Iranian Revolution
The shah leaves and Khomeini takes the helm
Mass protests forced Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to leave Iran in January 1979. Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile to lead the country, and after a referendum Iran was declared an Islamic Republic. The revolution reshaped the balance of power in the Middle East.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 1 year later
Europe
- 1968 May 1968 in France — 11 years earlier
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 10 years later
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 10 years later
- 1990 German reunification — 11 years later
- 1991–2001 Yugoslav Wars — 12 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — 22 years earlier
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — 18 years earlier
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 6 years later
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 10 years later
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — 12 years later
Africa
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 12 years earlier
- 1967–1970 Nigerian Civil War and Biafra — 12 years earlier
- 1974 Lucy is discovered — 5 years earlier
- 1983–1985 The Ethiopian famine — 4 years later
- 1994 End of apartheid in South Africa — 15 years later
Asia
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 4 years earlier
- 1976 Tangshan earthquake — 3 years earlier
- 1978 Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening-up — 1 year earlier
- 1984 Bhopal disaster — 5 years later
- 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami — 25 years later
Americas
- 1969 Moon landing — 10 years earlier
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 9 years earlier
- 1980 Eruption of Mount St. Helens — 1 year later
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 4 years later
- 2001 September 11 attacks — 22 years later
Oceania
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 25 years earlier
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 20 years earlier
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 13 years later
Alive at the time
- Nelson Mandela (aged 61)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 49)
- Jorge Luis Borges (aged 80)
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) (aged 78)
- Leonid Brezhnev (aged 73)
- Mother Teresa (aged 69)
- Ronald Reagan (aged 68)
- Richard Nixon (aged 66)
- Indira Gandhi (aged 62)
- Edmund Hillary (aged 60)