The Mental Floss History Of The World Part 31

age of John F. Kennedy at his inauguration as U.S. president in 1961, making him the youngest elected president in the country's history

45.

number of revolutions per minute (rpm) completed by a recording format introduced by RCA in 1949 68.4.

life expectancy, in years, of human being in United States in 1953 <>

life expectancy, in years, of human being in China or India in 1953 2,294.

number of U.S. banks that failed in 1931 2,400.

number of Germans who fled East Berlin on a single day, August 12, 1961 5,000.

range, in miles, of U.S. and Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles by the late 1950s 10,000.

estimated number of Austrian Jews who committed suicide after being forced into n.a.z.i concentration camps 33, 514.

number of "enemies of the people" killed by Soviet secret police in 1937 and 1938 150,000.

number of British officials in India in 1931 353,000,000.

number of Indians in India in 1931 179,000.

number of people in Soviet slave labor camps, or gulags, in 1930 1,700,000.

number of people in Soviet gulags in 1953 836,255.

number of women's dresses found by Russian troops after liberating the Auschwitz concentration camp in late January 1945 23,000,000.

number of Americans receiving some form of government aid in 1938 2,300,000,000.

the world population in 1940, about 25 percent of whom lived in China

ONE WORLD.

(19632007)

IN A NUTSh.e.l.l.

In the s.p.a.ce of just a few weeks in the summer of 2007, British scientists in Antarctica appeared in a globally televised environmental awareness concert; a major French bank triggered a plunge in the U.S. stock market, and Chinese restaurateurs prepared for the 2008 Summer Olympics by translating their menus into English-and learning the difference between carp carp and and c.r.a.p c.r.a.p.

It's a small world, after all.

In fact, as the twenty-first century plowed through its first decade, technological innovation, environmental challenges that transcended geopolitical borders, and an increasingly intertwined international economy combined to shrink the planet considerably.

Following the Cuban missile crisis, both of the world's super powers, the United States and Soviet Union, took a step back from the abyss, and settled into ideological combat by proxy in other countries. But by the end of the 1980s, the Soviet Union's faltering economy betrayed its military and political aspirations, and the cold war was over.

Unfortunately, there were plenty of other wars: in Vietnam, the Middle East, East Africa, Eastern Europe, and on the Indian subcontinent.

In 1991, the United States, now the world's sole superpower, led an international force against Iraq to drive dictator Saddam Hussein's invading forces out of Kuwait. In 2001, following a ma.s.sive terrorist attack on American targets, the U.S. led another international force to overthrow the religious dictatorship of the Taliban in Afghanistan, followed by the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. And so on. Clearly, the fall of communism did not presage a Pax Americana.

In the Middle East, an abundance of disparate ingredients-economic feuds over the area's bountiful oil supplies; bitter sectarian disputes between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and the Arab world's antipathy toward Israel-worked to keep the region a seething cauldron of unrest.

Racial, ethnic, and religious differences sparked fights in other areas as well, from Northern Ireland to South Africa to East Timor. Predictably, the unrest triggered ma.s.sive waves of migration, more often forced than voluntary.

The collapse of communism ended third world nations' roles as colonial p.a.w.ns, but post-colonialism did not equate to post-poverty. By 1998, Africa contained 10 percent of the world's population, yet only 1 percent of its industrial output.

Latin America had reasonably good success in industrializing and relatively poor results in securing political stability. During the first decade of the twenty-first century, highly centralized governments that were either socialist or bordered on socialism took control in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador, countering moves toward democracy in countries such as Chile, Brazil, and Argentina.

In China, the disintegration of the Soviet Union left the world's most populous nation as the only large Communist country. Years of often violent internal unrest finally gave way to a more stable, if still repressive, government. The Chinese economy began to modernize, and the country entered the new century as a dominant player in the global marketplace.

In Europe, at least in Western Europe, cold war tensions between the USSR and the United States served to push countries toward greater cooperation. The European Economic Community was formed in 1957 on the Continent, joined in 1969 by England and Ireland. Other countries joined what became the European Union in 1995. By 2002, twelve European countries had adopted a unified currency, the euro.

While each region of the world was struggling with its own problems and enjoying its successes, advances in technology and science were making the world more interesting, more accessible-and smaller. Man walked on the moon; a sheep was successfully cloned; a human baby was conceived in a laboratory dish. Personal computers evolved from simple word processors to marvels of calculation and information, which expanded exponentially with the development of the Internet. Cellular and satellite telephones meant there was virtually no place on earth that was out of earshot.

The communications revolution helped spur a more fluid world economy. Goods and money moved more easily over oceans and across borders. Multinational groups such as the European Union and partic.i.p.ants in the North American Free Trade Agreement fostered international cooperation on issues such as tariffs. The number of multinational firms went from thirty-seven thousand in 1983 to more than sixty-three thousand in 2000.

But there were downsides to the global economy too. Inequities in earnings meant that high-wage countries shipped jobs to low-wage nations. Foreign capital could be fickle and withdrawn precipitously, leaving new industries in developing countries in the lurch, or at the mercy of corporate interests in other nations that swooped in to take advantage of the situation.

Economic interests weren't the only things countries shared with one another. Highly communicable viruses such as HIV and SARS replaced the plague and smallpox as epidemics that traveled without pa.s.sports. Environmental problems, ranging from global warming to the destruction of rainforests to air and water pollution, all transcended borders.

As the twenty-first century began to gather steam, mankind's best hope for solving the daunting environmental, economic, political, and social problems might well lie in an adage coined by the American statesman Benjamin Franklin in 1776: "We must all hang together, or a.s.suredly we shall all hang separately."

WHAT HAPPENED WHEN.

June 16, 1963 The United States and Soviet Union agree to ban testing nuclear arms aboveground and orbiting nuclear weapons in s.p.a.ce.

Apr. 6, 1965 The world's first global telecommunications satellite, EARLY BIRD, is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

June 20, 1969 U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong sets foot on the Earth's moon.

Jan. 15, 1973 The United States suspends all military action against North Vietnam to concentrate on peace talks.

Aug. 9, 1974 After the Watergate scandal Richard M. Nixon becomes the first U.S. president to resign from office.

Jul. 25, 1978 A healthy 5-pound, 12-ounce baby girl is born in London from an egg that is fertilized outside her mother's body-history's first "test-tube baby."

Oct. 16, 1978 Cardinal Karol Jozef Wojtyla of Poland becomes Pope John Paul II, the first non-Italian pontiff since 1522.

May 3, 1979 Margaret Thatcher becomes Britain's first female prime minister.

Dec. 26, 1979 Soviet troops invade Afghanistan.

Sept. 17, 1980 Iraq declares war on neighboring Iran.

Dec. 3, 1985 Poisonous gas leaks from a pesticide plant near Bhopal, India, killing 2,500.

Nov. 9, 1989 Guards throw open the gates at the Berlin Wall.

Aug. 6, 1991 A young British scientist named Tim Brenners-Lee posits an idea for using the Internet to share information called the "World Wide Web Project."

Dec. 26, 1991 The Supreme Soviet, which had ruled over the USSR since 1917, dissolves itself, completing the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Apr. 25, 1994 The all-white parliament of South Africa also dissolves itself, ending 342 years of white rule.

Jul. 1996 A United Nations report reveals that 385 people control about half of the world's personal wealth.

Aug. 1999 The population of India reaches 1 billion. Overall, the world's population reaches 6 billion.

Mar. 29, 2004 NATO formally admits seven new countries that were once part of the Soviet Union or Soviet-dominated.

Aug. 24, 2006 Pluto is recla.s.sified as a dwarf planet, shrinking the solar system's full planet roster to eight.

SPINNING THE GLOBE.

Africa:

Free(ish) at Last

By the 1960s, most African countries had achieved independence, or were on their way to doing so. But once the colonial powers departed, Africans were left to hastily put together their own governments, something they were often ill prepared to do.

The result in many cases was either a military coup or civil war, sometimes accompanied by genocide. In Libya, Colonel Moammar al-Gaddafi seized power in 1969, followed by General Idi Amin in Uganda in 1971. Civil wars erupted in the Sudan (1956 and 1983), Nigeria (1967), and Liberia (1990).

In 1974, a Soviet-backed Marxist coup toppled the venerable leader Haile Sela.s.sie in Ethiopia, and a decade later the region of Eritrea broke off from Ethiopia. A nine-year civil war ended with Eritrean independence in 1993.

In famine-ridden Somalia, troops from the United States and other countries tried both humanitarian and military aid to stop a civil war in the early 1990s. In 1995, however, they gave up the military efforts and the war continued into the 2000s.

In April 1994, ethnic violence broke out in Rwanda between members of the Hutu and Tutsi tribes. Within three months, an estimated one million Tutsi and moderate Hutus had been shot, clubbed, or hacked to death by Hutu gangs and members of the Rwandan military. When the genocide finally ended, more than two million Hutu, fearing reprisals, had fled the country to refugee camps in neighboring nations.

In Sudan, the largest country in Africa, a civil war raged between "Arab" Sudanese in the north and "African" Sudanese in the south. From 1956 to 1972, and then from 1983 to 2005, the fighting killed more than 2.0 million and displaced another 4.5 million. Even as an uneasy peace was worked out between north and south, the Arab-dominated government was using militia groups and mercenaries to wage war on residents of Darfur in western Sudan. More than 2,000 villages were destroyed and more than 400,000 people killed.

YOU CAN CALL ME AL(-GADDAFI).

Although he has been ruler of the country since 1969, Libya's Muammar al-Gaddafiholds no official public office and lacks a formal government t.i.tle. Heck, he's not even a general, he's a colonel.

Not all the fighting was African on African, and not all Europeans bowed out gracefully as the post-colonial era dawned. In Rhodesia, a minority white government led by a politician named Ian Smith broke away from British rule and established its own whites-in-charge government. Eventually bowing to international pressure, the white government held elections in 1980, which resulted in the election of a black-majority government led by a Marxist politician named Robert Mugabe. Mugabe rapidly became dictator of what was renamed Zimbabwe.

In South Africa, whites' control of the government began to slip in the 1980s. Widespread riots broke out in 1985, followed a year later by an economic boycott of the country by the United States and the European Economic Community. By 1994, black civil rights leader Nelson Mandela, who had spent more than twenty-seven years behind bars, was elected the country's president.

Even the relatively stable and democratic East African country of Kenya had its share of political unrest, including an attempted 1982 military coup and ethnic violence following a controversial 2007 election.

In addition to a high degree of political unrest throughout much of the continent, Africa also suffered from a severe case of empty wallet. Both the West and the Communist bloc had shown interest in currying the emerging nations' favor through economic aid. But the collapse of the Soviet Union made Africa less interesting to Western leaders. Direct economic aid from Western governments gave way to loans from organizations such as the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund, and the result was that many African nations rolled up heavy debts, with little economic growth to show for it.

While the economies stagnated, however, population growth did not. With the highest birthrate of any continent, Africa's turn-of-the century population of about 750 million was expected to nearly triple by 2050. The continent also led the world in another most unwelcome category: with 13 percent of the earth's population, Africa was home to nearly 70 percent of the earth's HIV/AIDS victims.

Soviet Union:

Refragmented

While the breakup of the Soviet Union seemed to happen overnight, it actually began to show signs of cracking decades before it occurred.