Bhopal disaster
The worst industrial disaster ever struck as a city slept
On the night of 2–3 December 1984 about 40 tonnes of toxic methyl isocyanate leaked from the American firm Union Carbide's pesticide plant. The gas cloud settled over the sleeping slums around the factory. The official toll in the first days was 2,259 dead, while by various estimates total deaths exceeded 15,000; more than half a million people were injured.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 4 years earlier
- 2008 Global financial crisis — 24 years later
Europe
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 5 years later
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 5 years later
- 1990 German reunification — 6 years later
- 1991–2001 Yugoslav Wars — 7 years later
- 1992 Maastricht Treaty — 8 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — 23 years earlier
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 1 year later
- 1986 Chernobyl disaster — 2 years later
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 5 years later
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — 7 years later
Middle East
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 5 years earlier
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 4 years earlier
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — 6 years later
Africa
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 17 years earlier
- 1967–1970 Nigerian Civil War and Biafra — 17 years earlier
- 1974 Lucy is discovered — 10 years earlier
- 1983–1985 The Ethiopian famine — 1 year earlier
- 1994 End of apartheid in South Africa — 10 years later
Americas
- 1969 Moon landing — 15 years earlier
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 14 years earlier
- 1980 Eruption of Mount St. Helens — 4 years earlier
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 1 year earlier
- 2001 September 11 attacks — 17 years later
Oceania
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 25 years earlier
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 8 years later
Alive at the time
- Nelson Mandela (aged 66)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 54)
- Jorge Luis Borges (aged 85)
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) (aged 83)
- Mother Teresa (aged 74)
- Ronald Reagan (aged 73)
- Richard Nixon (aged 71)
- Indira Gandhi (aged 67)
- Edmund Hillary (aged 65)
- Jimmy Carter (aged 60)