Eruption of Mount St. Helens
A mountainside collapses in the largest landslide ever recorded
On 18 May 1980 the volcano's north flank collapsed in the largest landslide ever recorded, and a lateral blast flattened forest over 600 km². Fifty-seven people died, including volcanologist David Johnston. It became one of the most studied eruptions in the world.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — same year
Europe
- 1968 May 1968 in France — 12 years earlier
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 9 years later
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 9 years later
- 1990 German reunification — 10 years later
- 1991–2001 Yugoslav Wars — 11 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — 23 years earlier
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — 19 years earlier
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 5 years later
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 9 years later
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — 11 years later
Middle East
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 1 year earlier
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — same year
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — 10 years later
Africa
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 13 years earlier
- 1967–1970 Nigerian Civil War and Biafra — 13 years earlier
- 1974 Lucy is discovered — 6 years earlier
- 1983–1985 The Ethiopian famine — 3 years later
- 1994 End of apartheid in South Africa — 14 years later
Asia
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 5 years earlier
- 1976 Tangshan earthquake — 4 years earlier
- 1978 Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening-up — 2 years earlier
- 1984 Bhopal disaster — 4 years later
- 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami — 24 years later
Oceania
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 21 years earlier
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 12 years later
Alive at the time
- Nelson Mandela (aged 62)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 50)
- Jorge Luis Borges (aged 81)
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) (aged 79)
- Leonid Brezhnev (aged 74)
- Mother Teresa (aged 70)
- Ronald Reagan (aged 69)
- Richard Nixon (aged 67)
- Indira Gandhi (aged 63)
- Edmund Hillary (aged 61)