Chilean coup d'état
Jets bomb the presidential palace; Allende dies
On 11 September 1973 the military under General Augusto Pinochet overthrew the socialist president Salvador Allende. Jets fired on La Moneda Palace, and Allende took his own life rather than surrender. The US-backed junta ruled for 17 years: more than 3,000 people were killed or disappeared and tens of thousands were imprisoned and tortured. Chile returned to democracy in 1990.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 25 years earlier
- 1949 Founding of NATO — 24 years earlier
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 7 years later
Europe
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — 20 years earlier
- 1961 Berlin Wall built — 12 years earlier
- 1968 May 1968 in France — 5 years earlier
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 16 years later
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 16 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — 16 years earlier
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — 12 years earlier
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 12 years later
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 16 years later
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — 18 years later
Middle East
- 1948 Founding of the State of Israel — 25 years earlier
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 6 years later
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 7 years later
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — 17 years later
Africa
- 1963 The Organisation of African Unity is founded — 10 years earlier
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 6 years earlier
- 1967–1970 Nigerian Civil War and Biafra — 6 years earlier
- 1974 Lucy is discovered — 1 year later
- 1983–1985 The Ethiopian famine — 10 years later
Asia
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — 20 years earlier
- 1970 Bhola cyclone — 3 years earlier
- 1971–1971 Bangladesh Liberation War — 2 years earlier
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 2 years later
- 1976 Tangshan earthquake — 3 years later
Oceania
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 19 years earlier
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 14 years earlier
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 19 years later
Alive at the time
- Pablo Picasso (aged 92)
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 84)
- Mao Zedong (aged 80)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 55)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 43)
- Haile Selassie (aged 81)
- Golda Meir (aged 75)
- Jorge Luis Borges (aged 74)
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) (aged 72)
- Dmitri Shostakovich (aged 67)