D-Day: Normandy landings
The largest seaborne invasion opens a second front
On 6 June 1944 American, British, Canadian and other Allied troops landed on the Normandy coast in the largest seaborne invasion in history. The Second Front in Europe was opened, and the liberation of France soon followed.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1939–1945 World War II — 5 years earlier
- 1945 Founding of the United Nations — 1 year later
- 1947–1991 Cold War — 3 years later
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 4 years later
- 1949 Founding of NATO — 5 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — 8 years earlier
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 3 years earlier
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — 2 years earlier
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — 1 year later
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — 13 years later
Middle East
- 1932 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia proclaimed — 12 years earlier
- 1948 Founding of the State of Israel — 4 years later
Africa
- 1935–1937 Italy invades Ethiopia — 9 years earlier
- 1956 The Suez Crisis — 12 years later
- 1958 Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart — 14 years later
- 1960 Year of Africa — 16 years later
- 1963 The Organisation of African Unity is founded — 19 years later
Asia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — 1 year later
- 1945 Indonesia proclaims independence — 1 year later
- 1947 Independence and Partition of India — 3 years later
- 1949 Founding of the People's Republic of China — 5 years later
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — 9 years later
Americas
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — 15 years earlier
- 1945 ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer — 1 year later
- 1947 Invention of the transistor — 3 years later
- 1955 Salk polio vaccine declared safe — 11 years later
- 1969 Moon landing — 25 years later
Oceania
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 8 years earlier
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — 3 years earlier
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — 2 years earlier
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 10 years later
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 15 years later
Alive at the time
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 75)
- Winston Churchill (aged 70)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 66)
- Albert Einstein (aged 65)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 63)
- Adolf Hitler (aged 55)
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 55)
- Mao Zedong (aged 51)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 26)
- Martin Luther King Jr. (aged 15)