Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope
An eye in orbit refines the age of the universe
On 24 April 1990 Space Shuttle Discovery carried the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit. Once its flawed mirror was corrected in 1993, it helped pin down the age of the universe and discover its accelerating expansion.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
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
Middle East
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 11 years earlier
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 10 years earlier
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — same year
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
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)