leonhard euler used to live in a town called "königsberg." (its name changed to kaliningrad in 1946). the town is on the river pregel. there is an island in the river. there are some bridges across the river. euler wanted to walk around and use each of the bridges once. he asked if he could do this. in 1736, he published a scientific article where he showed that this was not possible. today, this problem is known as the seven bridges of königsberg. the article is seen as the first paper in the history of graph theory.