Smallpox declared eradicated
For the first time, humanity wipes out a disease
On 8 May 1980 the World Health Assembly declared smallpox eradicated, the first human disease ever wiped out. The WHO's global vaccination drive had been proposed by the USSR in 1958; the last natural case was found in Somalia in 1977.
Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Europe
- 1968 May 1968 in France — 12 years earlier
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 9 years later
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 9 years later
- 1990 German reunification — 10 years later
- 1991–2001 Yugoslav Wars — 11 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — 23 years earlier
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — 19 years earlier
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 5 years later
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 9 years later
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — 11 years later
Middle East
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 1 year earlier
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — same year
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — 10 years later
Africa
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 13 years earlier
- 1967–1970 Nigerian Civil War and Biafra — 13 years earlier
- 1974 Lucy is discovered — 6 years earlier
- 1983–1985 The Ethiopian famine — 3 years later
- 1994 End of apartheid in South Africa — 14 years later
Asia
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 5 years earlier
- 1976 Tangshan earthquake — 4 years earlier
- 1978 Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening-up — 2 years earlier
- 1984 Bhopal disaster — 4 years later
- 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami — 24 years later
Americas
- 1969 Moon landing — 11 years earlier
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 10 years earlier
- 1980 Eruption of Mount St. Helens — same year
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 3 years later
- 2001 September 11 attacks — 21 years later
Oceania
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 21 years earlier
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 12 years later
Alive at the time
- Nelson Mandela (aged 62)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 50)
- Jorge Luis Borges (aged 81)
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) (aged 79)
- Leonid Brezhnev (aged 74)
- Mother Teresa (aged 70)
- Ronald Reagan (aged 69)
- Richard Nixon (aged 67)
- Indira Gandhi (aged 63)
- Edmund Hillary (aged 61)