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The Uninon of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was formed. They were the people who later built canals off the Amu and Syr rivers.
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In the 1930s, the Soviet government decided to construct canals to divert the water to irrigate the desert for rice, cereal and cotton.
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The Aral Sea is identified as the forth largest lake in the world.
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Fishing was the biggest industry in the Aral Sea. In the 1960s, fishing supplied over 60,000 jobs to workers. However, by 1977, the fishing harvest dropped by 75%.
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The once rich fishing industry was eliminated in the 1980s due to the small size and salinity of the Aral Sea.
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In 1987, the shrinkage caused the Aral Sea to split into two separate bodies of water- the North Aral Sea and the South Aral Sea.
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In the beginning of the 1990s, the Aral Sea's surface area had shrunk by nearly half of its original area and its volume had gone down by about 75%.
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The Aral Sea was declared the worst ecological disaster of the twentieth century by the United Nations Environmental Programme.
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The Soviet Union breaks up into 15 separate countries, forcing Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to deal with the Aral Sea crisis by themselves.
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Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan sign a treaty to pledge 1% of their budget to helping the Aral Sea recover.
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Construction of the Dike Kokaral begins.
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In a final attempt to save at least some of the lake, Kazakhstan built a dam separating the North and South Aral Sea. Finished in 2005, the dam was basically a death sentence for the South Aral Sea, but the North Aral Sea is now slowly growing once again.
