Samoan independence
Samoa opens the era of Pacific decolonisation
On 1 January 1962 Western Samoa, administered by New Zealand as a UN trust territory, became the first Pacific Island nation to win independence, after decades of the non-violent Mau movement. Nauru (1968), Fiji (1970), Papua New Guinea (1975), the Solomon Islands (1978), Vanuatu (1980) and others followed.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1947–1991 Cold War — 15 years earlier
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 14 years earlier
- 1949 Founding of NATO — 13 years earlier
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 18 years later
- 1981 AIDS first described — 19 years later
Europe
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — 21 years earlier
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — 9 years earlier
- 1957 Treaty of Rome — 5 years earlier
- 1961 Berlin Wall built — 1 year earlier
- 1968 May 1968 in France — 6 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 21 years earlier
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — 20 years earlier
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — 17 years earlier
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — 5 years earlier
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — 1 year earlier
Middle East
- 1948 Founding of the State of Israel — 14 years earlier
- 1948–1949 1948 Arab–Israeli War and the Nakba — 14 years earlier
- 1953 Iranian coup against Mosaddegh — 9 years earlier
- 1978 Camp David Accords — 16 years later
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 17 years later
Africa
- 1958 Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart — 4 years earlier
- 1960 Year of Africa — 2 years earlier
- 1963 The Organisation of African Unity is founded — 1 year later
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 5 years later
- 1967–1970 Nigerian Civil War and Biafra — 5 years later
Asia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — 17 years earlier
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — 9 years earlier
- 1964 First Shinkansen high-speed railway — 2 years later
- 1966–1976 Cultural Revolution in China — 4 years later
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 13 years later
Americas
- 1960 Great Chilean earthquake — 2 years earlier
- 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis — same year
- 1969 Moon landing — 7 years later
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 8 years later
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 21 years later
Alive at the time
- Winston Churchill (aged 88)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 81)
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 73)
- Mao Zedong (aged 69)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 44)
- Martin Luther King Jr. (aged 33)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 32)
- Yuri Gagarin (aged 28)
- Harry S. Truman (aged 78)
- Anna Akhmatova (aged 73)