One of the biggest stories in 1986 was the explosion of a Soviet nuclear reactor at Chernobyl in Ukraine. Labelled the worst nuclear power plant accident in history, Chernobyl resulted in the release of radioactive material across much of Europe, affecting over half a million people.

1987 was marked by a massive loss of wealth across the world when stock markets crashed on October the 19th – a day known as Black Monday. The global crash began in Hong Kong and spread to Europe, also hitting the United States. Australia and New Zealand’s markets were affected a day later.

In 1988 much of Australia was in party mode. On January the 26th, 200 years after the arrival of the First Fleet, we celebrated our bicentenary in a sunny spectacle focused on where it all began — Sydney Harbour.

In 1989, after almost 30 years of division, the Berlin Wall came down paving the way for German re-unification. On November the 9th the East German government announced its citizens could visit West Germany and West Berlin any time they wished.

In 1990 Nelson Mandela was released from jail paving the way for democracy in South Africa. Arrested in 1962 for his campaign to get equal rights for black South Africans, Nelson Mandela was charged with treason and spent 27 years in a notorious prison on Robben Island, off the coast of Cape Town.

One of the stories that shook the world in 1991 was the start of Operation Desert Storm. A coalition led by the United States began military operations against Iraq after the United Nations condemned Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait.

In 1992 the demolition of the Babri Mosque in India reverberated around the world. Situated in in Ayodhya, a town revered as the birthplace of the Hindu God Lord Ram, the mosque was the focus of a long debate over whether a temple existed beforehand on the site.

In 1993 the world of tennis changed in an instant when Monica Seles was stabbed during a match against Magdalena Maleeva in Germany.

After 27 years in exile, 1994 was marked by Yasser Arafat’s return to the Gaza Strip. The P-L-O leader gave a triumphant address to 200 thousand Palestinians in Gaza city.

One of our biggest stories of the past four decades took place in 1995, when an American space shuttle docked with the Russian space station Mir. Despite previous cold war animosity, Russian astronauts greeted the Americans with bread, salt and a kiss on the cheek.