Founding of the United Nations
Nations create a body to prevent future wars
On 26 June 1945 the Charter of the United Nations was signed at the San Francisco conference. The UN, formally founded on 24 October 1945, was meant to prevent future wars, with the USSR, US, UK, France and China as permanent Security Council members.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Did you know
Fifteen years after the Battle of Kadesh, Egypt and the Hittites signed one of the oldest known peace treaties. A copy hangs at UN headquarters.
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — 17 years earlier
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — 12 years earlier
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — 9 years earlier
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — 4 years earlier
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — 8 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — 9 years earlier
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 4 years earlier
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — 3 years earlier
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — same year
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — 12 years later
Middle East
- 1932 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia proclaimed — 13 years earlier
- 1948 Founding of the State of Israel — 3 years later
Africa
- 1935–1937 Italy invades Ethiopia — 10 years earlier
- 1956 The Suez Crisis — 11 years later
- 1958 Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart — 13 years later
- 1960 Year of Africa — 15 years later
- 1963 The Organisation of African Unity is founded — 18 years later
Asia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — same year
- 1945 Indonesia proclaims independence — same year
- 1947 Independence and Partition of India — 2 years later
- 1949 Founding of the People's Republic of China — 4 years later
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — 8 years later
Americas
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — 16 years earlier
- 1945 ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer — same year
- 1947 Invention of the transistor — 2 years later
- 1969 Moon landing — 24 years later
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 25 years later
Oceania
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 9 years earlier
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — 4 years earlier
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — 3 years earlier
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 9 years later
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 14 years later
Alive at the time
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 76)
- Winston Churchill (aged 71)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 67)
- Albert Einstein (aged 66)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 64)
- Adolf Hitler (aged 56)
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 56)
- Mao Zedong (aged 52)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 27)
- Martin Luther King Jr. (aged 16)