WELTEREIGNISSE

The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the No. 4 reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the city of Pripyat in the north of the Ukrainian SSR in the Soviet Union.

The September 11 attacks, known as 9/11, were a series of four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks. The hijackers successfully crashed the first two airliners into the towers of the World Trade Center, and the third plane into the Pentagon. The fourth plane crashed down outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania following a passenger revolt. 

The 7 July 2005 London bombings, referred to as 7/7, were a series of four coordinated suicide attacks carried out by Islamist terrorists in London targeting commuters travelling on the city's public transport system during the morning rush hour.

The Covid-19 pandemic affected millions of people and killed hundreds of thousands, promoting an unprecedented global health crisis. The virus forced businesses and schools to close, and disrupted daily life around the world.

The global pandemic of HIV/AIDS (human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) began in 1981, and is an ongoing worldwide public health issue. According to the World Health Organization , as of 2021, HIV/AIDS has killed approximately 36.3 million people, and approximately 37.7 million people are infected with HIV globally.

World War I or The First World War, often abbreviated as WWI or WW1, began on the 28th of July, 1914 and ended on the 11th of November, 1918. Referred to as the "Great War", it included much of Europe, Russia, the United States and Turkey, with fighting also expanding into the Middle East, Africa and parts of Asia.

World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers.

The United States detonated two nuclear weapons over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in armed conflict.

In the early hours of 31 August 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales, died from the injuries she sustained in a car crash in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel in Paris, France. Dodi Fayed and Henri Paul, the driver of the Mercedes-Benz, were pronounced dead at the scene. Their bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, was seriously injured, but survived the crash.

The financial crisis of 2007-2008, was a severe worldwide economic crisis. It was the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression (1929). Predatory lending targeting low-income homebuyers, excessive risk-taking by global financial institutions, and the bursting of the US housing bubble culminated in a "perfect storm".

The Arab Spring was a series of anti-government protests, uprisings, and armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began in response to corruption and economic stagnation and was first started in Tunisia.

On 22 March 2017, a terrorist attack took place outside the Palace of Westminster in London. Khalid Masood drove a car into pedestrians on the pavement along the south side of Westminster Bridge injuring more than 50 people, four of them fatally.

On 22 May 2017, an Islamist extremist suicide bomber detonated a shrapnel-laden homemade bomb as people were leaving the Manchester Arena following a concert by American singer Ariana Grande. Twenty-three people died, including the attacker, and 1,017 were injured, many of them children.

On 3 June 2017, a terrorist vehicle-ramming and stabbing took place in London, England. A van was deliberately driven into pedestrians on London Bridge, and then crashed on Borough High Street. The van's three occupants then ran to the nearby Borough Market area and began stabbing people. The Islamic State (ISIS) claimed responsibility for the attack.

On 15 September 2017, an explosion occurred on a District Line train at Parsons Green Underground station, London, England. Thirty people were treated in hospital, mostly for burn injuries, by a botched, crude "bucket bomb" with a timer containing the explosive chemical TATP.

The Finsbury Park attack was a terror-attack in Finsbury Park, London, England, on 19 June 2017. A van was driven into pedestrians in Finsbury Park, London, by Darren Osborne, causing one death and injuring at least nine people. This occurred near the Muslim Welfare House, close to the Finsbury Park Mosque.

On 14 August 2018, three people were injured when a silver Ford Fiesta hit them near the Palace of Westminster, London, England. The Metropolitan Police responded within seconds and arrested the driver, Salih Khater, without further incident. Khater was subsequently found guilty of two counts of attempted murder and sentenced to life in prison.

On 29 November 2019, five people were stabbed, two fatally, in Central London. The attacker, Briton Usman Khan, had been released from prison in 2018 on licence after serving a sentence for terrorist offences.

Two consecutive mass shootings occurred at mosques in a terrorist attack in Christchurch, New Zealand, during Friday Prayer on 15 March 2019. The attack began at the Al Noor Mosque in the suburb of Riccarton and continued at the Linwood Islamic Centre.

Shortly after 19:00 on 21 December 1988, while Pan Am Flight 103 was in flight over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, it was destroyed by a bomb that had been planted on board, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew in what became known as the Lockerbie bombing.

The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe.

John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated on Friday, November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza. He was fatally shot from a nearby building by Lee Harvey Oswald.

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression between 1929 and 1939 that began after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagion began around September 4, 1929, and on Black Tuesday, October 29th, the stock market crashed.

A major earthquake occurred in Christchurch, New Zealand, on Tuesday 22 February 2011. It caused widespread damage, killing 185 people

On 9 December 2019 Whakaari/White Island, an active stratovolcano island in New Zealand's northeastern Bay of Plenty region erupted. Twenty-two people died, and a further 25 suffered serious injury.

The 2019–20 Australian bushfire season (Black Summer) was a period of bushfires in many parts of Australia, which, due to its unusual intensity, size, duration, and uncontrollable dimension, is considered a megafire.

On 7 January 2015, two French Muslim brothers, Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, forced their way into the offices of the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Armed with rifles and other weapons, they killed 12 people and injured 11 others.

On 15 April 2019, a fire broke out beneath the roof of the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris. By the time the structure fire was extinguished, the building's spire had collapsed, most of its roof had been destroyed, and its upper walls were severely damaged.

On the evening of 14 July 2016, a 19-tonne cargo truck was deliberately driven into crowds of people celebrating Bastille Day on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France, resulting in the deaths of 86 people and the injury of 458 others.

The November 2015 Paris attacks were a series of coordinated Islamist terrorist attacks that took place on Friday 13 November 2015. Three suicide bombers struck outside the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, during an international football match. Another group of attackers then fired on crowded cafés and restaurants in Paris.

The Falklands War (Spanish: Guerra de las Malvinas) was a ten-week undeclared war between Argentina and the United Kingdom in 1982 over the Falkland Islands and its territorial dependency, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.

Bloody Friday is the name given to the bombings by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Belfast, Northern Ireland on 21 July 1972, during the Troubles. At least twenty bombs exploded in the space of eighty minutes, most within a half hour period.

The 1972 Munich massacre was an attack during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September. A group of eight Black September members took hostage nine Israeli Olympic team members and one West German police officer.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a two-week (October 16–28, 1962) confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union over Soviet nuclear missiles deployed in Cuba. American President John F. Kennedy issued a public warning on October 22 that U.S. armed forces were prepared to invade Cuba if the Soviet Union did not remove the missiles.

Space Shuttle Columbia disaster was the destruction of the Space Shuttle Columbia and the deaths of its seven crew members when the spacecraft disintegrated during reentry into the Earth's atmosphere following a malfunction in its left wing.

The Reichstag fire was a 1933 fire at the Reichstag building in Berlin. The fire was used as an excuse by the Nazi Party to suspend civil liberties and to assume emergency powers. The fire was started by a Dutch Communist, Marinus van der Lubbe.

The Sergei and Yulia Skripal poisoning occurred on 4 March 2018 in Salisbury, Wiltshire, England, when Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer who spied for the UK, and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with a nerve agent. The UK accused the Russian government of being behind the attack, an accusation that Russia denied.

Nikolai Glushkov was a Russian businessman and former deputy director of Aeroflot. He was convicted of embezzlement in 1999 and sentenced to five years in prison, but was later pardoned. Glushkov was found dead in his London home in 2018, and a coroner ruled his death a homicide.

The Murder of Lee Rigby was an act of terrorism and murder that took place in London in 2013. A British soldier, Lee Rigby, was attacked and killed by two men with knives and a cleaver. The attackers, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, were motivated by Islamic extremism and believed that Rigby was a legitimate target because he was a soldier.

The Crimean War was a conflict fought from October 1853 to February 1856 in which the Russian Empire lost to an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, Britain and Sardinia. The immediate cause of the war was Russia's expansion into Ottoman territory in the Balkans and the consequent threat to British and French interests in the Mediterranean.

The 1950s are often called the Golden Age of America because there was a major upswing in the economy. Americans became more prosperous than ever, and enjoyed a great deal of material wealth. In particular, this was seen with utilities becoming more automated and food processing machines making life easier for "housewives" .

Amelia Earhart (1897–c. 1937) was an American aviator, who became well-known in 1928 when, as a member of a three-person crew, she became the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean in an aircraft. In 1932 she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.

On November 4, 2008, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois defeated Senator John McCain of Arizona to become the 44th U.S. president, and the first African American elected to the White House. He was inaugurated on January 20th 2009

Isabel Martínez de Perón, born María Estela Martínez Cartas, also known as Isabelita, is an Argentine politician who served as President of Argentina from 1974 to 1976. She was the first female Republican Head of State in the world, although other nations had female regnant monarchs or female heads of government.

The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc, which began following World War II.

In an evening televised address on August 8, 1974, President Richard M. Nixon announced his intention to become the first president in American history to resign. With impeachment proceedings underway against him for his involvement in the Watergate affair, Nixon finally bowed to pressure from the public and Congress to leave the White House.

The RMS Titanic sank in the early morning hours of 15 April 1912 four days into her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. The largest ocean liner in service at the time, Titanic had an estimated 2,224 people on board when she struck an iceberg at around 23:40 on Sunday, 14 April 1912.

The capture of Saddam Hussein was an American military operation conducted on 13 December 2003 in the town of ad-Dawr, Iraq, near Tikrit, that led to the capture of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. The operation was named after the 1984 film Red Dawn.

The history of the Chinese Communist Party, began with its establishment in July 1, 1921. A study group led by Peking University professors Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao to discuss Marxism-Leninism, led to intellectuals officially founding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

In late 2001, the United States and its close allies invaded Afghanistan and toppled the Taliban government. The invasion's stated aims were to dismantle al-Qaeda, which had executed the September 11 attacks, and to deny it a safe base of operations in Afghanistan by removing the Taliban government from power.

The EEC was created in 1957 by the Treaty of Rome, which was signed by Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany. The United Kingdom, Denmark, and Ireland joined in 1973, followed by Greece in 1981 and Portugal and Spain in 1986.

The Treaty on European Union, commonly known as the Maastricht Treaty, is the foundation treaty of the European Union (EU). Concluded in 1992 between the then-twelve member states of the European Communities, it announced "a new stage in the process of European integration" for the eventual introduction of a single currency, and common foreign policies.

Humans have been venturing into space for over 60 years. The era of space travel officially began October 4, 1957, when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.), or Soviet Union, launched Sputnik. In 1969, on Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the moon's surface.

The first-wave feminism of the 19th and early 20th centuries focused on women’s legal rights, especially the right to vote (suffrage). The second-wave in 1960s and 70s the women’s rights movement touched on every area of women’s experience—including politics, work, the family, and sexuality.

Brexit (British Exit) was the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union, at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020

The civil rights movement was a struggle for social justice that took place mainly during the 1950s and 1960s for Black Americans to gain equal rights under the law in the United States.

Black Lives Matter is a decentralized political and social movement that seeks to highlight racism, discrimination, and inequality experienced by black people. When its supporters come together, they do so primarily to protest incidents of police brutality and racially motivated violence against black people.

The apartheid system in South Africa was ended through a series of negotiations between 1990 and 1993 and through unilateral steps by the de Klerk government and Nelson Mandela.

The Continental Congress declared that the thirteen American colonies were no longer subject (and subordinate) to the monarch of Britain, King George III, and were now united, free, and independent states. The Congress had voted to declare independence two days earlier, on July 2, but it was not declared until July 4.

Margaret Thatcher, leader of the Conservative Party, becomes Britain's first female prime minister on May 4, 1979.

Kamala Harris was sworn into office as the 49th vice president of the US on January 20th 2021, the first woman to hold the office in the nation’s history, as well as the first Black woman and first woman of South Asian descent to hold the title.

The application of marriage law equally to same-sex and opposite-sex couples (called marriage equality) has varied by jurisdiction, and has come about through legislative change to marriage law, court rulings based on constitutional guarantees of equality, recognition that same-sex marriage is allowed by existing marriage law, and by direct popular vote.

The Algerian War, also known as the Algerian Revolution or the Algerian War of Independence, and sometimes in Algeria as the War of 1 November, was fought between France and the Algerian National Liberation Front from 1954 t, which led to Algeria winning its independence from France on 19th March 1962.

May 8th 1945 was the date the Allies celebrated the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of Adolf Hitler's Reich, formally recognising the end of the Second World War in Europe. This became known as V.E (Victory in Europe) Day.

The United States Constitution was signed on September 17, 1787 by delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. The Constitution was ratified by the states in 1788 and went into effect in 1789. The Constitution is the supreme law of the United States and establishes the framework for the federal government.

The Little Rock Nine were nine African American students who were enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957, after the US Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional. The students were met with violent opposition from white supremacists, and the Arkansas National Guard was called in to escort them to school.

The Irish Free State was a sovereign state established in 1922 following the Anglo-Irish Treaty. It comprised 26 of the 32 counties of Ireland, with Northern Ireland, which comprised the remaining six counties, opting to remain within the United Kingdom.

The Soviet Union was a country that was divided into several republics. The Soviet Union was founded in 1917 and lasted until 1991. The Soviet Union had a variety of different languages and dialects. The Soviet Union was a dictatorship and the government was controlled by the Communist Party.

The Blaine Act was a bill passed by the United States Congress in 1878. The bill was formally titled "An Act to Prohibit the Importation of Intoxicating Liquors into the United States". The act was passed in response to public outcry over the corruption of government officials who were taking bribes from alcohol manufacturers and distributors.

The Good Friday Agreement is a peace agreement between the Irish and British governments, as well as the main political parties in Northern Ireland. The agreement was reached on Friday, April 10th, 1998, and was signed on Good Friday, April 11th. The agreement put an end to the 30-year-long Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Queen Victoria (1819-1901) was the queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 1837 to 1901. She was the last British monarch of the House of Hanover and the first of the House of Windsor.

The Boston Tea Party was a political and protest action against the British government and the monopolistic East India Company that took place on December 16, 1773. American colonists, frustrated and angry at Britain for imposing taxes on them without their consent, dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor.