1918: The Children Who Were Evacuated Around the World

In the spring of 1918, families in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg, Russia) were suffering from a lack of food due to transportation challenges in the wake of World War I and the October Revolution. So they sent 782 of the city's children to the Ural Mountains in the south, to a summer camp run by a charity called the Union of Cities. There they were caught between Russian and Czech fighters and could not leave- they spent the winter at camp. Aid workers from the Young Men's Christian Association (yes, the YMCA) found the children and helped them evacuate further east, to Siberia. There, the children fell into the care of the American Red Cross at Vladivostok. Then the Japanese invaded Vladivostok, and took the children to sea. For reasons that aren't all that clear, they didn't go west through the Indian Ocean, but sailed east to the US, around through the Panama Canal, and then the children spent some time in New York City. They didn't return to their parents in Petrograd until January of 1921! What they thought would be a summer in the mountains turned into a trip around the world, which you can read about at Messy Nessy Chic.    

(Image source: Library of Congress)