Era · 1945 – present
From the Cold War and the Space Race to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the world we live in today.
Seven years of military dictatorship ended after the junta's coup in Cyprus provoked a Turkish invasion; democracy was restored under Konstantinos Karamanlis and the monarchy was abolished.
Up to about 119,000 tonnes of crude oil fouled the coasts of Cornwall and Brittany; the disaster led to new international conventions on oil pollution at sea.
North Korea held the 82 surviving crew for 11 months, releasing them on 23 December 1968; the ship itself was never returned.
The treaty entered into force in 1970, was extended indefinitely in 1995 and became the most widely joined arms control agreement in the world.
US and South Vietnamese forces retook Hue after about a month of street fighting, but much of the city was destroyed and thousands of civilians died.
The Marine base held and the siege was lifted in April 1968, but US forces dismantled and abandoned Khe Sanh in July 1968.
Between 347 and 504 unarmed civilians were killed; the massacre was covered up for over a year, and of those charged only Lieutenant William Calley was convicted.
The offensive was beaten back with very heavy communist losses, but it shattered American confidence, led Johnson to limit the bombing and not seek re-election, and opened the way to peace talks.
The reform movement was ended by a Warsaw Pact invasion; Dubcek was replaced in 1969 and two decades of hardline 'normalisation' followed.
The protest brought the women's liberation movement to national attention and gave rise to the lasting myth of feminist bra-burning.
Wage rises and university reform followed, and the Gaullists won a landslide election, but de Gaulle resigned within a year and the events reshaped French culture.
The machinists won a pay rise to 92 per cent of the men's rate, though not regrading; the strike helped push the government to pass the Equal Pay Act 1970.
