The Stasi is founded
East Germany creates a secret police with an army of informers
On 8 February 1950 East Germany created the Ministry for State Security, the Stasi, run from 1957 to 1989 by Erich Mielke. By 1989 it had 91,015 full-time staff and 173,081 informants inside the country; after reunification, citizens could read their own files on request.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1939–1945 World War II — 11 years earlier
- 1945 Founding of the United Nations — 5 years earlier
- 1947–1991 Cold War — 3 years earlier
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 2 years earlier
- 1949 Founding of NATO — 1 year earlier
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 9 years earlier
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — 8 years earlier
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — 5 years earlier
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — 7 years later
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — 11 years later
Middle East
- 1941 Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran — 9 years earlier
- 1948 Founding of the State of Israel — 2 years earlier
- 1948–1949 1948 Arab–Israeli War and the Nakba — 2 years earlier
- 1953 Iranian coup against Mosaddegh — 3 years later
- 1958 14 July Revolution in Iraq — 8 years later
Africa
- 1948 Apartheid begins in South Africa — 2 years earlier
- 1952 Egyptian revolution of 1952 — 2 years later
- 1956 The Suez Crisis — 6 years later
- 1958 Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart — 8 years later
- 1960 Year of Africa — 10 years later
Asia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — 5 years earlier
- 1950–1953 Korean War — same year
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — 3 years later
- 1966–1976 Cultural Revolution in China — 16 years later
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 25 years later
Americas
- 1929 Wall Street Crash — 21 years earlier
- 1945 ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer — 5 years earlier
- 1947 Invention of the transistor — 3 years earlier
- 1969 Moon landing — 19 years later
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 20 years later
Oceania
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 14 years earlier
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — 9 years earlier
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — 8 years earlier
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 4 years later
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 9 years later
Alive at the time
- Winston Churchill (aged 76)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 72)
- Albert Einstein (aged 71)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 69)
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 61)
- Mao Zedong (aged 57)
- Georgy Zhukov (aged 54)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 32)
- Martin Luther King Jr. (aged 21)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 20)