Warsaw Pact
The Eastern Bloc forms a military alliance to counter NATO
On 14 May 1955 the USSR and the socialist states of Eastern Europe signed a treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance in Warsaw. The military alliance stood opposite NATO until it was dissolved in 1991.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1939–1945 World War II — 16 years earlier
- 1947–1991 Cold War — 8 years earlier
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 7 years earlier
- 1949 Founding of NATO — 6 years earlier
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 25 years later
Europe
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — 22 years earlier
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — 19 years earlier
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — 14 years earlier
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — 2 years earlier
- 1957 Treaty of Rome — 2 years later
Middle East
- 1932 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia proclaimed — 23 years earlier
- 1948 Founding of the State of Israel — 7 years earlier
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 24 years later
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 25 years later
Africa
- 1956 The Suez Crisis — 1 year later
- 1958 Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart — 3 years later
- 1960 Year of Africa — 5 years later
- 1963 The Organisation of African Unity is founded — 8 years later
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 12 years later
Asia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — 10 years earlier
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — 2 years earlier
- 1955–1975 Vietnam War — same year
- 1955 Bandung Conference — same year
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 20 years later
Americas
- 1955 Salk polio vaccine declared safe — same year
- 1959 Cuban Revolution — 4 years later
- 1960 Great Chilean earthquake — 5 years later
- 1969 Moon landing — 14 years later
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 15 years later
Oceania
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 19 years earlier
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — 14 years earlier
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — 13 years earlier
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 1 year earlier
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 4 years later
Alive at the time
- Winston Churchill (aged 81)
- Albert Einstein (aged 76)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 74)
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 66)
- Mao Zedong (aged 62)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 37)
- Martin Luther King Jr. (aged 26)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 25)
- Yuri Gagarin (aged 21)
- Harry S. Truman (aged 71)