Syrian civil war
Peaceful protests turn into a war drawing in world powers
In March 2011 protests broke out in Daraa; Bashar al-Assad's government met them with force, and by 2012 the confrontation had become a war. Iran, Hezbollah, Russia, Turkey, the US and its allies intervened, and the Islamic State rose amid the chaos. Estimates of the dead range from about 500,000 to over 600,000, and about half the pre-war population fled their homes. Assad's government fell in December 2024.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 2008 Global financial crisis — 3 years earlier
Europe
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 22 years earlier
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 22 years earlier
- 1992 Maastricht Treaty — 19 years earlier
- 2002 Euro notes and coins — 9 years earlier
- 2012 Discovery of the Higgs boson — 1 year later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1986 Chernobyl disaster — 25 years earlier
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 22 years earlier
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — 20 years earlier
Africa
- 1994 End of apartheid in South Africa — 17 years earlier
- 1998–2003 Second Congo War — 13 years earlier
Asia
- 1998 Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests — 13 years earlier
- 2001–2021 US war in Afghanistan — 10 years earlier
- 2001 China joins the WTO — 10 years earlier
- 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami — 7 years earlier
- 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami — same year
Americas
- 1990 Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope — 21 years earlier
- 2001 September 11 attacks — 10 years earlier
- 2003 Human genome sequenced — 8 years earlier
- 2007 Apple unveils the iPhone — 4 years earlier
- 2010 Haiti earthquake — 1 year earlier
Oceania
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 19 years earlier
Alive at the time
- Nelson Mandela (aged 93)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 81)
- Jimmy Carter (aged 87)
- Fidel Castro (aged 85)
- Elizabeth II (aged 85)
- Gabriel García Márquez (aged 84)
- Mikhail Gorbachev (aged 80)
- Pelé (aged 71)
- George H. W. Bush (aged 87)
- Chinua Achebe (aged 81)