The Baltic states become part of the USSR
Ultimatums, Soviet troops and single-list elections
In June 1940 the USSR sent ultimatums to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and moved in troops; after single-list elections the new parliaments asked to join, and in August they were admitted to the Union. The 1939 secret protocol had assigned the Baltic to the Soviet sphere; the US never recognised the incorporation.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — 22 years earlier
- 1939–1945 World War II — 1 year earlier
- 1947–1991 Cold War — 7 years later
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 8 years later
- 1949 Founding of NATO — 9 years later
Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — 12 years earlier
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — 7 years earlier
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — 4 years earlier
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — 1 year later
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — 13 years later
Middle East
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — 25 years earlier
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — 24 years earlier
- 1932 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia proclaimed — 8 years earlier
- 1941 Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran — 1 year later
- 1948 Founding of the State of Israel — 8 years later
Africa
- 1922 Discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb — 18 years earlier
- 1935–1937 Italy invades Ethiopia — 5 years earlier
- 1948 Apartheid begins in South Africa — 8 years later
- 1952 Egyptian revolution of 1952 — 12 years later
- 1956 The Suez Crisis — 16 years later
Asia
- 1937–1938 Nanjing Massacre — 3 years earlier
- 1942 Fall of Singapore — 2 years later
- 1943 Bengal famine — 3 years later
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — 5 years later
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — 13 years later
Americas
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — 11 years earlier
- c. 1930–1936 Dust Bowl — 10 years earlier
- 1933–1939 New Deal — 7 years earlier
- 1945 ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer — 5 years later
- 1947 Invention of the transistor — 7 years later
Oceania
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 4 years earlier
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — 1 year later
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — 2 years later
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 14 years later
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 19 years later
Alive at the time
- Nikola Tesla (aged 84)
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 71)
- Winston Churchill (aged 66)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 62)
- Albert Einstein (aged 61)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 59)
- Adolf Hitler (aged 51)
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 51)
- Mao Zedong (aged 47)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 22)