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Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting the Black and Aegean Seas...
Timeline of Events
1959
11.23.1959
General Charles de Gaulle, President of France, declares in a speech in Strasbourg his vision for a "Europe, "from the Atlantic to the Urals."
1970
9.6.1970
Two passenger jets bound from Europe to New York are simultaneously hijacked by Palestinian terrorist members of PFLP and taken to Dawson's Field in Jordan.
1973
10.30.1973
The Bosporus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey is completed, connecting the continents of Europe and Asia over the Bosporus for the first time.
1974
3.18.1974
Oil embargo crisis: Most OPEC nations end a five-month oil embargo against the United States, Europe and Japan.
1977
3.4.1977
The 1977 Bucharest Earthquake in southern and eastern Europe kills more than 1,500.
1981
11.30.1981
Cold War: In Geneva, representatives from the United States and the Soviet Union begin to negotiate intermediate-range nuclear weapon reductions in Europe (the meetings ended inconclusively on December 17).
1983
7.23.1983
The Sri Lankan Civil War begins with the killing of 13 Sri Lanka Army soldiers by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam Terrorist group. In the subsequent riots of Black July, about 1,000 Tamils are slaughtered, some 400,000 Tamils flee to neighbouring Tamil Nadu, India and many find refuge in Europe and Canada.
1985
4.7.1985
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev declares a moratorium on the deployment of middle-range missiles in Europe.
1986
10.11.1986
Cold War: U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet in Reykjavík, Iceland, in an effort to continue discussions about scaling back their intermediate missile arsenals in Europe.
1988
7.3.1988
The Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey is completed, providing the second connection between the continents of Europe and Asia over the Bosporus.
1998
1.12.1998
Nineteen European nations agree to forbid human cloning.
1999
2.16.1999
Across Europe, Kurdish rebels take over embassies and hold hostages after Turkey arrests one of their rebel leaders, Abdullah Öcalan.
3.20.1999
Legoland California, the only Legoland outside of Europe, opens in Carlsbad, California.
11.30.1999
British Aerospace and Marconi Electronic Systems merge to form BAE Systems, Europe's largest defense contractor and the fourth largest aerospace firm in the world.
2003
6.2.2003
Europe launches its first voyage to another planet, Mars. The European Space Agency's Mars Express probe launches from the Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan.
8.11.2003
NATO takes over command of the peacekeeping force in Afghanistan, marking its first major operation outside Europe in its 54-year-history.
2004
3.27.2004
HMS Scylla, a decommissioned Leander class frigate, is sunk as an artificial reef off Cornwall, the first of its kind in Europe.
2006
6.19.2006
Prime ministers of several northern European nations participate in a ceremonial "laying of the first stone" at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Spitsbergen, Norway.
2010
4.15.2010
Volcanic ash from the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland leads to the closure of airspace over most of Europe.