The Gulf of Finland is the easternmost arm of the Baltic Sea. It extends between Finland to the north and Estonia to the south, to Saint Petersburg in Russia to the east, where the river Neva drains into it. Other major cities around the gulf include Helsinki and Tallinn. The eastern parts of the Gulf of Finland belong to Russia, and some of Russia's most important oil harbors are located farthest in, near Saint Petersburg. As the seaway to Saint Petersburg, the Gulf of Finland has been and continues to be of considerable strategic importance to Russia. Some of the environmental problems affecting the Baltic Sea are at their most pronounced in the shallow gulf. Proposals for a tunnel through the gulf have been made.
The policy of Russification of Finland was a governmental policy of the Russian Empire aimed at limiting the special status of the Grand Duchy of Finland and possibly the termination of its political autonomy and cultural uniqueness in 1899–1905 and in 1908–1917, fully integrating Finland to the Russian Empire. It was a part of a larger policy of Russification pursued by late 19th–early 20th century Russian governments which tried to abolish cultural and administrative autonomy of non-Russian minorities within the empire.
The Grand Duchy of Finland, officially and also translated as the Grand Principality of Finland, was the predecessor state of modern Finland. It existed between 1809 and 1917 as an autonomous state within the Russian Empire.
The coat of arms of Finland is a crowned lion on a red field, the right foreleg replaced with an armoured human arm brandishing a sword, trampling on a sabre with the hindpaws. The Finnish coat of arms was originally created around the year 1580.
The Larne gun-running was a major gun smuggling operation organised in April 1914 in Ireland by Major Frederick H. Crawford and Captain Wilfrid Spender for the Ulster Unionist Council to equip the Ulster Volunteer Force. The operation involved the smuggling of almost 25,000 rifles and between 3 and 5 million rounds of ammunition from the German Empire, with the shipments landing in Larne, Donaghadee, and Bangor in the early hours between Friday 24 and Saturday 25 April 1914. The Larne gun-running may have been the first time in history that motor-vehicles were used "on a large scale for a military-purpose, and with striking success".
Finland declared its independence on 6 December 1917. The formal Declaration of Independence was only part of the long process leading to the independence of Finland.
The Berdan rifle is a single-shot rifle created by American engineer and inventor Hiram Berdan in 1868. It was the service rifle of the Imperial Russian Army from 1870 to 1891, when replaced by the Mosin–Nagant rifle. The gun was widely used in Russia as a hunting weapon, and sporting variants, including shotguns, were produced until the mid-1930s. The Russian Berdan I (M1868) and Berdan II (M1870) rifles of .42 caliber are distinct from the Spanish Berdan 15 mm (0.591 in) conversion rifles adopted by Spain as the M1857/67 Berdan.
Moshulu is a four-masted steel barque, built as Kurt by William Hamilton and Company at Port Glasgow in Scotland in 1904. The largest remaining original windjammer, she is currently a floating restaurant docked in Penn's Landing, Philadelphia, adjacent to the museum ships USS Olympia and USS Becuna.
HMS Vittoria was a British destroyer of the Admiralty V-class. She was converted to a minelayer, and was torpedoed by the Bolshevik submarine Pantera off the island of Seiskari in the Gulf of Finland on 31 August 1919.
SS Libau was a merchant steam ship. In 1916 she was disguised with the identity of a Norwegian vessel named the SS Aud in an attempt to carry arms from Germany to Ireland as part of the preparation for the Easter Rising.
Albatros is a sailing ketch built in the Netherlands in 1899. Trading as a cargo sailing ship until 1996, she is now used as a training vessel.
USS West Bridge (ID-2888) was a Design 1013 cargo ship in the United States Navy during World War I. She was begun as War Topaz for the British Government but was completed as West Bridge. After being decommissioned from the Navy, the ship returned to civilian service as West Bridge, but was renamed Barbara Cates, and Pan Gulf over the course of her commercial career under American registry.
Konrad Viktor Zilliacus was a Finnish independence activist involved in the Grafton Affair in 1905.
Larsmo is a municipality in Finland, located on the west coast of the country. Larsmo is situated in Ostrobothnia, along the Gulf of Bothnia. The population of Larsmo is approximately 6,000, while the sub-region has a population of approximately 50,000. It is the 154th most populous municipality in Finland.
Sampo was a Finnish state-owned steam-powered icebreaker. Built in 1898 by Sir W.G. Armstrong, Whitworth & Co Ltd in Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom and named after a magical artifact from the Finnish mythology, she was the second state-owned icebreaker of Finland and the first European icebreaker equipped with a bow propeller. When Sampo was decommissioned and broken up in 1960, she was also the second last steam-powered icebreaker in the Finnish icebreaker fleet.
Suur Tõll is an Estonian steam-powered icebreaker preserved in the Estonian Maritime Museum in Tallinn. She was originally built for the Russian Empire in 1914 by AG Vulcan in Stettin, Germany, as Tsar Mikhail Feodorovich. In 1917, she was taken over by the Bolsheviks and renamed Volynets. However, in 1918 she was captured by Finland and served as Wäinämöinen until 1922, when she was handed over to Estonia according to the Treaty of Tartu and renamed Suur Tõll. When Estonia was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940, the icebreaker rejoined the Soviet fleet and was again named Volynets. She remained in service until 1985.
The 120 mm 50 caliber Pattern 1905 was a Russian naval gun developed by Vickers for export in the years before World War I that armed a variety of warships of the Imperial Russian Navy. Guns salvaged from scrapped ships found a second life as coastal artillery, railway artillery and aboard river monitors during the Russian Civil War. It was estimated that there were 110 guns in the Soviet Navy's inventory in 1941. Of these, 39 were in the Baltic Fleet, 20 in the Black sea Fleet, 24 in the Amur Flotilla, 11 in the Pacific Fleet and 6 in the Pinsk flotilla in World War II.
Aktiebolaget Sandvikens Skeppsdocka och Mekaniska Verkstad was a Finnish shipbuilding and engineering company that operated in Helsinki in 1895–1938. The company was set up to continue shipbuilding at Hietalahti shipyard, after its predecessor Helsingfors Skeppsdocka, which operated the yard in 1865–1895, had bankrupted.
The Åland War was the operations of a Anglo-French naval force against military and civilian facilities on the coast of the Grand Duchy of Finland in 1854–1856, during the Crimean War between the Russian Empire and the allied France and Britain. The war is named after the Battle of Bomarsund in Åland. Although the name of the war refers to Åland, skirmishes were also fought in other coastal towns of Finland in the Gulf of Bothnia and the Gulf of Finland.
