Moon landing
Humans set foot on another world for the first time
Apollo 11 launched from Cape Canaveral on 16 July 1969, and on 20 July Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people to walk on the Moon while Michael Collins stayed in orbit. The landing was the climax of the space race.
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Did you know
Cleopatra (born 69 BC) lived closer in time to the Moon landing (about 2,040 years) than to the building of the Great Pyramid (about 2,490 years).
Just 58 years separate the Wright brothers' first flight from Gagarin's, and 66 from the Moon landing — some who saw the first airplanes lived to see the Moon.
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1945 Founding of the United Nations — 24 years earlier
- 1947–1991 Cold War — 22 years earlier
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 21 years earlier
- 1949 Founding of NATO — 20 years earlier
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 11 years later
Europe
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — 16 years earlier
- 1961 Berlin Wall built — 8 years earlier
- 1968 May 1968 in France — 1 year earlier
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 20 years later
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 20 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — 12 years earlier
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — 8 years earlier
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 16 years later
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 20 years later
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — 22 years later
Middle East
- 1948 Founding of the State of Israel — 21 years earlier
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 10 years later
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 11 years later
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — 21 years later
Africa
- 1960 Year of Africa — 9 years earlier
- 1963 The Organisation of African Unity is founded — 6 years earlier
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 2 years earlier
- 1967–1970 Nigerian Civil War and Biafra — 2 years earlier
- 1974 Lucy is discovered — 5 years later
Asia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — 24 years earlier
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — 16 years earlier
- 1970 Bhola cyclone — 1 year later
- 1971–1971 Bangladesh Liberation War — 2 years later
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 6 years later
Oceania
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 15 years earlier
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 10 years earlier
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 23 years later
Alive at the time
- Pablo Picasso (aged 88)
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 80)
- Mao Zedong (aged 76)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 51)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 39)
- Harry S. Truman (aged 85)
- Ho Chi Minh (aged 79)
- Dwight D. Eisenhower (aged 79)
- Haile Selassie (aged 77)
- Nikita Khrushchev (aged 75)