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4:40 p.m., 31 August 1980

On 31 August 1980, in the occupational-safety hall of Gdańsk's Lenin Shipyard, strike leader Lech Wałęsa and Deputy Prime Minister Mieczysław Jagielski signed an agreement between the Inter-Factory Strike Committee and the communist government commission. The signing was televised live.

Wałęsa declared the strike over immediately afterward. By that day roughly 800 workplaces were associated with the strike committee.

The concession and its price

The government accepted the creation of new, independent, self-governing trade unions. In return, those unions were to observe Poland's constitution, the ruling party's state role and the country's existing international alliances.

The accord also addressed political prisoners, censorship, the right to strike and economic demands from the workers' list of 21.

Who kept the strike alive

The 14 August walkout began over the dismissed activist Anna Walentynowicz and wages, then widened into an inter-workplace solidarity strike. On 16 August, after a shipyard-only settlement, Walentynowicz, the nurse Alina Pienkowska and Ewa Ossowska stopped departing workers so smaller workplaces would not be abandoned.

The agreement permitted independent unions; NSZZ Solidarność was formed on 17 September and registered by the court on 10 November.

Ten airports, three fronts

On 22 September 1980, Iraq turned escalating border fighting into full-scale war, striking ten major Iranian airports from the air and invading along three fronts.

Iraqi aircraft hit bases near Tehran and at Tabriz, Kermanshah, Ahvaz, Dezful, Urmia, Hamadan, Sanandaj and Abadan. Six divisions are reported to have crossed, advancing as far as 8 kilometres into Iran in the opening attack.

Toward Khuzestan

Ground formations pushed toward Qasr-e Shirin in the north and into oil-producing Khuzestan toward objectives including Dezful, Khorramshahr and Abadan.

Baghdad had renounced the 1975 Algiers Agreement on 17 September, after months of border clashes and mutual subversion, and moved to exploit Iran's post-revolutionary military disruption.

That 1975 settlement had placed the Shatt al-Arab boundary along the thalweg, the main navigational channel, in exchange for Iran ending its support to Iraq's Kurdish rebellion.

The raid that did not work

The opening strike was surprising but was not a repeat of Israel's 1967 destruction of Egypt's air force. Most Iranian combat aircraft survived.

Iran began retaliatory air attacks within hours and mounted broader counterstrikes against Iraqi bases the following day.

About 1 a.m., 3 December 1984

Late on 2 December 1984, workers at Union Carbide India Limited's pesticide plant detected rising pressure and a small methyl-isocyanate leak. At about 1 a.m. on 3 December a safety valve gave way and discharged a toxic plume over nearby Bhopal neighborhoods.

Water had mixed with roughly 40 tons of MIC in storage tank E610, producing a runaway exothermic reaction. The vent-gas scrubber had been turned off, the refrigeration coolant removed and the flare system was out of action. How the water entered E610 remains contested.

Streets and hospitals

The plume struck densely populated settlements while residents slept. Streets filled with human and animal bodies, and local hospitals were rapidly overwhelmed without adequate information about the chemicals involved.

A scholarly review estimates at least 3,800 immediate deaths, with published estimates reaching up to 10,000 in the first few days. The Indian government reported more than 500,000 people exposed.

Not simply an MIC leak

The plant was operated by Union Carbide India Limited, an Indian subsidiary majority-owned by the US-based Union Carbide Corporation — neither simply an American plant nor simply an Indian one.

And what came out of E610 was not simply MIC. Later chemical analysis reported more than 28 substances or reaction products connected with the tank, the residue of heating and reaction inside it. Doctors that night were treating thousands of choking patients without reliable information about what they had inhaled, and the precise composition of the cloud is disputed to this day.

17 April 1989, Warsaw Voivodeship Court

On 17 April 1989, a three-judge panel presided over by Judge Danuta Widawska entered the Independent Self-Governing Trade Union “Solidarity” in the register of trade unions, restoring its ability to operate publicly.

The ruling rested on amendments to trade-union law enacted after the Round Table settlement of 5 April. This was a provincial court, not the Supreme Court.

The anthem in the courtroom

About 200 supporters rose after the decision was announced, chanted the names of Solidarity and Lech Wałęsa, and sang the Polish national anthem.

Wałęsa was elsewhere. Afterward he called on Polish workers to join the restored union.

Solidarity had been formally dissolved by legislation in October 1982, after martial law, and had operated underground for more than six years. Bronisław Geremek, one of its Round Table negotiators, was present in the court.

A union, not a party

The registration covered a trade union. Solidarity-backed election activity ran through the Citizens' Committee, with candidates formally standing as independents for the June elections.

The separate Rural Solidarity union was registered three days later, on 20 April.

28 November 1989, on live television

At a nationally televised Communist Party gathering in Prague on 28 November 1989, the new party leader Karel Urbánek told approximately 3,500 activists that the party's future required abandoning its monopoly on power.

Prime Minister Ladislav Adamec said he would ask the Federal Assembly the next day to remove the constitutional clauses guaranteeing the party's leading role. He also promised a broader cabinet including non-Communists, and legislation dropping the requirement that education be based on Marxism-Leninism.

The pressure behind it

Eleven days of demonstrations had followed the 17 November police assault, culminating in a nationwide two-hour general strike on 27 November involving millions.

By 28 November, 10 of the 13 party Presidium members had already resigned.

Civic Forum raised the bid

Within hours, Civic Forum answered with further demands: President Gustáv Husák's departure, and laws guaranteeing free elections, freedom of the press and freedom of association.

The following day, 29 November, both chambers of the Federal Assembly unanimously abolished Article 4's guarantee of the party's leading role, and revised the provisions on the National Front and Marxist-Leninist education.

Ten laws — or eleven — and a 1 January deadline

Later accounts date President Wojciech Jaruzelski's signature of the economic-reform acts that make up the Balcerowicz Plan to 31 December 1989, completing the presidential stage of a package the Sejm had passed three days earlier. The Polish Press Agency and the official law gazette instead support 30 December; PAP's account has him receiving the package in Warsaw that day and signing it on the spot.

Even the size of it is reported two ways. The official presidential timeline counts ten laws; another retrospective account describes eleven acts as passed and signed. Sources may simply group the package differently, and the deferral of the anti-monopoly bill — enacted only in February 1990 — is one possible explanation rather than a settled one.

The legislation supplied the legal basis for enterprise insolvency, tighter monetary rules, new credit and foreign-exchange rules, and changes affecting foreign investment and taxation.

Why 30 December has the better paperwork

31 December is the date repeated in retrospective accounts of the signature. The Polish Press Agency, however, places Jaruzelski's signing on 30 December.

The official gazette leans the same way. Dziennik Ustaw issue 74, dated 30 December, carries seven of the package's acts, and the legal record for the state-enterprise law gives 30 December as publication and 1 January as commencement.

The parliamentary date is the one nobody disputes: the Sejm adopted the package on 28 December, and the Senate returned it without amendments.

What the signature did not do

It did not end communist rule. The official presidential chronology puts Poland's formal constitutional break with the People's Republic — removing the party's leading role and restoring the name Republic of Poland — on 29 December, in a separate act.

It did not take Poland out of the Warsaw Pact. Poland remained in it until the pact's military structures were dissolved in 1991 and the treaty expired on 1 July 1991.

Most of the measures took effect on 1 January 1990: price controls and subsidies were sharply reduced, credit tightened, interest rates rose, the złoty was devalued and fixed against the dollar, and enterprises entered a substantially different legal and financial environment.

6 November 1989, after seven peace prayers

On 6 November 1989, after peace prayers in seven Leipzig churches, several hundred thousand people assembled on Karl-Marx-Platz for what contemporary and memorial sources call the city's largest Monday demonstration.

Estimates differ widely: the German federal government gives about 300,000, a Leipzig tourism chronology about 400,000, and the Round Corner memorial up to 500,000. The march went ahead in heavy rain.

The demands

Marchers called for free elections, unrestricted travel, recognition of new opposition groups such as New Forum, and an end to the SED's constitutional monopoly on power.

The day coincided with publication of a restrictive new travel-law draft — still requiring applications and permissions — that drew immediate public criticism. Leipzig SED officials tried and failed to present themselves at the pre-march rally as leaders of reform, while the Stasi kept monitoring activists.

The next three days

The travel draft was rejected on 7 November, the day Willi Stoph's entire government resigned. On 8 November the Politburo resigned and New Forum was legalized.

On 9 November, the confused announcement of another travel rule precipitated the opening of the Berlin Wall checkpoints. This 6 November march is often confused with the 9 October demonstration, which drew about 70,000 and was the one security forces did not attack.

3 p.m. at the Lutherkirche

On 7 October 1989, the GDR's fortieth anniversary, thousands gathered near Plauen's Lutherkirche after typed leaflets and word of mouth spread a call from the Initiative for the Democratic Renewal of Society. They demanded free elections, speech, assembly, opposition activity and travel.

The Stasi report counted about 3,000 assembled by 3 p.m. and estimated around 10,000 overall; later municipal and memorial accounts give 15,000 to 20,000 — in a city of just under 80,000.

Candles, then fire engines

The crowd marched past the local SED headquarters, placing burning candles and chanting “We are the people,” and pressed on toward the town hall square.

Two police Hundertschaften and firefighting vehicles improvised as water cannon failed to disperse them. The Plauen and Neundorf volunteer fire brigades later formally objected to the misuse of their vehicles against civilians.

A promise, and a warning

The Lutheran superintendent Thomas Küttler mediated between the authorities and the demonstrators, who wanted to hear Mayor Norbert Martin.

The crowd dispersed around 6 p.m. after obtaining a promise of talks, and resolved to return the following Saturday. This was the first GDR mass protest of the revolutionary autumn that security forces attempted but failed to break up — two days before the well-known Leipzig march of 9 October.

2 May 1990: talks about talks

Delegations representing South Africa's government and the African National Congress began their first formal meeting at Groote Schuur in Cape Town on 2 May 1990. The meeting ran for three days, through 4 May.

Nelson Mandela, then deputy president of the ANC, led its delegation; State President F. W. de Klerk led the government side. Their immediate task was to identify and remove obstacles to substantive political negotiations.

The agenda was machinery, not a constitution

Issues raised during the talks included political prisoners, indemnity for exiles, security legislation, the state of emergency, troops in townships, political violence and the ANC's armed struggle.

De Klerk's February 1990 unbanning of the ANC and other organisations, followed by Mandela's release, had made an open meeting possible. Both sides still needed to resolve these practical obstacles before constitutional negotiations could begin.

The Groote Schuur Minute

On 4 May the parties adopted the Groote Schuur Minute and committed themselves to a peaceful negotiating process. They created a joint working group on political offences, political prisoners and immunity, which was initially given until before 21 May 1990 to report.

The government also undertook to review security legislation and to work toward lifting the state of emergency. These were preliminary talks rather than the later multiparty constitutional negotiations, and apartheid did not end on 2 May.

16 January 1991: the order and the announcement

On 16 January 1991 in the United States, President George H. W. Bush directed U.S. forces to begin combat operations against Iraqi forces and military targets in Iraq and occupied Kuwait. Iraq had not withdrawn from Kuwait by the 15 January deadline set under UN Security Council Resolution 678.

At 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, while strikes were reaching their targets, the White House announced that the liberation of Kuwait had begun under the code name Operation Desert Storm. Bush told the public that allied aircraft had begun attacking military targets about two hours before his televised address.

Radars first, then a thousand sorties

The opening attack included U.S. Army Apache strikes against Iraqi early-warning radar and the first combat launches of U.S. Navy Tomahawk land-attack missiles. USS San Jacinto fired the first Navy Tomahawk ever launched in combat, at 1:30 a.m. Gulf time.

The opening salvo was 48 missiles, and 114 were launched in three salvos over the first night. More than 1,000 aircraft sorties flew during the first day, 228 of them U.S. Navy combat sorties.

No ground forces, and a date that moves

Bush said explicitly that coalition ground forces were not yet engaged. He identified 28 countries with forces in the Gulf area that night; later summaries commonly count 34 coalition nations, depending on whether a source counts political participants or armed-force contributors.

Operation Desert Shield's defensive deployment had become an active combat campaign across Iraq and Kuwait. On the second night Iraq began launching missiles at Israel in an unsuccessful effort to provoke an Israeli response and fracture the coalition.

23:03 on 20 August 1991

At 11:03 p.m. on 20 August 1991, the Supreme Council of the Republic of Estonia adopted the Resolution on the National Independence of Estonia at Toompea in Tallinn. Sixty-nine deputies voted in favour.

The vote took place while the attempted Soviet coup was still under way and its outcome uncertain, as Soviet airborne troops reached Tallinn and volunteers guarded Toompea, the radio building and television facilities.

Three operative paragraphs

The resolution affirmed Estonia's national independence and called for the restoration of its diplomatic relations. It ordered the creation of a Constitutional Assembly drawn jointly from the Supreme Council and the Congress of Estonia, and called for parliamentary elections under a new constitution during 1992.

The text cited the coup by the Soviet State Committee on the State of Emergency as endangering Estonia's democratic process and making restoration through bilateral negotiations with the USSR impossible. Arnold Rüütel, chairman of the Supreme Council, signed the adopted resolution.

Restoration, not creation

Estonian official usage is "restoration" or "affirmation" of independence, because the republic claimed legal continuity from the state proclaimed in 1918. The document began from that claimed continuity as a subject of international law rather than describing a new post-Soviet state.

Measures adopted in May 1990 had opened a transition toward restoration; this was the decisive full-independence act. The next day, 21 August, Latvia's Supreme Council ended its own transition period by 111 votes to 13, restoring Latvia's full de facto independence.

5 June 1991: 112 to 30 in the white chamber

In Cape Town on 5 June 1991, South Africa's tricameral Parliament approved the Abolition of Racially Based Land Measures Bill. The white House of Assembly passed it 112–30; the chambers representing Coloured and Indian voters approved it without opposition.

The Land and Group Areas Acts had restricted where Black South Africans could acquire, occupy or use land. They had no chamber in the Parliament that voted to repeal them.

Four statutes, rural and urban

The measure repealed the 1913 Black Land Act, the 1936 Development Trust and Land Act, the 1966 Group Areas Act and the 1984 Black Communities Development Act, together with numerous related provisions.

Its stated purpose was to abolish race- and population-group-based restrictions on acquiring and using rights to land, and to phase out the associated racial institutions and regulatory systems. The single measure reached both rural land allocation and the urban zoning system that had assigned neighbourhoods by race.

Passed in June, in force at the end of June

The vote completed parliamentary passage, but the old restrictions stayed legally operative while the bill awaited assent. F. W. de Klerk assented on 27 June, the Act was promulgated on 28 June and most provisions commenced on 30 June 1991.

Repealing the statutes did not return land to people dispossessed under them; restitution required later legislation and claims procedures. Racial classification was dealt with separately, by a further vote on 17 June repealing the Population Registration Act.