Space Shuttle Challenger disaster
A shuttle with a teacher aboard breaks up 73 seconds in
On 28 January 1986 the shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after launch, killing seven astronauts, among them teacher Christa McAuliffe, who was to give lessons from orbit. The cause was a booster O-ring that lost its elasticity in the cold.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty — 18 years earlier
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 6 years earlier
- 1981 AIDS first described — 5 years earlier
- 1997 Kyoto Protocol — 11 years later
- 2008 Global financial crisis — 22 years later
Europe
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 3 years later
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 3 years later
- 1990 German reunification — 4 years later
- 1991–2001 Yugoslav Wars — 5 years later
- 1992 Maastricht Treaty — 6 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — 25 years earlier
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 1 year earlier
- 1986 Chernobyl disaster — same year
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 3 years later
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — 5 years later
Middle East
- 1978 Camp David Accords — 8 years earlier
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 7 years earlier
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 6 years earlier
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — 4 years later
- 1993 Oslo Accords — 7 years later
Africa
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 19 years earlier
- 1974 Lucy is discovered — 12 years earlier
- 1983–1985 The Ethiopian famine — 3 years earlier
- 1994 End of apartheid in South Africa — 8 years later
- 1998–2003 Second Congo War — 12 years later
Asia
- 1966–1976 Cultural Revolution in China — 20 years earlier
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 11 years earlier
- 1984 Bhopal disaster — 2 years earlier
- 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami — 18 years later
- 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami — 25 years later
Oceania
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 6 years later
Alive at the time
- Nelson Mandela (aged 68)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 56)
- Jorge Luis Borges (aged 87)
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) (aged 85)
- Mother Teresa (aged 76)
- Ronald Reagan (aged 75)
- Richard Nixon (aged 73)
- Edmund Hillary (aged 67)
- Jimmy Carter (aged 62)
- Fidel Castro (aged 60)