Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami
Waves strike 14 countries, leaving about 230,000 dead
On 26 December 2004 a magnitude 9.1–9.3 earthquake off Sumatra sent tsunamis onto the coasts of 14 countries, from Indonesia and Thailand to Sri Lanka and Somalia. About 230,000 people died, including thousands of tourists. A warning system for the ocean followed.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 24 years earlier
- 2008 Global financial crisis — 4 years later
Europe
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 15 years earlier
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 15 years earlier
- 1992 Maastricht Treaty — 12 years earlier
- 2002 Euro notes and coins — 2 years earlier
- 2012 Discovery of the Higgs boson — 8 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1980 Solidarity — 24 years earlier
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 19 years earlier
- 1986 Chernobyl disaster — 18 years earlier
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 15 years earlier
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — 13 years earlier
Middle East
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 25 years earlier
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 24 years earlier
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — 14 years earlier
Africa
- 1983–1985 The Ethiopian famine — 21 years earlier
- 1994 End of apartheid in South Africa — 10 years earlier
Americas
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 21 years earlier
- 1990 Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope — 14 years earlier
- 2001 September 11 attacks — 3 years earlier
- 2003 Human genome sequenced — 1 year earlier
- 2007 Apple unveils the iPhone — 3 years later
Oceania
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 12 years earlier
Alive at the time
- Nelson Mandela (aged 86)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 74)
- Ronald Reagan (aged 93)
- Edmund Hillary (aged 85)
- Jimmy Carter (aged 80)
- Fidel Castro (aged 78)
- Elizabeth II (aged 78)
- Gabriel García Márquez (aged 77)
- Mikhail Gorbachev (aged 73)
- Boris Yeltsin (aged 73)