Red Army Faction
A journalist helps free Andreas Baader, and the RAF is born
On 14 May 1970 the journalist Ulrike Meinhof and accomplices freed the jailed Andreas Baader in West Berlin, giving birth to the far-left Red Army Faction. Over almost 30 years it carried out bombings and kidnappings and was blamed for 34 deaths; on 20 April 1998 it announced its dissolution in a letter faxed to Reuters.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1947–1991 Cold War — 23 years earlier
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 22 years earlier
- 1949 Founding of NATO — 21 years earlier
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 10 years later
- 1981 AIDS first described — 11 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — 13 years earlier
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — 9 years earlier
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 15 years later
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 19 years later
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — 21 years later
Middle East
- 1958 14 July Revolution in Iraq — 12 years earlier
- 1960 Founding of OPEC — 10 years earlier
- 1978 Camp David Accords — 8 years later
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 9 years later
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 10 years later
Africa
- 1960 Year of Africa — 10 years earlier
- 1963 The Organisation of African Unity is founded — 7 years earlier
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 3 years earlier
- 1967–1970 Nigerian Civil War and Biafra — 3 years earlier
- 1974 Lucy is discovered — 4 years later
Asia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — 25 years earlier
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — 17 years earlier
- 1966–1976 Cultural Revolution in China — 4 years earlier
- 1970 Bhola cyclone — same year
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 5 years later
Americas
- 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis — 8 years earlier
- 1969 Moon landing — 1 year earlier
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — same year
- 1973 Chilean coup d'état — 3 years later
- 1983 ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 13 years later
Oceania
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 16 years earlier
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 11 years earlier
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 22 years later
Alive at the time
- Pablo Picasso (aged 89)
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 81)
- Mao Zedong (aged 77)
- Georgy Zhukov (aged 74)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 52)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 40)
- Bertrand Russell (aged 98)
- Harry S. Truman (aged 86)
- Charles de Gaulle (aged 80)
- Haile Selassie (aged 78)