Chernobyl disaster
The worst nuclear power accident empties Pripyat
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On 26 April 1986 an explosion at reactor No. 4 of the Chernobyl plant caused the worst accident in the history of nuclear power. Radioactive fallout spread across much of Europe, the town of Pripyat was evacuated and an exclusion zone was created around the plant.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 6 years earlier
- 2008 Global financial crisis — 22 years later
Europe
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 3 years later
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 3 years later
- 1990 German reunification — 4 years later
- 1991–2001 Yugoslav Wars — 5 years later
- 1992 Maastricht Treaty — 6 years later
Middle East
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 7 years earlier
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 6 years earlier
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — 4 years later
Africa
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 19 years earlier
- 1967–1970 Nigerian Civil War and Biafra — 19 years earlier
- 1974 Lucy is discovered — 12 years earlier
- 1983–1985 The Ethiopian famine — 3 years earlier
- 1994 End of apartheid in South Africa — 8 years later
Asia
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 11 years earlier
- 1984 Bhopal disaster — 2 years earlier
- 1989 Tiananmen Square protests — 3 years later
- 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami — 18 years later
- 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami — 25 years later
Americas
- 1969 Moon landing — 17 years earlier
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 16 years earlier
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 3 years earlier
- 1990 Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope — 4 years later
- 2001 September 11 attacks — 15 years later
Oceania
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 6 years later
Alive at the time
- Nelson Mandela (aged 68)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 56)
- Jorge Luis Borges (aged 87)
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) (aged 85)
- Mother Teresa (aged 76)
- Ronald Reagan (aged 75)
- Richard Nixon (aged 73)
- Edmund Hillary (aged 67)
- Jimmy Carter (aged 62)
- Fidel Castro (aged 60)