Eruption of Mount Pinatubo
Forecasts save thousands as the planet cools by half a degree
On 15 June 1991 came the second-largest eruption of the 20th century. Forecasts allowed tens of thousands to be evacuated, but a passing typhoon turned the ash into heavy mud that collapsed roofs. Global temperatures fell by about half a degree for two years.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 11 years earlier
- 2008 Global financial crisis — 17 years later
Europe
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 2 years earlier
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 2 years earlier
- 1990 German reunification — 1 year earlier
- 1991–2001 Yugoslav Wars — same year
- 1992 Maastricht Treaty — 1 year later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1980 Solidarity — 11 years earlier
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 6 years earlier
- 1986 Chernobyl disaster — 5 years earlier
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 2 years earlier
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — same year
Middle East
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 12 years earlier
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 11 years earlier
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — 1 year earlier
Africa
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 24 years earlier
- 1967–1970 Nigerian Civil War and Biafra — 24 years earlier
- 1974 Lucy is discovered — 17 years earlier
- 1983–1985 The Ethiopian famine — 8 years earlier
- 1994 End of apartheid in South Africa — 3 years later
Americas
- 1969 Moon landing — 22 years earlier
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 21 years earlier
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 8 years earlier
- 1990 Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope — 1 year earlier
- 2001 September 11 attacks — 10 years later
Oceania
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 1 year later
Alive at the time
- Nelson Mandela (aged 73)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 61)
- Mother Teresa (aged 81)
- Ronald Reagan (aged 80)
- Richard Nixon (aged 78)
- Edmund Hillary (aged 72)
- Jimmy Carter (aged 67)
- Fidel Castro (aged 65)
- Elizabeth II (aged 65)
- Gabriel García Márquez (aged 64)