Spitak earthquake
Spitak and Leninakan are flattened; aid pours in from the world
On 7 December 1988 a magnitude 6.8 earthquake destroyed Spitak and much of Leninakan (now Gyumri) and Kirovakan (now Vanadzor). An estimated 25,000–50,000 died and hundreds of thousands were left homeless. The USSR accepted large-scale foreign aid for the first time in decades, and Gorbachev cut short a US visit.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty — 20 years earlier
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 8 years earlier
- 1981 AIDS first described — 7 years earlier
- 1997 Kyoto Protocol — 9 years later
- 2008 Global financial crisis — 20 years later
Europe
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 1 year later
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 1 year later
- 1990 German reunification — 2 years later
- 1991–2001 Yugoslav Wars — 3 years later
- 1992 Maastricht Treaty — 4 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 3 years earlier
- 1986 Chernobyl disaster — 2 years earlier
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 1 year later
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — 3 years later
- 1994–1996 First Chechen War — 6 years later
Africa
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 21 years earlier
- 1974 Lucy is discovered — 14 years earlier
- 1983–1985 The Ethiopian famine — 5 years earlier
- 1994 End of apartheid in South Africa — 6 years later
- 1998–2003 Second Congo War — 10 years later
Asia
- 1966–1976 Cultural Revolution in China — 22 years earlier
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 13 years earlier
- 1989 Tiananmen Square protests — 1 year later
- 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami — 16 years later
- 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami — 23 years later
Americas
- 1969 Moon landing — 19 years earlier
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 18 years earlier
- 1983 ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 5 years earlier
- 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster — 2 years earlier
- 2001 September 11 attacks — 13 years later
Oceania
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 4 years later
Alive at the time
- Nelson Mandela (aged 70)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 58)
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) (aged 87)
- Mother Teresa (aged 78)
- Ronald Reagan (aged 77)
- Richard Nixon (aged 75)
- Edmund Hillary (aged 69)
- Jimmy Carter (aged 64)
- Fidel Castro (aged 62)
- Elizabeth II (aged 62)