The fall of the Tree of Ténéré
A truck hits the only tree for hundreds of kilometres
This lone acacia in the Sahara was a landmark for caravans, marked even on 1:4,000,000 maps. It stood for about 300 years until 1973, when it was knocked down by a truck whose driver was reportedly drunk. A metal sculpture now stands in its place.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 25 years earlier
- 1949 Founding of NATO — 24 years earlier
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 7 years later
- 1981 AIDS first described — 8 years later
Europe
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — 20 years earlier
- 1961 Berlin Wall built — 12 years earlier
- 1968 May 1968 in France — 5 years earlier
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 16 years later
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 16 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — 16 years earlier
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — 12 years earlier
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 12 years later
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 16 years later
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — 18 years later
Middle East
- 1953 Iranian coup against Mosaddegh — 20 years earlier
- 1978 Camp David Accords — 5 years later
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 6 years later
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 7 years later
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — 17 years later
Asia
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — 20 years earlier
- 1966–1976 Cultural Revolution in China — 7 years earlier
- 1970 Bhola cyclone — 3 years earlier
- 1971–1971 Bangladesh Liberation War — 2 years earlier
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 2 years later
Americas
- 1969 Moon landing — 4 years earlier
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 3 years earlier
- 1973 Chilean coup d'état — same year
- 1980 Eruption of Mount St. Helens — 7 years later
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 10 years later
Oceania
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 19 years earlier
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 14 years earlier
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 19 years later
Alive at the time
- Pablo Picasso (aged 92)
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 84)
- Mao Zedong (aged 80)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 55)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 43)
- Haile Selassie (aged 81)
- Golda Meir (aged 75)
- Jorge Luis Borges (aged 74)
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) (aged 72)
- Dmitri Shostakovich (aged 67)