Soweto uprising
Schoolchildren march against lessons in Afrikaans
On 16 June 1976 thousands of Black schoolchildren in Soweto marched against compulsory teaching in Afrikaans, seen as the language of the oppressor. Police opened fire; estimates of the dead in the wave of protests range from 176 to 700. South Africa now marks 16 June as Youth Day.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty — 8 years earlier
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 4 years later
- 1981 AIDS first described — 5 years later
- 1997 Kyoto Protocol — 21 years later
Europe
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — 23 years earlier
- 1974 Carnation Revolution — 2 years earlier
- 1978 John Paul II, the first Polish pope — 2 years later
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 13 years later
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 13 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — 19 years earlier
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — 15 years earlier
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 9 years later
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 13 years later
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — 15 years later
Middle East
- 1960 Founding of OPEC — 16 years earlier
- 1978 Camp David Accords — 2 years later
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 3 years later
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 4 years later
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — 14 years later
Asia
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — 23 years earlier
- 1966–1976 Cultural Revolution in China — 10 years earlier
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 1 year earlier
- 1976 Tangshan earthquake — same year
- 1978 Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening-up — 2 years later
Americas
- 1969 Moon landing — 7 years earlier
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 6 years earlier
- 1973 Chilean coup d'état — 3 years earlier
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 7 years later
- 2001 September 11 attacks — 25 years later
Oceania
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 22 years earlier
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 17 years earlier
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 16 years later
Alive at the time
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 87)
- Mao Zedong (aged 83)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 58)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 46)
- Golda Meir (aged 78)
- Jorge Luis Borges (aged 77)
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) (aged 75)
- Jean-Paul Sartre (aged 71)
- Leonid Brezhnev (aged 70)
- Mother Teresa (aged 66)