The Nurek Dam
A 300-metre dam on the Vakhsh, the tallest in the world
In 1980 a 300-metre earth-fill dam was completed on the Vakhsh river, then the tallest in the world, a title it held for over 30 years. Its power station generates most of Tajikistan's electricity, and its reservoir irrigates fields in the south.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty — 12 years earlier
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — same year
- 1981 AIDS first described — 1 year later
- 1997 Kyoto Protocol — 17 years later
Europe
- 1974 Carnation Revolution — 6 years earlier
- 1978 John Paul II, the first Polish pope — 2 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
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
- 1978 Camp David Accords — 2 years earlier
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 1 year earlier
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — same year
- 1988–1994 First Nagorno-Karabakh War — 8 years later
- 1988 Spitak earthquake — 8 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
Americas
- 1969 Moon landing — 11 years earlier
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 10 years earlier
- 1980 Eruption of Mount St. Helens — same year
- 1983 ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 3 years later
- 2001 September 11 attacks — 21 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)
- Jean-Paul Sartre (aged 75)
- Leonid Brezhnev (aged 74)
- Mother Teresa (aged 70)
- Ronald Reagan (aged 69)
- Richard Nixon (aged 67)
- Indira Gandhi (aged 63)