The Ethiopian famine
A BBC report gives birth to Band Aid and Live Aid
Drought in northern Ethiopia combined with civil war and the policies of the Derg military regime, which blocked aid to rebel areas and forcibly resettled peasants. By various estimates 300,000 to 1.2 million people died. Michael Buerk's report from the Korem camp in October 1984 shocked the West, inspiring the Band Aid single and the Live Aid concert, which raised tens of millions of dollars.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 3 years earlier
- 2008 Global financial crisis — 25 years later
Europe
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 6 years later
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 6 years later
- 1990 German reunification — 7 years later
- 1991–2001 Yugoslav Wars — 8 years later
- 1992 Maastricht Treaty — 9 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — 22 years earlier
- 1980 Solidarity — 3 years earlier
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 2 years later
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 6 years later
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — 8 years later
Middle East
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 4 years earlier
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 3 years earlier
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — 7 years later
Asia
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 8 years earlier
- 1978 Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening-up — 5 years earlier
- 1984 Bhopal disaster — 1 year later
- 1989 Tiananmen Square protests — 6 years later
- 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami — 21 years later
Americas
- 1969 Moon landing — 14 years earlier
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 13 years earlier
- 1980 Eruption of Mount St. Helens — 3 years earlier
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — same year
- 2001 September 11 attacks — 18 years later
Oceania
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 24 years earlier
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 9 years later
Alive at the time
- Nelson Mandela (aged 65)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 53)
- Jorge Luis Borges (aged 84)
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) (aged 82)
- Mother Teresa (aged 73)
- Ronald Reagan (aged 72)
- Richard Nixon (aged 70)
- Indira Gandhi (aged 66)
- Edmund Hillary (aged 64)
- Jimmy Carter (aged 59)