Timeline of the 20th century

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	19th century 20th century 21st century
Timelines:	19th century 20th century 21st century
State leaders:	19th century 20th century 21st century
Decades:	1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s
Categories:	Births – Deaths Establishments – Disestablishments

This is a timeline of the 20th century.

1900s[]

1901[]

• 1 January: The Australian colonies federate.
• 22 January: Edward VII becomes King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India upon the death of Queen Victoria.
• 2 March: Platt Amendment limits the autonomy of Cuba in exchange for withdrawal of American troops.
• June: Emily Hobhouse reports on the terrible conditions in the 45 British concentration camps for Boer women and children in South Africa.
• 6 September: Assassination of William McKinley. Vice President Theodore Roosevelt assumes office as President of the United States following McKinley's death on September 14.
• 7 September: Boxer Rebellion ends.
• 12 December: Guglielmo Marconi receives the first trans-Atlantic radio signal.
• First Nobel Prizes awarded.

1902[]

• 13 January: Unification of Saudi Arabia begins.
• 20 May: Cuba gains independence from the United States.
• 31 May: Second Boer War ends.
• 2 July: Philippine–American War ends.
• 12 July: Arthur Balfour becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• 17 July: Willis Carrier invents the first modern electrical air conditioning unit.
• Venezuela Crisis, in which Britain, Germany and Italy sustain a naval blockade on Venezuela in order to enforce collection of outstanding financial claims.

1903[]

• 15 February: The first teddy bear is invented.
• 1 July: The first Tour de France is held.
• July to August: In Russia the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks form from the breakup of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party.
• 4 August: Pius X becomes Pope.
• 18 November: Independence of Panama, the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty is signed by the United States and Panama.
• 17 December: First controlled heavier-than-air flight of the Wright Brothers.
• The Ottoman Empire and the German Empire sign an agreement to build the Constantinople-Baghdad Railway.

1904[]

• 8 February: A Japanese surprise attack on Port Arthur (Lushun) starts the Russo-Japanese War.
• 8 April: Entente cordiale signed between Britain and France.
• May: Construction of the Panama Canal begins.
• 21 June: Trans-Siberian railway is completed.
• September: End of British expedition to Tibet.
• Herero and Namaqua Genocide, the first genocide of the 20th century, begins in German South-West Africa.
• Roger Casement publishes his account of Belgian atrocities in the Congo Free State.

1905[]

• 22 January: The Revolution of 1905 in Russia begins.
• March: The First Moroccan Crisis begins, going until May 1906.
• 7 June: The Norwegian Parliament declares the union with Sweden dissolved, and Norway achieves full independence.
• 5 September: The Russo-Japanese War ends.
• 26 September: Albert Einstein's formulation of special relativity.
• 16 October: The British Indian Province of Bengal, partitioned by the Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon.
• 5 December: Henry Campbell-Bannerman becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• Schlieffen Plan proposed.
• The Persian Constitutional Revolution begins.

1906[]

• 18 April: An earthquake in San Francisco, California, magnitude 7.9, kills 3,000.
• 13 July: Alfred Dreyfus is exonerated and reinstated as a major in the French Army; the Dreyfus Affair ends.
• 16 August: An earthquake in Valparaíso, Chile, magnitude 8.2, kills 20,000.
• 28 September: The US begins the Second Occupation of Cuba.
• 23 October: Brazilian inventor Alberto Santos-Dumont takes off and flies his 14-bis to a crowd in Paris.
• 30 December: The Muslim League is formed by Nawab Salimullah Khan of Dacca.
• The Stolypin reform in Russia creates a new class of affluent kulaks.

1907[]

• February to April: A peasants' revolt in Romania kills roughly 11,000.
• 15–16 March: Elections to the new Parliament of Finland are the first in the world with woman candidates, as well as the first elections in Europe where universal suffrage is applied.
• 24 July: Japan–Korea Treaty of 1907.
• The Indian National Congress splits into two factions at its Surat session, presided by Rash Behari Bose.
• Persian Constitutional Revolution ends with the establishment of a parliament.
• The Anglo-Russian Entente bring a pause in The Great Game in Central Asia.
• Bakelite, the world's first fully synthetic plastic, invented in New York by Leo Baekeland, who coins the term "plastics".

1908[]

• The coldest year since 1880 according to NASA.
• 24 January: Start of publication of Robert Baden-Powell's Scouting for Boys in London.
• 8 April: H. H. Asquith becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• 26 May: First commercial Middle-Eastern oilfield established, at Masjed Soleyman in southwest Persia.
• 30 June: The Tunguska impact devastates thousands of square kilometres of Siberia.
• July: Young Turk Revolution in the Ottoman Empire.
• 1 October: The Ford Motor Company invents the Model T.
• early October: Austria-Hungary annexes Bosnia-Herzegovina, triggering the Bosnian Crisis.
• 5 October: Independence of Bulgaria.
• 2 December: Pu Yi, the last Emperor of China, assumes the throne.
• 28 December: The 1908 Messina earthquake in southern Italy, magnitude 7.1, kills 70,000 people.
• Herero and Namaqua Genocide ends.
• First commercial radio transmissions.

1909[]

• United States troops leave Cuba.
• 4 March: William Howard Taft is inaugurated as President of the United States.
• 10 March: Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909 signed (effective on 9 July).
• 12 March: Indian Councils Act passed.
• April: Bosnian crisis ends with Austria-Hungary's annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
• 6 April: Robert E. Peary claims to have reached the North Pole though the claim is subsequently heavily contested.
• 13 April: A countercoup fails in the Ottoman Empire.
• 16 July: A revolution forces Mohammad Ali Shah, Persian Shah of the Qajar dynasty to abdicate in favor of his son Ahmad Shah Qajar.
• Japan and China sign the Jiandao/Gando Treaty.

1910s[]

1910[]

• 8 February: Boy Scouts of America is founded.
• April: Halley's Comet returns.
• May to July: Albanian Revolt of 1910.
• 6 May: George V becomes King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India.
• 31 May: Union of South Africa created.
• 28 August: Montenegro is proclaimed an independent kingdom.
• 29 August: Imperial Japan annexes Korea.
• 5 October: The 5 October 1910 revolution in Portugal and proclamation of the First Portuguese Republic.
• 20 November: Beginning of the Mexican Revolution (Plan of San Luis Potosí).

1911[]

• 14 January: Roald Amundsen first reaches the South Pole.
• 18 January: Eugene B. Ely lands on the deck of the USS Pennsylvania stationed in San Francisco harbor, marking the first time an aircraft lands on a ship.
• 25 March: Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City results in the deaths of 146 workers and leads to sweeping workplace safety reforms.
• April to November: Agadir Crisis.
• 29 September: The Italo-Turkish war which led to the capture of Libya by Italy, begins.
• 10 October: Xinhai Revolution, which overthrew the Qing dynasty of China, begins.
• 3 November: Swiss race car driver and automotive engineer Louis Chevrolet co-founds the Chevrolet Motor Company in Detroit with his brother Arthur Chevrolet, William C. Durant and others.
• 12 December: New Delhi becomes the capital of British India.
• Ernest Rutherford identifies the atomic nucleus.

1912[]

• 8 February: The African National Congress is founded.
• 12 February: End of the Chinese Empire. Republic of China established.
• 14 February: Arizona becomes the last state to be admitted to the continental Union.
• 30 March: Morocco becomes a protectorate of France.
• 15 April: Sinking of the RMS Titanic.
• 30 July: Emperor Meiji dies, ending the Meiji Era; his son, the Emperor Taishō, becomes Emperor of Japan.
• 25 August: The Kuomintang, the Chinese nationalist party, is founded.
• 8 October: The First Balkan War begins.
• Banana Wars: United States occupation of Nicaragua begins.

1913[]

• 23 January: In the 1913 Ottoman coup d'état, Ismail Enver comes to power.
• 9–19 February: La Decena Trágica in Mexico City.
• 4 March: Woodrow Wilson is inaugurated as President of the United States.
• 29 May: Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring infamously premiers in Paris.
• 30 May: Treaty of London.
• June to August: Second Balkan War.
• 10 August: Treaty of Bucharest.
• 7 October: Ford Motor Company introduces the first moving assembly line.
• 23 December: The Federal Reserve System is created.
• Yuan Shikai uses military force to dissolve China's parliament and rules as a dictator.
• Niels Bohr formulates the first cohesive model of the atomic nucleus, and in the process paves the way to quantum mechanics.

1914[]

• 28 June: Gavrilo Princip assassinates Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo, triggering the start of World War I.
• 28 July: World War I begins.
• 15 August: Panama Canal opens.
• 26–30 August: Battle of Tannenberg.
• 1 September: Martha, last known passenger pigeon, dies.
• 3 September: Benedict XV becomes Pope.
• 6–12 September: First Battle of the Marne.
• September to October: The Race to the Sea leaves Germany and the Allies entrenched along the Western Front.
• 19 December: The United Kingdom establishes the Sultanate of Egypt as a protectorate.
• Edgar Rice Burroughs publishes Tarzan of the Apes.

1915[]

• 22 April: Second Battle of Ypres begins, first widespread use of poison gas.
• 24 April: The deportation of Armenian leaders and notables in Constantinople signals the onset of the Armenian Genocide.
• 7 May: Sinking of the RMS Lusitania.
• 28 July: In the Banana Wars, the United States occupation of Haiti begins.
• The first large scale use of poison gas by both sides in World War I occurs, first by the Germans at the Battle of Bolimów on the eastern front, and at the Second Battle of Ypres on the western front, and then by the British at the Battle of Loos.

1916[]

• 9 January: The Gallipoli Campaign ends in failure.
• February to December: Battle of Verdun.
• 24–30 April: Easter Rising in Ireland.
• 30 April: The first nationwide implementation of daylight saving time in the German Empire and Austria-Hungary.
• June to September: Brusilov Offensive.
• June: The Arab Revolt begins.
• 6 June: The Warlord Era begins in China after the death of Yuan Shikai.
• July to November: Battle of the Somme.
• 15–22 September: First use of tanks at the Battle of Flers-Courcelette.
• 21 November: Sinking of the HMHS Britannic.
• December: The Pact is agreed upon by both the Congress and the Muslim League at the Indian city of Lucknow.
• 6 December: David Lloyd George becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• 30 December: Grigori Rasputin is assassinated by H.H. Prince Felix Youssoupov.
• Market Square, one of the earliest shopping malls, opens in the Chicago metropolitan area.

1917[]

• 8 March: Russian Revolution ends the Russian Empire; beginning of Russian Civil War.
• 6 April: USA joins the Allies for the last 17 months of World War I.
• May to October: Apparitions of Our Lady of the Rosary in Fatima, Portugal.
• 4 June: The first Pulitzer Prizes announced.
• July to November: Battle of Passchendaele.
• October to November: Battle of Caporetto.
• 1–2 November: The Third Battle of Gaza ends in British victory.
• 7 November (O.S. 25 October): October Revolution in Russia.
• 8 November: The Ukrainian–Soviet War begins.
• 26 November: The National Hockey League is formed in Montreal, Canada.
• 6 December: Independence of Finland.

1918[]

• January to May: Finnish Civil War.
• 22 January: Ukraine declares independence from Russia.
• February: Beginning of the Spanish flu pandemic, which lasts until April 1920 and kills tens of millions.
• March to July: The German spring offensive.
• 25 March: Belarus declares independence from Russia.
• 30 March: The Armenian–Azerbaijani War begins.
• 28 May: Azerbaijan Democratic Republic declared.
• 4 July: Mehmed VI becomes the last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and the last Caliph.
• 16–17 July: Assassination of Tsar Nicholas II and his family.
• 8–12 August: Battle of Amiens.
• August to November: The Hundred Days Offensive sends Germany into defeat.
• October: the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs is established.
• 29 October: German Revolution begins.
• 30 October:
  • The Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen founded.
  • The Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire begins.
• 1 November:
  • Independence declared in the West Ukrainian People's Republic.
  • The Polish–Ukrainian War begins.
• 9 November: Abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II.
• 11 November:
  • The Armistice of 11 November 1918 ends World War I.
  • Poland declares independence from Russia.
• 1 December: The Kingdom of Iceland, a personal union with Denmark, is formed.
• The British occupy Palestine.

1919[]

• 14 February: Polish-Soviet War begins.
• 2 March: Comintern established.
• 11 April: The International Labour Organization is established.
• 13 April: The Jallianwala Bagh massacre in northern India: Acting Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer orders troops of the British Indian Army to fire their rifles into a crowd of unarmed Indian civilians, killing from 379 to 1,000 people and injuring another 1,500.
• 19 May: Turkish War of Independence begins.
• 28 June: The Treaty of Versailles redraws European borders.
• July: The Egyptian Revolution of 1919 ends.
• 18 July: End of Polish–Ukrainian War.
• 11 August: German Revolution ends with the collapse of the German Empire and the establishment of the Weimar Republic.
• 19 November: Release date of Feline Follies, the first appearance of Felix the Cat (then known as Master Tom).
• First experimental evidence for the General theory of relativity obtained by Arthur Eddington.
• Ernest Rutherford discovers the proton.

1920s[]

1920[]

• 10 January: League of Nations founded.
• 17 January: Prohibition in the United States begins.
• 2 February: Victory for Estonia in the Estonian War of Independence.
• 25 April: Mandatory Palestine established.
• 27–28 April: Red Army invasion of Azerbaijan and Armenia ends the Armenian–Azerbaijani War and concludes with their incorporation into the Soviet Union.
• 21 May: The Mexican Revolution ends.
• 5 September: Mahatma Gandhi launches Non-cooperation movement.
• Greece restores its monarchy after a referendum.

1921[]

• 25 January: Premiere of the science-fiction play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), in which the word "robot" was first used.
• February to March: Russia invades Georgia and incorporates it into the Soviet Union.
• 4 March: Warren G. Harding is inaugurated as President of the United States.
• July 29: Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of the Nazi Party as hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic begins.
• 18 October: End of the Polish-Soviet War.
• 9 November: The Italian National Fascist Party is established by Benito Mussolini.
• 17 November: End of the Ukrainian–Soviet War.
• 15 December: Coup brings the Pahlavi dynasty to power in Iran.

1922[]

• 2 February: James Joyce publishes Ulysses.
• 6 February:
  • Pius XI becomes Pope.
  • The Washington Naval Treaty is signed.
• Mohandas Gandhi calls off Non-cooperation movement.
• 28 February: Egypt gains independence from the United Kingdom, though British forces still occupy the Suez Canal.
• 16 June: End of Russian Civil War.
• 28 June: The Irish Civil War begins.
• 23 October: Andrew Bonar Law becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• 28 October: March on Rome brings Benito Mussolini to power in Italy.
• 1 November: Ottoman Sultanate abolished by the Turkish Grand National Assembly; Sultan Mehmed VI is deposed.
• 4 November: Howard Carter discovers Tutankhamen's tomb.
• 14 November: British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) established.
• 6 December: Irish Free State is established, while the Province of Northern Ireland is created within The United Kingdom.
• 16 December: Gabriel Narutowicz, President of Poland, is assassinated.
• 30 December: The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the world's first officially Communist state, is formed.
• The union of Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador is dissolved.
• The Italian reconquest of Libya begins.

1923[]

• 3 March: Time Magazine is first published.
• 22 May: Stanley Baldwin becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• 24 May: The Irish Civil War ends.
• 9 June: A military coup ousts and kills Bulgarian Prime Minister Aleksandar Stamboliyski.
• 2 August: Death of Warren G. Harding; Vice President Calvin Coolidge assumes office as President of the United States.
• 1 September: The Great Kantō earthquake kills at least 105,000 people in Japan.
• 11 October: Turkish War of Independence ends; Ankara replaces Istanbul as its capital.
• 29 October: Kemal Atatürk becomes the first President of the newly established Republic of Turkey.
• 16 October: The Walt Disney Company is founded.
• 8 November: The Beer Hall Putsch, an attempt to overthrow the Weimar Republic, ends in failure and brief imprisonment for Adolf Hitler but brings the Nazi Party to national attention.
• 15 November: Hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic ends with the introduction of the Rentenmark.

1924[]

• 21 January: The death of Vladimir Lenin triggers power struggle between Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin.
• 22 January: Ramsay MacDonald becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• 25 January–5 February: The first edition of the Winter Olympic Games is hosted in Chamonix, France.
• 12 February: Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin premieres in New York City.
• 3 March: The Caliphate is abolished by Kemal Atatürk.
• 10 May: The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation founded under J. Edgar Hoover.
• 24 May: U.S. Immigration Act of 1924 significantly restricts immigration from Asia, the Middle East, and Southern Europe.
• 28 August: The August Uprising in Georgia against Soviet rule.
• 4 November: Stanley Baldwin becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

1925[]

• 3 January: Benito Mussolini delivers a speech which is considered the beginning of this dictatorship.
• March to April: First televisual image introduced by John Logie Baird.
• 18 July: Mein Kampf is published.
• October 5–16: Locarno Treaties signed.
• Serum run to Nome.

1926[]

• 12–14 May: May Coup in Poland.
• 28 May: 28 May 1926 coup d'état in Portugal.
• 22 August: General Georgios Kondylis overthrows General Theodoros Pangalos in Greece.
• 25 December: Emperor Taishō dies; his son, the Emperor Shōwa (Hirohito) becomes Emperor of Japan.

1927[]

• World population reaches two billion.
• 1 January: The BBC is granted a Royal Charter in the United Kingdom.
• May: Australian Parliament convenes in Canberra for the first time.
• 13 May: The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland officially becomes the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
• 18 May: The Bath School disaster, a series of violent attacks perpetrated by Andrew Kehoe on May 18, 1927, in Bath Township, Michigan, United States, results in 45 deaths.
• 20 May: Saudi Arabia gains independence.
• 20–21 May: Charles Lindbergh performs the first nonstop flight from New York City to Paris.
• 1 August: The Chinese Civil War begins.
• 4 October: Mount Rushmore construction begins.
• 6 October: The Jazz Singer, the first "talkie", is released.
• 12 November: Soviet general secretary Joseph Stalin becomes leader of the Soviet Union.

1928[]

• March: Hassan al-Banna founds the Muslim Brotherhood.
• 1 September: King Zog I is crowned in Albania.
• 3 September: Accidental rediscovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming.
• 24 July: The Kellogg-Briand Pact is signed in Paris.
• 18 November: Release date of Steamboat Willie, widely regarded as the first appearance of Mickey Mouse.
• 29 December: The Warlord Era ends in China.
• Malta becomes a British Dominion.
• Bubble gum is invented.

1929[]

• February: Leon Trotsky is exiled.
• 11 February: Pope Pius XI signs the Lateran Treaty with Italian leader Benito Mussolini, after which the Vatican City is recognised as a sovereign state.
• 14 February: Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, the murder of seven members and associates of Chicago's North Side Gang.
• 4 March: Herbert Hoover is inaugurated as President of the United States.
• 16 May: The first Academy Awards are presented.
• 5 June: Ramsay MacDonald becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• 24–29 October: Wall Street crash of 1929 and the beginning of the Great Depression.
• First people sent to the gulag in the Soviet Union as Stalin assumes effective control.

1930s[]

1930[]

• 18 February: Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto.
• 12 March: Salt March by Mohandas Gandhi and the official start of civil disobedience in British India.
• 2 April: Haile Selassie becomes Emperor of Abyssinia.
• 19 April: Sinkin' in the Bathtub, the first Looney Tunes short, is released.
• 27 May: Construction of Chrysler Building completed.
• 13–30 July: The first FIFA World Cup is hosted in Uruguay. The champions are Uruguay.
• 4 August: King Kullen, widely regarded as the first supermarket, opens in Queens, New York City.
• 14 September: Aided by the Great Depression, the Nazi Party increases its share of the vote from 2.6% to 18.3%.
• November: First Round Table Conference between India and Great Britain, which goes until January 1931.
• 3 November: The Vargas Era begins in Brazil.

1931[]

• 3 March: "The Star-Spangled Banner" is adopted as the United States's national anthem.
• 1 May: Empire State Building completed.
• June: Floods in China kill up to 2.5 million people.
• 14 April: The Second Spanish Republic is declared.
• September: Japan invades Manchuria, part of the chain of events leading to the start of World War II.
• September to December: Second Round Table Conference.
• 7 November: The Chinese Soviet Republic is proclaimed by Mao Zedong.
• 11 December:
  • Statute of Westminster creates the British Commonwealth of Nations.
  • Independence of South Africa.
• 12 December: Christ the Redeemer completed.

1932[]

• 1 March: Lindbergh baby kidnapping.
• 9 March: Éamon de Valera becomes President of the Executive Council (prime minister) of the Irish Free State.
• 9 September: The Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay begins.
• 4 June: Military coup in Chile.
• 24 June: Siamese Revolution establishes a constitutional monarchy.
• November to December:
  • Failed Emu War in Australia.
  • Third Round Table Conference.
• 19 December: BBC World Service starts broadcasting.
• The neutron is discovered by James Chadwick.
• Soviet famine of 1932–33 and Holodomor begin.
• The Nazi party becomes the largest single party in the German parliament.
• Aldous Huxley publishes Brave New World.

1933[]

• 30 January: Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany.
• 2 March: King Kong is released in New York.
• 4 March: Franklin D. Roosevelt is inaugurated as President of the United States, after being elected to the first of his record four terms.
• 27 March: Japan announces it will leave the League of Nations.
• 14 October: Germany announces its withdrawal from the League of Nations and the World Disarmament Conference, after the U.S., the U.K. and France deny its request to increase its defense armaments under the Versailles Treaty.
• 5 December: Prohibition in the United States is abolished.
• New Deal begins in America.
• United States occupation of Nicaragua ends.

1934[]

• 12–16 February: The Austrian Civil War results in Fascist victory.
• 24 March: The United States grants more autonomy to the Philippines.
• 23 May: Bonnie and Clyde are shot to death in a police ambush.
• 30 June to 2 July: Adolf Hitler instigates the Night of the Long Knives, which cements his power over both the Nazi Party and Germany.
• 22 July: John Dillinger is gunned down by the FBI outside the Biograph Theater.
• 1 August: The United States occupation of Haiti ends.
• 2 August: With the death of President Hindenburg, Hitler declares himself Führer of Germany.
• 16 October: Mao Zedong begins the Long March.
• November: David Toro overthrows the government of Bolivia in a military coup.

1935[]

• 31 May: Establishment of 20th Century Fox.
• 21 March: Reza Shah of Iran asks the international community to formally adopt the name "Iran" to refer to the country, instead of the name "Persia".
• 7 June: Stanley Baldwin becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• 12 June: Chaco War ends.
• 15 September: Enactment of the Nuremberg racial laws.
• 3 October: The Second Italo-Abyssinian War begins and goes until February 1937. It includes events such as the exile of Haile Selassie and the conquest of Abyssinia by Benito Mussolini.
• 23 October: William Lyon Mackenzie King becomes Prime Minister of Canada.
• 15 November: Manuel L. Quezon becomes President of the Philippines.

1936[]

• 20 January: Edward VIII becomes King of the British Commonwealth and Emperor of India.
• 9 May: Italy annexes Ethiopia.
• 17 July: Beginning of the Spanish Civil War.
• 7 September: "Benjamin", the last known thylacine, dies in Hobart Zoo.
• 11 December: After a reign shorter than one year, Edward VIII abdicates and hands the throne to his brother, George VI.
• The Hoover Dam is completed.
• Great Purge begins under Stalin.
• Arab Revolt in Palestine against the British begins to oppose Jewish immigration.
• George Nissen and Larry Griswold build the first modern trampoline.

1937[]

• 6 May: German zeppelin Hindenburg crashes in Lakehurst, New Jersey, ending the airship era.
• 28 May: Neville Chamberlain becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• 7 July: Japanese invasion of China, and the beginning of World War II in the Far East.
• 28 August: Toyota founded in Japan by Kiichiro Toyoda.
• 21 September: J. R. R. Tolkien publishes The Hobbit.
• 13 December: The Nanjing Massacre begins, ending about a month later in January 1938. It results in 40,000 to 200,000 deaths according to various estimates.
• 21 December: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is the first feature-length animated movie released.
• The Irish Republican Army attempts to assassinate King George VI of the United Kingdom.
• Volkswagen founded by the German Labour Front.

1938[]

• The Great Purge ends after nearly 700,000 executions.
• 12 March: Anschluss unifies Germany and Austria.
• 18 April: DC Comics hero Superman has its first appearance.
• 15 June: Hungarian newspaper editor László Bíró fills a British patent of the first commercially successful ballpoint pen. This would popularize the instrument, currently the most widely used for writing, after World War II.
• 6–15 July: Évian Conference ends with all attendee nations save the Dominican Republic refusing to accept more Jewish refugees from the Third Reich.
• 30 September: Munich agreement hands Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany.
• 9–10 November: Kristallnacht, a pogrom of over 90 Jews in Germany.
• December: Time Magazine declares Adolf Hitler as Man of the Year.

1939[]

• 2 March: Pius XII becomes Pope.
• 30 March: DC's Detective Comics#27 marks the first appearance of Batman in comics.
• 1 April: End of Spanish Civil War; Francisco Franco becomes dictator of Spain.
• 23 August: The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union.
• 1 September: Germany invades Poland and WWII begins.
• 25 August: Release date of MGM's The Wizard of Oz.
• 13 September: Ferrari founded in Modena, Italy (as Auto Avio Costruzioni) by Enzo Ferrari.
• September to October: Nazi invasion of Poland triggers the beginning of World War II in Europe. Soviet invasion of Poland begins 16 days later.
• 15 December: Release date of Gone with the Wind (film).
• The Palestinian revolt against the British ends.

1940s[]

1940[]

• January: Chechen insurgency begins in Soviet Union.
• 7 February: Release date of Disney's Pinocchio.
• 13 March: The Winter War between Soviet Union and Finland ends with a costly victory for the USSR.
• April to May: The Katyn massacre of Polish soldiers in USSR and the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states.
• 10 May: Winston Churchill becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• 15 May: McDonald's founded in San Bernardino, California.
• May to June: Nazis invade France, the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway.
• June: The Soviet Union annexes the Baltic states.
• July to October: Battle of Britain, the first entirely aerial military campaign, becomes the first significant defeat for the Axis powers.
• 20 August: Leon Trotsky is assassinated in Mexico.
• 7 September: The Blitz, a German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom, begins.
• 13 November: Release date of Disney's Fantasia.
• Neptunium is synthesized.

1941[]

• June to December: Hitler commences the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.
• 25 June: Continuation War between Finland and the Soviet Union begins. Siege of Tobruk in North Africa is the first major defeat for Hitler's land forces.
• 8 September: Siege of Leningrad begins.
• October:
  • Operation Reinhard commences the main phase of The Holocaust.
  • All Star Comics#8 marks the first appearance of Wonder Woman in comics.
• 23 October: Release date of Disney's Dumbo.
• 7 December: Attack on Pearl Harbor, which leads to the USA joining World War II.
• Mount Rushmore construction ends.

1942[]

• April: Bataan Death March.
• 4–8 May: Battle of the Coral Sea.
• 4–7 June: Battle of Midway.
• 1–27 July: First Battle of El Alamein.
• August: Battle of Stalingrad and Guadalcanal Campaign begin. Internment of Japanese-American citizens in the US begins.
• 13 August: Release date of Disney's Bambi.
• October to November: Second Battle of El Alamein.
• The Manhattan Project begins.

1943[]

• 15 January: The Pentagon is completed.
• 2 February: Battle of Stalingrad ends with over two million casualties and the retreat of the German Army.
• April to May: Warsaw Ghetto uprising fails.
• 15 May: American Broadcasting Company (ABC) founded in New York City.
• July to August: The failed Battle of Kursk becomes the last Nazi offensive on the Eastern Front.
• November to December: Tehran Conference between Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin agrees to launch Operation Overlord.
• A famine in Bengal kills up to 3 million people.

1944[]

• 27 January: The Siege of Leningrad ends with Soviet victory after over a million deaths.
• February to March: Chechen insurgency ends with deportation of the entire Chechen population.
• 1 June: First operational electronic computer, Colossus, comes online.
• 6 June: D-Day landings in Normandy.
• June to August: Soviet forces launch Operation Bagration on the Eastern Front, the biggest defeat in German military history.
• 20 July: Adolf Hitler survives the 20 July plot to assassinate him led by Claus von Stauffenberg.
• 19–25 August: Liberation of Paris.
• 19 September: The Continuation War ends.
• October to December: American and Filipino troops begin the Battle of Leyte in the Philippines.

1945[]

• 4–11 February: Yalta Conference.
• 13–15 February: Allied bombing of Dresden.
• February: Death of Anne Frank.
• February to March: Battle of Manila.
• March to July: Battle of Okinawa.
• 12 April: Franklin D. Roosevelt dies. Vice President Harry Truman assumes office as President of the United States.
• April to May: Battle of Berlin.
• 28 April: Execution of Benito Mussolini.
• 30 April: Suicide of Adolf Hitler.
• May: End of World War II in Europe.
• The Holocaust ends after ~12 million deaths, including 6 million Jews.
• 26 June: United Nations founded (UN Charter).
• 26 July: Clement Attlee becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• July to August: The Potsdam Conference divides Europe into Western and Soviet blocs.
• 6 and 9 August: Harry S. Truman orders the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
• 17 August: Independence of Indonesia proclaimed begin Indonesian National Revolution.
• 2 September: End of World War II in Asia with the beginning of the Surrender of Japan. Related subsequent announcement of the Proclamation of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
• 8 October: The microwave cooking oven is patented, with the one of the first prototypes placed at a Boston restaurant for testing.
• 29 October: In Brazil, Getúlio Vargas is deposed in a coup.

1946[]

• 22 March: Independence of Jordan.
• 2 June: Italy becomes a republic.
• 9 June: Bhumibol Adulyadej becomes King of Thailand.
• 4 July: The Treaty of Manila declares Philippines independent.
• 16 August: Mustafa Barzani founds the Kurdistan Democratic Party.
• 30 September/October 1: Nuremberg trials end.
• 27 October: French Fourth Republic established.
• 19 December: First Indochina War begins.
• First images of the Earth taken from space.

1947[]

• 12 March: Harry Truman establishes the Truman Doctrine of containment of Communism.
• 15 April: Jackie Robinson becomes the first baseball player of color.
• 26 July: Creation of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
• 14–15 August: Independence of India and Pakistan and beginning of First Indo-Pakistani War.
• November to December: Three Bell Labs engineers give the first public demonstration of the transistor, an electrical component that could control, amplify, and generate current.
• Breaking of the sound barrier.
• Hyundai Group founded by Chung Ju-yung in Seoul, South Korea.

1948[]

• 30 January: Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.
• 4 February: Independence of Burma and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) from Britain.
• 3 April: The Marshall Plan, an American initiative for foreign aid of $13 billion to 16 Western European countries, comes into effect.
• 7 April: The World Health Organization (WHO) founded.
• 16 April: The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) founded.
• 23 April: The Soviet Sever-2 expedition become the first party to indisputably set foot on the North Pole.
• 14 May: United Nations establishes Israeli Independence and the formation of the official State of Israel.
• 15 May: The Arab–Israeli War begins.
• 24 June: Berlin Blockade begins.
• August to September: Division of North and South Korea.
• 24 September: Honda founded in Hamamatsu, Japan by Soichiro Honda and Takeo Fujisawa.
• Beginning of apartheid in South Africa.

1949[]

• 5 January: The First Indo-Pakistani War ends.
• 5–8 January: COMECON founded by USSR and the Eastern Bloc.
• 10 March: The Arab–Israeli War ends.
• 4 April: Creation of NATO.
• 28 April: Former First Lady Aurora Aragon–Quezon is killed in an ambush in the Philippines.
• 12 May: Berlin Blockade ends.
• 23 May: Creation of NATO-backed Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany).
• 8 June: George Orwell publishes Nineteen Eighty-Four.
• 1 October: Establishment of the People's Republic of China under CCP Chairman Mao Zedong; The Republic of China relocates to Taiwan.
• 7 October: Creation of the socialist German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
• Partition of Kashmir.
• Soviet Union tests the atomic bomb.

1950s[]

1950[]

• 26 January: The Constitution of India comes into effect.
• 15 February: Release date of Disney's Cinderella.
• Communist victory in the Landing Operation on Hainan Island (March to May) and Wanshan Archipelago Campaign end the Chinese Civil War (May to August).
• 25 June: North Korean invasion of South Korea begins the Korean War.
• June to September: The Bodo League Massacre of prisoners during the Korean War.
• August to September: North Korean forces capture most of Korea, to the Pusan Perimeter.
• 25 August: Bertie the Brain, one of the first computer games, is released.
• September to November: UN forces reclaim Seoul and invade North Korea.
• October: Alan Turing publishes the Turing test, one of the most influential yet controversial concepts in artificial intelligence research.
• 17 November: Lhamo Dondrub assumes full political powers as the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet.

1951[]

• 1 July: Colombo Plan, a regional organisation of 27 countries designed to strengthen economic and social development of member countries in the Asia-Pacific region, commences.
• 28 July: Release date of Disney's Alice in Wonderland.
• 8 September: The Treaty of San Francisco ends the Occupation of Japan and formally concludes hostilities between Japan and the US.
• 18 September: Release date of the acclaimed science fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still.
• 26 October: Winston Churchill becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• The Soviet Union has the atomic bomb.

1952[]

• 6 February: Queen Elizabeth II becomes Monarch of the Commonwealth realms.
• May: Bonn–Paris conventions end allied occupation of West Germany.
• 2 May: The first passenger jet flight route opens between London and Johannesburg.
• 27 May: European Defence Community formed.
• 23 July: Egyptian Revolution under Gamal Abdel Nasser overthrows King Farouk and ends British occupation.
• 1 November: The United States successfully detonates the first hydrogen bomb, codenamed "Ivy Mike", at Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific Ocean, with a yield of 10.4 megatons.
• Development of the first effective polio vaccine by Jonas Salk.
• The Mau Mau Uprising begins in Kenya.
• The Slansky Trial in Czechoslovakia.

1953[]

• 20 January: Dwight D. Eisenhower is inaugurated as President of the United States.
• 5 February: Release date of Disney's Peter Pan.
• 5 March: Death of Stalin.
• 25 April: Discovery of the three-dimensional structure of DNA.
• 2 June: Coronation of Elizabeth II.
• 16–17 June: An East German Uprising leads to the arrest and execution of Lavrentiy Beria; power struggle begins between Georgy Malenkov and Nikita Khrushchev.
• 29 May: First ascent of Mount Everest.
• 27 July: End of the Korean War.
• 19 August: Mohammed Mossadeq deposed in Iran.
• 9 November: Independence of Cambodia.
• Elvis Presley's musical career is launched.
• The first color television is produced.
• "Insta-Burger King" founded in Jacksonville, Florida.

1954[]

• 12 April: The song Rock Around the Clock, by Bill Haley and His Comets, brings rock and roll to the American mainstream.
• 17 May: The Supreme Court of the United States decides Brown v. Board of Education, ordering an end to racial segregation in public schools.
• 29 July: J. R. R. Tolkien publishes The Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume of The Lord of the Rings.
• 1 August: First Indochina War ends.
• 3 September: First Taiwan Strait Crisis begins.
• 14 September: The Soviet Union generates first electricity by nuclear power.
• 23 October: The Western European Union is established.
• 1 November: Algerian War begins.
• 3 November: Godzilla is released in Japan.
• Two Miami-based franchisees, David Edgerton and James McLamore, purchase the company "Insta-Burger King" and rename it "Burger King".

1955[]

• After winning the power struggle that followed Stalin's death two years earlier, Nikita Khrushchev assumes control of the Soviet Union.
• 24 February: Formation of the Central Treaty Organization.
• 12 March: Death of Charlie Parker, American jazz saxophonist and composer.
• 6 April: Anthony Eden becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• 12 April: The Salk polio vaccine having passed large-scale trials earlier in the United States, receives full approval by the Food and Drug Administration.
• 18 April: Death of Albert Einstein.
• 18 to 24 April: Bandung Conference.
• 1 May: First Taiwan Strait Crisis ends.
• 14 May: Signing of the Warsaw Pact.
• 22 June: Release date of Disney's Lady and the Tramp.
• 18 August: First Sudanese Civil War begins.
• 30 September: Death of James Dean, American actor.
• Antimatter first produced.

1956[]

• 1 January: Independence of Sudan from Britain.
• 20 March: Independence of Tunisia from France.
• 23 March: Full independence of Pakistan.
• 11 November: The Hungarian Uprising crushed by Soviet troops.
• 29 October to 7 November: Nasser's nationalisation of the Suez Canal triggers the Suez crisis.
• Construction of Brasília, the new capital of Brazil to replace Rio de Janeiro, begins.

1957[]

• 10 January: Harold Macmillan becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• 6 March: Independence of Ghana from Britain.
• 17 March: Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay and 24 others are killed in a plane crash.
• 25 March: Treaty of Rome, which would eventually lead to the European Union.
• 31 August: Independence of the Federation of Malaya.
• 4 October: Launch of Sputnik 1 and the beginning of the Space Age.
• 3 November: Laika becomes the first animal launched into Earth orbit.
• 20 December: First flight of the Boeing 707.
• First prescription of the combined oral contraceptive pill.
• Beginning of the Asian flu in China, leading to a worldwide pandemic that lasts until the following year.

1958[]

• 31 May: Pizza Hut founded.
• 29 July: NASA formed.
• 23 August: Federal Aviation Administration formed.
• August to September: Second Taiwan Strait Crisis.
• 4 October: French Fifth Republic established.
• 28 October: John XXIII becomes Pope.
• November: Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) founded. CND's symbol, the peace sign, is first used.
• Invention of the optical disc and the cassette tape.

1959[]

• World population reaches three billion.
• 1 January: Cuban Revolution ends.
• 29 January: Disney's Sleeping Beauty premieres.
• 3 February: Rock and roll musicians Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly and The Big Bopper die in a plane crash.
• 19 February: Independence of Cyprus.
• 10–23 March: Uprising in Tibet against China leads to the exile of the Dalai Lama.
• 4 July: Admission of Alaska, the 49th state, into the United States.
• 21 August: Admission of Hawaii, the 50th state, into the United States.
• 7 October: The U.S.S.R. probe Luna 3 sends back the first ever photos of the far side of the Moon.
• 1 November: Beginning of the Vietnam War, which lasted for almost twenty years until 1975.
• 18 November: The Oscar-winning film Ben-Hur premieres.
• Great Chinese Famine begins in China.
• First documented AIDS cases.
• By this time, the gulag has been effectively disbanded, after over a million recorded deaths.

1960s[]

Polla

1960[]

• European Free Trade Association formed.
• Year of Africa: Independence of 17 African nations.
• 17 January: The assassination of Patrice Lumumba begins the Congo Crisis.
• 22 January: First crewed descent to the deepest point on Earth, the Mariana Trench.
• 21 March: The Sharpeville Massacre, in which the police opened fire against a protesting crowd at a police station in the South African township of Sharpeville in Transvaal, resulting in 69 deaths and 180 injuries.
• 21 April: Construction of Brasília, Brazil's new capital, finished.
• 1 May: 1960 U-2 incident sparks deterioration in relations between superpowers.
• 9 May: The birth control pill becomes commercially available.
• 16 May: Construction of the first laser.
• 22 May: An earthquake in Valdivia, Chile of magnitude 9.4 to 9.6, the highest ever recorded, causes 1,000 to 6,000 deaths.
  • American boxer Muhammad Ali wins gold.
• 18–25 September: The first edition of the Summer Paralympic Games is hosted in Rome.
• 30 September: The first episode of The Flintstones airs on ABC.
• 12 October: Inejiro Asanuma, a Japanese socialist politician, is assassinated during a broadcast on TV.
• 8 November: The 1960 United States presidential election marks the first televised debates between presidential candidates.
• Khrushchev withdraws Soviet cooperation with China, initiating the Sino-Soviet split.
• Mau Mau Uprising ends.
• The Beatles form in Liverpool.

1961[]

• 20 January: John F. Kennedy is inaugurated as President of the United States.
• 25 January: Release date of Disney's One Hundred and One Dalmatians.
• 12 April: Yuri Gagarin, flying the Vostok 1 spacecraft as part of the Vostok program, becomes the first human in space.
• 25 May: In an address to Congress, John F. Kennedy declares the United States' objective of "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" by the end of the decade. This would be in fact achieved by the Apollo Project, despite several challenges and much doubt.
• 13 August: Construction of the Berlin Wall.
• 18 September: UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld dies in a plane crash.
• The Great Leap Forward ends in China after the deaths of roughly 20-45 million people.

1962[]

• 19 March: The Algerian War ends with the independence of Algeria.
• May: Marvel's The Incredible Hulk marks the first appearance of the superhero.
• 2 July: Walmart founded in Rogers, Arkansas by Sam Walton.
• August: Marvel's Amazing Fantasy#15 marks the first appearance of Spider-Man in comics.
• 4 August: Death of Marilyn Monroe.
• 26 September: A coup ends the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen, establishing the Yemen Arab Republic and starting the North Yemen Civil War.
• 11 October: The Second Vatican Council is opened by Pope John XXIII.
• 16–29 October: The Cuban Missile Crisis nearly causes nuclear war.
• October to November: The Sino-Indian War, caused by a border dispute in Aksai Chin, ends with a Chinese victory.

1963[]

• 1 January: Premiere of the Astro Boy anime, the first to be broadcast overseas.
• 20 January: Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation begins.
• Birmingham campaign.
• 22 March: The Beatles' first record, Please Please Me, and the beginnings of the British Invasion.
• 27 May: Bob Dylan releases The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.
• 21 June: Paul VI becomes Pope.
• 26 July: Launch of the first geostationary satellite, Syncom 2.
• 28 August: Martin Luther King Jr. delivers "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
• 19 October: Alec Douglas-Home becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• 22 November: Assassination of John F. Kennedy. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson assumes office as President of the United States.
• 10–12 December: Independence of Kenya and Zanzibar and creation of Malaysia.
• 25 December: Release date of Disney's The Sword in the Stone.

1964[]

• 12 January: Zanzibar Revolution overthrows Arab ruling class; Zanzibar merges with Tanganyika to form Tanzania.
• 7 February: The Beatles' first visit to the United States.
• 31 March to 1 April: A coup d'état establishes a military dictatorship in Brazil.
• 27 May: Colombian armed conflict begins.
• 2 July: Civil Rights Act abolishes segregation in the USA.
• 4 July: Rhodesian Bush War begins.
• 6 July: Independence of Malawi.
• 2 August: The Gulf of Tonkin incident led to the escalation of U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War.
• 29 August: Release date of Disney's Mary Poppins.
• 21 September: Independence of Malta.
• 14 October: Leonid Brezhnev ousts Khrushchev and assumes power in the Soviet Union.
• 16 October: Harold Wilson becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• 28 November: NASA launches the Mariner 4 space probe from Cape Kennedy toward Mars to take television pictures of that planet in July 1965.

1965[]

• 24 January: Death of Winston Churchill.
• 21 February: Death of Malcolm X.
• 17 March: The Voting Rights Act of 1965, inspired by the Selma to Montgomery marches.
• 26 April: Establishment of Rede Globo, now the largest TV network in Brazil and Latin America and the second-largest in the world after ABC.
• 18 May: Israeli spy Eli Cohen is hanged in Damascus.
• 9 August: Singapore gains independence.
• 30 August: Bob Dylan releases Highway 61 Revisited.
• August to September: Second Indo-Pakistani War.
• 24–25 November: Congo Crisis ends; Joseph Mobutu becomes dictator of the Congo.
• 30 September: 30 September Movement in the Indonesia.
• 8 December: Second Vatican Council is closed by Pope Paul VI.
• 30 December: Ferdinand Marcos becomes President of the Philippines.
• Beginning of the anti-Communist purge in Indonesia, which killed up to 500,000 people.

1966[]

• 30 April: The Church of Satan is established in San Francisco by Anton LaVey.
• 16 May:
  • The Beach Boys release Pet Sounds.
  • China's Cultural Revolution begins.
• 11 August: The Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation ends.
• 30 September: Independence of Botswana.
• 4 October: Independence of Lesotho.
• 21 October: The Aberfan disaster, the catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil tip (pile of waste coal mining material) in Aberfan, Wales results in 144 deaths.
• 30 November: Independence of Barbados.
• 15 December: Death of Walt Disney.
• Joseph Weizenbaum, a German computer scientist at MIT, completes ELIZA, the first ever chatbot.

1967[]

• First high-speed rail introduced in Tokyo.
• Mid-year: Summer of Love, in which as many as 100,000 people, mostly young people sporting hippie fashions of dress and behavior, converged in San Francisco's neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury.
• 5–10 June: The Six-Day War, a conflict between Israel and Arab states that resulted in Israel occupying the Gaza Strip, the Sinal Peninsula, the West Bank and the Golan Heights.
• 6 July: Attempted secession of the Republic of Biafra from Nigeria triggers the Nigerian Civil War.
• 17 July: Death of John Coltrane, American jazz saxophonist, clarinettist and composer.
• 8 August: Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) founded.
• 18 October: Release date of Disney's The Jungle Book.
• 26 May: The Beatles release their landmark album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
• 17 December: Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt disappears while swimming at Cheviot Beach, Victoria.

1968[]

• January to March: Protests erupt in the United States, Europe and Latin America.
• January to August: Prague Spring crushed by the Eastern Bloc military intervention.
• January to September: The Tet Offensive occurs in South Vietnam.
• 8 February: 20th Century Fox releases Planet of the Apes.
• 19 February: The US national debut of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood on National Education Television (NET).
• 16 March: My Lai massacre, a mass murder and rape of unarmed South Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops in the Vietnam War.
• 21 March: Battle of Karameh in Jordan (part of the War of Attrition between Israel and Arab states).
• 4 April: Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. during the Poor People's Campaign.
• 5 June: Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy during the Poor People's Campaign.
• Another new strain of a flu in Hong Kong spreads again.
• The Troubles begin in Northern Ireland.

1969[]

• 13 January: Samsung Electronics founded in Suwon, South Korea.
• 20 January: Richard Nixon is inaugurated as President of the United States.
• 2 March: Concorde 001 flies from the first time, from Toulouse, piloted by André Turcat.
• March to September: Sino-Soviet border conflict.
• June 28 to July 3: The Stonewall riots in New York City instigate the gay rights movement.
• 20 July: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first two humans on the moon.
• 8–9 August: The Manson Family Murders - Under Charles Manson's orders, his followers, the "Manson Family" cult, enter the home of Hollywood actress Sharon Tate and murder her and four others.
• August: The Woodstock festival in Bethel, New York, attracts an audience of more than 400,000.
• 1 September: Muammar Gaddafi overthrows King Idris of Libya in a Coup d'état and establishes the Libyan Arab Republic.
• 29 October: Creation of Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), the earliest incarnation of the Internet.
• 10 November: Sesame Street premieres its debut episode.

1970s[]

1970[]

• 15 January: The Nigerian Civil War ends with the reintegration of the Republic of Biafra with Nigeria after ~3 million deaths.
• 22 January: Maiden flight of the Boeing 747.
• January to March: First Quarter Storm.
• 5 March: Ratification of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
• April: Break-up of the Beatles.
• 4 May: The Kent State massacre in Ohio leaves four students dead and nine injured.
• 19 June: Edward Heath becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• 6 September: Black September in Jordan begins, lasting until mid-1971.
• 18 September: Death of Jimi Hendrix.
• 28 September: Death of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
• October to December: FLQ seizes hostages, causing Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau of Canada to issue the War Measures Act.
• 4 October: Death of Janis Joplin, American rock, soul and blues singer-songwriter.
• 15 October: Anwar Sadat becomes President of Egypt.
• 3–13 November: The Bhola Cyclone kills 500,000 people in East Pakistan.
• 1 December: North Yemen Civil War ends.
• 14–19 December: 1970 Polish protests.
• 18 December: Establishment of Airbus.
• Containerisation adopted globally, massively boosting global trade.

1971[]

• 25 January: Idi Amin seizes power in Uganda.
• 26 March: Bangladesh Liberation War occurred, independence of Bangladesh from Pakistan and precipitates Third Indo-Pakistani War.
• 3 July: Death of Jim Morrison, American lead vocalist of the rock band the Doors.
• 6 July: Death of Louis Armstrong, American musician among the most influential figures in jazz.
• 17 July: Black September in Jordan ends.
• 9–10 August: Internment begins in Northern Ireland.
• 27 October: Joseph Mobutu renames The Republic of the Congo Zaire.
• 15 November: Intel releases the world's first microprocessor, the Intel 4004.
• December: Third Indo-Pakistani War.
• Nixon shock removes gold back-up for the US Dollar triggering export of inflation from rich to poor nations.
• COINTELPRO officially ends.
• Greenpeace founded.

1972[]

• January: Sheikh Mujibur Rahman returns to Bangladesh from imprisonment in Pakistan.
• 30 January: Northern Ireland's Bloody Sunday.
• 24 March: The Godfather premieres.
• 27 March: The First Sudanese Civil War ends.
• 30 May: Lod Airport massacre.
• 8 May: The airplane serving Sabena Flight 571 from Brussels to Lod, Tel Aviv is hijacked by four members of the Black September Organization, a Palestinian terrorist group, resulting in 3 deaths and 3 injuries.
  • 5–6 September: The Munich massacre, perpetrated by the Black September terrorist organization and aimed at the Israeli Olympic team, results in 17 total deaths.
• September:
  • Martial law declared in the Philippines by President Ferdinand Marcos.
  • Release date of the Magnavox Odyssey, the first commercial home video game console.
• 29 November: The arcade game Pong, the first commercially successful video game, is released.
• Release of A Computer Animated Hand, one of the first ever computer animations.

1973[]

• 22 January: The Supreme Court of the United States decides Roe v. Wade.
• 1 March Pink Floyd's album The Dark Side of the Moon is released in the UK.
• 3 May: Construction of the Sears Tower (later renamed to Willis Tower) completed.
• 14 May: The first space station, Skylab, is launched.
• 11 September: 1973 Chilean coup d'état.
• October: 1973 oil crisis.
• 6 to 25 October: Yom Kippur War.
• 3 December: Pioneer 10 sends back the first close-up images of Jupiter.

1974[]

• World population reaches four billion.
• 4 March: Harold Wilson becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• 29 March: First close-up images of Mercury by Mariner 10.
• 25 April: Carnation Revolution in Portugal begins transition to democracy.
• July to August: The Turkish invasion of Cyprus leads to the creation of the Northern Cyprus.
• 8–9 August: Resignation of Richard Nixon; Vice President Gerald Ford assumes office as President of the United States, the first person not elected as either President or Vice President to take the role.
• 12 September: Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia is overthrown in a military coup.
• 8 November: Release date of Disney's Robin Hood.
• 24 November: Discovery of "Lucy" (Australopithecus afarensis) in Tanzania's Olduvai Gorge.

1975[]

• January: Altair 8800, the first commercially successful personal computer, is released.
• 4 April: Microsoft founded in Albuquerque, New Mexico by Bill Gates and Paul Allen.
• 17 April: The Cambodian Civil War ends with victory for the Khmer Rouge.
• 30 April: The Fall of Saigon ends the Vietnam War.
• 20 November: Death of Francisco Franco.
• 22 November: Juan Carlos I becomes King of Spain.
• The Killing Fields murders begin.

1976[]

• 1 April: Steve Wozniak invents the Apple I and Steve Jobs then convinces Wozniak to sell the system, giving birth to Apple Computer.
• 5 April: James Callaghan becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• 4 July: Operation Entebbe, a successful counter-terrorist hostage-rescue mission carried out by commandos of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) at Entebbe Airport in Uganda.
• 9 September:
  • Death of Mao Zedong.
  • Release of VHS (Video Home System) in Japan.
• 6 October: End of Cultural Revolution.
• Church Committee, a U.S. Senate select committee that investigated abuses by the CIA, NSA, FBI and Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
• First outbreak of the Ebola virus in Zaire.

1977[]

• 20 January: Jimmy Carter is inaugurated as President of the United States.
• 9 February: Queen Alia of Jordan is killed in helicopter crash.
• 27 March: The Tenerife disaster in the Canary Islands, with 583 fatalities, marks the deadliest accident in aviation history.
• March to May: Shaba I conflict involves Safari Club.
• 25 May: Star Wars is released and quickly becomes the highest-grossing film of all-time.
• 16 August: Death of Elvis Presley.
• 20 August: Voyager 2 launched by NASA.
• 5 September: Voyager 1 launched by NASA.
• 11 September: Release date of the Atari 2600 video game console in North America.
• 26 October: The last wild case of smallpox is eradicated by the WHO.
• Introduction of the first mass-produced personal computers.

1978[]

• Invention of artificial insulin.
• 27 April: The War in Afghanistan (1978–present) begins.
• 22 June: Discovery of Pluto's moon Charon.
• July: Louise Brown is the first child successfully born after her mother received in vitro fertilisation treatment.
• 26 August: John Paul I becomes pope.
• 28 September: John Paul I dies, his papacy being one of the shortest in history.
• 1 October: Independence of Tuvalu from Britain.
• 9 October: The Uganda–Tanzania War begins.
• 16 October: John Paul II becomes pope.
• 18 November: Jim Jones's New religious movement, the Peoples Temple, ends in the organized mass killing and suicide of 920 people in Jonestown.
• 18 December: Deng Xiaoping commences the Chinese economic reform.
• 25 December: The Cambodian-Vietnamese War begins.
• 29 December: The current Constitution of Spain comes into effect, which for some marks the completion of the Spanish transition to democracy.
• Beginning of the Nicaraguan Revolution.

1979[]

• 7 January: The Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea ends Cambodia's Khmer Rouge regime.
• February to March: Sino-Vietnamese War.
• 11 February: The Iranian Revolution ends. Shah Reza Pahlavi is overthrown and forced into exile.
• 16 March: Central Treaty Organization dissolves.
• 28 March: The Three Mile Island nuclear accident, a partial meltdown of reactor number 2 of Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station (TMI-2) in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, near Harrisburg, and subsequent radiation leak.
• 4 May: Margaret Thatcher becomes the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• June: Arrival of Pope John Paul II in Poland, eventually sparking the Solidarity movement.
• 3 June: The Uganda–Tanzania War ends with defeat for Uganda and the exile of Idi Amin.
• 11 June: Death of John Wayne.
• 15 October: Beginning of the Salvadorian Civil War.
• 4 November: The Iran hostage crisis begins.
• 12 December: The Rhodesian Bush War ends.
• 24 December: The Soviet–Afghan War begins.
• Implementation of China's one-child policy.
• 1.7 million people known to have been murdered in The Killing Fields.
• The Nicaraguan Revolution begins.
• The 1979 oil crisis becomes the second one since 1973.

1980s[]

1980[]

• 24 March: Assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero.
• 18 April: Independence of Rhodesia, which becomes Zimbabwe.
• 30 April: Queen Beatrix becomes monarch of the Netherlands.
• 8 May: WHO announces the eradication of smallpox.
• 18 May: 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Skamania County, state of Washington, leaves approximately 57 deaths and $1 billion of property damage.
• 21 May: The Empire Strikes Back is released.
• 22 May: Release of Pac-Man, the best-selling arcade game.
• 1 June: Launch of Cable News Network (CNN).
• 30 July: Independence of Vanuatu.
• 31 August: Solidarity union forms at Poland's Gdańsk Shipyard under Lech Wałęsa, and begins agitation for greater personal freedoms.
• 22 September: Beginning of the Iran–Iraq War.
• 4 November: Ronald Reagan is elected as the 40th President of the United States, the oldest person to be elected.
• 13 November: Voyager 1 takes the first close-up pictures of Saturn.
• 8 December: Murder of John Lennon.
• Invention of the Rubik's Cube.

1981[]

• 20 January:
  • Ronald Reagan is inaugurated as President of the United States.
  • Iran releases the 52 U.S. hostages held in Tehran after 444 days.
• 30 March: President Reagan and three others are injured after an assassination attempt.
• 12 April: First orbital flight of the Space Shuttle.
• 11 May: Reggae singer Bob Marley dies.
• 13 May: Pope John Paul II assassination attempt.
• 5 June: The AIDS epidemic officially begins in the United States, having originated in Africa; making this to be an ongoing pandemic.
• 7 June: Operation Opera, a surprise airstrike conducted by the Israeli Air Force on an unfinished Iraqi nuclear reactor near Baghdad.
• 12 June: Release date of Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark.
• 29 July: Wedding of Charles, Prince of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer.
• 1 August: Launch of MTV.
• 12 August: IBM Personal Computer released.
• 6 October: Assassination of Anwar Sadat.

1982[]

• 2–28 February: The Hama massacre in Syria, a conflict between Syria and the Muslim Brotherhood, results in a decisive Syrian victory and about 10,000 deaths.
• 25 April: Israel withdraws from Sinai Peninsula.
• April to June: Falklands War.
• 6 June: First Israeli invasion of Lebanon begins.
• 11 June: Release date of Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
• 14 September: Princess Grace of Monaco dies following a car accident.
• 1 October: Sony releases the world's first commercially sold CD Player, the Sony CDP-101.
• 10–15 November: Death of Leonid Brezhnev; Yuri Andropov becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
• 30 November: Michael Jackson releases his landmark album Thriller, the best-selling album of all time.
• 7 December: The first execution by lethal injection takes place in Texas.

1983[]

• 1 January: Independence of Brunei.
• 18 April: The Bombing of U.S. Embassy in Beirut results in 63 deaths.
• 5 June: Second Sudanese Civil War begins.
• 15 July: Nintendo releases the Family Computer (Famicom) video game console in Japan.
• 21 August: Benigno Aquino Jr., Philippine opposition leader, is assassinated in Manila just as he returns from exile.
• 1 September: Korean Air Lines Flight 007, a scheduled flight from New York City to Seoul via Anchorage, Alaska, is shot down by a Soviet Su-15 interceptor, resulting in 269 fatalities and no survivors. This leads to the declassification of GPS development.
• October: Invasion of Grenada by the United States.
• 23 October: The Beirut barracks bombing results in the deaths of 307 people, hastening the removal of international peacekeeping forces in Lebanon.
• 10 December: End of dictatorship in Argentina.

1984[]

• 13 February: Konstantin Chernenko becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
• 1 April: Assassination of Marvin Gaye, American musician.
• 31 October: Assassination of Indira Gandhi, Indian Prime Minister.
• 19 December: Sino-British Joint Declaration agrees to hand Hong Kong back to China by 1997.
• Operation Moses, the covert evacuation of Ethiopian Jews from Sudan during a civil war that caused a famine.
• The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is recognized as the cause of HIV/AIDS, and research on zidovudine and other treatments gets underway.
• 3 December: Bhopal disaster.
• Beginning of the 1983–85 famine in Ethiopia and the 1984-85 UK miners' strike.

1985[]

• 7 March: Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, USA For Africa released We Are the World.
• 11 March: Mikhail Gorbachev becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
• 15 March: End of military leadership in Brazil.
• June: End of 1982 Lebanon War.
• 13 July: Live Aid.
• 20 August: Beginning of the Iran–Contra affair, a political scandal in the United States that occurred during the second term of the Reagan Administration involving the sale of arms to the Khomeini government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
• 1 September: 73 years after the infamous disaster, the wreck of the Titanic is found off the coast of Newfoundland by a joint French–American expedition led by Jean-Louis Michel of IFREMER and Robert Ballard of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
• 19 September: An earthquake in Mexico City, magnitude 8.0, kills from 5,000 to 45,000 people.
• 1 October: Release date of the Macintosh 128K, the first successful mass-market personal computer to feature a graphical user interface, built-in screen, and mouse.
• 18 October: North American release date of the Nintendo Entertainment System, a rebranding of Nintendo's Family Computer.
• 13 November: The Armero tragedy, in which 20,000 people die following the eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz stratovolcano in Tolima, Colombia.
• 20 November: Windows 1.0, the first Microsoft Windows operating system, released.
• First use of DNA fingerprinting.

1986[]

• 12–24 January: South Yemen Civil War.
• 24 January: First close-up images of the planet Uranus.
• 28 January: Challenger breaks apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members aboard.
• 25 February: End of dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines.
• 28 February: Assassination of Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden.
• March: Return of Halley's Comet.
• 26 April: The Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine kills about 100 people.

1987[]

• World population reaches five billion.
• 2 February: The new Constitution of the Philippines goes into effect.
• 27 July: Release of "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley.
• September: Release date of the Master System video game console in North America.
• 13 September: A radioactive contamination accident in Goiânia, Brazil, leaves 249 people contaminated, four of which die.
• 15 September: Huawei founded in Shenzen, China by Ren Zhengfei.
• 19 October: Stock market crash of 1987.
• 22 November: Max Headroom signal hijacking in Chicago (WGN-TV and WTTW).
• December: The antidepressant drug fluoxetine (marketed as Prozac) becomes commercially available.
• 8 December: The First Intifada between Israel and Palestine begins.
• 9 December: Windows 2.0 released.
• 20 December: The passenger ferry MV Doña Paz sinks after colliding with the oil tanker MT Vector 1 in the Tablas Strait in the Philippines, killing an estimated 4,000 people (history's worst peacetime maritime disaster).

1988[]

• 2 January: Beginning of the perestroika ("restructuring"), a political movement for reformation within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the 1980s associated with Gorbachev and his glasnost ("openness") policy reform.
• 20 August: End of the Iran–Iraq War.
• 29 October: Release date of the Mega Drive video game console in Japan.
• 21 December: Pan Am Flight 103 falls over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people and leaving no survivors.
• Myanmar Armed Forces launch a military coup.
• Construction of the Channel Tunnel begins.
• George H. W. Bush is elected President of the United States.

1989[]

• 7 January: Emperor Shōwa (Hirohito) dies; his son, Akihito (the Emperor Heisei) becomes Emperor of Japan.
• 20 January: George H. W. Bush is inaugurated as President of the United States.
• 2 February: Alfredo Stroessner is overthrown in Paraguay. End of dictatorship.
• 14 February: Fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie.
• 15 February: End of the Soviet war in Afghanistan.
• 24 March: The oil tanker Exxon Valdez spills 10.8 million US gallons of crude oil after striking a reef, causing severe damage to the environment.
• April to June: Tiananmen Square Massacre, in which troops armed with assault rifles and accompanied by tanks fired at student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, resulting in an undisclosed number of deaths (estimated in hundreds to thousands).
• 21 April: Release date of the Game Boy handheld console in Japan.
• 3 June: Ruhollah Khomeini dies; Ali Khamenei becomes Supreme Leader of Iran.
• 4 June: 1989 Polish legislative election although the elections were not entirely democratic, they led to the formation of a government led by Tadeusz Mazowiecki and a peaceful transition to democracy in Poland and elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe.
  • 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. A crackdown takes place in Beijing on the army's approach to the square, and the final stand-off in the square is covered live on television.
• 5 June: An unknown Chinese protester, "Tank Man", stands in front of a column of military tanks on Chang'an Avenue in Beijing, temporarily halting them, an incident which achieves iconic status internationally through images taken by Western photographers.
• 31 July: Release date of the Game Boy handheld console in North America.
• 14 August: North American release date of the Sega Genesis, a rebrand of Sega Mega Drive.
• 25 August: Voyager 2 makes its closest approach to Neptune and its largest moon, Triton.
• 17 October: The 6.9 M_w Loma Prieta earthquake shakes the San Francisco Bay Area and the Central Coast, killing 63.
• 9 November: Fall of the Berlin Wall; the Revolutions of 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Bloc begin in Europe, which leads to the end of the Cold War.
• 15 November and 17 December: The first direct Presidential election in Brazil since 1960.
• 17 November: Release date of Disney's The Little Mermaid.
• 1–9 December: A military coup attempt begins in the Philippines against the government of Philippine President Corazon C. Aquino.
• 17 December: The first episode of The Simpsons premieres on Fox.
• 20 December: The United States invasion of Panama begins.
• 24 December: The First Liberian Civil War begins.
• 25 December: Trial and execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu in Romania.

1990s[]

1990[]

• 11 February: Nelson Mandela is released from Victor Verster Prison outside Cape Town, South Africa after 27 years as a political prisoner.
• 11 March: End of dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile.
• 15 March: After his election in 1989, Fernando Collor begins his term as the first democratically elected President of Brazil since 1964.
• April to May: Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope.
• 22 May:
  • North and South Yemen unify to form the Republic of Yemen.
  • Windows 3.0 released.
• 16 July: An earthquake measuring M_w 7.7 kills more than 1,600 in the Philippines.
• 2 August: Gulf War begins.
• 3 October: German reunification.
• 21 November: Release date of the Super Famicom in Japan.
• 28 November: John Major becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• 20 December: Tim Berners-Lee publishes the first web site, which described the World Wide Web project.
• The Contra War ends.
• Myanmar Armed Forces place Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest.
• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases its first assessment report, linking increases in carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere, and a resultant rise in global temperature, to human activities.

1991[]

• 28 February: The Gulf War ends in US withdrawal and a failed uprising.
• 23 March: Beginning of the Sierra Leone Civil War.
• 21 May: Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, Indian Prime Minister.
• 24–25 May: Operation Solomon, a covert Israeli military operation to airlift Ethiopian Jews to Israel.
• 12 June: Mount Pinatubo erupts with a Volcanic Explosivity Index of 6 and reduces global temperatures.
• 27 June–7 July: The Ten-Day War in Slovenia begins the Yugoslav Wars.
• 1 July: President George H. W. Bush nominates the controversial Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court of the United States to replace Thurgood Marshall, who had announced his retirement.
• 10 July: Boris Yeltsin becomes the first President of Russia.
• 13 September: The Senate of the Philippines rejects the bilateral treaty with United States which would have extended American use of Subic Bay Naval Base.
• 24 September: Nirvana releases Nevermind, its landmark second album.
• 28 September: Death of Miles Davis, American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer.
• 12 August: North American release date of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, a rebranding of the Super Famicom.
• 5 October: Linus Torvalds launches the first version of the Linux kernel.
• 30 October–1 November: Madrid Conference of 1991.
• Early November: Tropical Storm Thelma lashes into Eastern Visayas, leaving 8,000 people dead.
• 24 November: Death of Freddie Mercury, British singer, songwriter, and record producer.
• 22 November: Release date of Disney's Beauty and the Beast.
• 26 December:
  • Dissolution of the Soviet Union and independence of 15 former Soviet republics.
  • Beginning of the Algerian Civil War.
• Beginning of the Somali Civil War.
• 1991 Sino-Soviet Border Agreement.

1992[]

• 16 January: End of the Salvadorian Civil War.
• 7 February: The Maastricht Treaty creates the European Union.
• 3 April: End of dictatorship in Albania.
• 6 April: The Bosnian War begins.
• April to May: Los Angeles riots over the acquittal of those involved in the beating of Rodney King.
• August: Hurricane Andrew kills 65 and causes $26.5 billion in damages in the Bahamas and the United States.
• 8 August: After the end of its dictatorship, South Korea is admitted to the UN.
• 4 October: El Al Flight 1862, in which a Boeing 747 cargo aircraft of the then state-owned Israeli airline El Al crashes into the Groeneveen and Klein-Kruitberg flats in the Bijlmermeer neighbourhood of Amsterdam, resulting in 43 deaths.
• 25 November: Release date of Disney's Aladdin.
• 29 December: After controversies surrounding him result in an impeachment process, Fernando Collor resigns and Itamar Franco takes office as President of Brazil.
• Discovery of the Kuiper belt and the first extrasolar planets.

1993[]

• 1 January: Velvet Divorce between Czech Republic and Slovakia.
• 20 January: Bill Clinton is inaugurated as President of the United States.
• 26 February: 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
• February to April: The Waco siege, the law enforcement siege of the compound that belonged to the Seventh-day Adventist religious sect Branch Davidians near Waco, Texas, carried out by the U.S. federal government, Texas state law enforcement, and the U.S. military, which results in a gunfight, a fire at the compound and 86 deaths.
• 11 June: Release date of Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park.
• 24 May: Independence of Eritrea.
• 28 June: Two UPLB students Eileen Sarmenta and Allan Gomez were abducted and killed by the men of Calauan, Laguna Mayor Antonio Sanchez in the Philippines.
• 27 July: Release date of Windows NT 3.1.
• 13 September: Oslo accords end First Intifada between Israel and Palestine.
• 1 November: The Maastricht Treaty founds the European Union.
• 30 November: Release date of Schindler's List.
• 2 December: Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar is gunned down by police.
• 11 December: The Highland Towers collapse in Selangor, Malaysia, leaving 48 dead.
• 1993 child sexual abuse accusations against Michael Jackson.

1994[]

• 1 January: Establishment of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
• 25 February: Cave of the Patriarchs massacre in the West Bank, a shooting massacre carried out by American-Israeli Baruch Goldstein, which resulted in 30 deaths and 125 injuries.
• 6 April: The assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira triggers the Rwandan genocide.
• 8 April: Suicide of Kurt Cobain.
• 10 May: End of apartheid in South Africa and election of Nelson Mandela.
• 6 May: Opening of the Channel Tunnel.
• May to July: First Yemeni Civil War.
• 1 May: Death of Ayrton Senna, Brazilian racing driver.
• 15 June: Release date of Disney's The Lion King.
• 23 June: Release date of Forrest Gump.
• 1 July: Plano Real introduces the new real currency in Brazil.
• 2 July: Colombian footballer Andrés Escobar is shot dead in Medellín.
• 5 July: Amazon founded in Bellevue, Washington by Jeff Bezos.
• 8–17 July: Death and state funeral of Kim Il-sung. Kim Jong-il becomes Supreme Leader of North Korea.
• 21 September: Release date of Windows NT 3.5.
• 28 September: The car ferry MS Estonia sinks in the Baltic Sea, killing 852 people.
• 1 October: Palau gains independence from the United States.
• 3 December: Release date of the PlayStation in Japan.
• 11 December: The First Chechen War begins.
• 14 December: Construction of the Three Gorges Dam begins in Hubei, China.
• Rise of a wave of Palestinian terrorist attacks in Israel.

1995[]

• 1 January:
  • Establishment of the World Trade Organization.
  • Austria, Finland and Sweden join the European Union.
• 17 January: A 6.9 M_w  Great Hanshin earthquake strikes the southern Hyōgo Prefecture of Japan with a maximum Shindo of VII, leaving 5,502–6,434 people dead, and 251,301–310,000 displaced.
• 20 March: The Tokyo subway sarin attack, an act of domestic terrorism perpetrated by members of the doomsday cult movement Aum Shinrikyo (now Aleph), in which they released sarin, an extremely toxic synthetic compound, in five coordinate attacks, resulting in 13 deaths and 6,252 injuries.
• 31 March: Murder of Selena.
• 7 April: Release date of Disney's Pocahontas.
• 19 April: American terrorist Timothy McVeigh bombs the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
• 29 June: The Sampoong Department Store collapse, a structural failure in a department store in Seoul, South Korea, kills 502 people and injures other 1,445.
• 11–22 July: The Srebrenica massacre of over 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys.
• 21 July: The Third Taiwan Strait Crisis begins.
• August to September: NATO bombing raids in Bosnia end the Bosnian War.
• 24 August: Release date of Windows 95.
• 9 September: Release date of the PlayStation in North America.
• 28 September: Oslo II Accord.
• 3 October: O. J. Simpson is found not guilty of double murder for the deaths of former wife Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman in 1994.
• October to November: Typhoon Angela leaves the Philippines and Vietnam devastated, with 882 deaths and US$315 million in damage.
• 4 November: Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli Prime Minister and Defence Minister, by Yigal Amir, an Israeli right-wing extremist.
• 22 November: Premiere of Toy Story, the first computer-animated feature film and the first Pixar Animation Studios film.
• 14 December: The signing of the Dayton Accords put an end to the three-and-a-half-year-long Bosnian War.
• The North Korean famine begins.

1996[]

• 13 February: Nepalese Civil War begins.
• 18 March: The Ozone Disco Club fire in Quezon City, Philippines, kills 162 people.
• 23 March: The Third Taiwan Strait Crisis ends.
• 28–29 April: The Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania, Australia leaves 35 people dead, leading to tighter gun regulations in Australia.
• 23 June: Release date of the Nintendo 64 video game console in Japan.
• 5 July: Dolly the sheep becomes the first successful cloned mammal.
• 17 July: TWA Flight 800 crash.
• 27 July: Centennial Olympic Park bombing.
• 24 August: Release date of Windows NT 4.0.
• 31 August: The First Chechen War ends.
• 2 September: A permanent peace agreement is signed at the Malacañan Palace between the Government of the Philippines and the Moro National Liberation Front.
• 7 September: Murder of Tupac Shakur.
• 27 September: The Taliban government takes control of Afghanistan, creating the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
• 24 October: The First Congo War begins.
• 1 November: Release of DVD in Japan.
• End of dictatorship in Taiwan.
• Increasing terrorist attacks in Israel.

1997[]

• January to August: The Albanian Civil War (Lottery Uprising), sparked by pyramid scheme failures, in which the government was toppled, with new parliamentary elections, and more than 2,000 people killed.
• 4 February: 1997 Israeli helicopter disaster, when two Israeli Air Force transport helicopters ferrying Israeli soldiers into Israel's security zone in southern Lebanon collided in mid-air, killing all 73 Israeli military personnel on board.
• 9 March: Murder of Biggie Smalls, American hip-hop artist.
• 13 March: Island of Peace massacre, a mass murder attack that occurred at the Island of Peace on the Israeli-Jordanian border, in which 7 people were killed and 6 injured.
• 2 May: Tony Blair becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• 17 May: Kabila ousts Mobutu; Zaire becomes the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
• 21 May: Radiohead release OK Computer.
• 25 June: J. K. Rowling publishes Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
• 27 June: Release date of Disney's Hercules.
• 1 July: Transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to China.
• 2 July: The Bank of Thailand floats the baht, triggering the Asian financial crisis.
• 15 July: Fashion designer Gianni Versace is murdered by Andrew Cunanan.
• 2 August: The First Liberian Civil War ends.
• 31 August: Diana, Princess of Wales is killed in a car accident in Paris.
• 19 December: Release date of Titanic.
• Sound barrier broken on land.

1998[]

• February: Osama bin Laden publishes a fatwa against the West.
• May: Riots in Indonesia, including incidents of mass violence, demonstrations, and civil unrest of a racial nature, result in the Fall of Suharto and the independence of East Timor.
• 28 May: Murder of Phil Hartman.
• 30 June: Joseph Estrada becomes President of the Philippines.
• 10 April: The Good Friday Agreement brings an end to The Troubles in Northern Ireland.
• 15 April: Death of Pol Pot.
• 2 August: The Second Congo War begins.
• 7 August: Kenya and Tanzania bombings.
• 15 August: Omagh bombing.
• 4 September: Google is founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
• 21 October: Release date of Nintendo's Game Boy Color handheld console in Japan.
• October to November: Hurricane Mitch leaves more than 19,325 dead in Central America as a result of catastrophic flooding and mudslides.
• 17 November: Release date of Nintendo's Game Boy Color handheld console in North America.
• 27 November: Sega releases the Dreamcast video game console in Japan.
• 19 December: The impeachment of Bill Clinton begins as a result of the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal.
• The North Korean famine has killed an estimated 2.5 million people by this point.

1999[]

• 1 January: Euro introduced to the financial markets. Coins and banknotes enter circulation in participating countries in 2002.
• 2 February: Hugo Chavez becomes President of Venezuela.
• April: A crisis in East Timor, which led to 1,400 deaths, begins.
• 20 April: The Columbine High School massacre in Colorado, United States, causes 15 deaths.
• 21 April: The Second Liberian Civil War begins.
• 1 May: The first episode of SpongeBob SquarePants airs on Nickelodeon.
• May to July: The Fourth Indo-Pakistani War.
• 11 June: The end of the Kosovo War ends the Yugoslav Wars.
• 18 June: Release date of Disney's Tarzan.
• 16 July: John F. Kennedy Jr. plane crash.
• 26 August: The Second Chechen War begins.
• 3–16 September: Russian apartment bombings kill more than 350 people.
• 9 September: Sega releases the Dreamcast video game console in North America.
• 12 October: World population reaches 6 billion.
• 30 November: ExxonMobil founded.
• 31 December: Vladimir Putin becomes President of Russia.

2000s[]

2000[]

• 1 January: The first day of the 3rd millennium is celebrated worldwide on New Year's Day, though not without dispute.
• 29 February: A rare century leap year date occurs.
• 30 April: The Canonization of Faustina Kowalska occurs in the presence of 200,000 people and the first Divine Mercy Sunday celebrated worldwide.
• 4 March: The Sony PlayStation 2 releases in Japan. The system would go on to become the highest-selling video game console in history, selling over 155 million units around the world before being discontinued in 2013.^[1]
• April to September: Abu Sayyaf gunmen seized 21 people including 10 tourists and 11 resort workers, two of them Filipinos, from the resort island of Sipadan, Malaysia.
• May: End of Israeli occupation of Lebanon.
• 5 May: The ILOVEYOU computer virus affects Windows computers and spreads fast.
• 6 May: The British Army launches Operation Palliser which effectively ends the Sierra Leone Civil War.
• 11 May: India becomes the second country to reach 1 billion people.
• 10 June: Syrian President Hafez al-Assad dies.
• 13–15 June: 2000 inter-Korean summit, the first inter-Korean summit.
• 15 June: Premiere of Disney's Fantasia 2000.
• 28 June: Elián González returns to Cuba with his father, Juan Miguel González, ending a protracted custody battle.
• 9 July: Philippine forces capture the main camp of MILF, Camp Abubakar in Mindanao.
• 17 July: Bashar al-Assad becomes President of Syria.
• 25 July: Air France Flight 4590 crashes into a hotel in Gonesse, France just after takeoff from Paris, killing all 109 aboard and 4 in the hotel.
• 6–8 September: The Millennium Summit, a meeting among many world leaders at the United Nations headquarters in New York City with the purpose of discussing the role of the United Nations at the turn of the 21st century.
• 28 September: The Second Intifada begins.
• 5 October: Overthrow of Slobodan Milošević, President of Yugoslavia.
• 12 October: al-Qaeda suicide bombs the USS Cole, killing 17 sailors, injuring 39 others, and damaging the ship.
• 26 October: Release date of the Sony PlayStation 2 in North America.
• 1 December: Vicente Fox becomes the first opposition President of Mexico, ending 71 years of single-party rule in the nation.
• November: George W. Bush is elected President of the United States, after a contentious recount in Florida.
• 2 November: First long-term residents (Expedition 1) of the International Space Station, whose first component was launched in 1998.
• 25 December: The Luoyang Christmas fire at a shopping center in China kills 309 people.

See also[]

• 20th century in fiction

Further reading[]

• Morris, Richard B. and Graham W. Irwin, eds. Harper Encyclopedia of the Modern World: A Concise Reference History from 1760 to the Present (1970) online

References[]