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.
The uprising brought the Palestinian question back to world attention, led the PLO to accept a two-state framework and helped open the way to the Madrid Conference and the Oslo Accords.
ACT UP's direct action and research advocacy helped speed up drug approval, opened clinical trials to patients and changed how medical research involved the people it affected.
Governments agreed to cut and later eliminate ozone-depleting chemicals; the treaty became the first to be ratified by every UN member state and the ozone layer is now slowly recovering.
All Soviet combat troops left Afghanistan by 15 February 1989; the war between the Kabul government and the mujahideen continued.
An estimated 3,200 to 5,000 civilians were killed and thousands injured; the attack became the deadliest chemical weapons attack on civilians in history and was later ruled an act of genocide by an Iraqi court.
The protests were suppressed with thousands killed; a military coup on 18 September 1988 created the SLORC junta, and Aung San Suu Kyi emerged as leader of the democracy movement.
The concert brought the campaign to free Nelson Mandela to a global television audience and strengthened international pressure on the apartheid government.
The IPCC became the world's main body for assessing climate change science, producing six assessment cycles and sharing the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
The platform was destroyed and 167 men died; the Cullen inquiry led to a new safety-case regime for offshore installations in the United Kingdom.
All 259 people aboard and 11 Lockerbie residents were killed; a Libyan intelligence officer was convicted in 2001 and Libya later accepted responsibility and paid compensation.
East Germans crossed freely into West Berlin; the Wall was dismantled from 1990 and Germany was reunified on 3 October 1990.
The Chinese government declared martial law and used the army to end the protests on 3-4 June 1989, killing hundreds or possibly thousands of people.
