The Colors of Cold

Time Line of Events from The Age of Ice

1550–1850 The so-called Little Ice Age in Europe—a period of overall colder temperatures.

1740 Ice Palace erected in St. Petersburg. Empress Anna Ioannovna dies.

Twins Andrei and Alexander are born to Prince Mikhail “The Clown” Velitzyn and Avdotia, née Buzheninova.

1742–61 Reign of Empress Elizaveta.

1747 Anna Khitrovo born.

1752 Andrei and Alexander enter the Cadet Corps military school in St. Petersburg.

1757–62 The Seven Years’ War.

1757 Alexander joins the Preobrazhensky Leib Guard.

1762 Peter III, husband of Ekaterine, crowned, only to be deposed and murdered by the Orlov brothers.

1762–96 Reign of Empress Ekaterine II, or Catherine the Great.

1768 Empress Ekaterine invites Dr. Thomas Dimsdale to St. Petersburg to perform vaccinations against smallpox. After a demonstration of the vaccine’s safety, she, her young son the Grand Duke, and the court receive inoculations.

Alexander volunteers to be a guinea pig for the first smallpox inoculation, before the vaccine is offered to the royalty.

1769 Andrei Junior is born to Andrei Velitzyn and Anna Khitrovo.

1769–74 War with the Ottoman empire.

1771–75 Circle of Sentimentalists active in Darmstadt: Goethe and Johann Heinrich Merck.

1772–74 Pugachev’s revolt in south-central Russia. 1773, October-February: Orenburg, the city-fortress, is besieged.

1773 December: Alexander travels to Orenburg. Andrei dies.

1774 Goethe publishes The Sorrows of Young Werther.

1775 James Watts perfects his steam engine with a condenser.

1779 Captain Cook is murdered on Kauai Island.

1781 Herschel discovers the planet Uranus.

Alexander duels with and kills Paul Svetogorov.

1783 Britain recognizes U.S. independence.

1785–93 Captain Joseph Billings leads Russian-British expedition in search of the Northeast Passage.

Alexander joins the expedition.

1789 French Revolution begins. Storm of the Bastille, National Assembly.

1787 Alexander “glaciates.” Discovered two months later by Dr. Merck.

1793 King Louis XVI of France executed. First Coalition against France. Jacobin reign of Terror.

Alexander joins Billings’s ill-fated land trek through the Chukchi Peninsula.

1797–1801 Reign of Czar Paul I. He is murdered in March 1801.

1794 March: Alexander returns home. September: marries Anna, adopts Andrei Junior.

1796 Alexander opens his icery.

1798 Dr. Merck kills a man in a cryopreservation experiment. Suffers a stroke.

1799 Napoléon becomes Consul, then First Consul.

1801 Andrei Junior marries Varvara Redrikov.

1804 Napoléon proclaimed Emperor.

Anna dies.

1805 December 2: Battle of Austerlitz between the allied Austria and Russia against Napoléon.

Andrei Velitzyn leads the 2nd squadron of the Life Guards Horse regiment into battle and captures the eagle standard of the French Fourth Line Infantry regiment—the only trophy that allies won at Austerlitz. Andrei dies during the retreat through the Sachan ponds.

1807 Russia enters a coalition with France against Britain—the Continental blockade, aka Blocus.

1808 First publication of Goethe’s Faust.

Martin Sawyer leaves Russia.

1811 The Comet of 1812 is first sighted in Viviers, France.

1812 June: Napoléon invades Russia. September: burns Moscow. October-December: retreats. The crossing of the Berezina River in December delivers a final blow to Napoléon’s army.

Alexander leaves home. He is adopted by the Chernigovsky Regiment as it chases the dwindling army of Napoléon across Russia.

1813–17 Persian Crown Prince Abbas Mirza in Tabriz employs British officers to modernize and train his army.

1814 April: Allies (Britain, Prussia, Russia, Austria) enter Paris. Napoléon abdicates.

Alexander in Paris.

1814 July: Mary Goodwin (Shelley, in marriage) and Percy Bysshe Shelley travel through France.

Mary meets Alexander at Ossip Vassilian’s.

1815 March: Napoléon leaves Elba and lands in France, his “Hundred Days” end at Waterloo on June 18.

Alexander is taken to Persia and becomes a slave to Najar Alibek.

1817 Russian diplomatic mission to Tehran, led by General Yermoloff.

Alexander performs spying and eavesdropping duties on the British and Russians for Najar and Mirza.

1825 Persia is defeated by Russia. Britain refuses to help despite an Anglo-Persian treaty.

1829 A mob in Tehran dismembers the Russian envoy Griboedov.

1835 Alexander flees after the death of Najar Alibek and travels east.

1837 Persians under the new shah mount an attack on Afghan city-fortress Herat. British lieutenant Eldred Pottinger tries to defend Herat.

1838 A Russian military contingent under Count Simonich joins Persian shah in his camp. Colonel Stoddard arrives from Tehran with a British ultimatum to Persia. Russians leave and Persian army lifts the siege.

Alexander asks Pottinger for asylum.

1838–42 First Anglo-Afghan War.

1839 Alexander is taken to Calcutta.

1843 Pottinger dies in Hong Kong.

1854 Alexander leaves India for Singapore.

1900 Average annual temperatures begin to rise.

1905 Peking-Paris auto rally.

1906 World fair in Milan.

1907 Anglo-Russian entente cordiale signed.

1912 Ballets Russes perform Stravinsky’s Petroushka in Covent Garden.

1912–15 Russian Silver Age intellectuals meet at the Stray Dog pub. Poet Anna Akhmatova is a regular.

1913 A British business delegation visits Russia.

Alexander meets Princess Elizabeth Goretsky. December: Elizabeth marries Pfaltzgraff von Welleren.

1914–18 World War I.

1914 August: Anna and Marie von Welleren are born.

1917 Bolshevik revolution in Russia.

1926 Soviet government proposes to found a Soviet-Jewish Republic in Russian Far East (Birobidzhan).

1927, approximate: Joseph Stalin consolidates power in Communist Russia.

1933 Adolf Hitler is granted dictatorial powers. First Nazi concentration camps. Boycott of the Jews.

1935 Twenty-one German-Jewish doctors, refugees in France, emigrate to Birobidzhan; fourteen are arrested by NKVD.

Marie von Welleren marries Mark Fromm and follows him to Birobidzhan. Both are arrested.

1936–38 Show trials orchestrated by Stalin’s NKVD against “enemies of the state.”

1939–45 World War II.

1953–64 De-Stalinization of the Soviet Union under Nikita Khrushchev.

1961 Alexander visits Pierre and Anna Cazaux.

1968 Student uprisings in France.

Anna leaves Pierre, travels to New York with a young American.

1969 Rolling Stones tour the U.S.

Alexander meets Anna in New York.

1971 Anna publishes her autobiographical novel My Life Without a Twin.

1973 Oil crisis.

Alexander travels to USSR in hopes of visiting Birobidzhan.

2003 Deadly summer heat wave in Europe.

Anna dies.

2007 Northwest Passage now free of ice in summer. Arctic ice sheet is melting.

Alexander leaves for the Arctic.