Full list  |  Top H G Wells, Intelligence on Mars, 1896: 'No phase of anthropomorphism is more naive than the supposition of men on Mars.' Agustin Chicarro, Project Scientist for European Space Agency Mars Express mission, 2001: 'Mariner 9 saw the polar caps, canyons, volcanoes and wind -- and Viking saw it all in more detail still. With MGS, we've had a revolution again -- we now know that Mars had a magnetic field and there's evidence for huge amounts of water everywhere in the past. It used to be just geologists and geophysicists who were interested in Mars, but now we're building global models with contributions from a wide range of disciplines.'

USA, THE AMERICAS . On November 13, 1971 the first crewless probe from earth orbited Mars. Mariner-9's circling of Mars marked a further and decisive shift in human ability to understand and connect with other planets throughout the galaxy.

The moon in 1969 was one thing. The 1969 successful landing on earth's nearest planetary neighbour undoubtedly and irreversebly changed how many humans perceived their connection with space. But as one commentator memorably phrased it the moon was the equivalent of nipping down to the corner shop for a pint of milk – satisfying but not real shopping.

Planets beyond the moon would always mean more. Mars in particular had influenced NASA thinking. Its early leader, Wernher von Braun, favoured openly a crewed mission to Mars as the next logical step after the moon.

Although only a small remote control probe the successful orbit of Mars proved it was possible to photograph and inspect distant planets. Before this time telescopes had done this from earth. Getting so close also meant it was possible to document the atmosphere and surface chemistry. 

Alas the results of Mariner 9 were disappointing for those who hoped for life on Mars. NASA announced there were ‘no martians, no canals, no water, no plants’. Shortly afterwards President Johnson speculated that humanity might just be more unique than many have thought. Nevertheless greater planetary exploration continued. Soon afterwards came Mariner 10 which flew within 300 km of Mercury several times and returned many photographs to earth. When President Bush announced in 2004 that America would return to the moon before 2020 he also suggested that Mars was important.

Full list  |  Top US President Ronald Reagan: 'The Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip.' Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems: 'Every time you turn on your new car, you're turning on twenty microprocessors. Every time you use an ATM, you're using a computer. Every time I use a settop box or game machine, I'm using a computer. The only computer you don't know how to work is your Microsoft computer, right?'

USA, THE AMERICAS. On November 15, 1971, America’s Intel Corporation showed the world that microchip manufacture on a large-scale was physically and commercially possible. Creating artificial intelligence inside non-human objects like computers changed much. Now, a lot of homo sapiens could control their environment with much less effort and much greater results. To paraphrase G K Chesterton the advance of the microchip meant that instead of humans being a pygmy to machines, machines had now became the pygmy and man the master. Within a decade (in 1982) Time Magazine named 'the Computer' as their Person of the Year, the first time an inanimate object won the prestigious award.

Intel was a new kid on the block. It appeared only a few years earlier in California, in 1968, based on a name merging ‘integrated’ and ‘electronics’. Intel’s central breakthrough was to position on one tiny chip little bigger than a fingernail all the parts needed for computers – from the processing unit to the memory and other controls.

This was radical on two fronts. First, it allowed computers to be much physically smaller while also becoming much more efficient and cheaper to produce. Second, it allowed Intel to grow in an industry that was always vulnerable to commoditisation. Intel’s particularly canny move was to spread the manufacture of chips around the world. Rather than depend on one single factory Intel built several plants in geographically different places from America to Asia and Europe. They even licensed potential competitors. To outsiders this sounded a bit crazy. But the strategy came right as personal computers exploded around the world in the 1980s. The devolved Intel was the master of the volume business. Only they could deliver the volume needed to meet the huge demand. And by the end of the twentieth century Intel was manufacturing millions of chips.

Naturally the long-term questions facing Intel were similar to other pioneering innovators. How could what went inside a relatively cheap commodity remain unique and profitable? Plus, drops in manufacturing cost existed elsewhere in the world and could make the American-based company hopelessly expensive. Technology could not stay protected indefinitely. And indeed prices kept dropping. In 1997, for example, Intel cut the price of Pentium microchips from $400 to $270.

To keep Intel microprocessors as the computing standard, and therefore piggyback on an exploding computer market, Intel launched the famous ‘Intel Inside’ campaign. A short jingle became synonymous around the world in any language. Intel also offered an assurance that they would pay half the advertising costs provided ‘Intel Inside’ featured.

When the market capitalization of Intel approached US$150 billion in 2005 after a mere three decades of operation it was a prism for how much humans had so quickly picked up a taste for non-human intelligence.

Full list  |  Top Mao Ze-dong, 1964: 'US imperialism is the common enemy of the people of the world. It is committing aggression against south Vietnam, intervening in Laos, menacing Cambodia and blustering about extending the war in Indo-China. It is thing by every means to strangle the Cuban revolution. It wants to turn West Germany and Japan into the two major US nuclear bases. It has ganged up with Britain in creating "Malaysia" to menace Indonesia and other countries in Southeast Asia. It has occupied south Korea and the Chinese province of Taiwan. It dominates all Latin America. It plays the bully everywhere. U.S. imperialism has over-reached itself. Wherever it commits aggression, it puts a new noose around its neck. It is besieged ring upon ring by the people of the whole world. ... People of the world, unite and defeat the U.S. aggressors and all their running dogs! People of the world, be courageous, dare to fight, defy difficulties and advance wave upon wave.' US President Richard Nixon, 1972: 'The Great Wall is no longer a wall dividing China from the rest of the world, but it is a reminder of the fact that there are many walls still existing in the world which divide nations and peoples.'

CHINA, ASIA. On February 22, 1972 Richard Nixon became the first sitting American President to visit Communist China. On meeting with Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou En-Lai he famously concluded the Great Wall no longer divides China from the rest of this world.

Strictly speaking the trip of an elected American leader to an unelected dictatorship of the proletariat was a diplomatic faux pas. At the time America still did not have diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. The American connection with China was still to the old Nationalist regime that had fled to Taiwan over two decades earlier in the 1940s. But Taiwan was only a fraction of the size of mainland China and by the 1970s it was clear there would be no Nationalist return anytime soon.

Naturally Taiwan was a central talking point and Chairman Mao was keen for it to be so. During the visit much of American policy changed. President Nixon committed himself to withdrawing American forces on Taiwan. Shortly afterwards came American recognition of not Taipei but Beijing as the legitimate Chinese seat at the United Nations Security Council. And so completed the turbulent but decisive power shift from Nationalist to Communist in China, one of the more striking political power-shifts in the twentieth century.

Prior to the Nixon visit the broad American view of China was simple and largely defined by one word: Communist. Red China was a firm pillar of the anti-American and pro-Soviet world. Chinese relations with the USSR might not be comprehensible or consistent but, in the final analysis, both existed at the polar opposite of capitalist and liberal America dedicated to free speech. Nixon’s legacy was to inject some nuance and subtlety to this view. He was especially careful to stress with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai during the visit: ‘We look at each country in terms of its own conduct rather than lumping them all together and saying that because they have this kind of philosophy they are all in utter darkness.'

By the way it should be noted the Sino-American meeting was part of a wider Nixon repositioning of American foreign policy. Totally there was agreement on four broad areas. These included normalisation of relations but also to try to keep the world from engaging in war. Ever and probably more dominant at the time was Soviet-American relations. Only a couple of months later in May of 1972 Nixon visited Moscow.

Full list  |  Top Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, 1969: 'The Egyptians could run to Egypt, the Syrians into Syria. The only place we could run was into the sea, and before we did that we might as well fight.' Soviet KGB head, Yuri Andropov: 'We shall not unleash the Third World War.'

ISRAEL, MIDDLE EAST. October 23 in 1973 saw an end to the brief but historic war of Yom Kippur. In a few weeks – fighting first flared on October 6 – a definitive milestone arrived in the Middle East that gave psychological comfort at least briefly, and most curiously, to both Jew and Arab.

Arguably the Yom Kippur war was like the second half of a very big regional football game, with the Six Days War in 1967 being the first half. Then the Arab world had been humiliated by several home goals and a lopsided rout of a combined Arab XI Egyptian-Syrian-Jordanian team. Israel, playing all by itself, had scored on multiple fronts and especially in the south towards the Suez Canal (against Egypt) and as far as the Golan Heights (against Syria). Only the timely refereeing of American President Johnson had pushed for a poltical resolution through the United Nations. But in three days over 100,000 casualties scarred Middle East relations. The Egyptian Air Force was particularly pummelled and Egypt surrendered within four days. Nasser, the victor of the Suez Canal crisis from the 1950s, received a red card and resigned shortly afterwards.

After the Six Days War Israel more than doubled its size, albeit in a climate that considered this a temporary situation. Europe became especially cool about a second half of hostilities. As practical signs of their anti-Israeli, or at least anti-war, concerns British officers continued leading the Arab Legion and other divisions, and British industrialists continued selling arms to Jordan and Iraq, while France pushed an Israeli arms boycott.

With such a win in the Six Day War it was no surpirse that Israel was unimpressed at European influence and confident too. They refused to negotiate away their gains at anything more than a glacial pace, if even that. By the early 1970s a frustrated Anwar Sadat of Egypt warned openly of sacrificing a million soldiers to ensure Egypt’s grievances were addressed more quickly. (The same Anwar Sadat that was Time Magazine's Person of the Year in 1977.)

Several Israeli elites knew of the ‘surprise attack’ at Yom Kippur. The timing itself held many clues. Yom Kippur, the religious holiday, traditionally meant avoiding five pleasures: no eating or drinking, no bathing, no perfuming the body, no wearing of leather shoes, and no sexual relations. It also coincided with Ramadan so many Muslim soldiers were also merant to be fasting.

Israel might be generally considered stronger, soldier for soldier, but could she handle another multi-front war against passionate and well-populated and better-prepared neighbours? And under a surprise attack too. Surely Islam with several hundred millions could vanquish a few million Jews? Israel at that time numbered not even 5% of the Arab population.

But knowing of the attack and taking the initiative were two different things. Israel in the 1970s was inhibited from any first strike because it feared enervating American support. This proved a canny decision because Henry Kissinger noted afterwards that had Israel attacked pre-emptively they would have received not even a nail from Uncle Sam.

The defensive Israeli posture explains why combined Arab nations – in what they call the Ramadan War – made significant advances with Soviet weaponry that was newly-supplied though not always methodically used. Support rose in a crescendo not just among the wealthy Arab world but the Non-Aligned Movement and Organization of African Unity. Things were going so well there was even speculation that Israel was done for and the injustices of the 1910s and 1940s would be settled.

Thinking Israel could be excised just like that was too optimistic. True, at one point the Arab penetration into Israel went up to twenty kilometres and threatened a brace of cities. The advantage of surprise by attacking on Israel’s Day of Atonement had worked. No matter what happened afterwards – and this probably explains the often intriguing Arab histories of Yom Kippur – the stain of defeat in 1967 had been erased by these few days of triumph. Even a tie against Israel could count as either victory or at least psychological vindication.

Momentum, however, quickly went the way of the Israel Defence Forces. Now that Israel had been attacked, rather than initiating an attack, the political stage was bigger and more open for Washington. The polite distance before war ended when the Americans went to DEFCON III on news of the general situation and especially learning Russia might support Egypt. Within days the United States shipped or flew in to Tel Aviv with huge Galaxy transport planes over 22,000 tons of military equipment. There were especially large amounts of tanks and large-bore ammunition. The push may have sucked in material meant for Vietnam – several in the Pentagon were not happy at the distraction – but was for a few days unrelenting and decisive.

Flush with American intelligence and weaponry and fighting under central command rather than their fragmented enemies, Israel made several strategic pushes. Syria disappeared entirely from the Golan Heights and Damascus, rather than Tel Aviv, looked vulnerable. To the south, even Cairo looked vulnerable and an entire Egyptian army was well and truly bested. Only American intervention, led by Kissinger with an eye on maximising American presence and diminishing the Soviet footprint, saved an Egyptian army from annihilation. They would be allowed to surrender rather than be destroyed by the Israeli Air Force which by then had complete air supremacy. Prior to that surrender the Egyptian military was described, not unfairly, as either a smoking hole in the ground or surrounded or hysterical or all three. When the war ended Israeli forces were 100 km from Cairo and 50 km from Damascus.

Fighting was incredibly fierce and comparable at times to the battles in El Alamein in North Africa during the 1940s. Over the key 20 days of war the Israeli Defence Forces lost over 2,600 troops – something which America took three years to suffer in Iraq during the 2000s. Israel also lost 100 planes and 400 tanks. But in the balance of kill-to-loss the IDF came off lightly. Arab forces lost four times as many, around 10,000 dead, plus over 400 planes and 2,000 tanks. Discrepancies in armour losses were an especially notable feature of Yom Kippur and revealed inherent problems with Soviet technology and tactics and with Egyptian abilities to leverage on their Soviet connection. The British Centurion tank proved well suited to desert conditions.

While the military results were obvious Yom Kippur was a decisive turning point not for the killing so many so quickly, or for cementing Israeli military footprint in the region, but for what came after the war.

Once the tank traps were filled in and the surrendered troops repatriated the implications became clearer. Some were about global economics: retaliatory oil embargoes swirled around the region and the world for many years. Saudi Arabia was especially forceful in pushing an embargo against the United States and other European powers for their support of Israel. (Though curiously Saudi Arabia's King Faisal won American Time Magazine's Person of the Year award in 1974.) Golda Meir rued: ‘Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!’

Important changes unfolded in regional leadership. Paradoxically Golda Meier, forced to weigh knowledge of the attacks with the American requirement that Israel could only react, was forced to resign in 1974 over insufficient preparedness. After her came increasingly more peace-minded leaders like Yitzhak Rabin (until 1977) and then Menachem Begin. On the Egyptian side Anwar Sadat was assassinated in 1981 while attending a war anniversary parade - the assassins said he had gioven away too much. The interpretations of the Meier and Sadat legacy to their respecttive countries may have looked odd but within the changes that followed them were new personnel who would champion new thinking for the Middle East.

But the most enduring outcomes of Yom Kippur were in politics. Seeing that Arabs felt proud of early wins and sensed weaknesses in their traditional enemy so Israel concluded that military prowess alone would never deter hatred. They may have defeated half a dozen of the richest countries in the world but they were not ascendant either military or politically. So gone was the thinking personified by Moshe Dyane that the Middle East would be at peace as soon as Arabs agreed with Israel. That was recognised as impractical.

Gone too after Yom Kippur was European acquiescence or at least mumbling disquiet at how Israel behaved. Afterwards Europeans became increasingly pro-Arab. Foremost among them was Britain and France, the two most prominent and arguably guilty ex-colonial powers in the region, who increasingly and much more openly sided with Arab positions against Israel on the United Nations Security Council. Only the United States retained their limpet like attachment to voting pro-Israeli positions.

Ultimately the most decisive change of Yom Kippur was inside Israel. Replacing the hostility and defensiveness that had defined the country from the 1940s came a more pragmatic Israeli mindset and inclination to negotiate rather than fight. As one telling sign how real this peace shift was, it was President Anwar Sadat of Egypt that shared the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Egypt became the first Arab country to recognize the modern Israeli state in 1979. Israel watched as Cairo's centre of gravity moved ever more from the Soviet towards the American. The Israel-Egyptian peace was admittedly a Cold Peace in a time, still, of Cold War where American and Soviet influence still tussled and the region. But it had enough hope to sustain at least some hope for the coming generations.

Full list  |  Top George Orwell, '1984', published in 1949: 'War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. Alexander Solzhenitzyn, 1970 : 'Like the gas chamber these crimes will never be forgotten, and all those involved in them will be condemned for all time, during their life and after their death.'

FRANCE, EUROPE. On December 28, 1973, Alexander Solzhenitsyn published ‘Gulag Archipelago’ (1918-1956). The book quickly captured the imagination of the world – both capitalist and communist – through a fresh look at Soviet prison and labour camps and the deception and lies that Soviet life endured in consequence.

"And there in the waiting room or at the bar he is hailed by an extraordinarily pleasant young man: "Don't you remember me, Pyotr Ivanich?" Pyotr Ivanich has difficulty remembering: "Well, not exactly, you see, although..." The young man, however, is overflowing with friendly concern: "Come now, how can that be? I'll have to remind you.. . . " And he bows respectfully to Pyotr Ivanich's wife: "You must forgive us. I'll keep him only one minute." The wife accedes, and trustingly the husband lets himself be led away by the arm -- forever or for ten years!"

There had been a lot of dissenting noise about Soviet brutality dating back to Stalin in the 1950s. But Solzhenitsyn was the one who found a voice that reverberated around the Soviet Union for its final two decades of life. This was ‘evil doing on a scale calculated in the millions’. The literary legacy is hard to beat. Gulag Archipelago helped change global perception about a brutal Russian prison system that stretched from the Bering Strait to the Bosphorous was to some the final word of truth on a hollow system.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn observed that one word of truth outweighs the whole world. Wherever and whoever else it fails, he thought, art always wins against lies. It was something that kept him going on his exile in America from 1974 to 1994.

The book itself is fairly simple. Gulag Archipelago rests on biting non-fictional history in the first four decades of Communism. The particualr focus is on the arrest and imprisonment of countless victims who somehow disappear into anonymity. Laced within the book are harrowing and shocking personal accounts of life in Soviet prisons. A final volume documents attempted escapes and subversions of the system. Throughout the book is an almost messianic obligation to honour the anonymous victims either tortured or murdered by the Soviet system, or both.

Profits from the book went to the Russian Social Fund for Persecuted Persons and Their Families.

Full list  |  Top US President Richard Nixon, 1973: 'In matters as sensitive as guarding the integrity of our democratic process, it is essential not only that rigorous legal and ethical standards be observed but also that the public, you, have total confidence that they are both being observed and enforced.' US Senator Sam Ervin, 1974: 'If the many allegations made to this date are true, then the burglars who broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate were, in effect, breaking into the home of every citizen.'

USA, THE AMERICAS. On August 8, 1974 America’s President Nixon resigned (he was the 37th president) rather than face impeachment. It was probably the most dramatic fall from grace for the winner of two elections in 1968 and 1972 and, in 1971 and 1972, the winner for two years in a row of Time Magazine's Person of the Year (the second year shared with Henry Kissinger).

For pro-democracts the uncomfortable pill of President Nixon's tactical withdrawal is that it did not matter that much that he had just won the biggest landslide in American history. The crowd cries of ‘Jail to the chief’, a pun on Hail to the chief, were simply too loud. Even though he was a clear winner in the 1968 election he would still be the first American president to resign from office.

Before he left the Californian wrote in a very brief letter delivered to Henry Kissinger: ‘Dear Mr Secretary: I hereby resign the office of President of the United States.' He had been president for one complete term (1968-1972) and one partial term (1972-1974), a period spanning 2000 days.

On the final moments Mr Nixon was politely but uncomfortably escorted by the new President Gerald Ford from the Oval Office with his wife, Pat. It was the first time he wore his glasses in public. Along his flight back to California Air Force One changed its call sign to the Spirit of 76 on its way to California.

All told some thirty people went to prison over Watergate and it dominated American political thought in various ways for the rest of the century. In part this was because it took so long to resolve. The Watergate scandal that culminated on this day in fact began two years earlier in 1972 during a break-in to the offices of the Democrat Convention – that is, the opposition party to Nixon's Republicans. The trickery did not go unnoticed even though the President at one stage dismissed the event as a third-rate burglary. It still kept bubbling around Washington.

When a ringleader (Gordon Liddy) took the Fifth Amendment (allowing him to stay silent) a Senator and presidential candidate, George McGovern, thought the President might have something to hide. In early 1974 key players were indicted and the Supreme Court ruled 8-0 that President Nixon should surrender tapes from inside the office when the burglary and its handling were discussed. The tapes were released, reluctantly and petulantly. The President tried reassurance: ‘People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I am not a crook’. But there were too many gaps for much reassurance. At one point it was estimated over 18 minutes were missing. An ironic tragedy, by the way, because Mr Nixon himself introduced the secret recording system that caught him out. As own goals go, they rarely come bigger than this.

Given the content suggested illegally it was clear that with impeachment by the Senate for high crimes and misdemeanours inevitable he resigned. He said ‘There can be no whitewash at the White House’.

Even though Mr Nixon was pardoned by President Ford there was a residue of suspicion. President Ford was anyway the Accidental President, in office for a trifling two years. Without ever facing the electorate he still had to forgive a president and accept the fall of Saigon. Two decades before Watergate the Californian politician had faced an unproven charge of embezzlement. A year prior to Watergate his Vice President, Spiro Agnew, had resigned over tax evasion. That too was unprecedented. Another senior Nixon official, Domestic Affairs Assistant John Erlingham, also resigned pending trial for obstruction of justice. The Attorney General John Mitchell was forced to resign. To many it looked like not only a suspicious President but a suspicious administration.

Over 110 million watched the resignation on telly. Another 40 million listened on radio.

Full list  |  Top Prince Norodom Sihanouk, 1972: 'President Nixon has explained that the US$341 million spent annually in the officially-approved slaughter of Cambodians is 'the best investment in foreign assistance that the United States has made in my political life'. Because of the 'success' of the Cambodian operation, 'US casualties have been cut by two thirds, a hundred thousand Americans have come home and more are doing so'. In other words, Lon Nol and Sirik Matak, by allowing Nixon to export the fighting from South Vietnam to Cambodia - to substitute Cambodian for American and South Vietnamese corpses - have rendered a valuable service, for which US$341 million is a reasonable annual reimbursement!' Chinese premiere Mao Ze-dong, 1973: 'The mass movement of protest against US aggression in Cambodia has swept the globe. Less than ten days after its establishment, the Royal Government of National Union of Cambodia was recognized by nearly twenty countries. The revolutionary armed struggles of the people of the South-east Asian countries, the struggles of the people of Korea, Japan and other Asian countries against the revival of Japanese militarism by the US and Japanese reactionaries, the struggles of the Palestinian and other Arab peoples against the US-Israeli aggressors, the national-liberation struggles of the Asian, African and Latin American peoples, and the revolutionary struggles of the peoples of North America, Europe and Oceania are all developing vigorously.'

CAMBODIA, ASIA. On April 17, 1975 the Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia. The last foreign troops supporting the incumbent regime, nearly all Americans, had left a few days earlier. With the capital city now free of foreign mlitary the victory of the Khmer geurillas was inevitable.

Perhaps at one stage the plans of Pol Pot also sounded like an inevitable improvement. Being peasant-born and from the countryside his vision of a rural utopia made some sense. Cambodia had suffered from several successive corrupt regimes. Plus the Khmer Rouge agenda to rid Cambodia of foreign presence was a common post-colonial theme all around the world and especially in Africa and Asia that had suffered much.

France, after all, had only granted independence two decades earlier in 1954. And since the French left the American military presence dominated the tiny country. In the late 1960s secret-bombing raids by the Americans aimed to destroy North Vietnamese forces. It did not succeed in this objective. But it did drive Vietnamese forces into the safe fringes of neighbouring Cambodia. With this expansion Cambodian neutrality in the Vietnamese Civil War was shattered despite Prince Sihanouk’s claims from the early 1960s. He was overthrown in 1969 and Lon Nol took over for the remaining years.

The reality of Khmer Rouge administration compared to the promises of Pol Pot were shockingly different. Within four years somewhere between one million to two million Cambodians were killed from a population of eight million. Cities were emptied and currency declared worthless. It was Year Zero in the brave new Khmer world. After Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia and Maoist China it was probably the world's most frightening world. People were killed senselessly and for the most trivial of matters.

Only in 1979 did the madness end. The healing force came not from within Cambodia but its neighbour. The Vietnamese liberalisation finally ended the slaughter and restored the urban centres. The Khmer Rouge faded out of the scene by the 1990s as Cambodia opened up again to the world. Somewhere around 150,000 Cambodians now live in the United States.

Full list  |  Top Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap, speaking after the war: 'In 1945, some Americans parachuted into our war zone to meet our late President Ho Chi Minh. Back then, President Roosevelt's attitude was that the U.S. did not want to see events like the war with France coming back to Indochina, but later this attitude was changed. After the August Revolution in 1945, the relationship between Vietnam and the U.S. could have been good, and we wished that it had been good.' US General William Westmoreland, 1982: Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.'

VIETNAM, ASIA. On April 30, 1975 tanks of the North Vietnamese army made their way in to Saigon. The capital city of the South was promptly renamed Ho Chi Minh City in honour of the North Vietnamese leader who died during the war.

Unlike in Cambodia and Phnom Penh a few weeks earlier the Americans had not sufficient time to leave. The scale and the speed of collapse throughout South Vietnam had been quicker than anyone imagined. Hurried scenes unfolded as people sought to be on the last helicopter out of town.

With the end of the Vietnam War came a turning point in relations between big and small countries. America had prosecuted the war for nearly two full and bloody decades. For one decade they had engaged their own troops and lost 58,000 troops in the process. Billions of dollars had been ploughed into Vietnam as aid to modernise the country and in military personnel and machinery. Yet nothing had made much significant difference and the people of the North had triumphed. Perhaps the old lessons from the American War of Independence held across continents. In that war the Americans had defeated the British directly rarely - Saratoga and Yorktown being the most prominent of a small list - yet had won the war. Now the Vietnamese had done the same.

With the American withdrawal came the recognition, both within America and around the world, that being a superpower has its limits. It brought eerily to life Chinese Communist Leader Lin Biao's observations that 'the greatest fear of US imperialism is that people's wars will be launched in different parts of the world'. The limits of American powere was critically exposed as weak when guerrilla wars are involved, negating much superior firepower, and when the dominant force cannot win hearts and minds.

Even last ditch attemps like the 1972 bombing of North Vietnam ordered by President Nixon looked inept rather than the decisive use of force to aid an ally. After the ‘peace’ signed in 1973 in the first year alone 50,000 Vietnamese were killed. President Nixon, by the way, was the last US president to visit Vietnam in the twentieth century. He went in 1969 after winning teh first of his two elections. It was not until 2000, nearly three decades after the war ended, that an American president returned (Clinton in 2000). Nixon perhaps voiced most fears when he said: ‘If when the chips are down the world’s most powerful nations, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful and helpless giant the forces of totalitarianism and anacrchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.’

After the fall of Saigon it fell to President Ford to heave the sigh of relief for an exhausted nation: ‘Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. These events, tragic as they are, portend neither the end of the world nor of America's leadership in the world.’

Full list  |  Top Douglas Adams, 1995: 'If Microsoft had been the innovative company that it calls itself, it would have taken the opportunity to take a radical leap beyond the Mac, instead of producing a feeble, me-too, implementation.' Microsoft CEO Bll Gates, 1999: 'Microsoft's role is a very specialized role. What we're good at is building the high volume software standards. We don't do the chips, we don't do the systems, we don't do the communications networks, but we work with all the leaders in those industries to make sure the pieces come together in a total solution.'

USA, THE AMERICAS. On November 26 in 1975 the Microsoft trade mark was registered, heralding the birth of a company that was to alter computing and modern communications in the late twentieth century. True to form, and like many other liberal inventions of America it arose not from the commercial and political elites of the east coast. Microsoft arose among the more radical and freethinking west coast of America. Microsoft, short for microcomputer software, started in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The early ambitions of key players like Bill Gates and Paul Allen were relatively modest. Microsoft simply wished to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for a specialized computer, the Altair 8800.

But the crowning outcomes was anything but modest. Microsoft Corporation eventually listed on the stock exchange and became the world’s largest software company. By the end of the 1980s almost every computer went to market with their preinstalled signature product, Windows. This afforded Microsoft not only an immediate and near-constant commercial revenue stream but an excellent platform for up-selling and in branching out to internet products like web browsers. By some estimates global annual sales exceeded tens of billions of US dollars and Microsoft employed well over 50,000 staff throughout half of the world’s countries.

By the end of the twentieth century the variety of Microsoft products had become incredible. Microsoft develops, makes, licences, and supports a wide range of software products for computers. In the mid-1990s the internet was dramatically altering computing markets and looked to have removed, or at least dramatically reduced, the efficacy of Microsoft. Then in 1995 Microsoft launched a war on the then-leading provider of software that helped people access the internet – the browser wars – and quickly crushed the early leader of Netscape. Internet Explorer became the default browser. Later the company branched out into providing content for the internet through the MSN portal.

Such dominance inevitably attracted judicial and political attention. In the late 1990s the American government fretted that Microsoft had ‘monopoly power’, though a break up was never fully developed.

Full list  |  Top Cardinal Gordon Gray, Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, Scotland, 1978: 'I have grave misgivings about the possible implications and consequences for the future.' Louise Brown, the first test-tube baby on giving birth to her own child, 2007: 'He's tiny, just under 6 pounds, but he's perfect.'

BRITAIN, EUROPE. July 25, 1978 saw the birth of first test-tube baby. Named Louise Brown she was delivered in a routine Ceaserean section. The birth may have been relatively normal delivery it was a common term for babies conceived as the result of IVF, test tube.

Prior to this time it was not possible to conceive outside the traditional method of making love. The only known exception was Mary the Mother of Jesus who was impregnated by the Holy Spirit without knowing each other. Reproduction for everyone else had to take place the traditional way.

But for many couples this was not possible. Defects in fallopian tubes meant eggs could not carry to the uterus. The test-tube revolution was to circumvent defective fallopian tubes. Egg were instead harvested directly from the ovary and fertilised inside a laboratory using sperm. The fertilised embyro was then implanted back to the uterus for birth as usual.

It took a dozen years and more to pioneer the technique. The number of babies born using IVF is small. While capable of helping around a third of infertile woemn it is expensive and intrusive. Over the next twenty years approximately 300,000 women conceived using IVF. Certainly not a small number in absolute terms. But as a source of conceived children it is not even a tenth of one percent of world growth.

Full list  |  Top Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, Chaim Herzog, 1975: 'We are being attacked by a society which is motivated by the most extreme form of racism in the world today. This is the racism which was expressed so succinctly in the words of the leader of the PLO, Yassir Arafat… “There will be no presence in the region other than Arab presence” In other words, in the Middle East from the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf only one presence is allowed, and that is Arab presence.' US President Jimmy Carter, 1979: 'Let us now reward all of the children of Abraham who hunger for proper peace. Let us know enjoy the adventure of becoming fully human.'

USA ,THE AMERICAS. On March 26, 1979, and following an intense weekend of negotiations and discussions and arguments, the Camp David agreements were signed between Israel and Egypt. For the first time in the century there seemed to be at least a glimmer of hope that peace could function in the Middle East.

The Israel signatory was Prime Minister Menachem Begin, a Russian born hardliner who emigrated to Israel after the Second World War. For Egypt was President Anwar Sadat, another hardliner who succeded Nasser. Together it needed some difficult choices for both leaders. It was the first time any peace deal had been signed between Israel and a neighbouring Arab state since the formation of Israel in the 1940s – three decades earlier.

The Camp David background was a late 1977 visit by President Sadat to Israel. The visit was widely criticised in Egypt and beyond. Not before long eighteen Arab nations cut relations with Egypt in protest. But Mr Sadat had calculated this response already and concluded that at least opening the door to peace would have more benefits in the long run.

America was quick to jump at the thaw in Egypt-Israel relations. President Carter, himself a Christian: ‘Let us now reward all of the children of Abraham who hunger for property peace. Let us know enjoy the adventure of becoming fully human…’ In practical terms there would indeed be a phased Israeli withdrawal from Sinai.

The American presence was central, as ever. The connection with Israel underpinned much of American foreign policy in the twentieth century. Consistent throughout was a firm, too firm according to some views, support for Israel. Countless UN resolutions against Israel have been vetoed by the United States. Billions of dollars of aid reached Israel. So much, indeed, that it was said that America’s Bible belt is Israel’s safety belt.

The Peace Treaties were not an overnight solution. But later in 1988 the head of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation promised: ‘I repeat for the record that we renounce, totally and absolutely, all forms of terrorism, including individual, group and state terrorism’

Both signatories withdrew from public life within a couple of years. Begin’s wife died and he retreated among rumours of mental health strains. President Sadat left office rather more abruptly, being assassinated while inspecting troops to celebrate their 'victory' over Israel in the 1973 war.

Full list  |  Top British Prime Minister James Callaghan, 1979: 'There are times, perhaps once every thirty years, when there is a sea-change in politics. It then does not matter what you say or you do. There is a shift in what the public wants and what it approves of. I suspect there is now such a sea-change and it is for Mrs Thatcher.' Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, 1986: 'No-one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions. He had money as well.'

BRITAIN, EUROPE. The spring of 1979 saw the election of Britain’s first female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. Following came a sea-change in British politics that defined the late twentieth century for this country and for many others that emulated British policies that appeared around now.

Thatcherism was pristinely crisp and clear about what it stood for and what it stood against. It was against the old socialism and planned interventions and powerful trade unions and the Soviet Union. It was for a new climate of individual responsibility, small government, monetarism, privatisation of state-owned industries and utilities, low taxation and an instinctive disdain for Europe.

Perhaps this was a little ironic as the Iron Lady’s entrance to high office with the Conservative Party was unconventional and to some extent unexpected. There had been a degree at Oxford (chemistry then law) and then marriage to a successful businessman (oil). But her background was considered trade by others. Even in 1979, after having defeated Edward Heath, himself no stranger to trade, and other Conservative elites and delivered a first election win some in the Conservative Party still concluded ‘we are a cavalry regiment headed by a corporal in the Women’s Royal Army Corps’.

Electoral success kept the elites of the Conservative Party quiet for a time. Indeed Mrs Thatcher stayed in office for eleven years until November 28, 1990. By then the memories of three successive election wins and a near-total transformation of the public administration landscape were fading. She may have been the only British politician in the twentieth century to win three successive general elections as party leader.

But by the start of the 1990s and in power over a decade the Thatcher fascination ebbed and vulnerabilities appeared. Consistently poor and consistently dropping poll ratings soon meant the knives were just insurmountable. Following an internal coup and vote Mrs Tahtcher was forced out. The mess of her departure was to define the Conservative party for the remaining decade of the century and beyond even though John Major continued as Prime Minister until 1997.

A defining moment early in her first term was the 1982 Argentinean invasion of the Falklands Islands in the South Atlantic – about as far from Britain as it is possible to go on the north-south meridian (8,000 miles). It was a telling insight to the kind of premiership and values she displayed. When 80 Royal Marines were quickly overcome her response was resolute and stirring: ‘British sovereign territory has been invaded,’ she ruled. Rather than negotiate through the United Nations, as many advisers were saying, she elected to enforce a blockade of the islands. The aircraft carrier HMS Invincible was first to leave and within its 1,000 crew was Prince Andrew. The other workable British aircraft carrier of the time, HMS Hermes, followed behind as the floating command centre.

Later during the Falklands Conflict came the torpedoing of the Belgrano. It was an old battleship that had survived Pearl Harbour but this time it finally sank. Over 300 died. Afterwards the Sun newspaper heralded ‘Gotcha!’

Though for a time teh Thatcher approach looked touch and go. HMS Sheffield was hit by a French Exocet missile and became the first British warship destroyed since World War Two. When troops finally came ashore at San Carlos HMS Antelope exploded – and was memorably caught on tape as fire exploded it. But by June 1982 it was all over. Argentina surrendered.

The filip from a win in the Falklands helped an impressive election win the following year – her second of three. Afterwards the privatisation of state assets became a bigger and firmer push. Despite pleas from within the Conservative Party as much as outside she was never for turning away from the sell agenda. If criticism was pushed too much she would sack wets – cabinet members who could not handle the strong reactions of the country and favoured a more cautious approach. Surviving a 1984 bombing by the IRA helped strengthen her position further.

In part the Thatcher imprint on Britain and the world was helped by an ineffective Labour opposition. During the 1980s the Party was in disarray and torn between a socialist identity and the reality of the problems excessive post-war socialism created. In 1983 the Labour manifesto was dismissed as the longest suicide note in history. Newspapers also helped. Indeed widespread support of the popular press stayed with the Conservatives right until 1997 – seven years after she left. At the 1992 election The Sun asked If Kinnock wins today, will the last person in Britain please turn out the lights?’ The following day after the Tories won (their fourth election victory) they concluded It’s The Sun Wot Won It.

But more than inefective opposition and a supportive press was the logical policy message of Thatcherism. It arrived at a perfect time. Even Tony Benn concluded Mrs Thatcher influenced the thinking of a generation.