On March 16, 1870, at the Sormovo Plant in Nizhny Novgorod, the first open-hearth furnace in Russia was put into operation—a furnace for converting pig iron and scrap into steel of the required chemical composition and quality. This furnace made the metal of this brand famous as the best in the country. The name came from the surname of the French engineer and metallurgist Pierre Martin, who created the first furnace of this type in 1864. The open-hearth furnace was installed at a plant that had grown out of the "Factory of Tug and Delivery Shipping", by its sole owner, the son of a Greek merchant who had accepted Russian citizenship, Dmitry Yegorovich Benardaki. Benardaki, at his own risk, turned out to be not only a sponsor but also an excellent top manager of his own project. He turned his small factory into a legend of the Russian metallurgical industry.
Following the Sormovo Plant, open-hearth steel production was organized at the Botkinsky, Putilov, Obukhov, Perm, and other plants. However, in the 21st century, the open-hearth method of steel production has gradually been displaced by the much more efficient basic oxygen process and electric melting. In addition, open-hearth furnaces heavily pollute the environment.
Benardaki was not only an industrialist: he was the only one among his contemporaries in Saint Petersburg who recognized Nikolai Gogol's talent and considered it an honor to know him. Dmitry Benardaki became the prototype of the "new Russian", the landowner Kostanzhoglo, in the second volume of "Dead Souls". Moreover, one character based on such a vivid model was not enough for Gogol, and he introduces there another one as well: the millionaire philanthropist Afanasy Murazov.
September 4 — a coup d'etat took place in France (the September Revolution of 1870), a direct consequence of defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. As a result, Emperor Napoleon III was overthrown, which marked the beginning of the Third Republic.
April 22 — Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) was born, the founder of the Soviet socialist state, the creator of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
August 2 — the London Underground opened.
October 22 — Ivan Alexeyevich Bunin was born, a writer, Nobel Prize laureate (1933).
September 7 — Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin was born, a Russian writer and emigre. Before his death he returned to Moscow.