Sinking of the submarine Kursk
A nuclear submarine sinks on exercises with all hands
On 12 August 2000, during exercises in the Barents Sea, a torpedo explosion wrecked the bow of the nuclear submarine Kursk. All 118 sailors died, some after surviving for hours in a stern compartment. The slow official response and the initial refusal of foreign help caused public outrage in Russia.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 20 years earlier
- 1981 AIDS first described — 19 years earlier
- 1997 Kyoto Protocol — 3 years earlier
- 2008 Global financial crisis — 8 years later
Europe
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 11 years earlier
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 11 years earlier
- 1991–2001 Yugoslav Wars — 9 years earlier
- 1992 Maastricht Treaty — 8 years earlier
- 2002 Euro notes and coins — 2 years later
Middle East
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 21 years earlier
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 20 years earlier
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — 10 years earlier
- 1993 Oslo Accords — 7 years earlier
- 2011–2024 Syrian civil war — 11 years later
Africa
- 1983–1985 The Ethiopian famine — 17 years earlier
- 1994 End of apartheid in South Africa — 6 years earlier
- 1998–2003 Second Congo War — 2 years earlier
- 2011 Independence of South Sudan — 11 years later
Asia
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 25 years earlier
- 2001–2021 US war in Afghanistan — 1 year later
- 2001 China joins the WTO — 1 year later
- 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami — 4 years later
- 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami — 11 years later
Americas
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 17 years earlier
- 1990 Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope — 10 years earlier
- 2001 September 11 attacks — 1 year later
- 2003 Human genome sequenced — 3 years later
- 2007 Apple unveils the iPhone — 7 years later
Oceania
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 8 years earlier
Alive at the time
- Nelson Mandela (aged 82)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 70)
- Ronald Reagan (aged 89)
- Edmund Hillary (aged 81)
- Jimmy Carter (aged 76)
- Fidel Castro (aged 74)
- Elizabeth II (aged 74)
- Gabriel García Márquez (aged 73)
- Mikhail Gorbachev (aged 69)
- Boris Yeltsin (aged 69)