Last sighting of the golden toad
Monteverde's bright amphibian vanishes amid drought and fungus
On 15 May 1989 the last male of the bright orange golden toad, found only on a few square kilometres, was seen in Monteverde's cloud forest. Drought and a fungal disease of amphibians are blamed. The species is now listed as extinct; that year, the Berlin Wall fell.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Did you know
In 1989, the year Tim Berners-Lee proposed the World Wide Web, the golden toad was seen for the last time in Costa Rica's forests.
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 9 years earlier
- 2008 Global financial crisis — 19 years later
Europe
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — same year
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — same year
- 1990 German reunification — 1 year later
- 1991–2001 Yugoslav Wars — 2 years later
- 1992 Maastricht Treaty — 3 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1980 Solidarity — 9 years earlier
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 4 years earlier
- 1986 Chernobyl disaster — 3 years earlier
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — same year
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — 2 years later
Middle East
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 10 years earlier
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 9 years earlier
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — 1 year later
Africa
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 22 years earlier
- 1967–1970 Nigerian Civil War and Biafra — 22 years earlier
- 1974 Lucy is discovered — 15 years earlier
- 1983–1985 The Ethiopian famine — 6 years earlier
- 1994 End of apartheid in South Africa — 5 years later
Asia
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 14 years earlier
- 1989 Tiananmen Square protests — same year
- 1991 Eruption of Mount Pinatubo — 2 years later
- 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami — 15 years later
- 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami — 22 years later
Oceania
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 3 years later
Alive at the time
- Nelson Mandela (aged 71)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 59)
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) (aged 88)
- Mother Teresa (aged 79)
- Ronald Reagan (aged 78)
- Richard Nixon (aged 76)
- Edmund Hillary (aged 70)
- Jimmy Carter (aged 65)
- Fidel Castro (aged 63)
- Elizabeth II (aged 63)