Health & Medicine in the 20th century

1,166 sourced entries, 1900 CE to 1999 CE, oldest first. Also see Health & Medicine across every century or everything else in the 20th century.

1900January 17 – Brigham H. Roberts is refused a seat in the United States House of Representatives because of his polygamy.United States source
1900January 25 - Plague is officially declared in Rosario.Argentina source
19001 September - Number of deaths from "Plague" in Rio decreases and the outbreak is limited to the city.Brazil source
1900October 29 – Sir Rodmond Roblin becomes premier of Manitoba, replacing Hugh John Macdonald.Canada source
1900November 8 – Prime Minister Giuseppe Saracco signs the decree establishing the Saredo Inquiry, officially known as the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Naples (Reale Commissione d’Inchiesta per Napoli), presided by senator Giuseppe Saredo, tasked with investigating corruption and bad governance of the city of Naples and to investigate how huge amounts of money that had been poured into Naples after the cholera epidemic of 1884 had vanished without noticeable benefit for the city's poor.Italy source
19001 December – A census of the German Empire was taken. Provisional figures showed a population of 56,345,014.Germany source
19003 December – Population Census: There were 2,239,881 inhabitants in Norway.Norway source
1900World population: 1,640,000,000source
19001 out of every 100 residents of India die of cholera each year.India source
1901January 5 – Typhoid fever breaks out in a Seattle jail, the first of two typhoid outbreaks in the United States during the year.United States source
190123 February - The Instituto Butantan is launched by biomedical scientist Vital Brazil.Brazil source
1901July 16 – The Fawcett Commission is established to look at living conditions of women and children, including water supply, sanitation, medical care and the mortality and birth rates in the concentration camps.South Africa source
190112 September — The Nurses Registration Act 1901 is passed.New Zealand source
1901November 25 – Auguste Deter is first examined by German psychiatrist Dr. Alois Alzheimer, leading to a diagnosis of the condition that will carry Alzheimer's name.source
190125 November – Dr. Alois Alzheimer examines Auguste Deter, eventually leading to a diagnosis of the condition that will carry Alzheimer's name.Germany source
190123 December – The Immigration Restriction Act 1901 comes into force, instituting the White Australia Policy.Australia source
1901American retail pharmacy Walgreens is founded in Chicago.source
1901The first kindergarten with public support in Denmark is established and inaugurated at Enghave Plads in the Vesterbro district of Copenhagen. Private kindergartens had been known since 1871.Denmark source
1901Women are given four weeks maternity leave.Sweden source
1902January 1 – The Nurses Registration Act 1901 comes into effect in New Zealand, making it the first country in the world to require state registration of nurses. On January 10, Ellen Dougherty becomes the world's first registered nurse.source
19028 January – The Great National Convention took place in the Round Room of the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin. Motions were passed regarding coercion, the Irish language and evicted tenants.Ireland source
1902February – A commission on yellow fever announces that the disease is carried by mosquitoes.United States source
1902April 14 – The first J. C. Penney department store opens in Kemmerer, Wyoming.United States source
190210 December – Ronald Ross wins the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for his work on malaria, by which he has shown how it enters the organism and thereby has laid the foundation for successful research on this disease and methods of combating it".United Kingdom source
190318 April – The local government of Saint Croix in the Danish West Indies issues a provisional Ordinance concerning measures against Glanders in St. CroixDenmark source
1903May 31 – Law no. 254 is passed on aimed at improving living conditions for workers and to control housing speculation, with the establishment of a Public Housing Institute (Istituto per la Case Popolari). The law was also known as the Luzzatti law, since it was introduced by the deputy Luigi Luzzatti, a member of the opposition at that time.Italy source
190322 June – Torbjørg Utne, hotelier (born 1812).Norway source
190329 September – Prussia becomes the second jurisdiction to require mandatory driver's licenses for operators of motor vehicles, after New York State in 1901.Germany source
1903The Austral Society was founded due to the influence of The Toowoomba poet George Essex EvansAustralia source
1903Plague (disease) breakout at Coimbatore.India source
1903Agnes Arvidsson becomes the first woman to graduate in pharmacology.Sweden source
1903The Lincoln–Lee Legion is established to promote the temperance movement and signing of alcohol abstinence pledges by children.United States source
19046 January – The Tasmanian government replaces the state's Central Board of Health with a Public Health Department.Australia source
1904January 13 — Zhang Zhidong and other advisers propose ending the civil service examinations.China source
1904Pneumonic plague breaks out in Johannesburg.South Africa source
1904October 1 – Phi Delta Epsilon, the international medical fraternity, is founded by Aaron Brown and 8 of his friends, at Cornell University Medical College.source
1904October 1 – Phi Delta Epsilon, the international medical fraternity, is founded by Aaron Brown and eight of his friends at Cornell University Medical College.United States source
1904Late October – The first members of what will become the Bloomsbury Group move to the Bloomsbury district of London; they will be joined about November 8 by the future novelist Virginia Woolf.source
19049 November – Bahamian Dr. Allan Glaisyer Minns becomes Mayor of Thetford, the first Black person to hold such an office in Britain.United Kingdom source
190410-16 November - Vaccine Revolt in Rio de Janeiro.Brazil source
1904Date unknown – From this year until 1909, co-education is introduced in a number of state secondary education schools, which makes private girls schools redundant.Sweden source
1904Orthopaedic surgeon Robert Jones becomes Honorary Surgeon to the Baschurch Home in Shropshire which he will develop into the world's first specialized orthopaedic hospital.Wales source
1905February 12 – The Switzerland national football team plays its first international game, losing to France, 1 to 0.source
1905February 28 – Jane Stanford, the co-founder with her husband Leland of Stanford University, is fatally poisoned while visiting the Moana Hotel in Hawaii.source
1905February – Alf Common becomes the first £1,000 footballer in his transfer from Sheffield United to Middlesbrough.United Kingdom source
1905April 24 – China's Empress Regent Cixi (Tzu Hsi) abolishes further use in executions of the nation's three most cruel torture execution methods, lingchi ("death by a thousand cuts"), gibbeting (similar to crucifixion, hanging until dying of exposure, thirst or starvation), and desecration of a dying person.source
190528 May – The town of Maryborough in Queensland experiences an outbreak of pneumonic plague.Australia source
1905May 29 - Brooklyn Superbas pitcher Elmer Stricklett introduces the "spitball" to major league baseball.United States source
1905June 20 – Ernest Henry Starling introduces the word "hormone" into the English language.source
190514 July – The government of France institutes its first government assistance program for elderly and disabled persons.France source
190526 July – Law promulgated making Sunday an obligatory day of rest in trade and industry.Belgium source
1905September 2 – Alexander Rutherford becomes the first premier of AlbertaCanada source
1905Alfred Einhorn introduces novocaine.source
1905The boycott originated when the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association of San Francisco called upon the people of China to pressure the United States into treating the Chinese immigrants in America better.China source
1905Fritz Schaudinn and Erich Hoffmann discovers the bacterium that is responsible for syphilis—a spiral-shaped spirochete called Treponema pallidum.Germany source
190615 May – Our Dumb Friends League opens its first animal hospital, in Victoria, London.United Kingdom source
1906Tuberculosis reaches epidemic proportions in South Africa.South Africa source
190621 August – the Education of Defective Children (Scotland) Act, a permissive act allowing local school boards, either alone or in combination, to make special provision for the education and medical inspection of 'epileptic, crippled or defective' children between the ages of 5 and 16.Scotland source
1906August - Evan Roberts suffers a breakdown, signalling the end of the 1904-1905 Welsh Revival.Wales source
1906October 11 – A United States diplomatic crisis with Japan arises when the San Francisco public school board orders Japanese students to be taught in racially segregated schools (it is resolved by next year).source
1906October 11 – The San Francisco public school board sparks a United States diplomatic crisis with Japan, by ordering Japanese students to be taught in racially segregated schools.United States source
1906The BCG vaccine for tuberculosis is first developed.source
1906Arnould Galopin - Doctor OmegaFrance source
1906The Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast was completed, laying claim to being the first air conditioned building in the world.Ireland source
1906The muffuletta sandwich is invented in New Orleans, Louisiana.United States source
190726 January – The Short Magazine Lee–Enfield rifle is officially introduced into British military service.United Kingdom source
19075 February – epidemic of meningitis in Glasgow, Edinburgh and BelfastScotland source
190721 February – The Bondi Surf Bather's Lifesaving Club is formed at Bondi Beach, Sydney, the first of its kind in the world.Australia source
190710 April – French doctors announce the discovery of a new serum to cure dysentery.France source
190711 September – Hans Georg Jacob Stang, politician and Minister (born 1858)Norway source
1907Indiana, in the United States, becomes the world's first legislature to place laws permitting compulsory sterilization for eugenic purposes on the statute book.source
1907Arsphenamine is first synthesised in 1907 in Paul Ehrlich's lab by Alfred Bertheim.Germany source
1907The first Home of Compassion is opened, at Island Bay in Wellington, by Mother Suzanne Aubert who had founded the congregation of the Sisters of Compassion in Jerusalem on the Whanganui River in 1892.New Zealand source
1907Indiana becomes the world's first legislature to place laws permitting compulsory sterilization for eugenic purposes on the statute book.United States source
1908January 1 – Georgia introduces a law prohibiting alcohol.United States source
190830 March – Commonwealth Quarantine service came into operation and took over quarantine stations in every state.Australia source
19088 April – The Invercargill Tragedy occurs, in which James Reid Baxter kills his family and then himself.New Zealand source
190814 November – Dr Elizabeth Garrett Anderson is the first woman in England to be elected as a mayor (of Aldeburgh).United Kingdom source
1908Auckland. Three cultivars of the Feijoa are introduced into New Zealand.New Zealand source
1908The Opium and Narcotics Act is passed banning certain drugs in Canada.Canada source
1908Anne of Green Gables is first published, having a great effect on Prince Edward Island.Canada source
1908Hallucinations pharmaceutiques ou le Truc du potardFrance source
19091 January: The Quackery Prevention Act 1908 becomes law, preventing false advertising in relation to ingredients, composition, structure, nature or operation of a medicine.New Zealand source
190911 April – coming into effect of Children Act 1908 (8 Edw. 7. c. 67), establishing separate juvenile courts for 10–16-year-olds; abolishing the use of custody for under-fourteens and hanging for under-sixteens; introducing the registration of foster parents; and restricting access for under-16s to cigarettes and alcohol.United Kingdom source
190914 April: Physician Carlos Chagas discovers a tropical parasitic disease caused by the flagellated cinetoplastid protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi, in the mining town of Lassance.Brazil source
1909July – Ivy Evelyn Woodward is admitted as the first woman Member of the Royal College of Physicians.United Kingdom source
1909September – Sigmund Freud, having arrived on August 29 in New York, delivers his only lectures in the United States, on psychoanalysis, at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, giving public recognition to the subject in the anglophone world.United States source
190930 November – Elise Aubert, novelist, short-story writer, and non-fiction writer (born 1837).Norway source
1909Karl Landsteiner, Constantin Levaditi and Erwin Popper first isolate the poliovirus.source
1909The Mater Infirmorum Hospital in Belfast was officially recognised as a university teaching hospital.Ireland source
1910January 31 – American-born medical practitioner Hawley Harvey Crippen poisons his wife, Cora, and buries her body in the cellar of their London home (probable date).source
1910March 12 – actress Florence Lawrence becomes "the first true movie star" after being named in advertisements, having previously been billed only as "The Biograph Girl".United States source
1910March 20 – The first clinic for treatment of occupational diseases is opened in Milan (Italy).source
1910March – King Edward VII falls very ill with bronchitis in France, returning to London a few weeks later.United Kingdom source
19107 April – Theodor Nilsen Stousland, politician (born 1842).Norway source
191030 September - The King Edward VII National Memorial Association begins its campaign to eradicate tuberculosis in Wales.Wales source
191015 October – Manchurian plague outbreak in the Russian Far East.Russia source
1910Approximate date of origin of Manchurian plague, a form of pneumonic plague which by December is spreading through northeastern China, killing more than 40,000.source
191031 December – Census returns give total population of Belgium as 7,423,784.Belgium source
1910Witwatersrand gold mine owners come under pressure to improve sanitary conditions since a third of the black miners are dying of pneumonia.South Africa source
1910The white population in South Africa is 21.5% of the total.South Africa source
19112 April – The national population census was taken.Ireland source
19113 April - 1911 Australian census was the first national population census. The day used for the census, was taken for the night between 2 and 3 April 1911. The total population of the Commonwealth of Australia was counted as 4,455,005.Australia source
191122 August – the Official Secrets Act 1911 comes into effect.United Kingdom source
191130 October – First Solvay Conference convenes, chaired by Hendrik Lorentz.Belgium source
1912January 23 – The First International Opium Convention is signed at The Hague to restrict exports.source
1912April 21 - Yung Wing, the first Chinese overseas student (born 1828)China source
1912The town of Hobhouse is established and named after Emily Hobhouse.South Africa source
1912August 17 – Circular No. 17 bans the teaching of the French language in Ontario schools.Canada source
19122 October – Ebbe Hertzberg, politician (born 1847).Norway source
1912October 12 – Taisho Pharmaceutical was founded by Kinujirō Ishii.Japan source
1912October 14 – While campaigning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, former President Theodore Roosevelt is shot by saloonkeeper John Schrank. With a fresh flesh wound and the bullet still in him, Roosevelt delivers his scheduled speech. After finishing it, he goes to the hospital, where it is deduced that if he had not had his speech in his breast pocket when he was shot, he most likely would have died.United States source
1912Neosalvarsan becomes available and supersedes the more toxic and less water-soluble salvarsan as an effective treatment for syphilis.Germany source
1912The School Medical Service begins in New Zealand.New Zealand source
191327 January – Robert Collett, zoologist (born 1842)Norway source
1913June 4 – Emily Davison, a British suffragette, runs out in front of the King's horse, Anmer, at The Derby. She is trampled and dies four days later in hospital, never having regained consciousness.source
19136 June – Stoneyetts Hospital is opened at East Muckcroft (later part of Moodiesburn, North Lanarkshire), originally for the treatment of people with epilepsy.Scotland source
19139 July: The first suspected case in a Smallpox outbreak is reported. It is later confirmed and the outbreak becomes an epidemic.New Zealand source
1913July 13 – The 1913 Romanian Army cholera outbreak during the Second Balkan War starts.source
191315 August – Mental Deficiency Act 1913 passed, establishing a Board of Control for Lunacy and Mental Deficiency to oversee the implementation by local Mental Deficiency Committees of provisions for the care and management people classed as "Idiots", "Imbeciles", "Feeble-minded persons" and "Moral Imbeciles", who are to be committed to institutions, including a new category of "mental deficiency colony".United Kingdom source
19136 October – An official report on the lockout suggested that workers should be reinstated without having to give a pledge not to join the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union.Ireland source
1913November 7–11 – The Great Lakes Storm of 1913 kills more than 250.United States source
1913November 27 – Iván Skerlecz proclaimed Ban and called for parliamentary elections.Croatia source
1913Astra, a predecessor of the AstraZeneca global healthcare and pharmaceutical brand, is founded in Södertälje, Sweden.source
1913White Phosphorus Matches Prohibition ActIndia source
191411 March - A Welsh Home Rule Bill is introduced by Edward T. John, MP for East Denbighshire; it fails.Wales source
1914March 27 – Belgian surgeon Albert Hustin makes the first successful non-direct blood transfusion, using anticoagulants.source
1914April 11 – Canadian Margaret C. MacDonald is appointed Matron-in-Chief of the Canadian Nursing service band and becomes the first woman in the British Empire to reach the rank of major.Canada source
1914July 14 – The Government of Ireland Bill completes its passage through the House of Lords in the U.K. It allows Ulster counties to vote on whether or not they wish to participate in Home Rule from Dublin. Because of the outbreak of war in Europe and later developments in Ireland, the Act is never implemented in its original form.source
1914August 3 – At the outbreak of World War I, the government, led by the conservative Antonio Salandra, declares that Italy would not commit its troops, maintaining that the Triple Alliance had only a defensive stance and Austria-Hungary had been the aggressor. In reality, both Salandra and the minister of Foreign Affairs, Antonino Paternò Castello, begin to probe which side would grant the best reward for Italy's entrance in the war and to fulfil Italy’s irredentist claims. Although the majority of the cabinet (including former Prime Minister Giolitti) is firmly against intervention, numerous intellectuals, including Socialists such as Ivanoe Bonomi and Leonida Bissolati declare in favour of intervention. One of the most prominent and popular Italian nationalist supporters of the war was Gabriele d'Annunzio who helped sway the Italian public to support intervention in the war.Italy source
1914August 5 – German zeppelins drop bombs on Liège, Belgium, killing 9 civilians.source
191430 October – the SS Rohilla, requisitioned as a military hospital ship, is lost by grounding in a storm on rocks off Whitby with the loss of 85 lives.United Kingdom source
1914December 17 – United States President Woodrow Wilson signs the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act. This begins the ongoing international war on drugs.source
1914December 17 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson signs the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act (initially introduced by Francis Burton Harrison).United States source
1914Oxymorphone, a powerful narcotic analgesic closely related to morphine, is first developed in Germany.source
1914The capital of Guangxi Province is moved from Guilin to Nanning.China source
1914Destructive Insects and Pests ActIndia source
1914Only two of the ten Class MJ 2-6-6-0 Mallet compound locomotives ordered from German manufacturer Maffei before the outbreak of World War I disrupts further delivery.South Africa source
1915January – While working as a cook at New York's Sloan Hospital under an assumed name, "Typhoid Mary" infects 25 people, and is placed in quarantine for life.United States source
1915February 21 – Nellie McClung presents a petition to the Alberta Legislature demanding women's suffrageCanada source
1915February – While working as a cook at New York's Sloane Hospital for Women under an assumed name, "Typhoid Mary" (an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid fever) infects 25 people, and is placed in quarantine for life on March 27.source
1915March – The 1915 Palestine locust infestation breaks out in Palestine; it continues until October.source
1915August–September – John Buchan's thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps, set largely in Galloway immediately before the outbreak of war and introducing his hero Richard Hannay, is serialised in Blackwood's Magazine before being published in book form in October by William Blackwood and Sons in Edinburgh.Scotland source
1915October 25 – Lyda Conley, the first American Indian woman to appear before the Supreme Court of the United States as a lawyer, is admitted to practice there.source
1915November 18 – The U.S. silent film Inspiration, the first mainstream movie in which a leading actress (Audrey Munson) appears nude, is released.source
1915November 18 – Release of Inspiration, the first mainstream movie in which a leading actress (Audrey Munson) appears nude.United States source
1915December 23 – HMHS Britannic, which will be the largest British ship lost in WWI (though with only 30 fatalities), departs Liverpool on her maiden voyage as a hospital ship.source
1915Sir William Rice Edwards becomes surgeon-general of Bengal.Wales source
1916January 1 – The British Royal Army Medical Corps carries out the first successful blood transfusion, using blood that has been stored and cooled.source
19161 January – the Royal Army Medical Corps carries out the first successful blood transfusion using blood that has been stored and cooled.United Kingdom source
191627 January – conscription introduced by the Military Service Act; applies to unmarried men aged 18–41 from 2 March and to married men in the same age bracket from April/May; it does not extend to Ireland.United Kingdom source
191610 April – Ole Bornemann Bull, ophthalmologist (born 1842)Norway source
191625 April – Martial law was declared in Dublin by the British authorities for a period of one month.Ireland source
1916May 19 – Norman Rockwell's first cover for The Saturday Evening Post, Boy with Baby Carriage.United States source
1916July 1 – Prohibition of alcohol introduced in AlbertaCanada source
1916October 16 – Margaret Sanger opens the first U.S. birth control clinic, a forerunner of Planned Parenthood.source
1916Oxycodone, a narcotic painkiller closely related to codeine, is first synthesized in Germany.source
1916Due to the outbreak of World War I, the 1916 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, is cancelled.source
1916Hotels are forced to close at 6 p.m., leading to the beginning of the "six o'clock swill": 27 March in South Australia; 21 July in Sydney after referendum of 10 June; 11 October in Victoria; during March in Tasmania.Australia source
1917January 25 – An anti-prostitution drive in San Francisco attracts huge crowds to public meetings. At one meeting attended by 7,000 people, 20,000 are kept out for lack of room. In a conference with Rev. Paul Smith, an outspoken foe of prostitution, 300 prostitutes make a plea for toleration, explaining they had been forced into the practice by poverty. When Smith asks if they will take other work at $8 to $10 a week, the ladies laugh derisively, which loses them public sympathy. The police close about 200 houses of prostitution shortly thereafter.United States source
191716 May – Ole Olsen Malm, physician, veterinarian, civil servant and politician (born 1854).Norway source
1917June 21 – Aubin Arsenault becomes premier of Prince Edward Island, replacing John MathiesonCanada source
1917August 17 – One of English literature's important meetings takes place, when Wilfred Owen introduces himself to Siegfried Sassoon at the Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh.source
191717 August – one of English literature's most important and famous meetings takes place when Wilfred Owen introduces himself to fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon at Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh.Scotland source
1917August: The government introduces conscription triggering the Conscription Crisis of 1917Canada source
1917November 17 – The People's Dispensary for Sick Animals is founded in the United Kingdom.source
19171 December – Six o’clock closing of hotel bars is introduced as a wartime measure.New Zealand source
191731 December – World War I: British government imposes rationing of sugar (8 oz per person per week).United Kingdom source
1917Due to World War I the Italian population declined by 234,978 peopleItaly source
1918January – 1918 flu pandemic: The "Spanish flu" (influenza) is first observed in Haskell County, Kansas.source
1918March 4 – A soldier at Camp Funston, Kansas falls sick with the first confirmed case of the Spanish flu.United States source
1918March 23 – In London at the Wood Green Empire, Chung Ling Soo (William E. Robinson, U.S.-born magician) dies during his trick, where he is supposed to "catch" two separate bullets (but one of them perforates his lung). He dies the following morning in a hospital.source
1918April 23 – Conscription Crisis of 1918 in Ireland: A general strike is held here against conscription.source
1918June 1 – First report of Spanish flu in Budapest newspapersHungary source
1918June–August – The "Spanish flu" becomes pandemic. Over 30 million people die in the following 6 months.source
1918August 3 – WWI: Australian hospital ship HMAT Warilda is torpedoed and sunk in the English Channel on passage from Le Havre to Southampton by German submarine SMU UC-49 with the loss of 123 of the 801 people on board.source
191812 October: Troop ship RMS Niagara returns, carrying a number of people ill with influenza. It is not quarantined. William Massey and Joseph Ward are aboard. Although later cited as the cause of the Spanish flu epidemic, 6 persons had already died in the 3 days preceding its arrival.New Zealand source
191815 November - President-elect Rodrigues Alves, suffering from influenza, is unable to take office on the scheduled date, and is replaced by Vice President Delfim Moreira.Brazil source
1918December – The beginning of the 1918 flu pandemic which lasts into the following year and kills about 10,000 people in Wales.Wales source
1918Due to World War I and the Spanish flu the Italian population declined by 612,937 peopleItaly source
1918An estimated 50 people die in the 1918 flu pandemic in South Africa, the fifth hardest hit country in the world.South Africa source
1918The forced registration and medical examination system of prostitutes is abolished. The Svenska Federationen, having reached its goal, is therefore dissolved.Sweden source
1919April 15 – The Save the Children Fund is created in the UK to raise money for the relief of German and Austrian children.source
191928 April – Fraserburgh life-boat Lady Rothes, on service to HM Drifter Eminent, suffers two crew swept overboard.Scotland source
1919July 4 – Food riots and strikes in Romagna and Bologna spread to other cities like Milan, Genoa, Livorno, Pisa, Florence, Palermo and others, with several people dead. Shopkeepers reduce food prices; sometimes to as much as 50 to 70 per cent.Italy source
1919September 9 – John Howatt Bell becomes premier of Prince Edward Island, replacing Aubin Arsenault.Canada source
1919September 9 – Pogrom in Tapolca and Diszel kills 15 peopleHungary source
1919October 2 – President of the United States Woodrow Wilson suffers a serious stroke, rendering him an invalid for the remainder of his life.source
1919October 28 – Prohibition in the United States: The United States Congress passes the Volstead Act, over President Woodrow Wilson's veto. Prohibition goes into effect on January 17, 1920, under the provisions of the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.source
1919October 28 – Prohibition begins: The United States Congress passes the Volstead Act over President Woodrow Wilson's veto.United States source
1919The worldwide Spanish flu epidemic continues, eventually claiming almost 12,000 lives in Australia.Australia source
1919Ongoing – Spanish Flu pandemicJapan source
1919The National Chess championship was not held (the influenza epidemic was still subsiding at its traditional new year dates).New Zealand source
1920January 5 – 1920 United States census count begins. This becomes the first census to record a population exceeding 100 million, at 106,021,537. Because there are so many mixed-race persons and because so many Americans with some black ancestry appear white, the Census Bureau stops counting mixed-race peoples and the one-drop rule becomes the national legal standard.United States source
1920January 17 – Prohibition in the United States begins, with the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution which bans the sale of alcohol in all states.source
1920January 23 – The Netherlands refuses to extradite ex-German Emperor Wilhelm II; on May 15 he moves into Huis Doorn in the country where he remains permanently in exile until his death in 1941.source
1920February 1 – Japanese sugar plantation workers in Hawaii officially join a strike led by Filipinos and Hispanic workers.Japan source
1920March 28 – The 1920 Palm Sunday tornado outbreak hits the Great Lakes region and Deep South of the United States.source
1920June 13 – The United States Post Office Department rules that children may not be sent via parcel post.source
1920July 21 – The Troubles in Ulster (1920–1922) begin with 8,000 Catholic and Socialist workers driven from shipyards and industrial sites in Belfast.source
1920July 31 – France prohibits the sale or prescription of contraceptives.source
192031 July - France prohibits the sale or prescription of contraceptives.France source
1920September 26 – Numerus Clausus quota passed, limiting nationalities in university admissions to their share in the population. In practice, this limits the admission of Jewish studentsHungary source
1920October 31 – Dr. Frederick Banting of Ontario first records his insight on how to isolate insulin for the treatment of diabetes; the first successful human trial of insulin will occur 15 months later.source
192029 November – Rationing imposed during World War I ends when the restriction on availability of sugar is lifted by the Government.United Kingdom source
19205 December – Scotland votes against prohibition generally, despite 40 districts voting in favour.Scotland source
1920The so-called Spanish flu pandemic ends with an estimated total of between seventeen and fifty million dead since 1918. It would be the last global pandemic until the 2009 swine flu pandemic almost 90 years later.source
1920Hydrocodone, a narcotic analgesic closely related to codeine, is first synthesized in Germany, by Carl Mannich and Helene Löwenheim.source
1920Approximate date – The HIV/AIDS pandemic almost certainly originates in Léopoldville, modern-day Kinshasa, the capital of the Belgian Congo.source
1920Francesco Saverio Nitti (1919–1920)Italy source
1920Legalization of Abortion (1920–1936)Russia source
192125 February – Elizabeth Fedde, Lutheran Deaconess who established the Norwegian Relief Society (born 1850)Norway source
1921March 1 – The Australia national cricket team, led by Warwick Armstrong, becomes the first to complete a whitewash of the touring England team in The Ashes, something that will not be repeated for 86 years.source
19217 March – The Commonwealth Department of Health is formed.Australia source
1921March 12 – The Capitol Theatre, a lush 2,500 seat movie palace, opened on Vancouver's Granville Street.Canada source
1921March 17 – Marie Stopes opens the first birth control clinic in the British Empire in London, UK.source
1921May 5 – Only 13 paying spectators attend the football match between Leicester City and Stockport County F.C. in England, the lowest attendance in The Football League's history.source
1921July 1 – The first BCG vaccination against tuberculosis is given, in Paris, France; the recipient is a newborn child.source
1921August 11 – The temperature reaches 39 degrees Celsius in Breslau; the heat wave continues elsewhere in Europe as well.source
1921August 11 – Franklin D. Roosevelt's paralytic illness strikes while he is vacationing; on August 25 he is diagnosed with polio and aged 39 becomes permanently disabled.source
1921August 11 – Franklin D. Roosevelt's paralytic illness strikes while he is vacationing on Campobello Island; on August 25 he is diagnosed with polio and aged 39 becomes permanently disabled.United States source
192126 August - Scheduled date of evacuation of Zone A, delayed by 48 hoursHungary source
1921October - The government implements a new policy in defense of coffee, for the third time in the history of the Republic.Brazil source
1921November 23 – In the United States, the Sheppard–Towner Act is signed by President Harding, providing federal funding for maternity and child care.source
1921November 25 – Crown Prince Hirohito is made regent in place of his ailing father.Japan source
1921Dr. Georg Gradnauer (SPD) – Minister of the InteriorGermany source
1922January 11 – The first successful insulin treatment of diabetes is made, by Frederick Banting in Toronto.source
1922January 11 – The world's first insulin treatment is made at the Toronto General Hospital. The successful technique would later win a Nobel Prize for its creators, Frederick Banting and Charles Best.Canada source
192213 January – Flu epidemic has claimed 804 victims in Britain.United Kingdom source
1922January – The year begins with the British Empire at the largest extent of any empire in history, covering one-quarter of the world (33 million square miles) and ruling over one in four people on earth, a population of 423 million people.United Kingdom source
192228 May – Prohibition begins in Wick, Caithness.Scotland source
1922Vegemite is invented by Australian entrepreneur Fred Walker.source
192214–21 August – Loch Maree Hotel botulism poisoning, first recorded outbreak in the United Kingdom.Scotland source
1922Ivor Novello stars in The Bohemian GirlWales source
192318 February – An amnesty for Irish Republican Army (IRA) Irregulars expired. It had been introduced by the Minister for Home Affairs, Kevin O'Higgins on 8 February.Ireland source
19231 April – The Provisional Government of Ireland establishes customs posts on the border with Northern Ireland.Northern Ireland source
1923April 9 – Adkins v. Children's Hospital: The Supreme Court rules that a minimum wage law for women and minors is unconstitutional.United States source
1923April 23 – Marijuana is prohibited soon after the House of Commons passes a bill on this date that includes making marijuana illegalCanada source
1923May 20 – British Prime Minister Bonar Law resigns, due to ill health.source
192322 May – Bonar Law resigns as Prime Minister due to ill health.United Kingdom source
1923July 1 – The Chinese Immigration Act, 1923 comes into effect, banning all Chinese from entering Canada except for businessmen, diplomats, foreign students, and "special circumstances"Canada source
1923September 7 – A Curfew is issued in Tokyo.Japan source
1923Cantonments (House-Accommodation) ActIndia source
1924January 10 – Narcisse Pérodeau becomes Quebec's 14th Lieutenant Governor.Canada source
192415 January – The last internee at Kilmainham Gaol, Ernie O'Malley, was transferred to St. Bricin's Military Hospital.Ireland source
192414 February – Amalie Andersen, actress (born 1861).Norway source
1924February – Mohandas Gandhi is released prematurely on medical grounds.India source
1924May 26 – The Asian Exclusion Act is enacted, banning all Asian immigration to the United States. It was a slap in the face to Japan after their participation as a principal ally in WWI, and is seen as the spark that spurred Japan's alliance with Germany and down the path to World War II.United States source
1924September 24 – First case report in the Los Angeles pneumonic plague outbreakUnited States source
192410 October – Edvard Liljedahl, politician and Minister (born 1845)Norway source
1924Football - 49-year-old Billy Meredith becomes the oldest man ever to play in an FA Cup semi-final.Wales source
19251 January – Ernest Rutherford is appointed to the Order of MeritNew Zealand source
1925January 27–February 1 – The 1925 serum run to Nome (the "Great Race of Mercy") relays diphtheria antitoxin by dog sled across the U.S. Territory of Alaska to combat an epidemic.source
1925May 12 – The Public Security Preservation Law is enacted.Japan source
1925The Cactoblastis moth is introduced in Queensland to control prickly pear cactus.Australia source
1925Sikh Gurdwaras (Supplementary) ActIndia source
192628 January – Orthopaedic surgeon Robert Jones is created a baronet (Jones of Rhyl).Wales source
192611 February – Inga Houge, actress (born 1856)Norway source
192611 April – Partial mobilization as a precaution after a speech of Italian dictator Benito MussoliniTurkey source
192618 April – censuses are held in both parts of Ireland. The 1926 Irish Free State census records a population of 2,971,992; the population of Northern Ireland is 1,257,000.Ireland source
192618 April – Census held in Northern Ireland (and the Free State). The population of Northern Ireland is 1,257,000.Northern Ireland source
19261 October − Public Service Commission established, it was later reconstituted as Federal Public Service Commission by the Government of India Act 1935 only to be renamed as today's Union Public Service Commission after the independence.India source
1926October 23 – A decree in Italy bans women from holding public office.source
19266 November – The policy of police confinement and internment begins with the issuance of Royal Decree 1848 and lasts until 1943. The decree allows Fascist Italy to deport its perceived political enemies as alleged subversives acting against the State, some of whom were later being knowingly deported to their imminent deaths in concentration camps. In spite of the Fascist regime, many Italians resisted and helped hide people from the authorities.Italy source
1926November 24 – Sri Aurobindo withdraws into seclusion following a spiritual realisation, entrusting the supervision of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram to "The Mother".source
1926Pavlova reportedly created by a Wellington hotel chef in honour of the visit of Anna PavlovaNew Zealand source
1927April 20 – Prime Minister Wakatsuki Reijirō is forced to resign during the Shōwa financial crisis and is succeeded by Tanaka Giichi who manages to control the situation with a three-week bank holiday and the issuance of emergency loans.Japan source
1927April - Establishment of the Order of Public InstructionPortugal source
1927May 2 – Buck v. Bell decided in the Supreme Court of the United States, permitting compulsory sterilization of people with intellectual disability.United States source
192728 October – Census (population 13,648,270)Turkey source
19278 November - 270 South Wales people join a hunger march in protest against the Ministry of Health who refused and limited the relief notes given to unemployed miners and their families.Wales source
1927Dr. B.R. Ambedkar started temple entry movement in 1927.India source
1927Estimated population as of 31 December: 1,450,400New Zealand source
1927The pharmaceutical company Galenica is established.Switzerland source
192816 January – Bjarne Solberg, physician and politician (born 1877)Norway source
19284 February – Romania enacts legislation to limit the trafficking and use of cannabis and narcotic drugs.Romania source
1928June 14 – Students take over the medical wing of Rosario University in Argentina.source
1928September 28 – Scottish-born microbiologist Alexander Fleming, at St Mary's Hospital, London, accidentally rediscovers the antibiotic which he will call Penicillin.source
192828 September – Scottish-born microbiologist Alexander Fleming, at St Mary's Hospital, London, accidentally rediscovers the antibiotic which he will call Penicillin.United Kingdom source
1928October 12 – An iron lung respirator is used for the first time at Children's Hospital, Boston.source
1928John Longstaff wins the Archibald Prize with his portrait of Dr Alexander LeeperAustralia source
192827–28 January – Bundaberg tragedy: 12 children die in Bundaberg, Queensland, after being inoculated with a diphtheria vaccine contaminated with the Staphylococcus aureus bacterium.Australia source
1928Irish becomes a compulsory subject for the Intermediate Certificate.Ireland source
1928Estimated population as of 31 December: 1,467,400.New Zealand source
1928Dr John Williams establishes a hospital at Durtlang in the Lushai Hills (Mizoram) of India.Wales source
19296 January – Mother Teresa arrives in Kolkata to work amongst poor and sickIndia source
1929January 10 – Lomer Gouin becomes Quebec's 15th lieutenant governor, serving until his death on March 28, 1929.Canada source
1929May 20 – The Wickersham Commission begins its investigation of alcohol prohibition in the United States.United States source
1929July 27 – Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armies in the Field (1929) is signedSwitzerland source
1929November – The Red Spear Society ceases to exist on the northern Shandong Peninsula as result of Liu Zhennian's counter-insurgency campaign.China source
1929Date unknown – Clinical application of cardiac catheterization begins with German physician Werner Forssmann in 1929, who inserted a catheter into the vein of his own forearm, guided it fluoroscopically into his right atrium, and took an X-ray picture of it.Germany source
1929Estimated population as of 31 December: 1,486,100.New Zealand source
1929Mads Gram, physician (born 1875)Norway source
19306 January – Don Bradman scores a record 452 not out in one cricket innings.Australia source
1930March 31 – The Motion Picture Production Code (Hays Code) is instituted by the studios in the United States, imposing strict guidelines on the treatment of sex, crime, religion and violence in films for the next 40 years.source
1930March 31 – The Motion Pictures Production Code is instituted, imposing strict guidelines on the treatment of sex, crime, religion and violence in motion pictures for the next 40 years.United States source
1930April 6 – In an act of civil disobedience, Mahatma Gandhi breaks the salt laws of British India by making salt by the sea at the end of the Salt March.source
19306 April – In an act of civil disobedience, Mahatma Gandhi breaks British law after marching to the sea and taking salt.India source
1930June 14 – The Federal Bureau of Narcotics is established under the United States Department of the Treasury, replacing the Narcotics Division of the Prohibition Unit.source
1930June 19 – 1930 Alberta general election: Premier John Brownlee's United Farmers of Alberta win a third consecutive majorityCanada source
19303 October - Nationwide outbreak of the Revolution of 1930.Brazil source
1930October 20 – The British Passfield white paper demands restrictions on Jewish immigration into Mandatory Palestine.source
193024 October – Johan Galtung, sociologistNorway source
1930November 25 – Cecil George Paine, a pathologist at the Sheffield Royal Infirmary in England, achieves the first recorded cure (of an eye infection) using penicillin.source
193029 December – The first and only census of Greater Romania reports that the population is 18,057,028, of which 28% are non-Romanian.Romania source
1930Estimated population as of 31 December: 1,506,800.New Zealand source
193121 January – Isaac Isaacs becomes the first Australian-born Governor-General.Australia source
1931February 14 – The original film version of Dracula, with Bela Lugosi, is released in the United States.United States source
1931April 1 – The Second Encirclement Campaign against Jiangxi Soviet in China is launched by the Kuomintang government, to destroy the Communist forces in Jiangxi Province.source
19313 April – persistent rainfall causes the banks of the River Lee to burst. Half the houses in Cork are flooded.Ireland source
193126 April – Axel Holst, professor of hygiene and bacteriology (born 1860)Norway source
1931The Beauharnois Scandal breaks outCanada source
1931Estimated population as of 31 December: 1,522,800.New Zealand source
1931The Northern Ireland international soccer team change the colour of their shirt from blue to green.Northern Ireland source
1931Autumn – means test introduced for those in receipt of unemployment insurance for more than six months.United Kingdom source
1932January 4 – The British authorities in India arrest and intern Mahatma Gandhi and Vallabhbhai Patel.source
19323–5 January – The 1932 Salvadoran legislative election was held but the results were cancelled by Maximiliano Hernández Martínez due to the Communist Party of El Salvador winning several municipalities.El Salvador source
1932March 21–22 – 1932 Deep South tornado outbreak: A series of deadly tornadoes in the United States kills more than 220 people in Alabama, 34 in Georgia and 17 in Tennessee.source
19326 April – Ministry of Health encourages local councils to engage in widespread slum clearance.United Kingdom source
1932April 13 – German Chancellor Heinrich Brüning bans the SA and the SS as threats to public order, arguing that they are chiefly responsible for the wave of political violence afflicting Germany.source
1932c. June – The Republican Citizens Committee Against National Prohibition is established for the repeal of Prohibition in the United States.source
1932December 17: the inscription to the Fascist party is made mandatory for the public employees.Italy source
1932The first family planning clinic in Canada is set up by Elizabeth Bagshaw in Hamilton, Ontario. At the time, providing birth control was illegal.Canada source
1932Estimated population as of 31 December: 1,534,700.New Zealand source
1933February 17 – Repeal of Prohibition in the United States: The Blaine Act passes the Senate, submitting the proposed Twenty-first Amendment to the Constitution to the states for ratification to end prohibition in the United States.United States source
1933March 22 – President Franklin Roosevelt signs the Cullen–Harrison Act, an amendment to the Volstead Act, allowing the manufacture and sale from April 7 of "3.2 beer" (3.2% alcohol by weight, approximately 4% alcohol by volume) and light wines, 8 months before the full repeal of Prohibition in the United States in December.source
1933April 2 – As a member of the English cricket team touring New Zealand, 1933, batsman Wally Hammond scores a record 336 runs in a test match at Eden Park, Auckland.source
19332 April – As a member of the English cricket team touring New Zealand, 1933, batsman Wally Hammond scores a record 336 runs in a test match at Eden Park, Auckland.United Kingdom source
1933April 5 – United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt declares a national emergency and issues Executive Order 6102, making it illegal for U.S. citizens to own substantial amounts of monetary gold or bullion.source
1933April 7 – In Germany, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service is passed, the first law of the new regime directed against Jews (as well as political opponents).source
1933April 21 – Nazi Germany outlaws the kosher ritual shechita.source
1933April 24 – Jewish physicians are excluded from official insurance schemes, forcing many to give up their practices.source
1933May 26 – The Nazi Party in Germany introduces a law to legalize eugenic sterilization.source
193326 May – The Nazi Party introduces a law to legalise eugenic sterilisation.Germany source
1933June 1 – Leonard Tilley becomes premier of New Brunswick, replacing Charles RichardsCanada source
193310 June – Draw 2–2 vs Australian XI at NewcastleNew Zealand source
193330 June - The third national Australian Census is taken, recording the population at 6,630,600.Australia source
1933July 14 – The Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring is enacted, allowing compulsory sterilization of citizens suffering from a list of alleged genetic disorders.source
1933July 14 – Formation of new political parties is forbidden.source
193329 November – Nikka Vonen, educator, folklorist and author (born 1836).Norway source
1933Margiad Evans – The Wooden DoctorWales source
19341 January — Germany passes the "Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring".Germany source
193412 March – Konstantin Päts with the help of General Johan Laidoner set up a virtual dictatorship. Parliament was prorogued and political parties were banned. Many members of the Vaps Movement were arrested.Estonia source
193416 May – Firedamp explosion in Fief-de-Lambrechies and Pâturages kills 57.Belgium source
1934May 28 – Near Callander, Ontario, Canada, the Dionne quintuplets are born to Oliva and Elzire Dionne, becoming the first quintuplets to survive infancy.source
193424 June – Daoud Hanania, Jordanian heart surgeon.Mandatory Palestine source
1934July 9 – The Hitler Youth movement is prohibited in South West Africa.South Africa source
1934July 13 – Hitler gives a speech to the Reichstag, justifying his purge.source
1934July 22 — Eric del Castillo, actorMexico source
1934November 6 – Attempted exclusion of Egon Kisch from Australia begins.source
19346 November – The Australian government attempts to stop left-wing writer Egon Erwin Kisch from entering the country, using the language provisions of the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 which allowed a test in any European language. The multi-lingual Kisch was tested in Scottish Gaelic, although the decision to block his entry was later overturned by the High Court.Australia source
1934Estimated population as of 31 December: 1,558,400.New Zealand source
1935January 28 – Iceland made abortions legal.Iceland source
193529 June – first portion of Swanscombe skull, belonging to a woman from 400,000 years past, is discovered in north Kent.United Kingdom source
1935August 14 – United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act into law.source
1935August 14 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act into law.United States source
1935October 14 – The Turkish government had all Masonic lodges in the country abolished on the ground that Masonic principles are incompatible with nationalistic policy and their property transferred to the state.source
193520 October – Census (Population 16,158,018)Turkey source
1935November 23 – Jacques and Thérèse Tréfouël, Daniel Bovet and Federico Nitti, in the laboratory of Ernest Fourneau at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, discover that sulfanilamide is the active component of Prontosil.source
193531 December – The cane toad is introduced to Queensland.Australia source
1935Dr. BR. Ambedkar ended all 3 temple entry movement in 1935.India source
1935The Chatham Cup is won by Hospital of Wellington who beat Western of Christchurch 3–1 in the final.New Zealand source
1935The Eternal Mask, an Austrian-Swiss drama, is releasedSwitzerland source
1936January 6 – Barbara Hanley is elected mayor of Webbwood, Ontario, becoming the first female mayor in CanadaCanada source
193617 February – Ole Nikolai Ingebrigtsen Strømme, politician and Minister (born 1876)Norway source
1936February 17 – The first superhero to wear a skin-tight costume and mask, The Phantom, makes his appearance in U.S. newspapers.United States source
193631 July – Public Health Act empowers local authorities to make byelaws regulating building construction.United Kingdom source
1936September 13 – In response to a polio outbreak, Chicago Public Schools launches a distance education program which constitutes the first large-scale use of radio broadcasts to facilitate distance education.source
193620 October – British woman Mabel Freer is refused entry to Australia on morality grounds, sparking a political controversy.Australia source
1936October - Saunders Lewis courts further controversy by appearing to praise Adolf Hitler.Wales source
1936November – Punjabi-born Dr. Jainti Dass Saggar becomes the first non-White local authority councillor in Scotland, being elected for the Scottish Labour Party in Dundee.Scotland source
1936December 7 – Streptococcous meningitis (a condition previously 99% fatal) is successfully treated for the first time with a sulfonamide.source
1936Public Order Act is introduced, giving the Chief Constable power to impose conditions on parades or public processions if it is believed that they would lead to public disorder.Northern Ireland source
193728 February – Population census in Northern Ireland.Northern Ireland source
1937March 18 – New London School explosion: In the worst school disaster in American history in terms of lives lost, the New London School in New London, Texas, suffers a catastrophic natural gas explosion, killing in excess of 295 students and teachers. Mother Frances Hospital opens in Tyler, Texas, a day ahead of schedule, in response to the explosion.source
1937March 18 – Mother Frances Hospital opens in Tyler, Texas in response to the New London School explosion.United States source
193717 April – A crowd of 149,415 spectators officially (and at least 20,000 more unofficially) watch the Scotland national football team defeat England 3-1 at Hampden Park, Glasgow, an all-time European record for an international match.Scotland source
1937July 6 – According to Japanese government official confirmed report, a caught fire in Handa Mental Rescue Hospital in Hiroshima City, kills 23 persons.Japan source
193720 July — The Geibeltbad Pirna is opened in Dresden, Germany.Germany source
1937October 5 – Roosevelt gives his famous Quarantine Speech in Chicago.source
1937October–December – Croydon typhoid outbreak of 1937: 341 cases of typhoid fever (43 fatal) result from a polluted well.United Kingdom source
193714 November – Harald Stormoen, actor (born 1872)Norway source
1937Italian psychiatrist Amarro Fiamberti is the first to document a transorbital approach to the brain, which becomes the basis for the controversial medical procedure of transorbital lobotomy.source
1937Estimated population as of 31 December: 1,601,800.New Zealand source
19386 February – Three hundred beachgoers are dragged out to sea when three freak waves strike Bondi Beach in Sydney in an event known as "Black Sunday". A team of eighty surf lifesavers manage to rescue all but five people.Australia source
1938February 10 – Carol II of Romania takes dictatorial powers.source
193831 March – First public statement about Atatürks's healthTurkey source
1938June 25 – Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act is signed into law by president Franklin D. Roosevelt.United States source
1938September 10 – Hermann Göring, in a speech at Nuremberg, calls the Czechs a "miserable pygmy race" who are "harassing the human race". That same evening, Edvard Beneš, President of Czechoslovakia, makes a broadcast in which he appeals for calm.source
193810 September — Hermann Göring, in a speech at Nuremberg, calls the Czechs a "miserable pygmy race" who are "harassing the human race." That same evening, Edvard Beneš, President of Czechoslovakia, makes a broadcast in which he appeals for calm.Germany source
193816 October – Nils Yngvar Ustvedt, medical doctor and politician (born 1868)Norway source
1938October 18 – The German government expels 12,000 Polish Jews living in Germany; the Polish government accepts 4,000 and refuses admittance to the remaining 8,000, who are forced to live in the no-man's land on the German-Polish frontier.source
1938November 16 – LSD is first synthesized by Albert Hofmann from ergotamine, at the Sandoz Laboratories in Basel.source
1938Vaccination for tuberculosis (the leading cause of death in young people) is introduced.Canada source
1938José Rubén Romero — La vida inútil de Pito PérezMexico source
1938Estimated population as of 31 December: 1,618,500.New Zealand source
1939January 1 – The Third Soviet Five Year Plan is launched.source
1939January 1 – The small businesses obligation to maintain adequate accounting.source
1939January — The British Hong Kong Government had announced that it will ban the export of weapons and ammunition to the Republic of China via the land boundary of Hong Kong.China source
1939May 14 – Lina Medina, a 5-year-old Peruvian girl, gives birth to a baby boy, becoming the youngest confirmed mother in medical history.source
1939May 17 – The British government issues the White Paper of 1939, sharply restricting Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine.source
193919 May – Tore Godal, physician.Norway source
19396 October – General elections are called for 10 March 1940.Bolivia source
1939October – Action T4 programme begins, meaning that the state will now euthanise people deemed "unworthy" of life due to physical disabilities or mental illness, as keeping them alive would not be seen as good use of taxpayers money by the state or its supporters.Germany source
1939November 16 – Al Capone is released from Terminal Island, due to deteriorating health caused by syphilis.source
193929 November – Erling Dahl-Iversen gives the last lecture at the Royal Danish Academy of Surgery on Bredgade in Copenhagen.Denmark source
1939Portuguese Code of Civil ProcedureIndia source
1939Estimated population as of 31 December: 1,641,600.New Zealand source
1939Doktór Murek, with Nora Ney based on a book by Tadeusz Dołęga-Mostowicz, directed by Juliusz Gardan, music by Władysław Szpilman,Poland source
1940January 8 – Food rationing in the United Kingdom begins; it will remain in force until 1954.source
194018 January – Law of national prevention (Milli Korunma Kanunu) a law which authorizes the government to control the economy to overcome the war time hardshipsTurkey source
1940January 29 – According to Japanese government official confirmed report, a three-passenger locomotive commuter train derail and caught fire nearby Ajikawaguchi Station, Osaka, resulting to 189 person (181 were instantly, 8 were hospital) were death and 69 persons injures.Japan source
1940February 9 – Mae West and W. C. Fields join comedic forces for My Little Chickadee with tremendous success. The film becomes one of the highest-grossing of the year.United States source
19401 June – Sale of the neutralist Derry Journal in Northern Ireland is prohibited for four days.Northern Ireland source
1940June 14 – A group of 728 Polish political prisoners from Tarnów become the first residents of the Auschwitz concentration camp.source
1940June 30 – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is placed under the Federal Security Agency.source
1940President Ortiz takes leave from work because of diabetesArgentina source
194016 August – The Communist Party of Norway is banned in German-occupied Norway.Norway source
1940August 24 – Howard Florey and a team including Ernst Chain and Norman Heatley at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford, publish their laboratory results showing the in vivo bactericidal action of penicillin. They have also purified the drug.source
194010 October – Jews banned from public office by decree of the occupying forces.Belgium source
1940Estimated population as of 31 December: 1,633,600.New Zealand source
1941January–August – 10,072 men, women and children with mental and physical disabilities are asphyxiated with carbon monoxide in a gas chamber, at Hadamar Euthanasia Centre in Germany, in the first phase of mass killings under the Aktion T4 program here.source
1941February 12 – Reserve Constable Albert Alexander, a patient at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, England, becomes the first person treated with penicillin intravenously, by Howard Florey's team. He reacts positively, but there is insufficient supply of the drug to reverse his terminal infection. A successful treatment is achieved during May.source
1941President Roberto Ortiz, during leave from work because of diabetes, condemns the electoral fraud promoted by his vice president and acting president, Ramón Castillo.Argentina source
194120 April – Åshild Hauan, politicianNorway source
194126 May – A special sitting of Dáil Éireann unanimously condemns the introduction of conscription in Northern Ireland.Northern Ireland source
1941June 22 – Rapid escalation of the Holocaust in Lithuania: Between now and the end of the year, an estimated 190,000-195,000 out of 210,000 Lithuanian Jews will be massacred, killing an estimated 95% of the nation's Jewish population.source
1941August 6 – Six-year-old Elaine Esposito goes to have an appendix operation in Florida and lapses into a coma, dying 37 years later, still comatose.source
1941August 6 – Six-year-old Elaine Esposito undergoes an appendectomy and lapses into a coma that lasts for a record-breaking 37 years until her death in 1978.United States source
1941August 12 – All Japanese Canadians are ordered to carry identity cards with their thumbprint and photo.Canada source
194118 August — Adolf Hitler orders a temporary halt to Nazi Germany's systematic euthanasia of the mentally ill and handicapped due to protests. However, graduates of the T-4 Euthanasia Program are then transferred to concentration camps, where they continue in their trade.Germany source
1941September 3 – The Holocaust: SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Fritzsch first uses the pesticide Zyklon B to execute Soviet prisoners of war en masse at Auschwitz concentration camp; eventually it will be used to kill about 1.2 million people.source
1941November 7 – WWII: The Soviet hospital ship Armenia is sunk by German aircraft while evacuating refugees, wounded military and the staff of several Crimean hospitals. It is estimated that more than 5,000 die in the sinking.source
1941Estimated population as of 31 December: 1,631,200.New Zealand source
1941The Polish School of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh foundedScotland source
1942February 24 – Internment of Japanese Canadians is ordered.source
19422 April - Olga Hankin (born 1852), Zionist activist and midwife.Mandatory Palestine source
194216 April – Decree prohibits the establishment of new businesses or expansion of existing businesses.Belgium source
194222 April – Egil "Drillo" Olsen, international soccer player and coachNorway source
1942April 27 – WWII: Conscription crisis in Canada: A national plebiscite is held on the issue of conscription.source
194227 April – Rationing on sugar and women's stockings is introduced. The allowance per person is 12 oz of sugar per week, and one pair of women's stockings every three months.New Zealand source
1942April — Holocaust: the Nazi German extermination camp Sobibor opens in occupied Poland on the outskirts of the village of Sobibór. Between April 1942 and October 1943, at least 160,000 people were killed in the camp.Germany source
1942July – The Holocaust: Inmates of Westerbork transit camp in the occupied Netherlands begin to be shipped to Nazi extermination camps. From now until 1944 around 107,000, mostly Jewish, from here will be killed.source
1942August 16 – Polish-Jewish teacher Janusz Korczak follows a group of Jewish children into the Treblinka extermination camp.source
1942October 21 – Gordon Conant becomes premier of Ontario, replacing Mitchell HepburnCanada source
1942November 26 – The movie Casablanca premières at the Hollywood Theater in New York City.source
1942Júlio Afrânio Peixoto - PepitasBrazil source
1942A cholera epidemic in Yunnan province kills around 200 peopleChina source
1943January 23 – American critic and commentator Alexander Woollcott suffers an eventually fatal heart attack, during a regular broadcast of the CBS Radio round-table program People's Platform.source
19435 March – A strike wave takes place throughout northern Italy, reaching Milan and other cities of Lombardy in late March and continuing into April. Around 100,000 workers take part in Turin alone.Italy source
1943March 23 – The drugs Vicodin and Lortab are first produced in Germany.source
1943April 19 – History of lysergic acid diethylamide: Albert Hofmann self-administers the psychedelic drug LSD (which he first synthesized in 1938) for the first time in history and records the details of his experience.source
1943April 21 – Aberdeen, Scotland, experiences its worst bombing, with 125 people killed.source
1943May 14 – Australian Hospital Ship Centaur is sunk off the coast of Queensland by Japanese submarine I-177, killing 268 of the 332 medical personnel and civilian crew aboard.source
194314 May – The hospital ship AHS Centaur is torpedoed by a Japanese submarine off North Stradbroke Island in Queensland, killing 268 people.Australia source
194324 May – Holocaust: Josef Mengele becomes the chief medical officer of Auschwitz.Germany source
194323 July: On the recommendation of the National Petroleum Council, Brazil bans the use of private motorcycles throughout the nation in order to conserve fuel. Use of gasoline-powered automobiles had been prohibited the year before.Brazil source
1943August 3 – Patton slapping incident: U.S. General George S. Patton Jr. slaps a soldier suffering from battle fatigue, at a field hospital in Sicily. On August 10, he slaps another soldier suffering from the same condition.source
194320 September - Sonia Belkind (born 1870), Russian (Belarus)-born doctor, first gynecologist in Ottoman PalestineMandatory Palestine source
194330 September – Thore Langfeldt, psychologist and sexologistNorway source
194328 October – Butter rationing is introduced, with an allowance of 8 oz per person per week.New Zealand source
1943Hugo Wast, ministry of education, outlaws lunfardo and forces many tango artists to rewrite the lyrics of their songs.Argentina source
194414 January – Meat rationing begins in Australia.Australia source
194413 February – Lasse Efskind, speed skater, medical doctor and writer.Norway source
1944February 26 – Sue S. Dauser becomes the first woman appointed to the substantive rank of captain, in the United States Navy Nurse Corps.source
194413 March – The British Government prohibits all travel between Great Britain and Ireland.Northern Ireland source
1944March 24 – In Markowa, Poland, German police kill Józef and Wiktoria Ulm, their 6 children and 8 Jews they were hiding.source
1944Bernardo Houssay, Juan Lewis and Eduardo Menendez establish the Instituto de Biología y Medicina ExperimentalArgentina source
1944March – Meat rationing is introduced, with an allowance of 1/9 to 2/- per person per week.New Zealand source
1944April 3 – Smith v. Allwright decided in the Supreme Court prohibits white primaries.United States source
19447 July — Holocaust: Hungarian Regent Horthy orders Jewish transports to Auschwitz halted; 437,000 Jews have already been deported, mostly to their deaths.Germany source
194421 September – Prince Charles, Count of Flanders, is appointed Prince Regent of Belgium in the King's absence.Belgium source
1944October 25 – 76-year-old American amateur soprano Florence Foster Jenkins gives a sell-out public recital in Carnegie Hall, New York. The audience and press are scathing: "she can sing everything except notes". 5 days later she suffers a fatal heart attack, dying at home on November 26.source
1945January 18 – The Holocaust: The SS begins the evacuation of Auschwitz concentration camp. Nearly 60,000 prisoners, mostly Jews, are forced to march to other locations in Germany; as many as 15,000 die. The 7,000 too sick to move are left without supplies being distributed.source
194518 January – 66,000 Jewish prisoners are evacuated from Auschwitz by the Nazis.Germany source
1945February 8 – The Alaska Anti-Discrimination Act of 1945, championed by charismatic native leader Elizabeth Peratrovich, is passed by the territorial Senate, after the legislature defeated a previous bill in 1943.source
1945February 12 – A devastating tornado outbreak in Mississippi and Alabama kills 45 people and injures 427 others.source
1945February – Raymond L. Libby of American Cyanamid's research laboratories, at Stamford, Connecticut, announces a method of orally administering the antibiotic penicillin.source
1945April 12 – A devastating tornado outbreak occurs across the United States, which kills 128 people and injures over 1,000 others. This is heavily overshadowed by the death of President Roosevelt.source
1945August 31 – A team at American Cyanamid's Lederle Laboratories, Pearl River, New York, led by Yellapragada Subbarow, announces they have obtained folic acid in a pure crystalline form. This vitamin is abundant in green leaf vegetables, liver, kidney, and yeast.source
194527 September – The Defence Emergency Regulations are enacted by the Mandatory authorities.Mandatory Palestine source
194521 October – Census (population 18,790,174)Turkey source
194512 December – Howard Florey shares the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on penicillin.Australia source
1945December 29 – Expulsion of Germans from Hungary is ordered by the Soviet-dominated Hungarian government.source
1945Family allowance payments are introduced.Canada source
1945World War II aftermaths: 282,000 dead people (about 1/4 of population of Estonia).Estonia source
1945Hákon Bjarnason, director of the Icelandic Forest Service, introduces lupine from Alaska to Iceland where it becomes an invasive species.Iceland source
1945Saturday and Sunday trading by most retail outlets, apart from dairies and takeaway food outlets, is banned.New Zealand source
1946January 1 – Gideon Brand van Zyl is appointed the 7th Governor-General of the Union of South Africa.South Africa source
194616 January – A Chinese vegetable gardener named Foong Mok killed nine people in Boyan, a kampong near Taiping, Perak. He was subsequently sent to hospital for observation and found to be insane.Malaya source
194621 March – Svein Sturla Hungnes, actor, theatre director and instructorNorway source
194623 April – Das Volk ceased publication.Germany source
1946May 1 – At least 800 Indigenous Australian pastoral workers walk off the job in Northwest Western Australia, starting one of the longest industrial strikes in Australia.source
19461 May – At least 800 Aboriginal pastoral workers walk off the job in Northwest Western Australia, starting one of the longest industrial strikes in Australia.Australia source
1946May 31 – All Japanese-Canadians ordered deported to Japan.Canada source
194620 November – an outbreak of cholera leads to one death in Gardez. To contain the outbreak, the government takes steps to limit the movement of troops and civilians between Kabul and the southern province.Afghanistan source
1946Estimated population as of 31 December: 1,781,200.New Zealand source
1947January 13 – The last of hundreds of concentration camps in Francoist Spain, Miranda de Ebro, shuts down.source
1947April 1 – Jackie Robinson, the first African American in Major League Baseball since the 1880s, signs a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers.source
1947April 1 – Jackie Robinson signs with the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first African American Major League Baseball player since the 1880s.United States source
1947April 15 – Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American to play Major League Baseball since the 1880s.source
1947April - Suh Yun-Bok (서윤복) Completes the Boston Marathon with a time of 2:25:39 becoming the first Asian person to win the eventSouth Korea source
194728 May – Prohibition ends in Wick, Caithness; it also ends this year in Lerwick.Scotland source
19472 June – Mads Gilbert, physician.Norway source
1947July 1 – The United States begins the National Malaria Eradication Program, successfully eradicating malaria in 1951.source
1947August – October – Thousands massacred & 1 million migrations in Punjab.India source
1947Nearly 10 million people migrate to Pakistan and India. Muslims to Pakistan while Hindus and Sikhs to India.Pakistan source
1947December 21 – During the mass migration of Hindus and Muslims between the new states of India and Pakistan, 400,000 are slaughtered.source
1947Estimated population as of 31 December: 1,817,500.New Zealand source
1947Sir Frederick John Alban becomes President of the Society of Incorporated Accountants and Chairman of the Welsh Hospitals Board.Wales source
1948Nearly 10 million people migrate to Pakistan and India. Muslims immigrate to Pakistan while Hindus and Sikhs immigrate to India.Pakistan source
1948April 7– The World Health Organization is established by the United Nations.source
194831 May – Tea rationing, introduced in June 1942, is abolished.New Zealand source
1948June 22 – The ship HMT Empire Windrush brings more than 800 Afro-Caribbean immigrants to Tilbury near London, the start of a large wave of immigration to Britain.source
1948June 24 – The first World Health Assembly of the World Health Organization is held in Geneva.source
19481 July – The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme is introduced.Australia source
19485 July – The National Health Service launches in Northern IrelandNorthern Ireland source
194822 August – Order in Council for the implementation of the De Taeye Act.Belgium source
1948October 26 – Donora Smog of 1948: A killer smog settles into Donora, Pennsylvania.source
1948November 11 – Population Census is held in Israel, six months after its creation, to establish the population registry.Israel source
1948Stephen Leacock Award: Paul Hiebert, Sarah BinksCanada source
1948Early 1948 – The British government banned Angkatan Wanita Sedar (AWAS), together with several other political parties like PKMM and Hisbul Muslimin, accusing them of having connections to the Malayan Communist Party.Malaya source
1949c. January 28 – Stalin and antisemitism: The media in the Soviet Union resume a propaganda campaign against "rootless cosmopolitans", a euphemism for Soviet Jews, accusing them of being pro-Western and antisocialist.source
1949c. January 29 — Stalin and antisemitism: The Soviet media resume a savage propaganda campaign against "rootless cosmopolitans", a euphemism for Soviet Jews, accusing them of being pro-Western and antisocialistSoviet Union source
1949March 25 – Operation Priboi: An extensive deportation campaign begins in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The Soviet authorities deport more than 92,000 people from the Baltic states to remote areas of the Soviet Union.source
1949May 20 – The Kuomintang regime declares martial law in Taiwan, which lasts until 1987.source
19492 June – Gudbrand Bernhardsen Tandberg, politician (born 1903)Norway source
1949June 29 – Apartheid: The South African Citizenship Act suspends the granting of citizenship to Commonwealth of Nations immigrants after 5 years, and imposes a ban on mixed marriages.source
1949June 29 – South Africa introduces its apartheid policy.South Africa source
1949July 30 – Legal aid is introduced in England and Wales.source
1949August 21 – Deportivo Saprissa enters Costa Rican soccer's first division.source
1949October 31 – The date, which has been set by the national government, as the deadline for the evacuation of persons in an International Refugee Organization (IRO) refugee camp in Sturbabao Island off Samar, which has been established in February and houses more than 5,000 people. By late November, there are still 3,800, mostly white Russians, in the said resettlement camp.Philippines source
1949November 1 – Seretse Khama and his British wife Ruth Williams Khama are declared forbidden in South Africa.South Africa source
194925–28 March – an extensive deportation campaign was conducted in Estonian SSR, Latvian SSR, and Lithuanian SSR. The Soviet authorities deported over 90,000 people from the Baltics to remote areas of the Soviet Union.Estonia source
1949Estimated population as of 31 December: 1,892,100.New Zealand source
1949Belfast Celtic withdrew from the Irish League at the end of a season which had seen crowd trouble at a match against Linfield five months earlier.Northern Ireland source
1949General Services Administration established per Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949United States source
1950January 7 – A fire in the St Elizabeth's Ward of Mercy Hospital in Davenport, Iowa, United States, kills 41 patients.source
1950January 31 – United States President Harry S. Truman orders the development of the hydrogen bomb, in response to the detonation of the Soviet Union's first atomic bomb in 1949.source
1950January 31 – President Harry S. Truman orders the development of the hydrogen bomb, in response to the detonation of the Soviet Union's first atomic bomb in 1949.United States source
1950February 9 – In Wheeling, West Virginia, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin makes a speech that claims to have 205 communists in the U.S. State Department.source
195011 February – Anders Sandvig, dentist and ethnologist (born 1862)Norway source
1950February 12 – Albert Einstein warns that nuclear war could lead to mutual destruction.source
195020 February – Romania withdraws from the World Health Organization.Romania source
19504 June – Butter rationing, introduced in October 1943, is abolished.New Zealand source
195031 July – The austerity program is broadened to include rationing of clothing and shoes.Israel source
195031 July – Warwickshire's Eric Hollies beats Nobby Clark's record of 65 innings without reaching double figures when dismissed for 7 against Worcestershire. Hollies will eventually make it 71 before scoring 14 against Nottinghamshire on 16 August.United Kingdom source
1950September 19 – West Germany decides to purge communist officials.source
195022 October – Census (population 20,947,188)Turkey source
1950Myxomatosis is introduced into Australia, in an attempt to control the escalating rabbit population.source
1950St. Margaret's Hospice in Clydebank, the first modern hospice in Scotland, is begun by the Sisters of Charity.Scotland source
195118 June – The Bărăgan deportations, during which 44,000 residents from Caraș-Severin, Mehedinți, and Timiș counties are deported. Of those, 2,000 die.Romania source
195129 August – A law is passed making health insurance mandatory for employees and civil servants.Luxembourg source
1951September 13 – President Quirino signs Proclamation No. 274, establishing the National Fund and Educational Drive of the Philippine Tuberculosis SocietyPhilippines source
1951October 15 – Norethisterone, the progestin used in the combined oral contraceptive pill, is synthesized by Luis E. Miramontes in Mexico.source
1951October 21 – A storm in southern Italy kills over 100.source
195128 October – President Gomez is hospitalized after having a heart attack, which leaves him partially paralyzed for the rest of his life.Colombia source
1951The continental United States becomes malaria-free.source
1951Ștefan Baciu - Analiza cuvântului dorBrazil source
1951Muhammad Salleh Sulaiman (until 1 January)Malaya source
1951The Faustino Miranda Botanical Garden is founded under the trusteeship of Dr. Faustino Miranda.Mexico source
1951Public Order Act (Northern Ireland) 1951 is introduced, requiring organisers of public processions to give 48 hours' notice to the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), except for funeral processions and "public processions which are customarily held along a particular route".Northern Ireland source
1952January 24 – Vincent Massey appointed first Canada-born Governor General of CanadaCanada source
1952February 6 – In the United States, a mechanical heart is used for the first time in a human patient.source
1952February 7 – New York City announces its first crosswalk devices to be installed.source
1952February 14: Diário de Noite ran a report of mysterious bombs exploding in the city of Porto Alegre since the month of January. In May of the same year, the bomber, 24-year-old radio technician Herbert Rudiger was captured after maiming himself while fabricating another bomb. Rudiger confessed to the police that he was the author of the bombings while in the hospital and said his motive was fun he obtained with the sensationalism of the media.Brazil source
1952June 14 – Myxomatosis is introduced to Europe, on the French estate of Paul-Félix Armand-Delille.source
1952September 2 – C. Walton Lillehei and F. John Lewis perform the first open-heart surgery, at the University of Minnesota.source
195228 October – Premier of Victoria John McDonald resigns after the Victorian Legislative Council refuses supply. Thomas Hollway forms a short-lived ministry which lasts four days.Australia source
195214 November – Aldor Ingebrigtsen, politician (born 1888)Norway source
1952November 20 – One of the first successful gender-affirming surgeries is performed in Copenhagen on Christine Jorgensen.source
1952December 1 – The New York Daily News carries a front-page story announcing that Christine Jorgensen, a transsexual woman in Denmark, has become the recipient of the first successful sexual reassignment operation.United States source
19525 December – Ness, Lewis, selected for influenza vaccine trials.Scotland source
1952December 14 – The first successful surgical separation of conjoined twins is conducted in Mount Sinai Hospital, Cleveland, Ohio.source
195216 December – Harold Winstanley, the perpetrator of the Knowsley Hall shootings, is found guilty but insane at Manchester Assizes, and sentenced to detention at Broadmoor Hospital.United Kingdom source
1952Estimated population as of 31 December: 2,024,600.New Zealand source
195311 January - The Aleksandër Moisiu Theatre, named after the Austrian stage actor of the same name, opens in DurrësAlbania source
1953January 27 – The Canadian Dental Association approves the use of fluoride in drinking waterCanada source
1953February 13 – Transsexual Christine Jorgensen returns to New York after successful sex reassignment surgery in Denmark.source
1953March 26 – Jonas Salk announces his polio vaccine.source
1953March 29 – A fire at the Littlefield Nursing Home in Largo, Florida, kills 33 persons, including singer-songwriter Arthur Fields.source
195316 April – The Ministry of Hygiene completes its transition into the new Ministry of Public Health, being officially renamed via Decree 984 of 1953 (Decreto 984 de 1953).Colombia source
1953May 5 – Aldous Huxley first tries the psychedelic hallucinogen mescaline, inspiring his book The Doors of Perception.source
1953May 11 – Waco tornado outbreak: An F5 tornado hits in the downtown section of Waco, Texas, killing 114.source
1953May 20–21 – A tornado outbreak tears through Port Huron, Michigan and Sarnia, Ontario, leaving eight people dead and 123 people injured.source
1953June 7–9 – Flint–Worcester tornado outbreak sequence: A single storm-system spawns 46 tornadoes of various sizes, in 10 states from Colorado to Massachusetts, over 3 days, killing 246.source
1953June 8 – On the second day of the Flint–Worcester tornado outbreak sequence, a tornado kills 116 in Flint, Michigan; it will be the last to claim more than 100 lives, until the 2011 Joplin tornado.source
1953June 9 – CIA Technical Services Staff head Sidney Gottlieb approves of the use of LSD in an MKUltra subproject.source
19539 June – The Government said that as a measure to curb the spread of rabies, 7,397 dogs have been vaccinated and 1,051 stray dogs have been shot since May.Singapore source
1953July 25: The Ministry of Health is created.Brazil source
1953August 23 — RDS-4 is first tested.Soviet Union source
1953September 26 – Rationing of sugar ends in the UK.source
1953Estimated population as of 31 December: 2,074,700.New Zealand source
1953Marius Nygaard Smith-Petersen, physician and orthopaedic surgeon in America (born 1886)Norway source
195412 January – Jan-Olav Ingvaldsen, politician (died 2021).Norway source
195412 February – British Medical Committee report suggests the existence of a link between smoking and lung cancer.United Kingdom source
1954February 23 – The first mass vaccination of children against polio begins in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States.source
1954February 23 – The first mass vaccination of children against polio begins in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.United States source
195431 May – Arne Larsen Økland, retired footballerNorway source
1954June 22 – Sarah Mae Flemming is expelled from a bus in South Carolina, for sitting in a white-only section.source
1954July 4 – Food rationing in Great Britain ends, with the lifting of restrictions on sale and purchase of meat, 14 years after it began early in World War II, and nearly a decade after the war's end.source
19544 July – Fourteen years of rationing in the UK during and following World War II comes to an end, when meat officially comes off ration.Scotland source
1954December 23 – J. Hartwell Harrison and Joseph Murray perform the world's first successful kidney transplantation, in Boston, Massachusetts.source
1954December 23 – The first successful kidney transplant is performed by Joseph E. Murray, MD in Boston from one identical twin to his brother. Murray will later share the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his "[discovery] concerning organ and cell transplantation in the treatment of human disease".United States source
1954Gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus) are brought to the United States by Dr. Victor Schwentker.source
1954Estimated population as of 31 December: 2,118,400.New Zealand source
1954Donald Houston co-stars in Doctor in the House.Wales source
1955January 22 – In the United States, The Pentagon announces a plan to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), armed with nuclear weapons.source
1955February 17 - A fire broke out at Seibo no Sono (Our Lady's Garden) in Totsuka-ku, Yokohama. According to a report from Japan Fire and Disaster Management Agency (JFDMA), it resulted in the death of 99 people.Japan source
19552 March – Samet Aybaba, former football player and currently coachTurkey source
1955March 25 – The Appeal Court bench increases from six to eleven members.South Africa source
1955April 5 – Winston Churchill resigns as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, due to ill-health, at the age of 80.source
1955April 12 – The Salk polio vaccine, having passed large-scale trials earlier in the United States, receives full approval by the Food and Drug Administration.source
1955April 17 – Imre Nagy, the communist Premier of Hungary, is ousted for being too moderate.source
195527 April – The IMI Uzi submachine gun is introduced in the IDF parade on the Israel's Independence Day.Israel source
1955September 2 – Under the guidance of Dr. Humphry Osmond, Christopher Mayhew ingests 400 mg of mescaline hydrochloride and allows himself to be filmed as part of a Panorama special for BBC TV in the U.K. that is never broadcast.source
1955November 3: President Café Filho is admitted to a hospital in Rio de Janeiro after suffering a heart attack.Brazil source
195522 November – The first Soviet hydrogen bomb, RDS-37, is tested.Soviet Union source
1955November 26 – The British Governor of Cyprus declares a state of emergency on the island.source
1955December 19 – Australian comedian Barry Humphries first introduces his character Edna Everage on stage in Melbourne.source
1955World population: 2,755,823,000source
1955Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical SciencesIran source
1955Menteri Besar of Kedah : Tunku Ismail Tunku YahyaMalaya source
19569 January – Thorhild Widvey, politicianNorway source
1956May 1 – Minamata disease is discovered in Japan.source
1956June 5 – Elvis Presley performs "Hound Dog" on The Milton Berle Show, scandalizing the audience with his suggestive hip movements.United States source
195614 October – Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Indian Untouchable leader, converts to Buddhism along with 385,000 followers. See Neo-Buddhism.India source
1956November 1 – The film Oklahoma! (1955), previously released to select cities in Todd-AO, now receives a U.S. national release in CinemaScope, since not all theatres are yet equipped for Todd-AO. To accomplish this, the film has actually been shot twice, rather than printing one version in two different film processes, as is later done.source
1956Segregation is introduced on buses.South Africa source
1956Beijing University of Chinese MedicineChina source
1956Menteri Besar of Johor : Wan Idris IbrahimMalaya source
1956Estimated population as of 31 December: 2,209,200.New Zealand source
195611-17 June - The country stages the Equestrian events in the 1956 Summer Olympics because of problems with quarantine laws affecting the host city of MelbourneSweden source
1957January 5 – South African player Russell Endean becomes the first batsman to be dismissed for having handled the ball in Test cricket.source
1957January 9 – British Prime Minister Anthony Eden resigns on health grounds.source
1957January 30 – The General Assembly of the United Nations calls on South Africa to reconsider its apartheid policy.South Africa source
1957March 14 – President Sukarno declares martial law in Indonesia.source
19578 April – Dr. Moshe Wallach (born 1866), German-born physician, founder of Shaare Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem.Israel source
195727 April – The first Pontianak film was released, establishing the horror genre in the local film industry.Singapore source
195716 July – Article 433 of Decree 324 bans prostitution. The remainder of the legislation gives additional powers to the secret police.Romania source
195724 July - Influenza outbreak in the port of Valparaíso. Between August and September it would expand to all of Chile.Chile source
195729 July – Health insurance is made mandatory for all employees.Luxembourg source
1957The Asian Flu killed around 1-2 million pe ple in China and Hong Kong.China source
1957Otago: King Edward Technical College OBNew Zealand source
1957Late June – The 1957–1958 influenza pandemic ("Asian flu") which has already killed thousands of people worldwide, reaches Britain where it will kill a number estimated at between 20,000 and 33,000.United Kingdom source
1958February 19–20 – Rt Hon Ellen Fairclough first woman to assume the duties of Prime Minister for two days during John Diefenbaker's absence from the country.Canada source
1958March–April - Operation Booster ShotLaos source
195815 June – Two 14-year-old Blacktown Boys High School students are found alive after becoming lost in the Jamison Valley in the Blue Mountains and then spending a night in freezing conditions. They are treated at Katoomba Hospital for frostbite, exposure and shock.Australia source
1958June 25 – Presidential rule imposed in East PakistanPakistan source
1958August 25 – Instant noodles go on sale for the first time in Japan.Japan source
19583 September – Brian Barratt-Boyes performs New Zealand's first open heart surgery at Auckland's Green Lane Hospital.New Zealand source
1958September 20 – The Legge Merlin comes into force.Italy source
19581 October – The Standards of Weights and Measures Act took effect.India source
195919 January – Interior Minister Enrique Ortuzar resigns on health grounds.Chile source
19591 May – The Immigration Ordinance 1959 was enacted.Malaya source
1959July 22 – A Kumamoto University medical research group studying Minamata disease concludes that it is caused by mercury.source
1959July 31 - The EMS ministry, an elected communist government in Kerala brought down through President's rule following Vimochana Samaram.India source
195921 October – Åslaug Haga, politician and MinisterNorway source
1959November 1 – Montreal Canadiens Jacques Plante becomes the first ice hockey goalie to wear a protective face mask during a game against the New York Rangers at the Montreal ForumCanada source
1959November 11 – Werner Heyde, a psychiatrist who had guided the euthanizing of more than 100,000 handicapped persons in Nazi Germany, surrendered to police in Frankfurt after 13 years as a fugitive. As director of the Reich Association of Hospitals, Dr. Heyde had carried out "Action T4". Men, women and children who were mentally or physically handicapped were the victims of Heyde's "mercy killing" from 1939 to 1942, usually by lethal injection. Sentenced in absentia to death, Heyde had been practicing in Flensburg as "Dr. Fritz Sawade". On February 13, 1964, five days before his trial was to start, Dr. Heyde hanged himself at the prison in Butzbach.Germany source
1959Establishment of the Fourth Affiliated Hospital of XMU, in Urumqi, XinjiangChina source
1959Estimated population as of 31 December: 2,359,700.New Zealand source
1960March 21 – Juan Manuel Oliva, Governor of Guanajuato 2006-2012.Mexico source
1960March 24 – All public meetings of more than 12 people are banned.South Africa source
1960April 1 – The 1960 United States census begins. There are 179,323,175 U.S. residents on this day. All people from Latin America are listed as white, including blacks from the Dominican Republic, European whites from Argentina and Mexicans who resemble Native Americans.source
19602 April – In Yeşilhisar, because of the interference of ruling party partisans İsmet İnönü the leader of the opposition was not able to continue his election campaignTurkey source
1960May 4 – West German refugee minister Theodor Oberländer is dismissed because of his Nazi past.source
1960July 9 - The Belgian national airline Sabena began airlifting Belgian citizens out of the Republic of Congo. Over the next three weeks, 25,711 flew home.Democratic Republic of the Congo source
19601 August – The Internal Security Act 1960 was enacted. This act was repealed in 2012.Malaya source
1960November 14 – Belgium threatens to leave the United Nations over criticism of its policy concerning the Republic of the Congo.source
19605 December – A four-day conference on cholera begins in Dacca, during which the Pakistan-SEATO Cholera Research Laboratory is inaugurated.Pakistan source
1960World population: 3,021,475,000source
1960Estimated population as of 31 December: 2,403,600.New Zealand source
1960The Primary School Leaving Examination(PSLE) was first introduced as a mandatory examination in Singapore, the exam was meant for 12 years old who are leaving Primary Schools and moving on into Secondary SchoolsSingapore source
19612 January – Oral contraceptives are first sold in AustraliaAustralia source
19613 March – Henny Astrup, actress (born 1876)Norway source
196122 March – Gideon Mer (born 1894), Russian (Lithuania)-born Israeli physician, scientist and malaria researcher.Israel source
1961March 30 – The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs is signed at New York.source
19611 April – The ban on political activities was liftedTurkey source
196123 April – Emergency number 111 is introduced in Wellington.New Zealand source
1961July – The Control of Supplies Act 1961 was enacted.Malaya source
1961November 1 – The U.S. Interstate Commerce Commission's federal order banning segregation at all interstate public facilities officially comes into effect.source
1961November 1 – The Hungry generation Movement is launched in Calcutta, India.source
19611 November – The Hungry generation movement is launched in Calcutta.India source
1961November 7 – Woodrow Lloyd becomes premier of Saskatchewan, replacing Tommy DouglasCanada source
1962March 7 – Ash Wednesday Storm: A snow storm batters the Mid-Atlantic.source
19627 April – The World United Against Malaria campaign was commemorated on a Malayan stamp.Malaya source
1962April 18 – The Commonwealth Immigrants Act in the United Kingdom removes free immigration from the citizens of member states of the Commonwealth of Nations, requiring proof of employment in the U.K. This comes into effect on 1 July.source
1962May 17 - Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma halts the sale of the drug Thalidomide.Japan source
1962July 1 – A heavy smog develops over London.source
196216 July – The Goulburn School Strike started. This was an education strike in Goulburn, New South Wales, where, in response to a demand for the installation of three extra toilets at a local Catholic Primary School, the local community closed down these schools and sent the children to the Government schools. The Catholic Church declared they had no money to install the extra toilets. Nearly 1,000 children turned up to be enrolled locally and the state schools were unable to accommodate them. In 1963, Menzies made State aid for science blocks part of his party's platform in response to the public debate engendered by the Goulburn strike.Australia source
196228 July – A locust swarm threatens New Delhi.India source
196224 October – Hanan Rubin (born 1908), German-born Israeli politician.Israel source
1962Lillian Ngoyi is banned for 10 years, confining her to Orlando Township in Johannesburg and forbidding her to attend any gatherings.South Africa source
19621962–1965 rubella epidemic, originating in Europe and spreading to the United States.source
1962Estimated population as of 31 December: 2,515,800.New Zealand source
1962Ulster Hospital for Women and Sick Children is relocated from Belfast to Dundonald and renamed the Ulster Hospital.Northern Ireland source
1963January 1 – Bogle–Chandler case: Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation scientist Dr. Gilbert Bogle and Mrs. Margaret Chandler are found dead (presumed poisoned), in bushland near the Lane Cove River, Sydney, Australia.source
19634 January – May-Britt Moser, neuroscientist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.Norway source
1963February 10 – Five Japanese cities located on the northernmost part of Kyūshū are merged and become the city of Kitakyūshū, with a population of more than 1 million.source
1963April 1 – The long-running soap opera General Hospital debuts on ABC Televisions.United States source
1963May 1 – The Coca-Cola Company introduces its first diet drink, Tab cola.source
1963May 13 – A smallpox outbreak hits Stockholm, Sweden, lasting until July.source
1963August 20 – Mauritius bars South Africa and Portugal from her sea- and airports.South Africa source
196322 October – The establishment of National Research Institute of Chinese Medicine in Beitou District, Taipei.Taiwan source
1963November 9 – Miike coal mine explosion: A coal mine explosion kills 458 and sends 839 carbon monoxide poisoning victims to the hospital.source
1963Supreme Court of India mandates that reservation should not exceed 50% for any institution.India source
1963First issue of Margaret magazineJapan source
1963Chief Minister of Sarawak: Stephen Kalong NingkanMalaysia source
1963Otago: King Edward Technical College OBNew Zealand source
19647 January: French actress Brigitte Bardot arrives in Rio de Janeiro and spends her summer in the resort of Búzios, drawing the attention of the national and international press to the place. Thanks to Bardot's visit, Búzios has now became one of the hottest spots in the Brazilian summer.Brazil source
1964January 11 – United States Surgeon General Luther Terry reports that smoking may be hazardous to one's health (the first such statement from the U.S. government).source
19642 March - a power cut of 9 hours and 36 minutes affects the northern part of the country, between the cities of Iquique and Copiapó.Chile source
196421 April – Judy Hanrahan becomes the first female bank teller appointed by the Bank of NSW since World War II, taking up the position at the Collins Street branch in Melbourne.Australia source
1964May 2 – Senator Barry Goldwater receives more than 75% of the votes in the Texas Republican presidential primary.United States source
1964July 24 – John Harris, a schoolteacher, explodes a bomb at Park Station, killing 77-year-old Ethel Rhys and injuring 23 others.South Africa source
1964August 18 – The International Olympic Committee bans South Africa from the Tokyo Olympics on the grounds that its teams are racially segregated.source
1964August 22 – Goalkeeper Derek Forster of Sunderland becomes the youngest-ever player to play in the English Football League, aged 15 years and 185 days.source
196428 August – Emergency number 111 is introduced in Christchurch.New Zealand source
19648 October – Odd Emil Ingebrigtsen, politician.Norway source
1964November 30 – John Diefenbaker launches a filibuster to try to prevent the introduction of a new Canadian flagCanada source
1964Jerome Horwitz synthesizes zidovudine (AZT), an antiviral drug which will later be used in treating HIV.source
1965January 8 – Adam Faith, a British pop singer, cancels his tour of South Africa because the South African government prohibited mixed audiences at concerts.South Africa source
196531 March – Merle Thorton and Rosalie Bogner chained their ankles to the front bar of the Regatta Hotel in Brisbane in protest against the Queensland liquor laws that banned women from pubs.Australia source
1965April 12 – A historic and extremely destructive tornado outbreak struck the Midwest region of the United States, killing 266.source
196528 May – Alon Abutbul, Israeli actor.Israel source
196510 July – A by-election was held in Hong Lim after Ong Eng Guan of the United People's Party resigned. After the vote, Lee Khoon Choy from the People's Action Party was elected into Hong Lim constituency, defeating Ong Chang Sam of the Barisan Sosialis.Singapore source
1965July 30 – War on Poverty: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Social Security Act of 1965 into law, establishing Medicare and Medicaid.source
1965October 18 – The Indonesian government outlaws the Communist Party of Indonesia.source
196524 October – Census Population 31351421.Turkey source
196521 December – Pakistan's first nuclear research reactor, Pakistan Atomic Research Reactor-I, donated by the United States, reaches criticality.Pakistan source
196530 December – Compulsory national service is reduced to six months.Luxembourg source
1965Estimated population as of 31 December: 2,663,800.New Zealand source
1966January 24 – President Ferdinand Marcos, in his emergency address to the country, says, "We are in crisis!"Philippines source
196625 January – Saul Adler (born 1895), Russian (Belarus)-born Israeli physician, microbiologist and parasitology expert.Israel source
1966February 11 – District Six in Cape Town is declared a White Group Area by the government.South Africa source
1966April 21 – An artificial heart is installed in the chest of Marcel DeRudder in a Houston, Texas, hospital.source
1966May 24 – The Nigerian government forbids all political activity in the country until January 17, 1969.source
1966July 29 – Bob Dylan is injured in a motorcycle accident near his home in Woodstock, New York. He is not seen in public for over a year.source
1966August 1 – Sniper Charles Whitman kills 15 people and wounds 31 from roof of the University of Texas at Austin Main Building tower in the United States, after earlier killing his wife and mother.source
1966August 1 – Sniper Charles Whitman kills 13 people and wounds 31 from atop the University of Texas at Austin Main Building tower, after earlier killing his wife and mother.United States source
19668 September – Roger Ingebrigtsen, politician.Norway source
1966October 6 – LSD is made illegal in the United States and controlled so strictly that not only are possession and recreational use criminalized, but all legal scientific research programs on the drug in the country are shut down as well.source
1966October 7 – The Soviet Union declares that all Chinese students must leave the country before the end of October.source
1966Decree 770 is personally sanctioned by Ceaușescu, and signed by the communist Romanian government in 1967.Romania source
1966In or about this year, one person returning to Haiti from the Congo is thought to have first brought HIV to the Americas.source
1966The Government of Queensland grants sand mining leases on Fraser Island without holding the required public hearings.Australia source
1966Estimated population as of 31 December: 2,711,300.New Zealand source
1967February – Free milk in schools (a half pint daily for each primary school pupil) was stopped, it had been distributed since 1937. Some schools continued it with parents paying.New Zealand source
1967March 14 – Nine executives of the German pharmaceutical company Grunenthal are charged with breaking German drug laws because of thalidomide.source
1967June 17 – The municipality of Quirino, in the province of Isabela is established through the enacted Republic Act No. 4901.Philippines source
196723 June – The government bans the broadcast on Radio Pakistan of Tagore Songs, angering the country's Bengali population, who consider the songs part of their cultural identity.Pakistan source
19671 July – Full immigration control at Malaysia-Singapore border imposed.Malaysia source
1967August 5: A man with schizophrenia, Victor Hoffman, kills nine near Shell Lake, SaskatchewanCanada source
1967August 23 - A power outage affects a large part of the country. Its cause is the fall of a pole in the Ictinos neighborhood of Peñalolén, currently Ñuñoa, which caused an overload and caused a blackout between the cities of Copiapó and Puerto Montt.Chile source
1967September 1 – The Khmer–Chinese Friendship Association is banned in Cambodia.source
196716 September – South Sydney defeats Canterbury Bankstown 12–10 in front of 56,358 people to win the 1967 New South Wales Rugby League Grand Final.Australia source
1967October 29 – Expo 67 closes in Montreal, after having attracted more than 50 million visitors in six months.source
1967November 20 – The "population clock" of the United States Census Bureau records the U.S. population at 200 million people at 11:03 a.m. Washington, D.C. time.source
1967December 3 – Christiaan Barnard carries out the world's first heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa.source
1967December 3 – Professor Christiaan Barnard carries out the world's first heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital.South Africa source
19681 February – Jacob van der Hoeden (born 1891), Dutch-born Israeli veterinary scientist.Israel source
1968April 20 – Conservative British politician Enoch Powell makes a controversial "Rivers of Blood" speech in Birmingham deploring the effects of immigration; he is dismissed from the Shadow Cabinet the following day.source
1968April 23 – Surgeons at the Hôpital de la Pitié, Paris, perform Europe's first heart transplant, on Clovis Roblain.source
1968The Liberal Party of South Africa is banned by the government.South Africa source
196826 May: Dr. Euryclides de Jesus Zerbini and his team perform the first heart transplant in Latin America.Brazil source
1968June 28 – The first heart transplant in Chile and Latin America, and the second in the world, is performed by surgeon Jorge Kaplán at the Almirante Nef Naval Hospital in Viña del Mar to patient María Elena Peñaloza.Chile source
1968September 18 – The Republic Act No. 5446 takes effect which regards Sabah as part of the Philippines.Philippines source
196822 November – First heart transplantations in Turkey (Ankara)Turkey source
1968Males per 100 females: 99.8 – This was the first year (other than during a major war) in which the number of females exceeded the number of males.New Zealand source
1968Pakistan Hockey team led by Dr Tariq Aziz, won Gold at the Olympics in Men's Field HockeyPakistan source
196927 March – 2000 Weeks (directed by Tim Burstall) is released. The film was one of the first features of the modern era in Australian cinema, although it was received poorly both critically and commercially.Australia source
1969April 4 – Denton Cooley implants the first temporary artificial heart.source
1969April 17 – Dorothy Fisher is the first woman and the fifth person to receive a heart transplant under Dr. Christiaan Barnard.South Africa source
196931 August: A military junta rules the country following the sudden illness of President Artur da Costa e Silva. The junta is made up of ministers Aurélio de Lira Tavares from the Army, Augusto Rademaker from the Navy, and Márcio de Sousa e Melo from the Air Force.Brazil source
1969September 23 – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a film starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, opens to limited release in the U.S.United States source
196930 September – The government sets up a temporary Environmental Committee.Denmark source
196929 November – Anniken Huitfeldt, politician and Minister.Norway source
1969Margaret Atwood - The Edible WomanCanada source
1969The Save Manapouri campaign was launched at a public meeting in Invercargill in October.New Zealand source
19701 January – New uniforms for police personnel and school pupils are introduced.Malaysia source
1970January 26: After Leila Diniz's controversial interview to O Pasquim, the government signs Decree-Law Nº 1.077/1970, which censors material "subversive of morals and good customs"Brazil source
1970June 29 – According to Japan Fire and Disaster Management Agency official confirmed report, a Ryōmō General hospital fire, resulting to 17 person fatalities with 10 person injures, in Sano, Tochigi Prefecture.Japan source
19708 July – Singapore's first kidney transplant is performed on 29-year-old Doreen Tan at the Outram Park General Hospital (present day Singapore General Hospital), led by Chan Kong Thoe. The operation is declared a success.Singapore source
1970July 30 – Thalidomide scandal: Damages totalling £485,528 are awarded to 28 Thalidomide victims in the UK.source
1970October 4 – American rock singer Janis Joplin is found dead of an overdose, age 27, in her hotel room in Hollywood.source
1970October 16 – October Crisis: The Canadian government declares a state of emergency and outlaws the Quebec Liberation Front.source
1970October 17 – A cholera epidemic breaks out in Istanbul.source
197022 October - Attack on the Commander in Chief of the Army, René Schneider. The general dies 3 days later in the Military Hospital.Chile source
197025 October – Census (population 35,666,549)Turkey source
1970October 28 – A cholera outbreak in eastern Slovakia causes Hungary to close its border with Czechoslovakia.source
1970November 20: Metro Hospital General opens.Mexico source
1970December 7 – The U.N. General Assembly supports the isolation of South Africa for its apartheid policies.source
1970December 29 – U.S. President Richard Nixon signs into law the Occupational Safety and Health Act.source
1970The city of Faisalabad has an estimated population of 726,000, while the capital Islamabad has an estimated population of 70,000.Pakistan source
1971February 9 – Satchel Paige becomes the first Negro league player to be elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame.source
1971February 21 – Between February 21 and 22, an outbreak of nineteen tornadoes rages across the Mississippi Delta in Mississippi and Louisiana, killing 123 people.source
1971February 21 – The Convention on Psychotropic Substances is signed at Vienna.source
1971February 27 – Doctors in the first Dutch abortion clinic (Mildredhuis in Arnhem) start to perform abortions.source
1971March 6 – A fire in a mental hospital in Burghölzli, Switzerland kills 28 people.source
197126 March – President Yahya Khan banned political activities in Pakistan.Pakistan source
197127 April – Martial law declared; student associations banned.Turkey source
1971June 17 – President Richard Nixon declares the U.S. war on drugs.source
197110 July – Chaim Sheba (born 1908), Austro-Hungarian (Bukovina)-born Israeli physician.Israel source
197124 July - Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen declares a State of Emergency to allow the touring South African Springboks football team to play.Australia source
197130 July – Singapore's first sex reassignment surgery is performed on a 24-year-old who becomes a woman after the surgery, led by Dr S. S. Ratnam. The surgery is declared a success.Singapore source
1971August 14 – The controversial Stanford prison experiment, led by Stanford University psychology professor Philip Zimbardo, began in Palo Alto, Californiasource
1971August 22 – President Marcos suspends the Writ of Habeas CorpusPhilippines source
1971November 5 - Senior officials Cubans arrive at the Pudahuel Airport, their photography being forbidden to the media.Chile source
1971December 20 – Two groups of French doctors involved in humanitarian aid merge to form Médecins Sans Frontières.source
1971Dr. Roberto Farina performs the first male-to-female gender-affirming surgery in Brazil.Brazil source
1971Skittles was introduced by Wrigley in 1971.source
1972February – Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom made her first official visit to Malaysia. She visited General Hospital at Kota Kinabalu. The hospital was then renamed in her honour (Hospital Queen Elizabeth). It is the only hospital in Malaysia named after her.Malaysia source
1972Early March – Massive spraying is held in large areas of Palawan island about a week after malaria-bearing African mosquitoes, which has brought by Japanese scientists, escape from a cage in Puerto Princesa, Palawan.Philippines source
19722 April – Eyal Berkovic, Israeli footballer.Israel source
1972April 27 – Ikiza: Burundi government forces begin a 4-month genocide against the Hutu people, killing 100,000–300,000.source
1972May 3 – Abram Onkgopotse Tiro is expelled from the University of the North and students protest the expulsion.South Africa source
197220 July – The Stop at Two policy is unveiled to encourage people to have smaller families.Singapore source
1972July 25 – U.S. health officials admit that African-American men were used as guinea pigs in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study without their informed consent.source
197231 July – Claudy bombing ("Bloody Monday"), 10:00 AM : Three car bombs in Claudy, County Londonderry, kill six immediately with three dying later in hospital. It becomes public knowledge only in 2010 that a local Catholic priest was an IRA officer believed to be involved in the bombings but his role was covered up by the authorities.Northern Ireland source
1972September 23 – Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos announces on national television the issuance of Proclamation No. 1081 placing the entire country under martial law.source
1972October 20 – Provinces in State of Emergency are raised to 20.Chile source
1972Smallpox outbreak in Khulna Municipality leads to 1384 cases and 372 deaths between 28 April and 22 June 1972.Bangladesh source
197316 February – The Misuse of Drugs Act is passed to deal with the problem of drug abuse more effectively.Singapore source
1973March 8 – According to Japan Fire and Disaster Management Agency official confirmed report, Yawata General Hospital fire in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture, total 13 patients were fatalities.Japan source
197315 March – Mark Dvorzhetski (born 1908), Russian (Lithuania)-born Israeli physician and historian.Israel source
1973Steve Biko is banned by the government.South Africa source
1973May 28 — A man suffering from a "nerve disorder" kills his wife and daughter in Xianhu, Wuming, Nanning; he then broke into the village's communal building, killing an additional nine people and injuring nine others, before being lynched by an angry mobChina source
19731 August – The 25th anniversary of the World Health Organization (WHO) was celebrated.Malaysia source
1973September 7 - Salvador Allende requests the relocation of Synco's Operations Room, from its original location in Providencia to La Moneda PalaceChile source
1973Los Doctores las prefieren desnudas, directed by Gerardo SofovichArgentina source
1974January 11 – David, Elizabeth, Emma, Grant, Jason and Nicolette Rosenkowitz are born in Cape Town, the first sextuplets in the world where all six babies survive.South Africa source
1974January – May smallpox epidemic in East India.India source
197410 March – A ban on private automobiles on alternate days based on odd/even license plates went into effect, replacing the Sunday ban introduced in December of the previous year.Italy source
1974April 3 – The 1974 Super Outbreak, at the time the largest series of tornadoes in history, occurs in 13 U.S. states and one Canadian province, leaving over 300 people dead, over 5,000 people injured, and hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.United States source
1974April: The country enacted policies to prevent foreigners looking for drugs, especially opium, from entering. In an interview with the Associated Press, Mohammed Daoud, the country's president, described this policy as trying to counteract the "hippies".Afghanistan source
1974June 1 - In an informal article in a medical journal, Henry Heimlich introduced the concept of abdominal thrusts, commonly known as the Heimlich maneuver, to treat victims of choking.source
1974July 2 – Ralph Steinhauer becomes the first Aboriginal person to be a lieutenant governor when he is appointed lieutenant governor of Alberta.Canada source
1974August 11 – The government repeal a law banning women from bullfighting.Spain source
1974August – The Government approved Sunburst as the first ohu, a type of rural intentional community, near Whitianga, Coromandel.New Zealand source
197411 October – Axel Heiberg Stang, politician and Minister (b.1904).Norway source
1975March 28 – A fire in the maternity wing at Kučić Hospital in Rijeka, Yugoslavia (Croatia), kills 25 people.source
1975April 15 – The Kabataang Barangay (KB) was created by virtue of Presidential Decree No. 684. The decree provided for the organization of KB units in the 42,000 barangays all over the country with the purpose of giving the youth a definite role in community affairs.Philippines source
1975August 11 – Governor Mário Lemos Pires of Portuguese East Timor abandons the capital Dili, following a UDT coup and the outbreak of civil war between UDT and Fretilin.source
197525 August – An Australian women's soccer team captained by Pat O'Connor are defeated by Thailand 3-2 in Hong Kong in a Group A match of the 1975 Asian Cup Ladies Football Tournament. The Australian team are a representative team consisting mostly of players from suburban Sydney club St George-Budapest, but were not official international players until they were controversially recognised in 2024 as the first Matildas which prompts anger and disappointment from former Matildas who describe the decision as disrespectful to the women who were formally chosen to represent Australia from 1978 onwards. The decision to elevate the 1975 team to official status also results in Tarita Yvonne Peters (who played under the name Stacey Tracy) becoming the first women's Indigenous player to represent Australia, a title which was previously held by Karen Menzies.Australia source
1975October 16 – The last naturally occurring case of smallpox is diagnosed and treated, the victim being two-year-old Rahima Banu in Bangladesh.source
197516 October - Rahima Banu's smallpox infection is reported. She is the last known person to have been infected with naturally occurring Variola major.Bangladesh source
197530 October – Juan Carlos I becomes acting head of state due to the ill health of Francisco Franco.Spain source
1975October 31 – The Racial Discrimination Act 1975 takes effect in Australia.source
197524 November – The Swiss Society for the Watch Industry (SSIH) announces the dismissal of 170 people in Bienne and CornolSwitzerland source
1975November 29 – While disabled, the submarine tender USS Proteus discharges radioactive coolant water into Apra Harbor, Guam. A Geiger counter at two of the harbor's public beaches shows 100 millirems/hour, 50 times the allowable dose.source
1975Lillian Ngoyi's ban, confining her to Orlando Township in Johannesburg and forbidding her to attend any gatherings, is renewed for five years.South Africa source
1975December 18 – The Algerian president Houari Boumediene orders the expulsion of all Moroccans from Algeria.source
1975Tun Syed Zahiruddin bin Syed Hassan (from May)Malaysia source
1975The Dunedin Longitudinal Study begins, following the health and development of 1037 children born in Dunedin between 1972 and 1973.New Zealand source
1976February 7 – Toronto Maple Leafs star Darryl Sittler scores ten points in one game.Canada source
197628 February – Three people, including a fire officer, are taken to hospital after inhaling fumes from an ammonia leak in Harris Street in the Sydney suburb of Broadway.Australia source
1976March 25 - San Pablo Hospital is inaugurated in the city of Coquimbo.Chile source
1976March 31 – The New Jersey Supreme Court rules that patient in a persistent vegetative state in the Karen Ann Quinlan case can be disconnected from her ventilator. She remains comatose and dies in 1985.source
19767 June – The nation's first McDonald's restaurant opens in central Porirua; a Big Mac initially cost 75c.New Zealand source
1976June 27 – The world's first known case of Ebola is recorded in Nzara, Sudan (now South Sudan).source
1976July 27 – Delegates attending an American Legion convention at The Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia, US, begin falling ill with a form of pneumonia: this will eventually be recognised as the first outbreak of Legionnaires' disease and will end in the deaths of 29 attendees.source
1976August 26 – The second known outbreak of Ebola virus occurs in Yambuku, Zaire.source
1976August 26 - Parliamentary immunity is revoked for leftist deputies Fortunato Herrera and Salom Mesa Espinoza in connection with the Niehous case.Venezuela source
1976September 1 – The state of emergency in the Republic of Ireland legally still in force since 1939 is lifted.source
197610 October – Wang Sing-nan sent a mail bomb to Chairman of Taiwan Provincial Government Hsieh Tung-min; as a result of the explosion, Hsieh lost a hand.Taiwan source
1976November 6 - Uttawar forced sterilisations: Mass vasectomy of nearly 800 men of Uttawar village, Palwal district, Haryana during India's Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi.source
19766 November - Uttawar forced sterilisations: Mass vasectomy of nearly 800 men of Uttawar village, Palwal district, Haryana during India’s Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi.India source
197618 December – 10,000 public sector workers go on strike.Luxembourg source
1976Random breath testing is introduced in Victoria (Australia).source
1977January 18 – Scientists identify a previously unknown bacterium as the cause of the mysterious Legionnaires' disease.source
19771 March – Abdul Ati al-Obeidi is appointed General Secretary of the General People's Committee.Libya source
1977April 4 - The Ministry of the Interior prohibits the importation of the books by Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa and Julio CortázarChile source
19773 May: Two Palestinians die and six Israelis are injured in an outbreak of unrest on the West Bank sparked by a Gush Emunim announcement that it intended to establish more settlements.Palestine source
1977June 15 – Outbreak of cholera in Arida, Wakayama prefecture.Japan source
1977August 15 – Nazi war criminal Herbert Kappler escapes from the Caelian Hill military hospital in Rome.source
1977August – Herbert Kappler, a war criminal, escapes from a prison hospital with the help of his wife - she carried him out in a large suitcase.Italy source
1977October 26 – The last natural smallpox case is discovered in Merca district, Somalia. The WHO and the CDC consider this date the anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, a great success of vaccination and, by extension, of modern science.source
1977November 2 – The worst storm in Athens' modern history causes havoc across the Greek capital and kills 38 people.source
1977November 4 – United Nations Security Council Resolution 418 places a mandatory arms embargo against South Africa.South Africa source
197710 December – The Science Centre Singapore (then Singapore Science Centre) is officially opened.Singapore source
1977A influenza pandemic was reported and the pandemic lasted until 1979.Soviet Union source
197829 March – Dr. Leo Rebello pioneers a 60 lessons distance learning course in Naturopathy to train Naturopaths to serve in India's 560,000 villages.India source
197812 April – Louis Pilot is appointed the Luxembourg national football team's new coach.Luxembourg source
197813 May – Basaglia Law approved: gradual dismantling of psychiatric hospitals is initiated. The largest asylum was Mombello Psychiatric Hospital.Italy source
1978June 19 – England cricketer Ian Botham becomes the first man in the history of the game to score a century and take eight wickets in one innings of a Test match.source
197821 June – An outbreak of shooting between Provisional IRA members and the British Army leaves one civilian and three IRA men dead.Northern Ireland source
1978July 25 – Louise Brown, the world's first test tube baby, is born in Oldham, Greater Manchester, UK.source
1978August 4: President Ernesto Geisel signs a national decree, that prohibits strikes in the sectors of national security and public services.Brazil source
1978August 25 – Tropical Storms severely battered the northern Philippines and Manila, killing more than 50 persons.Philippines source
1978September 12 – The Declaration of Alma Ata is signed and released in the Capital City of Kazakh, USSR. Known as the core document on Primary Health Care Practices and Equity in Healthcare, it paved the way for the modern-day State-sponsored Healthcare System.source
1978September – Attempted poisoning of 500 members of the African National Congress by South African government infiltrators.source
1978October 13 – The Soviet Union launches a major Russification campaign throughout all union republics.source
1978November 24 – China starts an experimental "household responsibility system", in Anhui Province.source
1978December 16 - The Mystery of Mamo is released in cinemas.Japan source
1978Synthetic insulin is developed.source
1978Estimated population as of 31 December: 3,165,200.New Zealand source
1979February 7: Nazi criminal Josef Mengele suffers a stroke and drowns while swimming in Bertioga. His remains are found six years later.Brazil source
19797 April – Bangladesh started the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) to reduce child deaths from vaccine preventable diseases.Bangladesh source
1979April 10 – Presidential Decree No. 1616, an act to create an Intramuros Administration for the purpose of restoring and developing Intramuros is enacted.Philippines source
1979June 15 – McDonald's introduces the Happy Meal in the United States in a nationwide advertising campaign after testing the product since February in franchises in the U.S. state of Missouri.source
1979July 1 – Sweden becomes the first country to outlaw corporal punishment in the home.source
1979July 4 – Psychiatrist and leader of the global anti-asylum movement Franco Basaglia visits the Colônia de Barbacena Psychiatric Hospital in Minas Gerais, Brazil, and compares the facility to Nazi concentration camps, a move that momentum to psychiatric reform in the country that same year.source
197930 July – The carless days scheme is introduced, restricting private motor vehicles from driving on one day of the week.New Zealand source
19797 September – The first Speak Mandarin Campaign is launched to encourage Chinese Singaporeans to speak Mandarin instead of dialects.Singapore source
1979October 26 – The eradication of the smallpox virus is announced by the World Health Organization, making smallpox the first of only two human diseases that have been driven to extinction (rinderpest in 2011 being the other).source
197910 November – Mahmud Al-Nashaf (born 1906), Israeli Arab politician.Israel source
1979November 29 - The latest edition of El Tarapacá de Iquique circulates.Chile source
1979undated: Neue Deutsche Welle, a pop musical genre, spreads throughout the land.Germany source
19801 March – The federal executive of the Australian Labor Party decides to intervene in the Queensland branch, with most key office-holders replaced.Australia source
19802 April – Lubna Jaffery, politicianNorway source
1980April 12 – Terry Fox begins his Marathon of Hope, a plan to run across Canada to raise money for cancer research, setting off from St. John's, Newfoundland and running westward.source
198021: The first angioplasty treatment takes place at the Saint Antonius Hospital in Utrecht.Netherlands source
1980May 6 – Thozamile Botha, a Port Elizabeth activist, breaks his banning order and escapes to Maseru, Lesotho.South Africa source
1980May 8 – Global eradication of smallpox certified by the World Health Organization.source
1980September 1 – Terry Fox is forced to end his Marathon of Hope run outside of Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, after finding out that the cancer has spread to his lungs.source
1980October 10 – Wayne Gretzky plays in his first NHL game when his Edmonton Oilers are defeated by the Chicago Black HawksCanada source
198011 October – Census (Population: 44,736,947)Turkey source
1980Pakistani cricket team visited Bangladesh but matches were abandoned due to unwarranted crowd interference during the first match.Bangladesh source
1980Estimated population as of 31 December: 3,176,400.New Zealand source
1981February 12 – Moslem rebels attack a Philippine Army unit in Pata Island, Sulu, killing 119–124 troops in the worst outbreak of fighting since the 1974 rebel offensive of Jolo.Philippines source
19811 April – The opening of Far Eastern Memorial Hospital in Banqiao City, Taipei County.Taiwan source
1981April 5: Hennie Kuiper wins Tour of Flanders cycling race.Netherlands source
1981June 5 – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States report that five homosexual men in Los Angeles have a rare form of pneumonia seen only in patients with weakened immune systems, the first recognized cases of AIDS.source
1981September 5–10. First round of National Congress of Solidarity Delegates takes place in Gdańsk, at Hala Olivia. Solidarity has 9,5 million members. Of all its regions, most numerous is Upper Silesia - Zagłębie Dąbrowskie (Region Śląsko-Dąbrowski) - 1,4 mln members, Mazovia - 911,000 members, and Lower Silesia - 900,000 members. During the Congress, The Message to Working People of Eastern Europe is issued, as well as a Letter to Polonia of the Whole World.Poland source
198112 September – The new Singapore General Hospital is officially opened.Singapore source
19814 November: Israeli authorities order Birzet University closed for two months, additionally carrying out arrests of several of the university's administration and the student council.Palestine source
1981December 28 – The first American test-tube baby, Elizabeth Jordan Carr, is born in Norfolk, Virginia.source
198131 December – Camille Polfer steps down as Mayor of Luxembourg City after only two years, due to ill health, and is succeeded by his daughter, Lydie the following day.Luxembourg source
1981Around the end of 1981, China becomes the first country ever to reach a population of 1 billion.source
1981Cuba suffers a major outbreak of dengue fever, with 344,203 cases.source
1981Use of crack cocaine, a smokeable form of the drug, first reported in the United States and Caribbean.source
1981A national census was conducted in 1981.Iceland source
19821 January – Lydie Polfer becomes the new Mayor of Luxembourg City.Luxembourg source
19823 January – Inger Haldorsen, physician, midwife and politician (born 1899)Norway source
1982January 20 – Musician Ozzy Osbourne is treated for rabies after biting the head off a live bat during a concert in Des Moines, Iowa.source
1982February – First reported cases of AIDS in Canada.Canada source
1982August 13 – In Hong Kong, health warnings on cigarette packets are made statutory.source
1982September 1 - Vypeen alcohol poisonings.India source
1982September 21 – In the United States, the National Football League Players Association calls a strike, the first in-season work stoppage in the National Football League's 63-year history. The strike lasts for 57 days, reduces the regular season from 16 games to 9, and forces an expanded 16-team playoff tournament.source
1982October 8 – Poland bans the Solidarity trade union after having suspended it on December 13, 1981.source
198211 October – Andrew Peacock becomes Industry and Commerce Minister after 18 months on the backbench when ill-health forces Sir Phillip Lynch's resignation from the position and from Parliament.Australia source
198227 October – The Homosexual Offences (Northern Ireland) Order 1982 comes into effect, decriminalising homosexuality in Northern Ireland for those aged 18 or older.Northern Ireland source
1982December 2 – At the University of Utah, 61-year-old retired dentist Barney Clark becomes the first person to receive a permanent artificial heart (he lives for 112 days with the device).source
1982The population of the People's Republic of China alone exceeds 1 billion, making China the first nation to have a population of more than a billion.source
1982Bangladesh enacted the National Drug Policy which helped develop the drug manufacturing industry in Bangladesh.Bangladesh source
1982Estimated population as of 31 December: 3,226,800.New Zealand source
1983January 30 – Chinese newspaper People's Daily reports that the nation will run out of food and clothes by the year 2000 if the state's population control efforts are not successful.source
1983March 23 – Strategic Defense Initiative: U.S. President Ronald Reagan makes his initial proposal to develop technology to intercept enemy missiles.source
1983April 5 - Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia Henry Pybus Bell-Irving summons Premier Bennett to Government House. The L-G issues emergency warrants to cover spending until a snap election.Canada source
1983April 6 – The FDA approves sale of the first spermicidal sponge, "Today."source
198319 June – Simha Erlich (born 1915), Polish-born Israeli politician.Israel source
198318 July – The first death in Australia attributable to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) occurs.Australia source
1983August 7 – Soviet authorities pass harsher punishments for drunkenness and absenteeism, responding to public calls to curb high rates of alcoholism.source
198328 October – Gabriel Langfeldt, psychiatrist (born 1895).Norway source
19832 November – First successful kidney transplantation in Istanbul.Turkey source
1983November 14 – The immunosuppressant cyclosporine is approved by the FDA, leading to a revolution in the field of transplantation.source
1983Estimated population as of 31 December: 3,264,800.New Zealand source
1983Pat Jennings becomes the first footballer to play in 1,000 Football League matches.Northern Ireland source
1983In late February an incident of mass hysteria occurred at Hawke's Bay Beach leading to 18 casualties.Pakistan source
1984January 13: In Amsterdam and Utrecht a large number of people are infected with dysentery, after eating shrimps from Southeast Asia. 14 people in total don't survive the ordeal due to causes of the infection. So called 'home peeling' of shrimps, that guarantees too little hygiene becomes prohibited after this incident.Netherlands source
198424 January – Yotam Halperin, Israeli basketball player.Israel source
1984February 3 – John Buster and the research team at Harbor–UCLA Medical Center announce history's first embryo transfer from one woman to another, resulting in a live birth.source
19841 April – Medisave is launched as a personal savings scheme for medical bills.Singapore source
1984May 5 – Over 7,000 people attend an Afrikaner Volkswag rally in Pretoria.South Africa source
1984June 25 – Hayim Association is founded by Rina Zaizov Marx and parents of children with cancer as paediatric oncology department in Israel.source
1984June to July - A food poisoning occurs because mustard lotus root is infected with clostridium botulinum in Kumamoto. According to official confirmed report, resulting to 11 fatalities.Japan source
1984November 1 and 9 – Two separate hotel fires occur in Manila. The first breaks out at the Ambassador Hotel, a tourist hotel in Ermita, causing deaths of ten or eleven people. Eight days later, another engulfs a part of the Las Palmas Hotel, killing at least six, three of them foreigners.Philippines source
1984Crack cocaine, a smokeable form of the drug, is first introduced into Los Angeles and soon spreads across the United States in what becomes known as the crack epidemic.source
1984Deposit Insurance was first introduced in August 1984 as a scheme in terms of The Bank Deposit Insurance Ordinance, 1984Bangladesh source
1984Sultan of Pahang: Tengku Abdullah (Regent until 25 April)Malaysia source
1985January 1 - Law on tobacco control comes into forceIceland source
198531 January – Menachem Bader (born 1895), Austro-Hungarian (Galicia)-born Haganah member and Israeli politician.Israel source
1985February 19 – William J. Schroeder becomes the first patient with an artificial heart to leave the hospital.source
198514 March: President-elect Tancredo Neves is admitted to the Emergency Room of the Hospital de Base in the Federal District.Brazil source
1985April 23 – Coca-Cola changes its formula and releases New Coke. The response is overwhelmingly negative and the original formula is back on the market in less than three months.source
198516 May – The first case of HIV is diagnosed at the Communicable Diseases Centre (present day National Centre for Infectious Diseases). The patient is subsequently warded at the CDC.Singapore source
19851 June – Paul Philipp is appointed head coach of the Luxembourg national football team.Luxembourg source
19857 July – The Israeli government orders the Austrian Pilgrim Hospice to the Holy Family in the Old City of Jerusalem permanently closed, saying that the hospital's facilities were unable to provide adequate medical care. The closure proves controversial, leading to a general strike by Palestinians in East Jerusalem.Palestine source
1985July 20 – P.W. Botha declares a state of emergency in 36 magisterial districts.South Africa source
1985Africa has a population growth of 3.2 percent per year.source
1985Muhammad Ataul Gani Osmani was awarded posthumously for his contribution to social welfare.Bangladesh source
198624 January – Raviv Ullman, Israeli-born American actor.Israel source
198625 January – Mikhail Gorbachev proposes a 15-year plan on abolition of nuclear weapons.Soviet Union source
1986January – Belfast City Hospital tower-block is opened.Northern Ireland source
1986February 7 – Anti-Duvalier protest movement: President Jean-Claude Duvalier ("Baby Doc") flees Haiti, ending 28 years of family rule.source
198614 April – Sudirman Arshad held an open-air concert on Chow Kit Road, which was the first time ever that a street concert drew a 100,000-person crowd on a Monday night.Malaysia source
1986May 25 – Hands Across America: At least 5,000,000 people form a human chain from New York City to Long Beach, California, to raise money to fight hunger and homelessness.source
1986June 12 – South Africa declares a nationwide state of emergency.source
198617 June – The National University Hospital is officially opened.Singapore source
1986August 20 – In Edmond, Oklahoma, United States Postal Service employee Patrick Sherrill guns down 14 of his coworkers before committing suicide.source
1986August 21 – A radio journalist in Albay reports that a number of children has fallen ill after being provided UNICEF's vitamin A capsules through a provincewide research program by the Ministry of Health and two United States-based groups, which has begun on July 30 to address vitamin A deficiency in the Bicol Region. The subsequent widespread panic in the region leads to the project being indefinitely postponed since August 30. By mid-September, reportedly there are 85 alleged cases of side effects and two deaths from vitamin A. The ministry, following their investigation, would later deny the accusations and affirm the safety of the capsules.Philippines source
198622 October: The Israeli Hadassah Medical Organization establishes a liaison office with the Israeli Civil Administration to improve healthcare in the occupied Palestinian territories. The same day, the Israeli government appoints Tahir Hijazi as Mayor of Anabta.Palestine source
1986October 26 – Bus deregulation goes into effect in the United Kingdom, except Greater London and Northern Ireland.source
1986November 1 – Sandoz chemical spill: A major environmental disaster near Basel, Switzerland pollutes the Rhine, when an agrochemical storehouse catches on fire.source
1986Diet sessions: 104th (regular session opened in December 1985, to May 22), 105th (extraordinary, June 2), 106th (special, July 22 to July 25), 107th (extraordinary, September 11 to December 20), 108th (regular, December 29 to 1987, May 27)Japan source
1987February 28 – A Rüppell's vulture chick is hatched at the Milwaukee County Zoo, the first time the animal has been successfully bred in North America.source
1987March 20 – AZT is approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration for use in the treatment of HIV/AIDS.source
19873 April – The Housing and Development Board (HDB) introduces a new scheme for families with third children to upgrade to bigger flats. This comes after the new 'Have Three or More (if you can afford it)' policy is announced a month ago.Singapore source
1987April 21 – In Colombo, Sri Lanka, the Central Bus Station Bombing kills 113 civilians.source
1987June 4 – State President of South Africa Pieter Willem Botha visits Sharpeville.South Africa source
198712 June: President José Sarney announces the launch of the Bresser Plan, which freezes rents and wages.Brazil source
1987July 11 – World population is estimated to have reached five billion people, according to the United Nations.source
1987July 23 – The United States Census Bureau reports the biggest population gains in metropolitan U.S. areas of over 1 million people since 1980: Phoenix (population increase of 26%); Dallas-Fort Worth (+25%); Atlanta (+20%); San Antonio (+19%) Tampa-Saint Petersburg (+19%); San Diego (+18%); Sacramento (+17%); and Houston (+17%). The largest population losses were in Rust Belt cities: Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland.source
19871 September – Royal order prohibiting smoking in roofed public spaces comes into force.Belgium source
1987September 13 – Goiânia accident: Metal scrappers open an old radiation source abandoned in a hospital in Goiânia, Brazil, causing the worst radiation accident ever in an urban area.source
1987October 7 – The U.S. Department of Education announces new guidelines for teaching about AIDS in public schools, emphasizing the importance of abstinence and "appropriate moral and social conduct."source
1987October: Pediatrician Guus de Jonge publishes groundbreaking article about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. He advises to put infants in the supine position.Netherlands source
198728 November – Hussain Muhammad Ershad declares a state of emergency and bans strikes. All educational institutes are declared closed until 4 December.Bangladesh source
198710 December: Hamas is founded by Palestinian Islamic scholar Ahmed Yassin after the outbreak of the First Intifada.Palestine source
1987December 23 – Nikki Sixx, Mötley Crüe's bassist overdoses on heroin and is declared clinically dead for two minutes before a paramedic revives him with two syringes full of adrenaline.source
198729 December – 19-year-old Neighbours star Kylie Minogue enters the charts with her first single "I Should Be So Lucky".Australia source
198817 January – Education Minister Yitzhaq Navon orders the mobilisation of high school students to assist in the citrus fruit harvest in a crisis caused by the absence of Palestinian Arab workers.Israel source
1988February 4 – Cardinal Sin announces the closure of the National Secretariat for Social Action for the claims of infiltration by communists.Philippines source
198828 February – First heart transplant in Turkey (Ankara University)Turkey source
19889 June – The National Skin Centre starts operations.Singapore source
198812 June – The opening of National Cheng Kung University Hospital in North District, Tainan City.Taiwan source
198815 July – Jacques Poos is made Minister for Health.Luxembourg source
19885 September – The first AIDS case in the Soviet Union kills a 29-year-old woman Olga G.Soviet Union source
1988October 28 – Abortion: 48 hours after announcing it was abandoning RU-486, French manufacturer Roussel Uclaf states that it will resume distribution of the drug.source
1988December 1 – The first World AIDS Day is held.source
198820 December – The United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances takes place in Vienna.Austria source
1989January 4 – Dvora Netzer (born 1897), Russian (Ukraine)-born Israeli politician.Israel source
1989February 1 – In Australia, Joan Kirner becomes Victoria's first female Deputy Premier, after the resignation of Robert Fordham over the VEDC (Victorian Economic Development Co-operation) Crisis.source
19891 February – The Malaysian National Speed Limit was enforced.Malaysia source
1989February 2 – An ailing State President Pieter Willem Botha steps down from the leadership of the National Party, but remains state president.South Africa source
1989February 7: Last public performance by singer Misora Hibari held in Kitakyushu.Japan source
1989March 1 – A curfew is imposed in Kosovo, where protests continue over the alleged intimidation of the Serb minority.source
1989March 22 – Clint Malarchuk of the NHL Buffalo Sabres suffers a near-fatal injury when another player accidentally slits his throat.source
1989May 20 – 1989 Tiananmen Square protests: The Chinese government declares martial law in Beijing.source
1989May 20 — Tiananmen Square protests of 1989: The Chinese government declares martial law in Beijing.China source
1989Transhumanism: Genetic modification of adult human beings is tried for the first time, a gene tagging trial.source
1989August 8 – Prime Minister of New Zealand David Lange resigns for health reasons and is replaced by Geoffrey Palmer.source
1989October 3 – The government of East Germany closes the country's border with Czechoslovakia to prevent further emigration to the West.source
1989December 21 – Nicolae Ceaușescu addresses an assembly of some 110,000 people outside the Romanian Communist Party headquarters in Bucharest. Unprecedentedly, most of the crowd turns against him.source
198931 December – Singapore Indoor Stadium was officially opened in an inaugural ceremony by the Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew.Singapore source
1989The Atlantis Primal Therapy Commune moves to Colombia from Ireland.Colombia source
1989VeniceArrhythmias, a biannual international workshop on cardiac arrhythmias, is founded.Italy source
1990January 18 – Marion Barry, Mayor of the District of Columbia, is caught on videotape smoking crack cocaine.source
1990January 20 – The government of Haiti declares a state of emergency, under which it suspends civil liberties, imposes censorship and arrests political opponents. The state of siege is lifted on January 29.source
1990January 25–26 – The Burns' Day Storm kills 97 in northwestern Europe.source
1990February – Smoking is banned on all cross-country flights in the United States.source
1990March 11–13 – The March 1990 Central United States tornado outbreak produces 64 tornadoes across six US states, including four violent F4/F5 tornadoes. The outbreak leaves 2 dead, 89 injured, and causes over $500 million in damages.source
1990April 1 – The 1990 United States census begins. There are 248,709,873 residents in the U.S.source
1990April 23 – A power outage hits Makati, along with neighboring areas, during an ongoing, widespread daily crisis, affecting more than 300 government and major office buildings.Philippines source
1990May 17 – The World Health Organization removes homosexuality from its list of diseases.source
1990June 2 – The Lower Ohio Valley tornado outbreak spawns 88 confirmed tornadoes in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio, killing 12; 37 tornadoes occur in Indiana, eclipsing the previous record of 21 during the 1974 Super Outbreak.source
1990June 7 – State President F.W. de Klerk lifts the state of emergency in South Africa that has been in place for ten years.South Africa source
1990June 23 census: Population: 355,278Cape Verde source
1990July 26 - On the The Howard Stern Show, Gary Dell'Abate is given the nickname "Baba Booey" for the first time.source
1990August 2 – The first ban of smoking in bars in the US (and possibly the world) is passed in San Luis Obispo, California.source
199029 September – Singapore's first liver transplant is performed on 25-year-old Surinder Kaur, led by Dr Susan Lim from the National University Hospital. The operation is declared successful.Singapore source
199011 October – The last Social and Welfare Lottery draw was held, as the Malaysian government aspire to promote the assimilation of Islamic values in public administration and not involve directly in gambling activities. The end of such lotteries was announced in April.Malaysia source
199021 October – Census (population 56,473,005)Turkey source
199027 November – Censorship is imposed on the newspapers enabling strict monitoring; newspaper owners and journalists decided not to publish newspapers from the very next day. Ershad declares state of emergency, curfew imposed.Bangladesh source
1990Chile national football team 1990Chile source
199120 April – 1991 Categoría Primera B season.Colombia source
19913 June – The first National Registration Identity Card (NRIC) replacement exercise takes place in MacPherson Community Club in a programme spanning three years. The programme replaces the existing laminated NRICs to credit-card sized ones with features for higher security. It will also indicate blood types for use in emergencies.Singapore source
1991June 28 – The Population Registration Act in terms of which South Africans were classified into racial groups is repealed.South Africa source
19916 July – Lale Aytaman was appointed as the Muğla Province governor. She was the first female governorTurkey source
19912 October – The Punjab subordinate judiciary service tribunal act is passed.Pakistan source
199113 October – Diego Domínguez, Spanish actor and singerSpain source
19912 November - An IRA bomb explodes in Musgrave Park Hospital, Belfast, killing two British Army soldiers and injuring 11 other people.Northern Ireland source
1991November 6 – The CPSU and its republic-level division, the Communist Party of the Russian SFSR, are banned in the Russian SFSR by presidential decree.source
1991Chile national football team 1991Chile source
19923 January – Singapore bans the sale of chewing gum in a bid to prevent disruption to MRT services and reduce gum litter-related issues. This came after two incidents where MRT doors were unable to close fully due to gum. In 2004, the ban is partially lifted for gums with medicinal value.Singapore source
199213 January – Ulaanbaatar was reorganized from six districts to nine districts.Mongolia source
199229 January – New South Wales Premier Nick Greiner calls for a controversial sex education book, funded by the Federal Government, to be destroyed.Australia source
199218 March – Antonio Molina, singer (born 1928)Spain source
1992April 20 – The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, held at Wembley Stadium, London, is televised live to over one billion people and raises millions of dollars for AIDS research.source
1992May 25 – In PepsiCo's promotion Number Fever, the winning number "349" is announced with a million-peso prize; however, an error causes more than 600,000 winners; several violent incidents followed. By following year, about 22,000 people filed more than five thousand lawsuits against Pepsi, outnumbering those against former Pres. Ferdinand Marcos and Imelda Marcos. In 2006, a court would rule in favor of Pepsi.Philippines source
1992July 16 – At the 1992 Democratic National Convention, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton accepts his party's presidential nomination on behalf of the "forgotten middle class".source
199210 August - The Ulster Defence Association is proscribed by the Government of the United Kingdom.Northern Ireland source
1992October 23 – Emperor of Japan Akihito begins the first imperial visit to China, telling a Beijing audience he feels deep sorrow for the suffering of the Chinese people during World War II.source
1992Chinese Student Protection Act of 1992 was in effect starting October 9. This strengthened the role of Executive Order 12711, which was signed by George H. W. Bush in 1990.China source
1992Estimated population as of 31 December: 3,552,200.New Zealand source
19937 January - The government declares a state-of-emergency in Dushanbe.Tajikistan source
199318 January - João Carlos Teixeira, footballerPortugal source
19938 February – Gheorghe Vîlceanu replaces Doru Viorel Pană as prefect of Bucharest.Romania source
1993February 10 – Mani pulite scandal: Italian legislator Claudio Martelli resigns, followed by various politicians over the next two weeks.source
1993March 29 – A state of calamity is declared in the city of San Pablo and the municipalities of Nagcarlan and Rizal, all in Laguna, due to a fish kill that has affected six lakes in the province.Philippines source
1993April 11 – Four hundred fifty prisoners rioted at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio, and continued to do so for ten days, citing grievances related to prison conditions, as well as the forced vaccination of Nation of Islam prisoners (for tuberculosis) against their religious beliefs.source
1993April 14 – Hungary passes a law banning the public display of Fascist and Communist symbols.source
1993April 23 – The World Health Organization declares tuberculosis a global emergency.source
19934–11 August – Tropical Storm Bret passes over northern coastal areas of Colombia, killing one person. The storm kills a total of 231 people across Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Costa Rica.Colombia source
199317 December – The Ang Mo Kio Community Hospital (present-day Ang Mo Kio - Thye Hua Kwan Hospital) is officially opened. The hospital works with General Practitioners, which will mainly serve the elderly living in the area.Singapore source
199328 December – Pakistan begins a campaign to eradicate polio.Pakistan source
1993Chile national football team 1993Chile source
1994February 19 – Yitzhak Yitzhaky (born 1936), Israeli educator and politician.Israel source
1994March 27 – The biggest tornado outbreak in 1994 occurs in the southeastern United States; one tornado kills 22 people at the Goshen United Methodist Church in Piedmont, Alabama.source
19945 April – Economic rehabilitation program (known as bitter recipe)Turkey source
1994May 3 — Some scientists at Anhui use the technology of Genetic engineering to successful improve Oryza sativa.China source
1994May 18 – The Flavr Savr, a genetically modified tomato, is deemed safe for consumption by the FDA, becoming the first commercially grown genetically engineered food to be granted a license for human consumption.source
1994June 28 – Members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult execute the first sarin gas attack at Matsumoto, Japan, killing eight and injuring 200.source
1994June 28 – Members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult execute the first sarin gas attack at Matsumoto, Japan, killing 8 and injuring 200.Japan source
1994September 15 – The Manila RTC, through a temporary restraining order, stops an order from Malacañang disallowing jai alai.Philippines source
1994November 5 – A letter by former U.S. president Ronald Reagan, announcing that he has Alzheimer's disease, is released.source
1994Chile national football team 1994Chile source
1994Northern Ireland population estimated to be 1,643,700.Northern Ireland source
1994Tens of thousands of Tutsi Rwandans flee to Zaire, Burundi and Tanzania.Rwanda source
19951 January – The display of cigarette packets in advertisements was banned by the Malaysian federal government.Malaysia source
1995January 4 – Naomi Amir (born 1931), American-born Israeli neurologist.Israel source
1995April 9 - In a series of gubernatorial elections held across Japan, Yukio Aoshima and Knock Yokoyama become governors of Tokyo and Osaka respectively.Japan source
1995June 14–19 — Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisisRussia source
199524 June – Ren Ci Hospital is officially opened.Singapore source
1995June 27 – Supreme Court orders permanent cease of operations of jai alai frontons in the country. It has decided with finality that the sport is illegal following opposition from the government.Philippines source
199526 November – The Australian Women's Party is launched in Brisbane, Queensland by a group which includes disenchanted Labor women.Australia source
1995December 6 – The United States Food and Drug Administration approves Saquinavir, the first protease inhibitor to treat HIV/AIDS. Within 2 years of its approval, annual deaths from AIDS in the United States fall from over 50,000 to approximately 18,000.source
1995Estimated population as of 31 December: 3,706,700.New Zealand source
1996January 22 – Andreas Papandreou, Prime Minister of Greece, resigns due to health problems; a new government is formed under Costas Simitis.source
199630 January – President Samper calls a special Congress into session and admits that money tied to drug trafficking aided his 1994 election campaign, but insists he was deceived. He demands that Congress investigate the situation and himself to determine responsibility.Colombia source
1996February 27 – Pokémon Red & Green Versions release in Japan for the Game Boy.source
19965 March – The Singapore Gamma Knife Centre is officially opened. The centre, a privately owned facility, uses gamma knife for brain surgeries, resulting in less pain than conventional brain surgery, as well as a much safer alternative.Singapore source
199610 May – Prime Minister John Howard announces new gun control measures, which involve the banning of automatic and semi-automatic weapons, self-loading rifles, shotguns and pump-action shotguns, as well as tightening of other gun laws. A nationwide register will be established, along with requirements for a genuine reason for owning, possessing or using a firearm, minimum standards for storage and mail order sales controls.Australia source
1996July 1 – The Northern Territory in Australia legalises voluntary euthanasia.source
1996July 16 – An outbreak of E. coli food poisoning in Japan results in 6,000 children being ill, including two deaths, after a group of school children eat contaminated lunches.source
1996July 16 – An outbreak of E. coli food poisoning in Sakai City resulted in 6309 schoolchildren and 92 school staff members from 62 municipal elementary schools falling ill.Japan source
1996August 7 – Heavy rains kill more than 80 campers near Huesca, Spain.source
1996The first three-parent baby is conceived in New Jersey through mitochondrial donation.source
1996October 22 – A fire at La Planta prison in southwest Caracas, Venezuela, kills thirty prisoners.source
1996November 17 – A bomb explodes in Kaspiysk, Russia, killing 32 people.source
1996The national government bans José Ramos-Horta of Indonesia, a Timorese independence leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, from entering the country. It is the second time he has been banned since 1994.Philippines source
1996Municipality of São Miguel established from part of the municipality of Tarrafal on the island of SantiagoCape Verde source
1996Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996India source
1996Best Songwriter: Mark Tierney / Paul Casserly / Anthony Ioasa - Sweet Disorder (Strawpeople)New Zealand source
1997January 3 – The Bureau of Immigration adopts a policy against foreigners with unauthorized stay in the country, by virtue of the Alien Social Integration Act.Philippines source
1997January 26 – VJTI changes its name from Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute to Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute in Mumbai.source
199711 February – 800,000 workers, many in the public sector, participate in a walk out over President Ernesto Samper's economic policies of austerity and privatization.Colombia source
199715 February – The Toa Payoh Hospital and Changi Hospital are closed and merged into New Changi Hospital.Singapore source
1997March 24 – The 69th Academy Awards, hosted by Billy Crystal, are held at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, with The English Patient winning Best Picture. During the event, the DVD format is launched in the United States.source
1997May 8 – The Japanese Diet passes the Ainu Culture Law and repeals the Ainu Protection Act.Japan source
1997May 16 – U.S. President Bill Clinton issues a formal apology to the surviving victims of the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male and their families.source
19973 August – A state of emergency was imposed in Kuching, Sarawak after the Air Pollution Index reached "extreme".Malaysia source
1997September 1 – Dublin Regulation on treatment of applications for right of asylum under European Union law first comes into force.source
1997September 29 - The Taliban arrest European Union Commissioner for Humanitarian Affairs Emma Bonino, EU delegates, and journalists for taking pictures in a women's hospital in Kabul. They are released the same day.Afghanistan source
1997October 2 – British scientists Moira Bruce and John Collinge, with their colleagues, independently show that the new variant form of the Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease is the same disease as Bovine spongiform encephalopathy.source
199716 October – The Iraqi national census is conducted, estimating the population of Iraq at 22,046,000.Iraq source
1997November 2 – Severe Tropical Storm Linda devastates southern Vietnam and Thailand, killing 3,275 people.source
1997November 19 – In Des Moines, Iowa, Bobbi McCaughey gives birth to septuplets in the second known case where all seven babies are born alive, and the first in which all survive infancy.source
1997December 15 – Microsoft releases Windows 98 Beta 3.source
1997December 16 – In Japan, over 700 children suffer photosensitive epilepsy attacks after watching an episode of the Pokémon anime.source
1997December 22 - After the floods, aid agencies in Somalia get concerned over the risk of cholera.Somalia source
1997December 29 – Hong Kong begins to kill all the chickens within its territory (1.25 million) to stop the spread of a potentially deadly Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 strain.source
1998January 12 – Nineteen European nations agree to forbid human cloning.source
199820 January – Zevulun Hammer (born 1936), Israeli politician.Israel source
199827 February – Party political films are banned after amendments to the Films Act are passed. The amended law also toughens penalties for distribution of pornography, protects minors from pornography and expands 'films' to cover digital films. Censorship procedures will be streamlined into Films and Publications Department in MITA from 1 April.Singapore source
1998February 28 – A study led by Andrew Wakefield is published in The Lancet suggesting an alleged link between MMR vaccine and autism. Now known to be full of data manipulation, the study was instantly controversial and fueled the nascent anti-vaccination movement. Although subsequent large epidemiological research found no link between vaccines and autism, the study contributed – in the following years and decades – to a sharp drop in vaccination rates and the resurgence of measles in several countries. The study, fully retracted in 2010, was later characterised as "perhaps the most damaging medical hoax of the 20th Century".source
1998February – El Nino phenomenon begins.Malaysia source
1998April – First case of Kali River goonch attacks is reported.Nepal source
1998October 4 – The World Bank praises Costa Rica for its remarkable success in raising life expectancy and lowering infant mortality.source
1998October 6 – Supreme Court votes, 8–5, to acquit former First Lady Imelda Marcos and to reverse a 1993 Sandiganbayan verdict convicting her of graft in connection with the construction of the Philippine General Hospital.Philippines source
1998United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed. Some 250 people were killed in the blasts and thousands more wounded. Osama bin Laden was the primary suspect.Afghanistan source
1998The villages of Durba and Watsa in Orientale Province are the center of an outbreak of Marburg virus disease among gold mine workers.Democratic Republic of the Congo source
1998In 1998, the state accounted for 61.3% of Romania's fresh meat output. This was the only branch of the food processing sector still dominated by the state in 1998.Romania source
199910 January – The World Bank announces that tests on water wells in Bangladesh have shown that about 40% are contaminated with arsenic.Bangladesh source
1999January 21 – Dr J Ana Water Dispenser captured the 1999 2nd Yakult PBL Centennial Cup crown, becoming the 1st title to win the tournament, defeating Tanduay Gold Rhum Masters, three games to two.Philippines source
1999February 25: A legionellosis outbreak occurs in Bovenkarspel.Netherlands source
1999March 26 – The Melissa virus attacks the Internet.source
19991 July – The establishment of Centers for Disease Control.Taiwan source
1999July 18 – MLB Pitcher David Cone of the New York Yankees, throws the 16th perfect game in Major League Baseball history.source
1999July 20 – Falun Gong is banned in the People's Republic of China under Jiang Zemin.source
1999September 1 - Afghan Health Minister Mulla Mohammad Abbas Akhund met with Pakistani Health Minister Javed Hashmi and Pakistani Director of General Health Ghayur Ayub to discuss the lack of medical facilities in Afghanistan.Afghanistan source
199925 October – The first heart transplant in Romania is performed at the Floreasca Emergency Hospital by a team of doctors led by Prof. Dr. Șerban Brădișteanu.Romania source
1999October – The government distributes to all households a booklet concerning the Year 2000 problem, What everyone should know about the Millennium Bug.United Kingdom source
199917 November – Enrique Urquijo, singer-songwriter (born 1960; drug overdose)Spain source
199918 November – The Ministry of Health announced the formation of two healthcare clusters known as the Eastern (SingHealth) and Western (National Healthcare Group) Networks, which will take effect in 2000.Singapore source