Gulf War
Hundreds of burning oil wells and a 100-hour ground war
On 2 August 1990 Iraq seized Kuwait. A UN-mandated coalition of more than 30 countries led by the United States launched Operation Desert Storm in January 1991: five weeks of air strikes and a 100-hour ground offensive. Retreating Iraqi troops set hundreds of Kuwaiti oil wells ablaze; the fires burned until November 1991.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 10 years earlier
- 2008 Global financial crisis — 18 years later
Europe
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 1 year earlier
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 1 year earlier
- 1990 German reunification — same year
- 1991–2001 Yugoslav Wars — 1 year later
- 1992 Maastricht Treaty — 2 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1980 Solidarity — 10 years earlier
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 5 years earlier
- 1986 Chernobyl disaster — 4 years earlier
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 1 year earlier
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — 1 year later
Africa
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 23 years earlier
- 1967–1970 Nigerian Civil War and Biafra — 23 years earlier
- 1974 Lucy is discovered — 16 years earlier
- 1983–1985 The Ethiopian famine — 7 years earlier
- 1994 End of apartheid in South Africa — 4 years later
Asia
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 15 years earlier
- 1989 Tiananmen Square protests — 1 year earlier
- 1991 Eruption of Mount Pinatubo — 1 year later
- 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami — 14 years later
- 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami — 21 years later
Americas
- 1969 Moon landing — 21 years earlier
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 20 years earlier
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 7 years earlier
- 1990 Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope — same year
- 2001 September 11 attacks — 11 years later
Oceania
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 2 years later
Alive at the time
- Nelson Mandela (aged 72)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 60)
- Mother Teresa (aged 80)
- Ronald Reagan (aged 79)
- Richard Nixon (aged 77)
- Edmund Hillary (aged 71)
- Jimmy Carter (aged 66)
- Fidel Castro (aged 64)
- Elizabeth II (aged 64)
- Gabriel García Márquez (aged 63)