Indonesia proclaims independence
A few lines read out on a porch in Jakarta
On 17 August 1945, two days after Japan's surrender, Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta read a short declaration of independence outside Sukarno's house in Jakarta. The Netherlands tried to retake the colony, and four years of war and diplomacy followed. Only in December 1949 did the Dutch recognise the sovereignty of Indonesia, one of the largest nations on Earth.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1939–1945 World War II — 6 years earlier
- 1945 Founding of the United Nations — same year
- 1947–1991 Cold War — 2 years later
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 3 years later
- 1949 Founding of NATO — 4 years later
Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — 17 years earlier
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — 12 years earlier
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — 9 years earlier
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — 4 years earlier
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — 8 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — 9 years earlier
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 4 years earlier
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — 3 years earlier
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — same year
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — 12 years later
Middle East
- 1932 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia proclaimed — 13 years earlier
- 1948 Founding of the State of Israel — 3 years later
Africa
- 1935–1937 Italy invades Ethiopia — 10 years earlier
- 1956 The Suez Crisis — 11 years later
- 1958 Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart — 13 years later
- 1960 Year of Africa — 15 years later
- 1963 The Organisation of African Unity is founded — 18 years later
Americas
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — 16 years earlier
- 1945 ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer — same year
- 1947 Invention of the transistor — 2 years later
- 1969 Moon landing — 24 years later
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 25 years later
Oceania
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 9 years earlier
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — 4 years earlier
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — 3 years earlier
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 9 years later
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 14 years later
Alive at the time
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 76)
- Winston Churchill (aged 71)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 67)
- Albert Einstein (aged 66)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 64)
- Adolf Hitler (aged 56)
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 56)
- Mao Zedong (aged 52)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 27)
- Martin Luther King Jr. (aged 16)