Bubonic plague appeared in the Astrakhan Governorate. Over two years, 1,089 people would die from it.
In the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, serfdom was abolished. On March 15, the binding of peasants to the Urals was abolished (they were no longer required to work off obligations at factories and mines).
In Great Britain, the slave trade was banned.
On January 27, the battle between French and Russian troops at Preussisch Eylau brought victory to neither side. In June, Russian troops were defeated at Friedland. A meeting between Emperor Alexander and Napoleon took place in Tilsit, on the Neman River.
Admiral Dmitry Senyavin defeated the Turkish fleet near Mount Athos, applying the principles of maneuver warfare. In August, a Russo-Turkish armistice was concluded.
Construction of the Izhevsk Arms Plant began. On June 10, an Armory Office was opened to organize the plant’s administration, headed by the plant’s chief.
The Izhevsk Arms Plant produced both firearms and edged weapons.
By the start of the Patriotic War of 1812, the plant had produced 2,000 muskets, and in 1814 it produced 10,000 muskets and 2,500 cutlasses. In 1874, the plant began producing the Berdan four-line rifle, and in 1891, the Mosin three-line rifle. Only here were all its variants manufactured: infantry, dragoon, Cossack, and the cavalry carbine.
In 1887, the Izhevsk rifle was presented at the Siberian-Ural Exhibition and quickly gained popularity.
In 1900, at the World’s Fair in Paris, the plant’s hunting rifles received gold medals.
During the years of the Great Patriotic War, the Izhevsk plant produced up to 18 types of weapons, including the Degtyaryov and Simonov anti-tank rifles, Berezin aircraft machine guns and cannon, and Shpitalny and Nudelman-Suranov aircraft cannons.
Since 1948, the plant has produced the Kalashnikov assault rifle, which remains in service to this day and has no equal. Today, the enterprise is named the Kalashnikov Concern (until 2013 it was called OJSC NPO IZHMAZH, and until 1975, the Izhevsk Machine-Building Plant) and is a backbone organization of Russia’s small-arms sector within the defense industry. It manufactures Russian combat automatic and sniper weapons, guided artillery rounds, and a wide range of precision weapons. Overall, the Kalashnikov Concern includes three firearms brands: Kalashnikov (combat and civilian weapons), Baikal (hunting and civilian weapons), and Izhmash (sporting weapons). The Concern is the flagship of the domestic small-arms industry, and its products are supplied to more than 27 countries. A large segment of its civilian output includes hunting shotguns, sporting rifles, machine tools, and tools. New areas of the Concern’s activity since 2015 include remotely operated combat modules, unmanned aerial vehicles, and multipurpose special-purpose boats.