Gladio revealed
Italy's prime minister admits to a secret NATO network

On 24 October 1990 Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti told the Chamber of Deputies about Gladio, a network set up after World War II with the CIA and NATO to wage guerrilla war in case of a Soviet invasion. He gave a parliamentary commission a list of 622 members and reported 127 arms caches; similar networks surfaced across Western Europe.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty — 22 years earlier
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 10 years earlier
- 1981 AIDS first described — 9 years earlier
- 1997 Kyoto Protocol — 7 years later
- 2008 Global financial crisis — 18 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 5 years earlier
- 1986 Chernobyl disaster — 4 years earlier
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 1 year earlier
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — 1 year later
- 1993 1993 Russian constitutional crisis — 3 years later
Middle East
- 1988–1994 First Nagorno-Karabakh War — 2 years earlier
- 1988 Spitak earthquake — 2 years earlier
- 1989 9 April tragedy in Tbilisi — 1 year earlier
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — same year
- 1990 Black January in Baku — same year
Africa
- 1974 Lucy is discovered — 16 years earlier
- 1983–1985 The Ethiopian famine — 7 years earlier
- 1994 End of apartheid in South Africa — 4 years later
- 1998–2003 Second Congo War — 8 years later
- 2011 Independence of South Sudan — 21 years later
Asia
- 1966–1976 Cultural Revolution in China — 24 years earlier
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 15 years earlier
- 1989 Tiananmen Square protests — 1 year earlier
- 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami — 14 years later
- 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami — 21 years later
Americas
- 1969 Moon landing — 21 years earlier
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 20 years earlier
- 1983 ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 7 years earlier
- 1990 Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope — same year
- 2001 September 11 attacks — 11 years later
Oceania
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 2 years later
Alive at the time
- Nelson Mandela (aged 72)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 60)
- Mother Teresa (aged 80)
- Ronald Reagan (aged 79)
- Richard Nixon (aged 77)
- Edmund Hillary (aged 71)
- Henry Kissinger (aged 67)
- Jimmy Carter (aged 66)
- Margaret Thatcher (aged 65)
- Fidel Castro (aged 64)