Historic Anniversaries

With today being the 20 year mark since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and having passed the 20 year mark for the Tianenmen Square Massacre in China back in the spring of this year, I got to wondering what other important milestone anniversaries came about in 2009. Turns out, quite a few. In fact, this has been a big year for significant historic anniversaries. Here are some examples (bear in mind, I am not implying that these are all good things, just significant historical events):

60 years since:
Formation of NATO

50 years since:
Alaska becomes 49th state
Fidel Castro becomes Premier of Cuba
Debut of the Barbie doll
Dalai Lama flees Tibet for India
Debut of Rod Serling's "The Twilight Zone"

40 years since:
Yasser Arafat becomes leader of the PLO
Golda Meir becomes Prime Minister of Israel
Ted Kennedy leaves woman to die at Chappaquiddick
Manson Family murders
Ho Chi Minh dies in Vietnam
Wal-Mart incorporates
Debut of Sesame Street

30 years since:
The United States and China establish full diplomatic relations
The Khmer Rouge of Pol Pot in Cambodia fall to Vietnamese backed insurgents
Ayatollah Khomeini seizes power from the Shah in Iran
Sino-Vietnamese War begins when China invades Northern Vietnam
Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident
Idi Amin deposed in Uganda by Tanzanian troops
Pope John Paul II visits Poland-first visit by a pope to a communist country
Iran hostage crisis begins
Soviets invade Afghanistan

25 years since:
U.S. Marines pull out of Beirut, Lebanon
Famine in Ethiopa kills over 1 million people
Indira Gandhi assasinated by her own bodyguards in India

20 years since:
Exxon Valdez oil spill
Solidarity movement victorious in Poland's elections
USS Iowa gun turret explosion kills 47 U.S. sailors
Central Park Jogger rape case
Tianenmen Square Massacre in China
Disney MGM Studios opens to public in Florida
Hungary dismantles 150 miles of barbed wire fence along border with Austria
Gorbachev visits China
Death of the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran
Premiere of Seinfeld on television
The Baltic Way- An unbroken chain of over 2 million Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian people join hands over 600 km to demand freedom from the Soviets.
Pete Rose banned from baseball for life for gambling
San Fran earthquake kills 67 people and delays World Series for 10 days
David Dinkins elected mayor of NYC
Fall of the Berlin Wall
Velvet Revolution overthrows the Communists in Czheckoslovakia
The Simpsons premieres on television
Ceausescu and the Communists of Romania overthrown by the people
Soviets pull out of Afghanistan