Bhola cyclone
History's deadliest storm, a prelude to Bangladesh's independence
On 12 November 1970 the deadliest tropical cyclone on record drove a storm surge into the Ganges delta, killing 300,000 to 500,000 people. Slow relief from West Pakistan fuelled Bengali anger, and a year later the Bangladesh Liberation War began.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1945 Founding of the United Nations — 25 years earlier
- 1947–1991 Cold War — 23 years earlier
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 22 years earlier
- 1949 Founding of NATO — 21 years earlier
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 10 years later
Europe
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — 17 years earlier
- 1961 Berlin Wall built — 9 years earlier
- 1968 May 1968 in France — 2 years earlier
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 19 years later
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 19 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — 13 years earlier
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — 9 years earlier
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 15 years later
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 19 years later
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — 21 years later
Middle East
- 1948 Founding of the State of Israel — 22 years earlier
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 9 years later
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 10 years later
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — 20 years later
Africa
- 1960 Year of Africa — 10 years earlier
- 1963 The Organisation of African Unity is founded — 7 years earlier
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 3 years earlier
- 1967–1970 Nigerian Civil War and Biafra — 3 years earlier
- 1974 Lucy is discovered — 4 years later
Americas
- 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis — 8 years earlier
- 1969 Moon landing — 1 year earlier
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — same year
- 1973 Chilean coup d'état — 3 years later
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 13 years later
Oceania
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 16 years earlier
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 11 years earlier
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 22 years later
Alive at the time
- Pablo Picasso (aged 89)
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 81)
- Mao Zedong (aged 77)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 52)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 40)
- Harry S. Truman (aged 86)
- Haile Selassie (aged 78)
- Nikita Khrushchev (aged 76)
- Golda Meir (aged 72)
- Jorge Luis Borges (aged 71)