Attack on Pearl Harbor
Japan's strike pulls the US into World War II
On 7 December 1941 Japanese aircraft launched a surprise attack on the main base of the US Pacific Fleet in Hawaii, killing about 2,400 Americans. The next day the United States declared war on Japan and entered the Second World War.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — 23 years earlier
- 1939–1945 World War II — 2 years earlier
- 1947–1991 Cold War — 6 years later
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 7 years later
- 1949 Founding of NATO — 8 years later
Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — 13 years earlier
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — 8 years earlier
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — 5 years earlier
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — same year
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — 12 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — 12 years earlier
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — 5 years earlier
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — same year
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — 1 year later
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — 4 years later
Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — 25 years earlier
- 1916–1918 The Arab Revolt — 25 years earlier
- 1932 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia proclaimed — 9 years earlier
- 1948 Founding of the State of Israel — 7 years later
Africa
- 1922 Discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb — 19 years earlier
- 1935–1937 Italy invades Ethiopia — 6 years earlier
- 1956 The Suez Crisis — 15 years later
- 1958 Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart — 17 years later
- 1960 Year of Africa — 19 years later
Asia
- 1934–1935 Long March — 7 years earlier
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — 4 years later
- 1945 Indonesia proclaims independence — 4 years later
- 1947 Independence and Partition of India — 6 years later
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — 12 years later
Americas
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — 12 years earlier
- c. 1930–1936 Dust Bowl — 11 years earlier
- 1945 ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer — 4 years later
- 1947 Invention of the transistor — 6 years later
- 1955 Salk polio vaccine declared safe — 14 years later
Alive at the time
- Nikola Tesla (aged 85)
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 72)
- Winston Churchill (aged 67)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 63)
- Albert Einstein (aged 62)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 60)
- Adolf Hitler (aged 52)
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 52)
- Mao Zedong (aged 48)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 23)