Killing of Osama bin Laden
US special forces find the 9/11 mastermind in Pakistan
In the early hours of 2 May 2011 two dozen US Navy SEALs flew in two helicopters from near Jalalabad to Abbottabad and killed Osama bin Laden, hunted since 2001. Operation Neptune Spear took about 40 minutes; one helicopter crashed without casualties, and bin Laden's body was buried in the Arabian Sea.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1997 Kyoto Protocol — 14 years earlier
- 2008 Global financial crisis — 3 years earlier
Europe
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 22 years earlier
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 22 years earlier
- 2002 Euro notes and coins — 9 years earlier
- 2010 Eurozone debt crisis — 1 year earlier
- 2012 Discovery of the Higgs boson — 1 year later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 22 years earlier
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — 20 years earlier
- 1994–1996 First Chechen War — 17 years earlier
- 1999–2009 Second Chechen War — 12 years earlier
- 2004 Beslan school siege — 7 years earlier
Middle East
- 1992–1993 War in Abkhazia — 19 years earlier
- 1993 Oslo Accords — 18 years earlier
- 2003 Rose Revolution — 8 years earlier
- 2008 Russo-Georgian War — 3 years earlier
- 2011–2024 Syrian civil war — same year
Africa
- 1994 End of apartheid in South Africa — 17 years earlier
- 1998–2003 Second Congo War — 13 years earlier
- 2011 Independence of South Sudan — same year
Americas
- 1990 Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope — 21 years earlier
- 2001 September 11 attacks — 10 years earlier
- 2003 Human genome sequenced — 8 years earlier
- 2007 Apple unveils the iPhone — 4 years earlier
- 2010 Haiti earthquake — 1 year earlier
Oceania
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 19 years earlier
Alive at the time
- Nelson Mandela (aged 93)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 81)
- Henry Kissinger (aged 88)
- Jimmy Carter (aged 87)
- Margaret Thatcher (aged 86)
- Fidel Castro (aged 85)
- Elizabeth II (aged 85)
- Gabriel García Márquez (aged 84)
- Mikhail Gorbachev (aged 80)
- Pelé (aged 71)