Solidarity
A shipyard strike sparks the movement that ends Polish communism
In August 1980 a strike at the Gdańsk Shipyard led by Lech Wałęsa produced Solidarity, the first independent trade union in the Soviet bloc. With some 10 million members, it was central to the fall of communism in Poland in 1989.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — same year
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
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)