Moscow railway.
On August 6, 1851, Emperor Nicholas I issued the “highest approval” of the “Regulations on the composition of the management of the St. Petersburg - Moscow Railway.”
According to the “Regulations,” 14 separate military workers, two conductor and “telegraph” companies with a total number of 4,340 people were formed, which marked the beginning of the formation of the first military railway units. They were ordered to maintain the railway track in good condition and ensure the uninterrupted operation of bridge and railway crossing guard stations.
For more than a century and a half, military railway workers have selflessly and selflessly served the Fatherland. The railway troops of the Russian Federation take part in eliminating the consequences of emergencies, accidents and disasters.
On August 6, the entire planet celebrates the International Day of Doctors of the World for Peace, which is held by the decision of the Executive Committee of the International Movement of Doctors of the World for the Prevention of Nuclear War on the day of the bombing of Hiroshima.
On August 6, 1945, American aircraft bombed the Japanese city of Hiroshima, using atomic weapons for the first time in human history. About 140 thousand Japanese died in the bombing, and more than 230 thousand people died from the consequences of the use of atomic weapons. Moreover, the vast majority of those killed were civilians.
In memory of this mourning date, the organization Physicians of the World for the Prevention of Nuclear Threats has decided to celebrate the Day of Physicians of the World for Peace every August 6, the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima.
The organization “Doctors of the World for the Prevention of Nuclear Threats” arose in 1980 in France, spinning off from the famous international organization “Doctors Without Borders”. Since then, large branches of Doctors of the World have appeared in twelve countries, including the United States, Sweden and the Netherlands.
The Day “Doctors of the World - for Peace” is symbolic and is intended to remind people of the terrible tragedy of August 6, 1945, and also to always remind people of the inadmissibility of any war, especially nuclear war.
988 - Baptism of Rus', adoption of Christianity by Prince Vladimir of Kyiv.
1181 - The Novgorod squad founded the first Russian city on Vyatka - Nikulitsyn.
1181 - Chinese and Japanese astronomers detect a supernova explosion.
1192 - Novgorod Archbishop Gregory consecrated the temple in the name of the Transfiguration of the Lord in the Varlaamo-Khutyn Monastery
1378 - Battle of the Vozha River (Ryazan region): Prince Dmitry Ivanovich, later Donskoy, defeated the punitive expedition of Khan Mamai.
1492 - One of H. Columbus’s caravels lost its rudder already on the third day of the journey, which is why the expedition was delayed in Tenerife.
1496 - Bartolomeo Columbus founded Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic.
1497 - John Cabot's expedition returned to Bristol after discovering Canada.
1502 - Dionysius began painting the Ferapontov Monastery.
1506 - Lithuanians defeat Crimean Tatars in the Battle of Kletsk
1723 - During the Persian campaign of the Russian army and navy of 1722-1723, Baku was captured by Russian troops.
1783 - Georgia came under the authority and patronage of Russia.
1790 - Writer A. Radishchev was sentenced to execution for the book “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow.”
1806 - The end of the Holy Roman Empire after the refusal of Emperor Franz II (Franz II. Joseph Karl) from the German crown and the liquidation of the empire.
1817 - The Nizhny Novgorod Fair began to operate.
1825 - The Congress in the city of Chuquisaca (modern Sucre) declared the independence of Upper Peru, called Bolivia.
1828 - The first Royal Regatta took place in Canada, the oldest sporting competition in North America that has survived to this day.
1851 - China and Russia signed the Kulja Trade Treaty, which marked the beginning of official trade relations between these countries.
1866 - Vancouver Island is incorporated into British Columbia.
1888 - Running competitions were held in Tyarlevo (near St. Petersburg), marking the beginning of Russian athletics.
1889 - The last boxing fight without gloves was held.
1889 - The Savoy Hotel opens in London, the world's first hotel with a bath in every room.
1890 - Murderer William Kemmler became the first person to be executed by electric chair (New York).
1893 - From August 6 to 12, the third congress of the Second International was held in Zurich. Among others, decisions were made on the celebration of May 1 and the expulsion of anarchists from the organization.
1893 - The Corinth Canal opens in Greece.
1896 - Madagascar is declared a French colony.
1905 - Law on the establishment of the legislative advisory State Duma.
1914 - Austria-Hungary declares war on Russia.
1916 - Montenegro invited Serbia to unite into a federation.
1917 - The second coalition Provisional Government was formed under the chairmanship of Alexander Fedorovich Kerensky.
1926 - 19-year-old Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim the English Channel. She covered the distance of 56 km in 14 hours 31 minutes, improving the previous achievement of the men by 1 hour 59 minutes.
1926 - The Warner Brothers film studio presented the film “Don Juan” with the Vitafon sound system, which made it possible to synchronize the musical accompaniment with film footage.
1929 - The UK's first driving course opened in Bristol.
1932 - The first Venice Film Festival opened.
1932 - The Welland Canal was opened between Lakes Erie and Lake Ontario (North America).
1935 - Opening of the first all-Union competitions in parachuting.
1940 - Estonia was admitted to the USSR.
1940 - Arrest of Nikolai Vavilov.
1945 - American atomic bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima
1952 - The crash at Drovnino station, the largest railway accident in the Soviet Union at that time (109 dead and 211 injured).
1958 - The United States conducted atmospheric nuclear tests on Johnston Island.
1961 - The Vostok-2 spacecraft was launched, piloted by a citizen of the Soviet Union, pilot-cosmonaut Major German Titov.
1962 - Jamaica became independent after being a British colony for 300 years.
1965 - The Beatles' fourth album, Help!, is released in England.
1968 - The Doors' disc "Waiting For The Sun" went gold.
1969 - The Mi-12 helicopter set a world record, lifting 40,204.5 kg of payload to a height of 2,255 meters.
1970 - France conducted nuclear tests on the island of Mururoa.
1971 - The Procol Harum group gave a concert in the Canadian city of Edmonton along with the local symphony orchestra. The album, released later, became one of the best live recordings in the history of rock music.
1977 - The second and last European punk rock festival took place in Mont-de-Marsan (France).
1981 - In the United States, all striking air traffic controllers were fired after they did not comply with the president's order to return to work.
1982 - The Italian government ordered the liquidation of the country's largest private bank, Milan's Banco Ambrosiano.
1986 - Phil Katz released the PKARC archiver version 1.0 for IBM.
1991 - The nuclear submarine K-407 Novomoskovsk launched a salvo of 16 R-29RM intercontinental ballistic missiles for the first time in the world - Operation Behemoth-2.
1992 - The Russian government demanded $7.7 billion from the Baltic republics. in exchange for the withdrawal of Russian troops.
1995 - Croatian authorities announced the liquidation of the Republic of Serbian Krajina.
1996 - Chechen militants begin an assault on the city of Grozny.
1996 - NASA announced that the ALH 84001 meteorite, which broke off from Mars and fell to Earth, contained the remains of microorganisms that existed 3 billion years ago.
1997 - Microsoft announced that it would invest $150 million in Apple Computer Inc.
2002 - The computer network of the Japanese Ministry of Defense was hacked through a hacker attack.
2002 - Peace negotiations between Russia (Troitsky) and Ukraine (Karpenko) were held in Balaklava Bay.
2002 - The United States Court of Appeals rules that the media have the right to full access to and coverage of California's death penalty proceedings.
2007 - The first regiment of the fifth-generation S-400 Triumph air defense system began combat duty, protecting Moscow from threats not only from the sky, but also from space.
2008 - Military coup in Mauritania.
Railway Troops Day.
It was first established by decree of the President of the Russian Federation of July 19, 1996. Currently, it is celebrated as a memorial day of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in accordance with the decree of the President of the Russian Federation of May 31, 2006 “On the establishment of professional holidays and memorable days in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.”
On August 6 (August 18, new style), 1851, Emperor Nicholas I approved the Regulations on the composition of the management of the St. Petersburg-Moscow Railway, according to which the first special military formations were created in the engineering troops to protect and operate the railway.
The railway troops played an important role in the First World War, during which they built over 4 thousand kilometers of railways and restored more than 4.6 thousand kilometers of tracks.
Currently, the Railway Troops of the RF Armed Forces are special formations intended for the restoration, construction, operation and technical cover of railways used for military transportation. The number of Railway Troops of the Russian Armed Forces is over 23 thousand military personnel, of which about 5 thousand serve under contract.
Hiroshima Day - World Day for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
An unofficial memorial date dedicated to the day of the US atomic bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945 and to the day of the first international conference for the prohibition of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima.
The United States began preparations for the combat use of the atomic bomb in the summer of 1944. Initially, it was planned to drop 9 atomic bombs on Japanese rice fields or in the sea, but later it was decided to use the new weapon against densely populated cities.
On August 6, at 8:15 a.m., the Little Boy atomic bomb with a uranium charge, the TNT equivalent of which was about 20 thousand tons, was dropped on Hiroshima. The city was wiped off the face of the Earth. Died
about 80 thousand people, over 12 thousand were missing, 40 thousand people were injured.
On August 9, at 11:01 a.m., an American plane dropped the second atomic bomb Fat Man (“Fat Man”) with a plutonium charge on Nagasaki, the TNT equivalent of which was equal to “Baby.” More than 73 thousand people were killed or disappeared, and later another 35 thousand people died from exposure and injuries.
The total number of victims of the two tragedies is over 450 thousand people, and survivors still suffer from diseases caused by radiation exposure. According to the latest data, their number is 183 thousand 519 people.
103 years ago (1915), during the First World War, an event known as the "Attack of the Dead" took place.
A small Russian fortress 23.5 kilometers from the border of East Prussia was of the greatest strategic importance. It defended from the Germans the crossing of the Bobra River and the transport hub of Bialystok, the capture of which opened the road to Vilna, Brest, Grodno and Minsk. Despite the small size of the fortress, it was almost impossible to get around it due to the swamps surrounding Osovets.
Since September 1914, the Germans tried to take the fortress twice, using all their latest achievements against its defenders, but Osovets did not give up.
Then the Germans decided to use poison gases to destroy the fortress garrison. They carefully prepared the gas attack, bringing in 30 gas batteries with several thousand cylinders.
On August 6 at 4 a.m., after waiting for a fair wind, the Germans began releasing a poisonous mixture onto Russian positions. The gas wave was 12-15 meters high and 8 kilometers wide.
As a result of the gas attack, more than 1,000 defenders of the fortress were killed; almost the entire garrison, including the command, received varying degrees of poisoning. No more than fifty soldiers remained alive.
14 battalions of German troops (about 7 thousand people), after the gas attack and the massive shelling that followed, began an attack on the fortress. As one of the participants in the Osovets defense recalled: “We did not have gas masks, so the gases caused terrible injuries and chemical burns. When breathing, wheezing and bloody foam escaped from the lungs. The skin on our hands and faces was blistering. The rags we wrapped around our faces did not help. However, the Russian artillery began to act, sending shell after shell towards the Prussians from the green chlorine cloud. Here the head of the 2nd defense department of Osovets Svechnikov, shaking from a terrible cough, croaked: “My friends, we must not die, like the cockroaches of the Prussians, from poisoning. Let's show them so that they remember forever!“
Those who survived the gas attack, including the 13th company, came out to meet the German troops. It was headed by second lieutenant Vladimir Kotlinsky.
According to witnesses of that battle, the Russian soldiers alone by their appearance (many of them were disfigured after a gas attack and shelling) plunged the German soldiers into shock and total panic. The German attack was repulsed. The feat of Russian soldiers went down in history as an act of unprecedented courage.
288 years ago (1730), the Russian Empress Anna Ioannovna signed a decree on the casting of the large Assumption Bell, which later received the name “Tsar Bell”.
In 1934-1942 The main award of the film festival was the Mussolini Cup, in 1947-1948. - “Grand International Prize of Venice.” Since 1949, the main prize of the festival has been called the “Golden Lion”. For 10 years, from 1969 to 1979, the organizers of the Venice Festival returned to the original idea of a non-competitive screening of films and the Golden Lion was not awarded. Only individual films received awards.
This year, this oldest international film festival will be held for the 74th time.
In 1806, the Holy Roman Empire ceased to exist. Formally, it was founded in 800. Then it collapsed and only in 952 was restored by the German king Otto 1, who subjugated Northern and Central Italy and Rome. Over time, it included the Czech Republic, Burgundy, the Netherlands, Swiss and other lands. Gradually, the Roman Empire began to disintegrate into separate principalities, and then into independent states. Finally, in 1806, in connection with the dashing redrawing of European borders by Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon's future father-in-law, the Austrian Emperor Franz I and also the last monarch of the Holy Roman Empire, Franz II, resigned his second title and renounced the imperial crown. On August 6, 1973, on the way to a concert in North Carolina, Stevie Wonder's car crashed, causing the musician to fall into a four-day coma. For 10 days, the singer's life was under threat. Having lost only his sense of smell as a result of the accident, Stevie completely reconsidered his life goals. He became actively involved in charity events, the movement against nuclear weapons and the apartheid regime in South Africa. By the way, the famous motto of Sanya Grigoriev - “Fight and seek, find and not give up” - from Kaverin’s “Two Captains” goes back to Tennyson’s poem “The Travels of Ulysses”: 
Concerned about the departure of the creative intelligentsia from the country, Benito Mussolini, an ardent cinema fan, made a lot of efforts to organize a film forum that could compete with the Oscars. On the day of our review - August 6, 1932 - he opened the first Venice Film Festival. The organizers, who were under the personal control of the Duce, attracted 9 countries to participate in it, which submitted 29 full-length and 14 short films to the competition. The first film to be shown was “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” by Rouben Mamoulian.
The next festival in 1934 involved 17 countries and 40 full-length films. Then the main prize - the "Mussolini Cup" - was awarded to the Soviet Union for the best presented program (it included "Jolly Fellows", "Thunderstorm", "St. Petersburg Night", "Ivan", "Pyshka", "New Gulliver" and "Outskirts" ").
However, with the strengthening of fascist Germany, Italy's closest ally, the festival in Venice gradually began to turn into obsessive propaganda of the “new order”. Soon the Second World War began, and the festival was not held in 1939-1945.
After the war it resumed. And if the Berlin Film Festival is considered today the most political, the Cannes Film Festival the most international, the Venice Film Festival the most elitist. It is held on the resort island of Lido, and the emblem of Venice - the golden winged lion - has been the main prize of the film festival since 1980.
On August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb codenamed “Baby” was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima from an American B-29 aircraft.
There was no military need for this act of intimidation. US President Harry Truman stated that the bomb was dropped on a military base. He lied. The bomb fell on the heads of civilians, women, old people and children. As a result of the explosion, which occurred at an altitude of 600 meters, most of the city was destroyed, killing more than 140 thousand of its inhabitants. The number of victims of nuclear bombing is still growing, as the consequences of the explosion affect several generations. In memory of this tragedy, August 6 is celebrated as World Nuclear Ban Day. On this day, residents of Hiroshima light candles and let them float down the river. Every year the bell of Hiroshima rings.
In 1961, Levitan's voice announced a new space triumph of the USSR - the world's first daily flight into space by a Soviet cosmonaut.
The second flight into space in the history of mankind, following Yuri Gagarin, was made by 26-year-old German Titov. On August 6, 1961, at nine o'clock in the morning Moscow time, on the Vostok-2 spacecraft, he ascended into low-Earth orbit and spent 25 hours and 11 minutes in it, circling the Earth 17 times and thus seeing 17 cosmic dawns. The Soviet cosmonaut took the first photographs of the Earth, had lunch and dinner in zero gravity for the first time, and, most importantly, managed to sleep in space, which was one of the most important experiments. He proved that a person can live and work in a space alien to him.
Colleagues noted the extraordinary breadth of German Titov's professional interests - from the construction of schools and kindergartens for children of astronauts to the creation of complex spacecraft. He was an academician of the Academy of Cosmonautics named after. K.E. Tsiolkovsky, International Academy of Informatization. His books “Seventeen Cosmic Dawns”, “My Blue Planet”, “On Stellar and Earth Orbits” became reference books for more than several generations of astronauts.
In 1809, Alfred Tennyson was born, the English poet who most clearly expressed the views and hopes of the Victorian era and lived a long and colorful life.
Even if we are no longer the same strength,
What moved the earth and the sky;
We are what we are: sometimes
A hero's heart from adversity and years
Will weaken, but still have a strong desire to live,
Search, and find, and not give up.
In 1856, Apollinary Vasnetsov was born, a Russian painter, the younger brother of Viktor Vasnetsov. He studied with Repin, Polenov and, of course, with his brother.
Apollinary Vasnetsov is the founder of the historical landscape. This new form was invented by him. Moscow of the 17th century comes to life in his landscapes “Street in Kitai-Gorod”, “Red Square”... The Tretyakov Gallery presents the artist’s epic paintings: “Motherland”, “Taiga in the Urals”, “Blue Mountain”, “Kama”...
Art critics and historians say that Vasnetsov seemed to see ancient Moscow through the ground. He knew what could be found during excavations in this or that place of the city. Already at a very old age, the creator of the picturesque chronicle of Moscow, together with metro builders, descended into tunnels and mines. Apollinarius Mikhailovich searched in the dungeons of the capital for traces of a past life, which for many had become history and a fairy tale. The artist’s son Vsevolod recalled: “Fearing that during the work related to the construction of the metro, many historical monuments would be lost forever, my father sent a letter to the Moskovskaya Pravda newspaper.” In it, he drew the attention of builders to the great scientific value of such finds and encouraged them to collaborate with specialists - historians or archaeologists... He wanted to see everything with his own eyes, to touch the remnants of a bygone era. Regardless of anything, he made his way into the very depths of the tunnel. And upon returning from such an expedition, he immediately (while it was still fresh in his memory) wrote down and sketched in detail everything he saw interesting.”
In 1881, bacteriologist Alexander Fleming was born in the Scottish town of Lochfield. From his first steps in science, he was obsessed with the idea that all living things have defense mechanisms, otherwise no organism could exist: bacteria would freely invade and kill it. Fleming dedicated his life to the search for these mechanisms.
Like many scientists, he was helped by luck and chance. In Fleming's laboratory, his main enemy was mold. It never occurred to anyone to use this “dirt” in the fight against disease. One day, in one of the cups, Fleming discovered mold around which bacteria did not multiply. Having separated the mold, he found that “the broth on which the mold had grown... acquired a distinct ability to inhibit the growth of microorganisms.” This is how penicillin was discovered in 1928.
Penicillin marked the beginning of a new era in medicine - the treatment of diseases with antibiotics. In the entire history of mankind, there has not been a medicine in the world that would save so many lives. Fleming was awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery.
In Greece, where the scientist visited, national mourning was declared on the day of his death, and in Barcelona, Spain, all the flower girls in the city poured armfuls of flowers from their baskets to the memorial plaque with the name of the great bacteriologist and “doctor of the century” Alexander Fleming.
Valentin Levashev, a composer, choral conductor, and folklore collector, was born in 1915. He headed the Siberian Folk Choir, and for many years was the artistic director of the Russian Folk Choir named after Pyatnitsky.
His songs were performed by Klavdiya Shulzhenko, Maya Kristalinskaya, Anna German, Lyudmila Zykina... Based on the poems of Bulat Okudzhava, Levashev wrote one of the best songs about the war - “Take your overcoat, let's go home.”
Railway Troops Day.
It was first established by decree of the President of the Russian Federation of July 19, 1996. Currently, it is celebrated as a memorial day of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in accordance with the decree of the President of the Russian Federation of May 31, 2006 “On the establishment of professional holidays and memorable days in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.”
On August 6 (August 18, new style), 1851, Emperor Nicholas I approved the Regulations on the composition of the management of the St. Petersburg-Moscow Railway, according to which the first special military formations were created in the engineering troops to protect and operate the railway.
The railway troops played an important role in the First World War, during which they built over 4 thousand kilometers of railways and restored more than 4.6 thousand kilometers of tracks.
Currently, the Railway Troops of the RF Armed Forces are special formations intended for the restoration, construction, operation and technical cover of railways used for military transportation. The number of Railway Troops of the Russian Armed Forces is over 23 thousand military personnel, of which about 5 thousand serve under contract.
Hiroshima Day - World Day for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
An unofficial memorial date dedicated to the day of the US atomic bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945 and to the day of the first international conference for the prohibition of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima.
The United States began preparations for the combat use of the atomic bomb in the summer of 1944. Initially, it was planned to drop 9 atomic bombs on Japanese rice fields or in the sea, but later it was decided to use the new weapon against densely populated cities.
On July 25, 1945, US President Harry Truman approved the order to bomb one of the Japanese cities: Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata or Nagasaki.
On August 6, at 8:15 a.m., the Little Boy atomic bomb with a uranium charge, the TNT equivalent of which was about 20 thousand tons, was dropped on Hiroshima. The city was wiped off the face of the Earth. Died
about 80 thousand people, over 12 thousand were missing, 40 thousand people were injured.
On August 9, at 11:01 a.m., an American plane dropped the second atomic bomb Fat Man (“Fat Man”) with a plutonium charge on Nagasaki, the TNT equivalent of which was equal to “Baby.” More than 73 thousand people were killed or disappeared, and later another 35 thousand people died from exposure and injuries.
The total number of victims of the two tragedies is over 450 thousand people, and survivors still suffer from diseases caused by radiation exposure. According to the latest data, their number is 183 thousand 519 people.
103 years ago (1915), during the First World War, an event known as the "Attack of the Dead" took place.
This is one of the most famous episodes of the First World War. As a result of a counterattack by the 13th company of the 226th Zemlyansky regiment, defending the Osovets fortress, fifty Russian soldiers put almost seven thousand German troops to flight.
A small Russian fortress 23.5 kilometers from the border of East Prussia was of the greatest strategic importance. It defended from the Germans the crossing of the Bobra River and the transport hub of Bialystok, the capture of which opened the road to Vilna, Brest, Grodno and Minsk. Despite the small size of the fortress, it was almost impossible to get around it due to the swamps surrounding Osovets.
Since September 1914, the Germans tried to take the fortress twice, using all their latest achievements against its defenders, but Osovets did not give up.
Then the Germans decided to use poison gases to destroy the fortress garrison. They carefully prepared the gas attack, bringing in 30 gas batteries with several thousand cylinders.
On August 6 at 4 a.m., after waiting for a fair wind, the Germans began releasing a poisonous mixture onto Russian positions. The gas wave was 12-15 meters high and 8 kilometers wide.
As a result of the gas attack, more than 1,000 defenders of the fortress were killed; almost the entire garrison, including the command, received varying degrees of poisoning. No more than fifty soldiers remained alive.
14 battalions of German troops (about 7 thousand people), after the gas attack and the massive shelling that followed, began an attack on the fortress. As one of the participants in the Osovets defense recalled: “We did not have gas masks, so the gases caused terrible injuries and chemical burns. When breathing, wheezing and bloody foam escaped from the lungs. The skin on our hands and faces was blistering. The rags we wrapped around our faces did not help. However, the Russian artillery began to act, sending shell after shell towards the Prussians from the green chlorine cloud. Here the head of the 2nd defense department of Osovets Svechnikov, shaking from a terrible cough, croaked: “My friends, we must not die, like the cockroaches of the Prussians, from poisoning. Let’s show them so that they remember forever!”
Those who survived the gas attack, including the 13th company, came out to meet the German troops. It was headed by second lieutenant Vladimir Kotlinsky.
According to witnesses of that battle, the Russian soldiers alone by their appearance (many of them were disfigured after a gas attack and shelling) plunged the German soldiers into shock and total panic. The German attack was repulsed. The feat of Russian soldiers went down in history as an act of unprecedented courage.
288 years ago (1730), Russian Empress Anna Ioannovna signed a decree on the casting of the large Assumption Bell, which later became known as the “Tsar Bell”.
In the 17th century, on the orders of Boris Godunov, foundry worker Andrei Chokhov made the first huge Kremlin bell, called the Great Assumption Bell. Unfortunately, it didn't last long. During the fire in the Kremlin, he fell and was broken. In the mid-1600s, a new, even larger bell was cast from the fragments of the Great Assumption Bell. And it did not last long either, as it cracked from a strong blow of the tongue against it. To replace the broken bell, another one was cast, but in June 1701, during a fire in the Kremlin, it fell and broke.
The execution of the decree of Empress Anna Ioannovna was entrusted to the Office of the Main Artillery and Fortification. The casting of the bell was entrusted to Ivan Motorin, who made the largest bells for Russian monasteries.
The molding and casting of the Tsar Bell was carried out in a special pit dug on Ivanovo Square. The first attempt to cast a bell in 1734 ended in failure. During the work, a fire occurred, as a result of which the shape of the bell was damaged.
The new Tsar Bell was cast on November 25, 1735. The work lasted more than 36 hours. 12 thousand 327 poods (201 tons 924 kilograms) of bell bronze were poured into the mold.
After the completion of work on the Tsar Bell, for unknown reasons, it remained in the foundry pit for a long time. There he was caught by the famous Trinity Fire, which broke out in the Kremlin in May 1737. When extinguishing the fire, water fell on the hot metal of the bell, and a piece weighing 11.5 tons broke off.
For more than a hundred years, attempts were made to remove the bell from the pit, which ended in failure. In 1836, St. Petersburg architect Auguste Montferrand developed a design for a lifting device and a special stone pedestal for installing the Tsar Bell on it. The bell was removed from the pit and, as an example of foundry art, installed on an octagonal sandstone pedestal, where it stands to this day.
27 years ago (1991) the first Internet server appeared.
The history of the World Wide Web began in 1989, when British scientist Tim Berners-Lee published his ideas about creating a worldwide computer network. A year later, he gained access to a NeXT computer, which became the first Internet server, browser and web editor. In 1991, the Berners-Lee project was finalized, and the standard for WWW pages was approved.
Today, over 3 billion people use the Internet. The first place in terms of the number of users is occupied by China, second by India and third by the USA. Russia is in sixth place.
86 years ago (1932) the first Venice Film Festival took place.
It was organized on the initiative of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
The first film festival was non-competitive and took place on the terrace of the Excelsior Hotel on Lido Island. 9 countries took part in it, presenting 29 full-length and 14 short films. The film screening, which lasted until August 21, was attended by 25 thousand spectators.
Since 1934, the film festival has been held annually in August-September. The only exceptions were the war period of 1943-1945, as well as 1973-1978, when the new festival charter was being approved by the Italian Parliament.
In 1934-1942 The main award of the film festival was the Mussolini Cup, in 1947-1948. - “Grand International Prize of Venice.” Since 1949, the festival's main prize has been called the Golden Lion. For 10 years, from 1969 to 1979, the organizers of the Venice Festival returned to the original idea of a non-competitive screening of paintings and the Golden Lion was not awarded. Only individual films received awards.
This year, this oldest international film festival will be held for the 74th time.
