1991 Soviet coup attempt
A failed bid to oust Gorbachev hastens the Soviet collapse
On 19–21 August 1991 hardliners of the State Emergency Committee tried to oust Gorbachev and block a new union treaty. Resistance led by Boris Yeltsin at the Moscow White House defeated the coup and hastened the end of the USSR.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 11 years earlier
- 2008 Global financial crisis — 17 years later
Europe
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 2 years earlier
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 2 years earlier
- 1990 German reunification — 1 year earlier
- 1991–2001 Yugoslav Wars — same year
- 1992 Maastricht Treaty — 1 year later
Middle East
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 12 years earlier
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 11 years earlier
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — 1 year earlier
Africa
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 24 years earlier
- 1967–1970 Nigerian Civil War and Biafra — 24 years earlier
- 1974 Lucy is discovered — 17 years earlier
- 1983–1985 The Ethiopian famine — 8 years earlier
- 1994 End of apartheid in South Africa — 3 years later
Asia
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 16 years earlier
- 1989 Tiananmen Square protests — 2 years earlier
- 1991 Eruption of Mount Pinatubo — same year
- 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami — 13 years later
- 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami — 20 years later
Americas
- 1969 Moon landing — 22 years earlier
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 21 years earlier
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 8 years earlier
- 1990 Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope — 1 year earlier
- 2001 September 11 attacks — 10 years later
Oceania
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 1 year later
Alive at the time
- Nelson Mandela (aged 73)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 61)
- Mother Teresa (aged 81)
- Ronald Reagan (aged 80)
- Richard Nixon (aged 78)
- Edmund Hillary (aged 72)
- Jimmy Carter (aged 67)
- Fidel Castro (aged 65)
- Elizabeth II (aged 65)
- Gabriel García Márquez (aged 64)