Health & Medicine in the 20th century

380 sourced entries, 1901 CE to 1999 CE, oldest first. Also see Health & Medicine across every century or everything else in the 20th century.

• 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
• 1901American retail pharmacy Walgreens is founded in Chicago.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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 1905June 20 – Ernest Henry Starling introduces the word "hormone" into the English language.source
• 1905Alfred Einhorn introduces novocaine.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
• 1906The BCG vaccine for tuberculosis is first developed.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
• 1909Karl Landsteiner, Constantin Levaditi and Erwin Popper first isolate the poliovirus.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 20 – The first clinic for treatment of occupational diseases is opened in Milan (Italy).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
• 1912January 23 – The First International Opium Convention is signed at The Hague to restrict exports.source
• 1913July 13 – The 1913 Romanian Army cholera outbreak during the Second Balkan War starts.source
• 1913Astra, a predecessor of the AstraZeneca global healthcare and pharmaceutical brand, is founded in Södertälje, Sweden.source
• 1914March 27 – Belgian surgeon Albert Hustin makes the first successful non-direct blood transfusion, using anticoagulants.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 5 – German zeppelins drop bombs on Liège, Belgium, killing 9 civilians.source
• 1914December 17 – United States President Woodrow Wilson signs the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act. This begins the ongoing international war on drugs.source
• 1914Oxymorphone, a powerful narcotic analgesic closely related to morphine, is first developed in Germany.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
• 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
• 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
• 1916January 1 – The British Royal Army Medical Corps carries out the first successful blood transfusion, using blood that has been stored and cooled.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
• 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
• 1917November 17 – The People's Dispensary for Sick Animals is founded in the United Kingdom.source
• 1918January – 1918 flu pandemic: The "Spanish flu" (influenza) is first observed in Haskell County, Kansas.source
• 1918Conscription Crisis of 1918 in Ireland: A general strike is held here against conscription.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 is torpedoed and sunk in the English Channel on passage from Le Havre to Southampton by German submarine with the loss of 123 of the 801 people on board.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
• 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
• 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 17 – A woman named Anna Anderson tries to commit suicide in Berlin and is taken to a mental hospital where she claims she is Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia.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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 1921November 23 – In the United States, the Sheppard–Towner Act is signed by President Harding, providing federal funding for maternity and child care.source
• 1922January 11 – The first successful insulin treatment of diabetes is made, by Frederick Banting in Toronto.source
• 1922Vegemite is invented by Australian entrepreneur Fred Walker.source
• 1923May 20 – British Prime Minister Bonar Law resigns, due to ill health.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
• 1926October 23 – A decree in Italy bans women from holding public office.source
• 1926November 24 – Sri Aurobindo withdraws into seclusion following a spiritual realisation, entrusting the supervision of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram to "The Mother".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
• 1928October 12 – An iron lung respirator is used for the first time at Children's Hospital, Boston.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
• 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
• 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
• 1930October 20 – The British Passfield white paper demands restrictions on Jewish immigration into Mandatory Palestine.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
• 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
• 1932January 4 – The British authorities in India arrest and intern Mahatma Gandhi and Vallabhbhai Patel.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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 1933Jewish 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
• 1933The Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring is enacted, allowing compulsory sterilization of citizens suffering from a list of alleged genetic disorders.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
• 1934July 13 – Hitler gives a speech to the Reichstag, justifying his purge.source
• 1934November 6 – Attempted exclusion of Egon Kisch from Australia begins.source
• 1935August 14 – United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act into law.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
• 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
• 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
• 1936December 7 – Streptococcous meningitis (a condition previously 99% fatal) is successfully treated for the first time with a sulfonamide.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
• 1937October 5 – Roosevelt gives his famous Quarantine Speech in Chicago.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
• 1938February 10 – Carol II of Romania takes dictatorial powers.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
• 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
• 1939January 1 – Coming into effect in Nazi Germany of:source
• 1939January 1 – The Third Soviet Five Year Plan is launched.source
• 1939January 1 – The small businesses obligation to maintain adequate accounting.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
• 1939November 16 – Al Capone is released from Terminal Island, due to deteriorating health caused by syphilis.source
• 1940Food rationing in the United Kingdom begins; it will remain in force until 1954.source
• 1940June 30 – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is placed under the Federal Security Agency.source
• 1940A group of 728 Polish political prisoners from Tarnów become the first residents of the Auschwitz concentration camp.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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 1942February 24 – Internment of Japanese Canadians is ordered.source
• 1942April 27 – WWII: Conscription crisis in Canada: A national plebiscite is held on the issue of conscription.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
• 1942November 26 – The movie Casablanca premières at the Hollywood Theater in New York City.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
• 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
• 1943Australian Hospital Ship Centaur is sunk off the coast of Queensland by , killing 268 of the 332 medical personnel and civilian crew aboard.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
• 1944February 26 – Sue S. Dauser becomes the first woman appointed to the substantive rank of captain, in the United States Navy Nurse Corps.source
• 1944In Markowa, Poland, German police kill Józef and Wiktoria Ulm, their 6 children and 8 Jews they were hiding.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
• 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
• 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
• 1945December 29 – Expulsion of Germans from Hungary is ordered by the Soviet-dominated Hungarian government.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
• 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 15 – Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American to play Major League Baseball since the 1880s.source
• 1947July 1 – The United States begins the National Malaria Eradication Program, successfully eradicating malaria in 1951.source
• 1947December 21 – During the mass migration of Hindus and Muslims between the new states of India and Pakistan, 400,000 are slaughtered.source
• 1948April 7– The World Health Organization is established by the United Nations.source
• 1948June 24 – The first World Health Assembly of the World Health Organization is held in Geneva.source
• 1948October 26 – Donora Smog of 1948: A killer smog settles into Donora, Pennsylvania.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
• 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
• 1949May 22 – After two months in Bethesda Naval Hospital, James Forrestal commits suicide under suspicious circumstances.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
• 1949July 30 – Legal aid is introduced in England and Wales.source
• 1949August 21 – Deportivo Saprissa enters Costa Rican soccer's first division.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
• 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
• 1950February 12 – Albert Einstein warns that nuclear war could lead to mutual destruction.source
• 1950September 19 – West Germany decides to purge communist officials.source
• 1950Myxomatosis is introduced into Australia, in an attempt to control the escalating rabbit population.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
• 1951The continental United States becomes malaria-free.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
• 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
• 1952November 20 – One of the first successful gender-affirming surgeries is performed in Copenhagen on Christine Jorgensen.source
• 1952December 14 – The first successful surgical separation of conjoined twins is conducted in Mount Sinai Hospital, Cleveland, Ohio.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
• 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
• 1953September 26 – Rationing of sugar ends in the UK.source
• 1954February 23 – The first mass vaccination of children against polio begins in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States.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
• 1954December 23 – J. Hartwell Harrison and Joseph Murray perform the world's first successful kidney transplantation, in Boston, Massachusetts.source
• 1954Gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus) are brought to the United States by Dr. Victor Schwentker.source
• 1955January 22 – In the United States, The Pentagon announces a plan to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), armed with nuclear weapons.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
• 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 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
• 1956May 1 – Minamata disease is discovered in Japan.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
• 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
• 1957March 14 – President Sukarno declares martial law in Indonesia.source
• 1959July 22 – A Kumamoto University medical research group studying Minamata disease concludes that it is caused by mercury.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
• 1960May 4 – West German refugee minister Theodor Oberländer is dismissed because of his Nazi past.source
• 1960November 14 – Belgium threatens to leave the United Nations over criticism of its policy concerning the Republic of the Congo.source
• 1960World population: 3,021,475,000source
• 1961March 30 – The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs is signed at New York.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
• 1962March 7 – Ash Wednesday Storm: A snow storm batters the Mid-Atlantic.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
• 1962July 1 – A heavy smog develops over London.source
• 19621962–1965 rubella epidemic, originating in Europe and spreading to the United States.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
• 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
• 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
• 1963Miike coal mine explosion: A coal mine explosion kills 458 and sends 839 carbon monoxide poisoning victims to the hospital.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
• 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
• 1964Jerome Horwitz synthesizes zidovudine (AZT), an antiviral drug which will later be used in treating HIV.source
• 1965April 12 – A historic and extremely destructive tornado outbreak struck the Midwest region of the United States, killing 266.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
• 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
• 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
• 1966In or about this year, one person returning to Haiti from the Congo is thought to have first brought HIV to the Americas.source
• 1967March 14 – Nine executives of the German pharmaceutical company Grunenthal are charged with breaking German drug laws because of thalidomide.source
• 1967April 21 – An outbreak of tornadoes strikes the upper Midwest section of the United States (in particular the Chicago area, including the suburbs of Belvidere and Oak Lawn, Illinois where 33 people are killed and 500 injured).source
• 1967September 1 – The Khmer–Chinese Friendship Association is banned in Cambodia.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
• 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
• 1969April 4 – Denton Cooley implants the first temporary artificial heart.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
• 1970October 28 – A cholera outbreak in eastern Slovakia causes Hungary to close its border with Czechoslovakia.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
• 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
• 1971June 17 – President Richard Nixon declares the U.S. war on drugs.source
• 1971August 14 – The controversial Stanford prison experiment, led by Stanford University psychology professor Philip Zimbardo, began in Palo Alto, Californiasource
• 1971December 20 – Two groups of French doctors involved in humanitarian aid merge to form Médecins Sans Frontières.source
• 1971Skittles was introduced by Wrigley in 1971.source
• 1972April 27 – Ikiza: Burundi government forces begin a 4-month genocide against the Hutu people, killing 100,000–300,000.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
• 1972September 23 – Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos announces on national television the issuance of Proclamation No. 1081 placing the entire country under martial law.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
• 1975March 28 – A fire in the maternity wing at Kučić Hospital in Rijeka, Yugoslavia (Croatia), kills 25 people.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
• 1975October 16 – The last naturally occurring case of smallpox is diagnosed and treated, the victim being two-year-old Rahima Banu in Bangladesh.source
• 1975October 31 – The Racial Discrimination Act 1975 takes effect in Australia.source
• 1975November 29 – While disabled, the submarine tender 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
• 1975December 18 – The Algerian president Houari Boumediene orders the expulsion of all Moroccans from Algeria.source
• 1976June 27 – The world's first known case of Ebola is recorded in Nzara, Sudan (now South Sudan).source
• 1976August 26 – The second known outbreak of Ebola virus occurs in Yambuku, Zaire.source
• 1976September 1 – The state of emergency in the Republic of Ireland legally still in force since 1939 is lifted.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
• 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
• 1977August 15 – Nazi war criminal Herbert Kappler escapes from the Caelian Hill military hospital in Rome.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
• 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
• 1978July 25 – Louise Brown, the world's first test tube baby, is born in Oldham, Greater Manchester, UK.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
• 1978Synthetic insulin is developed.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
• 1979August 27 – The Troubles: Lord Mountbatten of Burma and two others are killed in a bombing on his boat in the Republic of Ireland by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). Mountbatten was a British fleet admiral, statesman and an uncle of The Duke of Edinburgh. On the same day, the Warrenpoint ambush occurs, killing 18 British soldiers. Doreen Knatchbull, Baroness Brabourne would die in a hospital the following day from injuries sustained in the bombing.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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 1981December 28 – The first American test-tube baby, Elizabeth Jordan Carr, is born in Norfolk, Virginia.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
• 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
• 1982August 13 – In Hong Kong, health warnings on cigarette packets are made statutory.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
• 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
• 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 6 – The FDA approves sale of the first spermicidal sponge, "Today."source
• 1983August 7 – Soviet authorities pass harsher punishments for drunkenness and absenteeism, responding to public calls to curb high rates of alcoholism.source
• 1983November 14 – The immunosuppressant cyclosporine is approved by the FDA, leading to a revolution in the field of transplantation.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
• 1984June 25 – Hayim Association is founded by Rina Zaizov Marx and parents of children with cancer as paediatric oncology department in Israel.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
• 1985February 19 – William J. Schroeder becomes the first patient with an artificial heart to leave the hospital.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
• 1985May 25 – Approximately 10,000 people are killed when Bangladesh is affected by the storm surge from Tropical Storm One (1B).source
• 1985Africa has a population growth of 3.2 percent per year.source
• 1986February 7 – Anti-Duvalier protest movement: President Jean-Claude Duvalier ("Baby Doc") flees Haiti, ending 28 years of family rule.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
• 1986August 20 – In Edmond, Oklahoma, United States Postal Service employee Patrick Sherrill guns down 14 of his coworkers before committing suicide.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
• 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
• 1987April 21 – In Colombo, Sri Lanka, the Central Bus Station Bombing kills 113 civilians.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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 1993February 10 – Mani pulite scandal: Italian legislator Claudio Martelli resigns, followed by various politicians over the next two weeks.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
• 1993April–May – 1993 Four Corners hantavirus outbreak: Thirteen people are killed by Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, mainly in the Southwestern United States.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
• 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
• 1994November 5 – A letter by former U.S. president Ronald Reagan, announcing that he has Alzheimer's disease, is released.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
• 1996January 22 – Andreas Papandreou, Prime Minister of Greece, resigns due to health problems; a new government is formed under Costas Simitis.source
• 1996February 27 – Pokémon Red & Green Versions release in Japan for the Game Boy.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
• 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
• 1997January 26 – VJTI changes its name from Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute to Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute in Mumbai.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 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
• 1997September 1 – Dublin Regulation on treatment of applications for right of asylum under European Union law first comes into force.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
• 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 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
• 1998October 4 – The World Bank praises Costa Rica for its remarkable success in raising life expectancy and lowering infant mortality.source
• 1999March 26 – The Melissa virus attacks the Internet.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