Handover of Hong Kong
Britain's last major colony returns to China
At midnight on 1 July 1997 Britain handed Hong Kong to China after 156 years of rule. Under the 1984 Joint Declaration the city was to keep its own laws, currency and economy for 50 years under 'one country, two systems'. For London it symbolically closed the empire in Asia; since the 2020 national security law, the city's autonomy has narrowed markedly.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 17 years earlier
- 1981 AIDS first described — 16 years earlier
- 2008 Global financial crisis — 11 years later
Europe
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 8 years earlier
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 8 years earlier
- 1991–2001 Yugoslav Wars — 6 years earlier
- 1992 Maastricht Treaty — 5 years earlier
- 2002 Euro notes and coins — 5 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1980 Solidarity — 17 years earlier
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 12 years earlier
- 1986 Chernobyl disaster — 11 years earlier
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 8 years earlier
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — 6 years earlier
Middle East
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 18 years earlier
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 17 years earlier
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — 7 years earlier
- 1993 Oslo Accords — 4 years earlier
- 2011–2024 Syrian civil war — 14 years later
Africa
- 1974 Lucy is discovered — 23 years earlier
- 1983–1985 The Ethiopian famine — 14 years earlier
- 1994 End of apartheid in South Africa — 3 years earlier
- 1998–2003 Second Congo War — 1 year later
Americas
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 14 years earlier
- 1990 Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope — 7 years earlier
- 2001 September 11 attacks — 4 years later
- 2003 Human genome sequenced — 6 years later
- 2007 Apple unveils the iPhone — 10 years later
Oceania
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 5 years earlier
Alive at the time
- Nelson Mandela (aged 79)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 67)
- Mother Teresa (aged 87)
- Ronald Reagan (aged 86)
- Edmund Hillary (aged 78)
- Jimmy Carter (aged 73)
- Fidel Castro (aged 71)
- Elizabeth II (aged 71)
- Gabriel García Márquez (aged 70)
- Mikhail Gorbachev (aged 66)