AIDS first described
First report of a disease that would kill over 40 million
On 5 June 1981 a bulletin from the US Centers for Disease Control described a rare pneumonia in five young men in Los Angeles — the first report of the disease later named AIDS. In 1983 French scientists isolated the virus behind it, HIV, which had passed to humans from chimpanzees in Central Africa in the early 20th century. UNAIDS estimates that over 40 million people have died of AIDS-related illnesses.
Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Europe
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 8 years later
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 8 years later
- 1990 German reunification — 9 years later
- 1991–2001 Yugoslav Wars — 10 years later
- 1992 Maastricht Treaty — 11 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — 24 years earlier
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — 20 years earlier
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 4 years later
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 8 years later
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — 10 years later
Middle East
- 1978 Camp David Accords — 3 years earlier
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 2 years earlier
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 1 year earlier
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — 9 years later
- 1993 Oslo Accords — 12 years later
Africa
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 14 years earlier
- 1967–1970 Nigerian Civil War and Biafra — 14 years earlier
- 1974 Lucy is discovered — 7 years earlier
- 1983–1985 The Ethiopian famine — 2 years later
- 1994 End of apartheid in South Africa — 13 years later
Asia
- 1966–1976 Cultural Revolution in China — 15 years earlier
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 6 years earlier
- 1978 Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening-up — 3 years earlier
- 1984 Bhopal disaster — 3 years later
- 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami — 23 years later
Americas
- 1969 Moon landing — 12 years earlier
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 11 years earlier
- 1980 Eruption of Mount St. Helens — 1 year earlier
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 2 years later
- 2001 September 11 attacks — 20 years later
Oceania
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 22 years earlier
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 11 years later
Alive at the time
- Nelson Mandela (aged 63)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 51)
- Jorge Luis Borges (aged 82)
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) (aged 80)
- Leonid Brezhnev (aged 75)
- Mother Teresa (aged 71)
- Ronald Reagan (aged 70)
- Richard Nixon (aged 68)
- Indira Gandhi (aged 64)
- Edmund Hillary (aged 62)