Tokyo Olympics
Asia's first Games show the world a renewed Japan
In October 1964 Tokyo hosted the first Olympic Games held in Asia. The Games, the first relayed live by satellite, showcased a rebuilt Japan; the flame was lit by a young man born in Hiroshima on the day of the atomic bombing.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Did you know
In 1868 Japan was still ruled by a shogun and samurai carried swords. Less than a century later Tokyo hosted the Olympics and launched the world's first high-speed train.
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1939–1945 World War II — 25 years earlier
- 1947–1991 Cold War — 17 years earlier
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 16 years earlier
- 1949 Founding of NATO — 15 years earlier
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 16 years later
Europe
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — 23 years earlier
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — 11 years earlier
- 1961 Berlin Wall built — 3 years earlier
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 25 years later
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 25 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — 22 years earlier
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — 19 years earlier
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — 7 years earlier
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — 3 years earlier
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 21 years later
Middle East
- 1948 Founding of the State of Israel — 16 years earlier
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 15 years later
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 16 years later
Africa
- 1958 Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart — 6 years earlier
- 1960 Year of Africa — 4 years earlier
- 1963 The Organisation of African Unity is founded — 1 year earlier
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 3 years later
- 1967–1970 Nigerian Civil War and Biafra — 3 years later
Americas
- 1960 Great Chilean earthquake — 4 years earlier
- 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis — 2 years earlier
- 1969 Moon landing — 5 years later
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 6 years later
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 19 years later
Oceania
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — 23 years earlier
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — 22 years earlier
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 10 years earlier
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 5 years earlier
Alive at the time
- Winston Churchill (aged 90)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 83)
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 75)
- Mao Zedong (aged 71)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 46)
- Martin Luther King Jr. (aged 35)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 34)
- Yuri Gagarin (aged 30)
- Harry S. Truman (aged 80)
- Anna Akhmatova (aged 75)