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ohn Lennon is assassinated in New York
On Monday 8th December 1980, the British musician
John Lennon
was assassinated in the entrance of the Dakota building, in New York, his place of residence. The culprit: Mark David Chapman, who shot the former Beatles idol singer five times. Lennon had just returned from the Record Plant Studio with his wife, Yoko Ono, and was pronounced dead upon arrival at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center. Dead at the age of only 40, he left a -
Attack against Pope John Paul II
On May 14, 1981, the
Pope Juan Pablo II
he was greeting more than 10,000 supporters in St. Peter's Square when a burst of gunfire was suddenly heard. The target: the Pontiff. At just 23 years old, Mehmet Ali Agca had already threatened the Pope in 1979, when he wrote a letter saying that, in the name of Islam, he would kill Juan Pablo during one of his trips. John Paul II was saved and forgave the aggressor. -
The Falklands War confronts Argentina and Great Britain
The Falkland Islands, an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean, which since 1833 belonged to a British colony, made world news when Argentina decided to claim that land that was part of its territory. In 1982, the forces of that country entered and advanced rapidly, capturing several territories with 1,800 Malvin islanders, mostly peasants. The occupation lasted 74 days, as on June 14 the English achieved the second usurpation after winning the so-called Malvinas War. -
Gas poisoning tragedy in India
At 12:15 a.m. On December 3, 1984, what seemed like an ordinary morning at one of Union Carbide's pesticide plants in Bhopal, India, turned into one of the greatest tragedies in history. A tank with methyl isocyanate began to leak and approximately 27 tons of the gas that was in the container spread throughout the city. It is estimated that between 3,800 and 6,000 people were poisoned by the accident. Thousands more suffered partial or permanent disabilities. -
An earthquake devastates Mexico City
"I was 4 years old (and I remember being) sitting in the living room ... on my mother's lap ... She starts to shake and I feel a heartrending scream ... coming from the radio: 'He's shaking'". This is how the witness Carolina Bustamante described the earthquake to the BBC, 30 years after the catastrophe that Mexico City suffered on September 19, 1985. At approximately 7:19 am, -
Seizure of the Palace of Justice by M-19 guerrillas
In a country already bled by the war against narco-terrorism, November 6, 1985, brought one more blow. The Palace of Justice of Colombia, seat of the Supreme Court and the Council of State, was occupied by the M-19 guerrillas, who considered that the Colombian government had violated the peace agreement reached the previous year. The hostages inside the building endured 28 hours of terror and three fires that left the nucleus of power of the Colombian nation reduced to rubble. -
Challenger space shuttle explodes in midair
On the morning of January 28, 1986, he was born very cold in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The Kennedy Space Center was about to witness one of NASA's greatest catastrophes. 73 seconds after the shuttle Challenger took off, on what would be its tenth mission, an explosion covered the sky leaving the audience of the show in shock. -
The historic fall of the Berlin Wall
The East Berlin German Communist Party announced on November 9, 1989 that at midnight on that day, all citizens of the German Democratic Republic were allowed to cross the borders of the country. For the first time since 1945, Berlin was united again. Some 2 million citizens visited West Berlin with pikes, hammers and any tool that would allow them to crumble the Berlin Wall, which for so long divided a nation. Reunification became official almost a year later, in 1990.