Baiji declared functionally extinct
The first whale or dolphin lost to human activity
In 2006 an expedition surveyed thousands of kilometres of the Yangtze and found no baiji, a river dolphin that had lived there for millions of years. It was declared functionally extinct, killed by fishing nets, shipping and dams: the first cetacean wiped out by humans.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 21st century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 2008 Global financial crisis — 2 years later
Europe
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 17 years earlier
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 17 years earlier
- 1992 Maastricht Treaty — 14 years earlier
- 2002 Euro notes and coins — 4 years earlier
- 2012 Discovery of the Higgs boson — 6 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 21 years earlier
- 1986 Chernobyl disaster — 20 years earlier
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 17 years earlier
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — 15 years earlier
Middle East
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — 16 years earlier
Africa
- 1983–1985 The Ethiopian famine — 23 years earlier
- 1994 End of apartheid in South Africa — 12 years earlier
Americas
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 23 years earlier
- 1990 Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope — 16 years earlier
- 2001 September 11 attacks — 5 years earlier
- 2003 Human genome sequenced — 3 years earlier
- 2007 Apple unveils the iPhone — 1 year later
Oceania
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 14 years earlier
Alive at the time
- Nelson Mandela (aged 88)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 76)
- Edmund Hillary (aged 87)
- Jimmy Carter (aged 82)
- Fidel Castro (aged 80)
- Elizabeth II (aged 80)
- Gabriel García Márquez (aged 79)
- Mikhail Gorbachev (aged 75)
- Boris Yeltsin (aged 75)
- Pelé (aged 66)