Iraq War
A US-led coalition topples Saddam Hussein
In March 2003 a US-led coalition invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein; the weapons of mass destruction cited as the main reason for war were never found. Years of violence and instability followed, and US troops left in 2011.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 23 years earlier
- 2008 Global financial crisis — 5 years later
Europe
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 14 years earlier
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 14 years earlier
- 1992 Maastricht Treaty — 11 years earlier
- 2002 Euro notes and coins — 1 year earlier
- 2012 Discovery of the Higgs boson — 9 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1980 Solidarity — 23 years earlier
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 18 years earlier
- 1986 Chernobyl disaster — 17 years earlier
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 14 years earlier
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — 12 years earlier
Africa
- 1983–1985 The Ethiopian famine — 20 years earlier
- 1994 End of apartheid in South Africa — 9 years earlier
Asia
- 1984 Bhopal disaster — 19 years earlier
- 1989 Tiananmen Square protests — 14 years earlier
- 1991 Eruption of Mount Pinatubo — 12 years earlier
- 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami — 1 year later
- 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami — 8 years later
Americas
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 20 years earlier
- 1990 Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope — 13 years earlier
- 2001 September 11 attacks — 2 years earlier
- 2003 Human genome sequenced — same year
- 2007 Apple unveils the iPhone — 4 years later
Oceania
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 11 years earlier
Alive at the time
- Nelson Mandela (aged 85)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 73)
- Ronald Reagan (aged 92)
- Edmund Hillary (aged 84)
- Jimmy Carter (aged 79)
- Fidel Castro (aged 77)
- Elizabeth II (aged 77)
- Gabriel García Márquez (aged 76)
- Mikhail Gorbachev (aged 72)
- Boris Yeltsin (aged 72)