Tangshan earthquake
A night tremor flattens an industrial city in seconds
On 28 July 1976 a night-time earthquake levelled the industrial city of Tangshan in seconds; the official death toll was about 242,000, and other estimates are higher. The government refused foreign aid. Six weeks later, Mao Zedong died.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 4 years later
Europe
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — 23 years earlier
- 1968 May 1968 in France — 8 years earlier
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 13 years later
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 13 years later
- 1990 German reunification — 14 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
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 3 years later
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 4 years later
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — 14 years later
Africa
- 1963 The Organisation of African Unity is founded — 13 years earlier
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 9 years earlier
- 1967–1970 Nigerian Civil War and Biafra — 9 years earlier
- 1974 Lucy is discovered — 2 years earlier
- 1983–1985 The Ethiopian famine — 7 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)
- Leonid Brezhnev (aged 70)
- Mother Teresa (aged 66)
- Ronald Reagan (aged 65)