Post-modernity spans 1945 to 2016 C.E., an era defined by rapid technological acceleration, decolonization, the rise of the internet, and expanding civil rights. This archive collects milestones in science, medicine, governance, and culture from those seven decades of sweeping human progress.
Sweden’s CFC aerosol ban, announced on January 23, 1978, made it the first country to prohibit the ozone-destroying propellants — acting seven years before scientists discovered the Antarctic ozone hole. The decision rested on theory alone, and it helped set the template for the Montreal Protocol and one of humanity’s rare universal environmental agreements.
The first mobile phone call rang out on a Manhattan sidewalk in April 1973, when Motorola engineer Martin Cooper lifted a 2.5-pound prototype to his ear and dialed his rival at Bell Labs. Passersby thought it was a film shoot. It would take another decade before anyone could actually buy one.
Bahamian independence arrived at midnight on July 10, 1973, when the Union Jack came down in Nassau and a new aquamarine, gold, and black flag rose in its place. Prime Minister Lynden Pindling, whose party had won a landmark 1967 election, led the transition. It closed more than 250 years of British rule and placed governance in the hands of the islands’ majority.
Nike’s Waffle Trainer started with a breakfast appliance. One Sunday in Eugene, Oregon, track coach Bill Bowerman poured liquid urethane into his wife’s waffle iron, chasing a lighter, grippier sole for his runners. The shoe reached stores in 1974, and its grid of independent rubber nodes still shapes how performance footwear is designed today.
The Very Large Array broke ground in April 1973 on a remote stretch of New Mexico high desert, launching one of the most ambitious radio astronomy projects ever attempted. Its 27 dishes, arranged in a 23-mile “Y,” can be repositioned by rail to zoom in on the cosmos. A patient bet on listening harder to a universe already speaking.
The Biological Weapons Convention opened for signature on April 10, 1972, as representatives gathered simultaneously in London, Moscow, and Washington to ban an entire class of weapons of mass destruction. It was the first treaty of its kind, and today 189 states are party to it — a rare, near-universal agreement that some things should never be built.
Plastic recycling took an early industrial step in 1972, when a mill opened in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, betting that discarded plastic could be reclaimed instead of buried. Workers sorted resins by hand before shredding, melting, and extruding them into pellets manufacturers could reuse. It was a small, imperfect start to a loop the world is still trying to close.
UCC ordination of William R. Johnson in 1972 made him the first openly gay clergyperson in a mainline American Protestant denomination. The decision came a year before the American Psychiatric Association stopped classifying homosexuality as a mental illness, and long before broader cultural acceptance. It quietly opened a door others would walk through for decades.
Pong arrived in a Sunnyvale tavern in the summer of 1972, a simple paddle-and-ball game built by engineer Allan Alcorn as a training exercise. Within ten days, quarters had jammed the coin box solid. That overflowing cabinet was the first real proof that video games could be a commercial medium, not just a curiosity.
Bangladesh independence was declared on March 26, 1971, in a radio broadcast from Chittagong, after Pakistani forces launched a brutal crackdown on the Bengali population of East Pakistan. Nine months of war followed, ending with Pakistan’s surrender that December. A nation built on language and cultural identity had entered the world.
