The Rubik's Cube is invented
Its inventor needed a month to solve his own puzzle
In 1974 Hungarian architecture lecturer Ernő Rubik built his 'Magic Cube' as a teaching aid. After scrambling it for the first time, he needed about a month to solve it himself. Some 500 million have since been sold, making it the best-selling toy in the world.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1949 Founding of NATO — 25 years earlier
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 6 years later
- 1981 AIDS first described — 7 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — 17 years earlier
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — 13 years earlier
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 11 years later
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 15 years later
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — 17 years later
Middle East
- 1978 Camp David Accords — 4 years later
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 5 years later
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 6 years later
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — 16 years later
- 1993 Oslo Accords — 19 years later
Africa
- 1963 The Organisation of African Unity is founded — 11 years earlier
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 7 years earlier
- 1967–1970 Nigerian Civil War and Biafra — 7 years earlier
- 1974 Lucy is discovered — same year
- 1983–1985 The Ethiopian famine — 9 years later
Asia
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — 21 years earlier
- 1966–1976 Cultural Revolution in China — 8 years earlier
- 1971–1971 Bangladesh Liberation War — 3 years earlier
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 1 year later
- 1976 Tangshan earthquake — 2 years later
Americas
- 1969 Moon landing — 5 years earlier
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 4 years earlier
- 1973 Chilean coup d'état — 1 year earlier
- 1980 Eruption of Mount St. Helens — 6 years later
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 9 years later
Oceania
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 20 years earlier
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 15 years earlier
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 18 years later
Alive at the time
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 85)
- Mao Zedong (aged 81)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 56)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 44)
- Haile Selassie (aged 82)
- Golda Meir (aged 76)
- Jorge Luis Borges (aged 75)
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) (aged 73)
- Dmitri Shostakovich (aged 68)
- Leonid Brezhnev (aged 68)