Great Smog of London
Coal smoke chokes the capital and leads to a Clean Air Act
From 5 to 9 December 1952 still air trapped coal smoke over London, cutting visibility to a few metres. Later estimates put the death toll at up to 10,000–12,000. The disaster led to the Clean Air Act of 1956, in the first year of Elizabeth II's reign.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1939–1945 World War II — 13 years earlier
- 1945 Founding of the United Nations — 7 years earlier
- 1947–1991 Cold War — 5 years earlier
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 4 years earlier
- 1949 Founding of NATO — 3 years earlier
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 11 years earlier
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — 10 years earlier
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — 7 years earlier
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — 5 years later
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — 9 years later
Middle East
- 1932 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia proclaimed — 20 years earlier
- 1948 Founding of the State of Israel — 4 years earlier
Africa
- 1956 The Suez Crisis — 4 years later
- 1958 Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart — 6 years later
- 1960 Year of Africa — 8 years later
- 1963 The Organisation of African Unity is founded — 11 years later
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 15 years later
Asia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — 7 years earlier
- 1950–1953 Korean War — 2 years earlier
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — 1 year later
- 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu — 2 years later
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 23 years later
Americas
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — 23 years earlier
- 1947 Invention of the transistor — 5 years earlier
- 1955 Salk polio vaccine declared safe — 3 years later
- 1969 Moon landing — 17 years later
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 18 years later
Oceania
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 16 years earlier
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — 11 years earlier
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — 10 years earlier
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 2 years later
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 7 years later
Alive at the time
- Winston Churchill (aged 78)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 74)
- Albert Einstein (aged 73)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 71)
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 63)
- Mao Zedong (aged 59)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 34)
- Martin Luther King Jr. (aged 23)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 22)
- Yuri Gagarin (aged 18)