1966 to 2000

There are a lot of real world events listed here. It’s a very deliberate choice, since I wanted to show how things have developed since “Star Trek” was first broadcast, usually in ways that no-one at the time could have guessed.

Jacqueline Susann
Tuesday 20th August, 1918 to Saturday 21st September, 1974
James Kirk is a keen reader of her work, as mentioned in “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home”.

Wednesday 1st June, 1966
Surveyor 1, the first American probe to land on the Moon and return pictures from the surface.

Sunday 14th August, 1966
Lunar Orbiter 1 does just that.

“Star Trek”

Thursday 8th September, 1966 to Friday 3rd June, 1969

A television show, broadcast by NBC. It was cancelled in 1969, but several versions of “Star Trek” are still in production (after a bit of a break) even now.
Comment: It would be very weird indeed if it had also happened in the “Star Trek” past.

“The Monkees”
Monday 12th September, 1966 to Monday 25th March, 1968
The original run of the TV show, outlived by the band created to feature in it. Ensign Barnes is a fan in LDS “Second Contact”.

1967

Henry Starling finds a crashed 29th century time travelling ship whilst camping in the High Sierras. Captain Braxton gets stranded on 20th century Earth by the crash. This event is later “corrected” by the starship Voyager. All of this is shown in VOY “Future’s End” (Parts 1 & 2).

The natural frequency of a caesium atom is adopted as the International Unit of Time.

Tuesday 3rd January, 1967
Edward W. Brooke becomes the first African-American senator since Reconstruction in the US.

Thursday 12th January, 1967
Dr James Bedford is the first person to be frozen after death in the hope of a future revival. Currently, he’s still frozen, as far as I’ve been able to find out.

Friday 27th January, 1967
Three American astronauts are killed whilst ground testing the Apollo 1 space capsule.

Tuesday 4th April, 1967
The first fatality during a space flight occurs, when Vladimir Komarov (Влади́мир Миха́йлович Комаро́в) is killed in Soyuz (Союз) 1.

Tuesday 30th May, 1967 to Thursday 15th January, 1970
Biafra attempts to secede from Nigeria, unsuccessfully.

Monday 5th to Saturday 10th June, 1967
Israel fights the Six-Day War with Egypt, Jordan and Syria.

Tuesday 13th June, 1967
Thurgood Marshall becomes the first African-American justice on the Supreme Court.

Tuesday 10th October, 1967
The Outer Space Treaty comes into force, ratified by Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States. It specifically bans orbital nuclear warhead platforms, meaning that the sabotaged launch shown in TOS “Assignment: Earth” thankfully remains firmly in the realm of fiction.

Wednesday 29th November, 1967
First Australian satellite, WRESAT launched, using a modified Redstone rocket.

Thursday 30th November, 1967
South Yemen achieves independence.

Thursday 28th December, 1967
A vaccine for mumps is licensed.

Friday 29th December, 1967
“Black hole” first used as a name for singularities by John Wheeler.

Saturday 24th February, 1968
The discovery of pulsars is announced.

Thursday 4th April, 1968
Martin Luther King is assassinated.

Wednesday 22nd May, 1968
Loss by unexplained explosion of the atomic submarine USS Scorpion, with the loss of ninety-nine men. Allegations that the submarine was deliberately sunk in an attack by a Soviet submarine remain unproven, and are denied by the US Navy. As far as I’ve been able to work out, the people who know about these things suspect that a defective torpedo detonated on-board and sunk the submarine.

Bob Gibson
Born Saturday 9th November, 1935
He’s mentioned in DS9 “The Homecoming”.

Thursday 6th June, 1968
The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.

Wednesday 12th June, 1968
American release date for the film “Rosemary’s Baby”. It’s the movie night film in ENT “Twilight”.

Monday 1st July, 1968
Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty signed, to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. It came into force on Thursday 5th March, 1970.

Wednesday 17th July, 1968
Coup in Iraq.

September 1968
Steppenwolf release “Magic Carpet Ride”. Zefram Cochrane insists on playing it during the launch of the Phoenix in “Star Trek: First Contact”.

Friday 6th September, 1968
Swaziland becomes independent.

Saturday 14th to Saturday 21st September, 1968
Zond (Зонд) 5 becomes the first (unmanned) spacecraft to travel around the Moon and return to Earth.

Friday 11th to Tuesday 22nd October, 1968
Apollo 7 mission.

Monday 21st October, 1968

The last contact from agents 201 and 347, three days before TOS “Assignment: Earth”.

TOS “Assignment: Earth”

Thursday 24th October, 1968

Duration: 1 day
Chronology: Captain Kirk helpfully gives the year. I’ve chosen the date by the convoluted argument below, and not tried to match the assassination or coup to real events. Presumably the ones referred to by Spock happened in “Star Trek”, rather than reality. The other part of the story happens in 2268.
Continuity: This story was actually written in 1967, and filmed in January 1968, so the events listed by Mister Spock are predictions. He says “There will be an important assassination today, an equally dangerous government coup in Asia, and, this could be highly critical, the launching of an orbital nuclear warhead platform by the United States countering a similar launch by other powers.” Unfortunately, there were two important assassinations in 1968, those of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy; there were other killings as well, including that of the American ambassador to Guatemala. There was a coup in Asia, in Iraq. America never launched an orbital weapons platform, and indeed they had already been outlawed by the Outer Space Treaty. Certainly, there was never any need to “respond” to an earlier launch by another country (the Soviet Union, as everyone in the audience would have immediately understood at the time). Originally, I had placed the story in June, linking it to the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, and the coup in Iraq, which happened in mid-July, and fudged a bit. I’ve dropped that idea, because it’s obviously not June in New York. Everyone is wrapped up for winter, pretty much ruling out a summertime setting for this story. The Memory Alpha website suggests that the murder of Martin Luther King and the launch of Apollo 6 on the same day in April could be a dating clue. Doctor King was shot in the early evening, so it’s not a surprise that no-one mentions the event during the story, but it raises the absolutely enormous question of why Gary Seven is pissing about with a rocket when he could be saving the life of MLK. I really can’t justify those priorities. Fortunately, I also got caught up in the distinction between “orbital” and “sub-orbital.” There’s confusion about the two terms all the way through the story, and the distinction became quite important (to me, anyway). As I discovered, the “Minuteman III” missile was specifically designed as a suborbital weapons platform. Each missile had three warheads that could be independently targeted. More to the point, test firings of the missile occurred in 1968. It even looks a bit like a miniature Saturn V (the Moon rocket used to represent the atomic missile in the story). One launch was in August, so it’s ruled out by being in summer. The other was on Thursday 24th October, 1968. I have no wish at all that the day should be marked by death and violence just to suit me. The assassination and Asian coup can remain completely fictional, since none of the real events of 1968 coincided in that way.

Saturday 21st to Friday 27th December, 1968
Apollo 8 mission.

Very approximately 1968

It seems to be around now that the Kelvans set off from the Andromeda Galaxy, three hundred years before TOS “By Any Other Name”. Their descendants will try to hijack Enterprise for a return trip.

1969

Henry Starling introduces the “isograted circuit” as a result of his discovery of a 29th century timeship in 1967, VOY “Future’s End, Part I”. This event is later corrected by the Starship Voyager.

Tom Paris recreates a stock 1969 Chevy Camaro on the holodeck in VOY “Vis à Vis”.

Friday 3rd January, 1969
Shirley Chisholm becomes the first African-American congresswoman.

Thursday 16th January, 1969
Soyuz (Союз) 4 & 5 make the first transfer of personnel between craft in space.

Sunday 2nd March, 1969
First test flight of Concorde, the supersonic passenger jet, which was withdrawn from service in 2003.

March to September 1969
There is a clash over a disputed border between China and the USSR.

July and August 1969
Unmanned probes Mariner 6 & 7 return high-resolution images of Mars.

TOS “Tomorrow Is Yesterday”

Saturday 12th to Monday 14th July, 1969

Estimated duration: 3 days
Chronology: Even though they’re trapped in the past, the log entries are stardated. Where the stardates are from is unknown, but they run from S.D. 3113.7 to S.D. 3114.1. I’ve assumed that converts to a story that lasts from about 5:30 PM on Saturday 12th July, 1969 to about 9:10 AM on Monday 14th July, 1969 (Omaha time). Then it all didn’t happen. The other part of the story is in 2267.
Continuity: It’s less than a week before the launch of America’s first Moonshot, scheduled for next Wednesday. By an absolutely amazing coincidence, Apollo 11 took off on Wednesday 16th July, 1969. I’ve assigned some specific days, but the story could happen anytime from Thursday 10th to Tuesday 15th July, 1969.

Sunday 20th July, 1969
The US accomplishes the first manned landing on the Moon. The commander of the mission, Neil Armstrong, was the first man to set foot on the Moon, and is mentioned in VOY “Threshold”, as is Buzz Aldrin in ENT “First Flight”. For the record, his first words on the Moon were: “Beautiful view. Magnificent desolation.”

Friday 16th August, 1969
A music festival is held at Woodstock, New York. Quinn claims to have made sure that the concert went as planned in VOY “Death Wish”.

Sunday 17th to Monday 18th August, 1969
Hurricane Camille hits Mississippi.

Wednesday 29th October, 1969
The first message is transmitted across a computer network, ARPANET.

Wednesday 21st January, 1970
A Boeing 747 flies across the Atlantic for the first time.

Wednesday 11th February, 1970
The first Japanese satellite, Ohsumi (大隅) is launched.

Monday 13th April, 1970
Following an explosion, the crew of Apollo 13 are unable to complete their mission to the Moon, but return safely to Earth.

Friday 24th April, 1970
The first Chinese satellite, Dongfanghong (“The East is Red”) 1 (東方紅一號) is launched.

Sunday 31st May, 1970
Ancash Earthquake, the most severe natural disaster in Peru’s history.

Saturday 12th to Thursday 24th September, 1970
Soil samples from the Moon are returned to Earth by an unmanned probe, Luna (Луна) 16.

October 1970
Silicon chips become commercially available.

Tuesday 10th November, 1970 to Monday 4th October, 1971
Lunokhod (Луноход) 1 is the first robot rover in space, and explores the surface of the Moon for 11 lunar days.

Friday 13th November, 1970
Bangladesh hit by cyclone and tidal waves.

Tuesday 15th December, 1970
Venera (Венера) 7 lands on the surface of Venus, the first probe to do so.

Approximately 1970

The Eska start hunting on Dakala. It’s “generations” and “hundreds of years” according to ENT “Rogue Planet”, so I’ve arbitrarily stuck it here.

1971
Kevlar®, a fibre stronger than steel, is first marketed.

Friday 12th March, 1971
The American release date of the film “The Andromeda Strain”. “Trip” Tucker mentions it in ENT “Observer Effect”.

Apollo 13
Sunday 11th to Saturday 17th April, 1971
Holographic Janeway tries to inspire Dal to improvise using the example of this mission in PDY “Time Amok”.

Monday 19th April, 1971
USSR launches Salyut (Салют) 1, the first space station. The first crew to dock with the space station are tragically killed when Soyuz (Союз) 11 depressurises during their return to Earth on Tuesday June 29th, 1971. This tragedy led to the suspension of the Soviet manned space programme for two years, and was the last occasion that cosmonauts were sent into space without spacesuits, a practice that started with the Voskhod (Восход) 1 mission.

Sunday 30th May, 1971
The first unmanned probe to go into orbit around Mars, Mariner 9, is launched by the US.

Saturday 31st July, 1971
The crew of Apollo 15 drive the first manned Lunar Rover on the surface of the Moon.

August 1971
Severe flooding in Vietnam.

Thursday 28th October, 1971
Launch of the first British satellite (and the only one so far launched by a British rocket) Prospero.

Friday 3rd to Thursday 16th December, 1971
India-Pakistan War. Bangladesh achieves independence.

1972
CAT scans developed.

The first domestic videocassette recorder goes on sale.

Saturday 1st January, 1972
Coordinated Universal Time is adopted throughout the world.

February 1972
Severe blizzards hit Iran.

Luciano Pavarotti
Saturday 12th October, 1935 to Thursday 6th September 2007
The EMH mentions him in VOY “The Swarm”.

Monday 21st to Monday 28th February, 1972
President Richard Nixon makes a state visit to the People’s Republic of China. Spock claims “Only Nixon could go to China” is an old Vulcan proverb in “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country”.

Thursday 2nd March, 1972

Unmanned space probe Pioneer 10 launched. It is fitted with a plaque intended to provide information about humanity to other intelligent beings, and is the first man-made object to travel through and beyond the asteroid belt, and later to leave the Solar System entirely.
Continuity: According to “Star Trek V: The Final Frontier” the probe comes to a sticky end in 2292, when a Klingon ship destroys it for target practice.
Comment: My guess is that Pioneer 10 will have travelled about 800 Astronomical Units from the Sun by 2292. That’s a long way, but still far short of the distance needed to reach the nearest star, at 277,600 A.U. In other words, the Klingons must have been awfully nearby, or the space probe was given a big boost somewhere along the line.

April 1972
Texas Instruments markets the first hand-held electronic calculator.

May 1972
The first video game console is commercially launched, designed by Ralph Baer.

November 1972
Astronomer Tom Bolton identifies the first object that may be a black hole, Cygnus X-1.

Thursday 7th to Tuesday 19th December, 1972
Apollo 17 is the final manned lunar mission of the Apollo programme.

Sunday 25th February, 1973
Opening on Broadway of the musical “A Little Night Music” by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler. The song “Send in the Clowns” is introduced. The song’s parodied in TNG “Up the Long Ladder” as “Send in the clones.”

Monday 14th May, 1973 to Friday 8th February, 1974
The US Skylab missions.

Tuesday 14th September, 1973
The microprocessor is patented.

Monday 6th to Sunday 26th October, 1973
Israel fights the Yom Kippur War (מלחמת יום הכיפורים‎, حرب تشرين) against Egypt and Syria.

Saturday 3rd November, 1973
The first mission to two planets is launched by the US. Mariner 10 photographs Venus and Mercury. A similar mission to Jupiter and Saturn by //Pioneer //11 is launched earlier in the year (Friday 6th April), but does not return information until later.

Wednesday 26th December, 1973
The American release date of the film “The Exorcist”. Doctor Phlox was talked into watching it the week before ENT “Doctor’s Orders”.

1974

Five women are murdered in Kiev, USSR, according to TOS “Wolf in the Fold”.

The Post-it® note is invented.

The first vaccine for chickenpox introduced.

Wednesday 3rd April, 1974
US hit by severe tornadoes.

Thursday 25th April, 1974
Revolution in Portugal, resulting in the independence of Angola, Mozambique and Cape Verde the following year.

Friday 17th May, 1974
The first weather satellite in geostationary orbit is launched by the US.

Saturday 18th May, 1974
India becomes the sixth nation to possess nuclear weapons.

June 1974
Element 106 is discovered in the USSR.

The first barcodes used for identifying goods in shops introduced.

Saturday 20th July, 1974
Turkey occupies northern Cyprus.

Bjorn Borg
Born Wednesday 6th June, 1956
Lily appears to know of him, at least vaguely, in “Star Trek: First Contact”.

January 1975
The first low-cost personal computer goes on sale, for $375. It was called the “Altair 8800” because Altair was where the starship Enterprise was going that night on TV when they had to think of a name (I think that has to be TOS “Amok Time”). The computer was programmed in BASIC, using code developed by Bill Gates. The Microsoft computer company was founded this year.

Saturday 19th April, 1975
The first Indian satellite, Aryabhatta, is launched.

Friday 16th May, 1975
Mrs Junko Tabei (田部井淳子) is the first woman to climb Everest.

Saturday 31st May, 1975
The European Space Agency formally comes into existence.

Tuesday 11th to Thursday 24th July, 1975
The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project is the first American-Soviet joint manned space mission. It is also the last manned American space mission until the first orbital flight of the Space Shuttle.

Thursday 16th October, 1975
The former Portuguese colony of East Timor is invaded and annexed by Indonesia.

Wednesday 22nd and Saturday 25th October, 1975
Venera (Венера) 9 & 10 return the first pictures of the surface of Venus.

Approximately 1975

Almost 30 years before ENT “Carpenter Street”, people become aware that fossil fuels are a finite resource, and will run out, according to Captain Archer.

1976
The first Cray I supercomputer is installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Element 107 discovered in the USSR. (Reality.)

Wednesday 7th January, 1976
The first of the “Aten” asteroids was discovered. These have orbits which (with two known exceptions) cross the orbit of Earth, and whose average distance from the Sun is less than the Earth’s.

Tuesday 20th July, 1976
Unmanned space probe Viking 1 lands on Mars and returns pictures from the surface. It also conducts experiments on the Martian soil.
Comment: The Viking soil experiments were designed to establish conclusively whether there was life on Mars. The results were ambiguous, but scientific opinion is that it was unexpected chemical reactions rather than actual living organisms that affected them.

Wednesday 28th July, 1976
Earthquake in Tangshan (唐山市), China.

Wednesday 4th August, 1976
The first recognised outbreak of Legionnaire’s Disease, at an American Legion convention.

Thursday 9th September, 1976
The death of Chinese leader Mao Tse-Tung, 毛澤東.

Friday 17th September, 1976
The first rollout of Space Shuttle Enterprise.

Monday 15th November, 1976
Megamouth shark discovered in the Pacific Ocean.

1977
Living creatures are discovered around deep-sea vents near the Galapagos Islands.

Monday 15th August, 1977
The Ohio State University radio telescope receives an unusual signal from outer space. It could be a sign of intelligence beyond the Earth, but it has never been repeated.
Comment: My guess is it wasn’t an alien intelligence, but I can’t prove it.

Saturday 20th August and Monday 5th September, 1977

The unmanned space probes Voyager 1 and 2 are launched by the US. Between 1979 and 1989 they will return information about Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The Voyager series of probes extends at least to six in “Star Trek”. In “Star Trek: The Motion Picture”, V’Ger turns out to be Voyager 6, lost centuries before when it “fell into a black hole”. When Voyager 6 might have been launched is open to question. The Star Trek Chronology suggested 1999, but I think a launch window in the late ’70s is more likely. Like a lot of other twentieth-century events in “Star Trek”, we just happen not to remember.
Comment: The Voyager probes took advantage of a particular alignment of the planets of the outer Solar System that won’t recur until the middle of the 22nd century. There would be no point in launching an extra Voyager unless it was at pretty much the same time as the “real” ones. Interestingly, it turns out that the original proposal was for four spacecraft that would have visited Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto too. In our version of events, the program was halved due to cost and a mission to Pluto was delayed for quite a while. Since the “Star Trek” version of history has considerably more concrete evidence of life beyond the Earth by this stage I’d guess that the mission was extended to a fleet of at least six Voyager probes, intended to visit all of the outer planets. The launches were originally planned to be in two “waves” in 1977 and 1979, so those are the two main candidates for the launch date of Voyager 6, as far as I can see.

Saturday 19th to Sunday 20th November, 1977
A cyclone hits India.

1978

A simulation of this year’s Red Sox team plays the recreated 1968 Yankees in Jake’s holosuite program in DS9 “For the Cause”.

The British Interplanetary Society publishes “Project Daedalus”, the first detailed feasibility study for an unmanned interstellar mission.

Monday 16th January, 1978
NASA officially recruits its first women astronauts, although a secret programme in 1960-1961 selected 13 women using exactly the same tests as the male Mercury astronauts, well before the flight of Valentina Tereshkova in 1963, as mentioned earlier.

Thursday 2nd to Friday 10th March, 1978
The Soviet Union begins a series of “international” space missions. Vladimír Remek becomes the first Czech in space, and the first non-American or Soviet space traveller.

Thursday 22nd June, 1978
The discovery of Charon, a moon of Pluto, is announced.

Tuesday 25th July, 1978
First “test-tube baby” born.

Saturday 18th November, 1978
The Jonestown Massacre occurs in Guyana.

March (and July) 1979
Voyager probes reach Jupiter, and return the first pictures of the previously unknown rings. Active volcanoes are also discovered on the moon Io.

Monday 26th March, 1979
Egypt-Israel peace treaty.

Sunday 1st April, 1979
Iran becomes an Islamic republic.

Wednesday 11th July, 1979
Skylab re-enters the atmosphere. Parts of America’s first space station are later recovered in Australia.

Monday 3rd September, 1979
Hurricane David hits the US.

Monday 24th December, 1979
ESA launches CAT, the first European satellite taken to orbit by the European rocket, Ariane.

Monday 24th December 1979 to Wednesday 15th February, 1989
Soviet Union invades Afghanistan. Although there was no way of knowing it would be happening at the time the show was made, this could qualify as one of the “brushfire wars” in Asia referred to by Captain Kirk in TOS “A Private Little War”.

1980
“Pac-Man” arcade game is launched in Japan.

Friday 18th April, 1980
Zimbabwe achieves majority rule, and internationally recognised independence.

May 1980
Rubik’s Cube is first marketed outside Hungary.

Thursday 8th May, 1980
The World Health Assembly declares that naturally occurring smallpox is completely eradicated.

Sunday 18th May, 1980
Mount St. Helens explodes.

Friday 18th July, 1980
The Indian satellite Rohini 1 is the first launched by an Indian rocket.

Monday 22nd September, 1980 to Saturday 20th August, 1988
Iran-Iraq War.

November 1980
Voyager 1 reaches Saturn.

1981
K. Eric Drexler's book “Engines of Creation” is published, explaining nanotechnology for a mass audience.

Monday 9th March, 1981
The first successful heart and lung transplant is carried out.

Sunday 12th April, 1981
The Space Shuttle Colombia conducts the first mission to orbit of the Space Transportation System.

Friday 5th June, 1981
AIDS first diagnosed.

Tuesday 6th October, 1981
Assassination of Anwar Sadat, محمد أنورالسادات.

1982
The CD is introduced.

Monday 1st March, 1982
Venera (Венера) 13 conducts the first analysis of the soil on Venus.

Thursday 24th June, 1982
Jean-Loup Chrétien becomes the first Frenchman in space.

Sunday 29th August, 1982
Element 109 is discovered in Germany.

Tuesday 25th January, 1983
Launch of IRAS, the Infrared Astronomical Satellite.

Wednesday 16th February, 1983
Severe brush fires in Australia.

Saturday 18th June, 1983
Sally Ride becomes the first American woman, and on Tuesday 30th August Guion S. Bluford the first African-American, astronauts in space.

Monday 28th November, 1983
Ulf Merbold becomes the first ESA astronaut to travel into space, on Space Shuttle Columbia.

Robert Jarvik
Born on Saturday 11th May, 1946
He’s mentioned in VOY “Fury”. Less obviously related, Jean-Luc Picard ends up benefiting from Dr Jarvik’s area of medical research, artificial hearts.

Tuesday 7th February, 1984
Bruce McCandless and Robert Stewart make the first untethered space walks.

Wednesday 14th March, 1984
Element 108 is discovered in Germany.

Monday 2nd April, 1984
Squadron-Leader Rakesh Sharma becomes the first Indian in space.

Saturday 7th April, 1984
The Long Duration Exposure Facility is placed in orbit by the space shuttle.

Wednesday 25th July, 1984
Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya (Светла́на Евге́ньевна Сави́цкая) is the first woman to walk in space.

Wednesday 31st October, 1984
Indira Ghandi assassinated.

Monday 3rd December, 1984
2,500 people are killed in Bhopal, India by a chemical leak.

1985
DNA fingerprinting technique is published.

Lasers are first used in surgery.

Buckminsterfullerenes are used in the diagnosis of pulmonary embolism.

Monday 7th January, 1985
Japan launches a satellite into orbit around the Sun, the third country to do so.

Sunday 17th June, 1985
Salman al-Saud (سلطان بن سلمان بن عبد العزيز آل سعود) becomes the first Saudi, royal and Muslim astronaut.

Monday 1st September, 1985
Wreck of the RMS Titanic located.

Wednesday 9th to Tuesday 15th November, 1985
The first international conference on the greenhouse effect is held in Villach, Austria.

Wednesday 13th November, 1985
The volcano Nevada del Ruiz erupts in Colombia.

Friday 24th January, 1986
Voyager 2 makes its closest approach to the planet Uranus.

Tuesday 28th January, 1986
The Space Shuttle Challenger explodes shortly after take-off, killing all aboard.

Wednesday 19th February, 1986
The USSR launches the first components of the Mir (Мир) space station (which was de-orbited and destroyed in the Earth’s atmosphere in 2001).

Friday 14th March, 1986
Around this time there are close fly-bys of Halley’s comet by unmanned probes from several nations. The ESA Giotto probe photographs the comet nucleus.

April 1986
The discovery of the first “high temperature” (relatively speaking) superconductor is announced.

Monday 14th April, 1986
Hailstones weighing up to one kilo (about two pounds) fall in Bangladesh.

Saturday 26th April, 1986
An explosion and fire occurs at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Soviet Union. An atomic reactor core is directly exposed to the atmosphere, releasing a huge plume of radioactive material across eastern and central Europe.

Thursday 9th October, 1986
The opening in London of “The Phantom of the Opera” musical, based on a much earlier novel. VOY “The Void” mentions the name.

“Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home”

Thursday 18th to Friday 19th December, 1986

Estimated duration: 2 days
Chronology: Based on the copy of the “San Francisco Register” in a dispenser at the start of the scenes in San Francisco, it’s the morning of Thursday 18th December, 1986. Although they get an amazing amount done in the time, it’s only the afternoon of the following day when the whales are saved, and they head off to do the timewarp again and go back to the future. (Sorry.) The other part of the story is in 2292.
Continuity: The date on the newspaper is slightly blurred, but clear enough for there not to be any real doubt. The headline “Nuclear Arms Talks Stalled; Geneva Summit in Doubt” would more appropriately precede the Reagan-Gorbachev Geneva Summit on Tuesday 19th December, 1985. That’s too early to be plausible, though. In actual fact, in December 1986 President Reagan was embroiled in the damaging Iran-Contra affair, and would be going into hospital for prostate surgery in early January, rather than getting ready for a summit meeting. It’s difficult to be certain of all the details, but I think that the USS Enterprise was docked at Alameda between Wednesday 13th August, 1986 and Monday 22nd September, 1986, and then out of port until Tuesday 10th March, 1987, which is a bit of a pity. The eagle-eyed people at the Memory Alpha website have spotted someone reading the May 1986 edition of OMNI Magazine on the bus, and that reflects the time when the filming was done in reality. Transparent aluminium is “invented”, but it seems to be taking a very long time to reach the market.
Comment: I’ve used the given date on screen for this, since it’s clearly meant to be that day’s newspaper. The weather in San Francisco might be a little mild, but it is California, after all.

1987

The principal event this year was that computers were cloned, according to an answer of Spock’s in “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home”.
Comment: I don’t remember that, either.

Monday 23rd February, 1987
For the first time in over 250 years, a supernova explosion becomes visible to the naked eye in the night sky of Earth.

Friday 24th April, 1987

Birth of Gabriel Bell, according to DS9 “Little Green Men”.

July 1987
Disposable contact lenses are introduced.

Monday 7th to Monday 21st September, 1987
First conference on artificial life held.

Thursday 15th to Friday 16th October, 1987
UK hit by a severe storm.

Tuesday 29th December, 1987
Prozac® approved for use in the US.

1988
The first fibre-optic cable across the Atlantic becomes operational.

Stephen Hawking
Thursday 8th January, 1942 to Wednesday 14th March, 2018
In the real world, Dr Hawking was a big fan of “Star Trek”, and the real him played the part of a holographic version in a cameo appearance in TNG “Descent, Part I”.

Monday 19th September, 1988
The first Israeli satellite, Ofeq 1 (אופק) launched.

Wednesday 7th December, 1988
Earthquake in Armenia.

Monday 13th March, 1989
Electrical power in Eastern Canada is disrupted by a massive solar flare.

Wednesday 26th April, 1989
Bangladesh hit by a severe tornado.

Sunday 4th June, 1989
Tienanmen Square (天安門廣場) Massacre in China.

Tuesday 8th August, 1989
The European Space Agency launches the Hipparcos star-mapping satellite. Contact was lost in 1993.

Friday 25th August, 1989
Voyager 2 reaches Neptune.

Friday 6th October, 1989
Release date of the film “Henry V”. Data watches it in preparation for performing as Henry V in TNG “The Defector”.

Thursday 9th November, 1989
Fall of the Berlin Wall, the event which symbolised the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.

Tuesday 5th December, 1989
First (and so far only) Iraqi satellite launched.

“The 1990s”

Various secret laboratories develop bacteriological weapons that resemble the “crystallising” virus on Omega IV, according to Doctor McCoy in TOS “The Omega Glory”.
Comment: This could be a direct reference to the Eugenics Wars, but I’ve kept it here. Tinkering with the dates is making things complicated enough already.

Friday 12th January, 1990
The Long Duration Exposure Facility is recovered from orbit by the space shuttle.

Saturday 13th January, 1990
Douglas Wilder becomes the first African-American state governor since Reconstruction.

Sunday 11th February, 1990
Nelson Mandela is released from prison by the South African government.

Wednesday 14th February, 1990
Voyager 1 takes the first picture of the planets of the Solar System from “outside.”

Sunday 20th May, 1990
The Hubble Space Telescope goes into operation.

Thursday 21st June, 1990
Earthquake in Iran.

Monday 16th July, 1990
The first Pakistani satellite, Badr-A is launched.

Thursday 17th January to Wednesday 27th February, 1991
First Gulf War.

Monday 29th April, 1991
Bangladesh hit by a severe cyclone.

Saturday 18th May, 1991
Helen Sharman is the first Briton in space.

Saturday 15th June, 1991
Mount Pintanubo erupts.

Tuesday 6th August, 1991
The World Wide Web is launched.

Sunday 8th December, 1991
The Soviet Union becomes the CIS.

1992

“Chicago Mobs of the Twenties” is published in New York. A copy will eventually be included in the library on board the starship Horizon and get left behind on Sigma Iotia II, according to TOS “A Piece of the Action”.

Henry Starling receives several awards, including ones from the Minnesota Society of Certified Public Accountants (MNCPA) and Partners in Science of Silicone Valley, California, according to set dressing used in VOY “Future’s End” (Parts 1 & 2).

Friday 26th June, 1992

Henry Starling gets his Bachelor of Science degree, according to VOY “Future’s End” (Parts 1 & 2) set dressing.

Monday 24th-Friday 28th August, 1992
Hurricane Andrew hits US.

Monday 12th October, 1992
NASA establishes a SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) programme, cancelled the next year. Luckily, it is only one of several such projects, although it is the only government-funded one. The others are all very modest by comparison.

May to September 1993
Severe flooding of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.

Thursday 24th June, 1993
Andrew Wiles publishes a paper proving Fermat’s Last Theorem. The solution cannot be the one Fermat had discovered. The validity of Wiles’ solution has subsequently been challenged. TNG “The Royale” was made before this, and says that the theorem remains unsolved.

Monday 12th July, 1993
Tsunami hits Japan and Russia.

Monday 13th September, 1993
Israel and the Palestinian National Authority sign the Oslo Accords.

Monday 13th September, 1993 to Friday 20th February, 2009
The run of “Late Night with Conan O’Brien”. Strode doesn’t want to miss Conan in ENT “Carpenter Street”.

Wednesday 29th September, 1993
Severe earthquake in India.

Monday 1st November, 1993
Maastricht Treaty comes into force, creating the European Union.

1994
Miguel Alcubierre begins serious speculation about interstellar travel faster than the speed of light by publishing the paper “The Warp Drive: Hyper-fast Travel within General Relativity” in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity.

Clare Raymond

1959 to 1994; then 2365, “2364” onwards

Homemaker and Partner of Donald Raymond (1957 to 2038), Clare died of an embolism in this year. Her husband had her body cryogenically preserved, and she was eventually revived in 2365 (2364 is the year expressly stated in the story but I can’t make that work), as shown in TNG “The Neutral Zone”.
Chronology: Cryogenic freezing has been around since the 1960s, although the problem of keeping bodies properly frozen for prolonged periods, especially if the money runs out, hasn’t been solved yet. There is no problem with Clare being frozen in 1994, but being placed in space seems a bit over-optimistic. Either the many hints that the “Star Trek” 1990s are radically different to our own are correct, or the removal to an orbiting satellite occurred later, possibly in my “fake” 1990s, around 2050, conveniently after the discovery of artificial gravity. This isn’t what's stated on-screen, but it isn’t impossible. Rather than filling the timeline with members of the Raymond family, I’ve added a family tree instead. Click on the link to see my own interpretation of the “re-mastered” Raymond Family Tree: Raymond Family Tree. In the original version, the family tree was quite different, but it wasn’t supposed to be visible to the audience. The revised family tree undoubtedly was meant to be seen in more detail, although not all of it is clear. Since it more closely matches the dialogue in the story, I’ve used it in preference to the original graphics.
Comment: Yes, I do know Data said it was the year 2364 in TNG “The Neutral Zone”. I think he was wrong, or referring to the “stardate year.”

Thursday 3rd February, 1994
Sergei Krikalev (Сергей Константинович Крикалёв) is the first Russian cosmonaut to travel on an American space shuttle mission.

Thursday 7th April, 1994
The Rwandan genocide begins, lasting about 100 days.

Tuesday 26th April, 1994
First non-racial election in South Africa.

Friday 6th May, 1994
The Channel Tunnel is opened.

July 1994
Comet Shoemaker-Levy collides with Jupiter.

Wednesday 9th November, 1994
Element 110 is discovered in Darmstadt.

Thursday 8th December, 1994
Element 111 is discovered in Germany.

1995
Mozambique joins the Commonwealth of Nations.

Thursday 26th June, 1995
Space shuttle Atlantis docks with the Russian Mir space station.

September 1995
DVD format launched.

Thursday 7th December, 1995
Galileo probe enters the Jovian atmosphere.

1996

Phineas Tarbolde writes a love poem called “Nightingale Woman”, according to TOS “Where No Man Has Gone Before”. Since he definitely doesn’t live on Earth, it’s possible that yet another strange group of English-speaking humans lives in the Canopius system, along with nightingales. Later on, in DS9 “The Muse”, we discover that this poet was also inspired and drained by Onaya.
Comment: Doubtless you all already know that the poem was actually written by Gene Roddenberry.

Friday 9th February, 1996
Element 112 is discovered in Germany.

May 1996

Henry Starling gets a plaque for being a “high tech computer operator,” according to a VOY “Future’s End” background prop.

June 1996

Henry Starling gets a plaque for his contributions to exotic collections, according to a VOY “Future’s End” background prop.

Friday 5th July, 1996
Dolly the Sheep cloned (died in 2003).

Sunday 7th July, 1996

The Los Angeles Chapter of the International Memorabilia and Collectibles Club awards a plaque to Henry Starling on this day, according to a VOY “Future’s End” background prop.

VOY “Future’s End” (Parts 1 & 2)

Wednesday 14th to Thursday 15th August, 1996

Estimated duration: 2 days
Chronology:Voyager is brought back in time, and discovers that history has been affected by a 29th century time-ship. They spend two days sorting out the mess. Since Rain wants a date with Paris the day after the second day (he says he’s busy) and it’ll be the weekend after that, I’m guessing that the story takes place on a Wednesday and a Thursday. Harry Kim has no difficulty in establishing the year as 1996 by looking at the stars. The other part of the story happens in “2373”, October 2373.
Continuity: Captain Janeway says she has no idea what her ancestors are doing at this time, but later on we get VOY “11:59”, which sort of directly contradicts that (perhaps she developed an interest after this, but that would mean that the records on Voyager are incredibly detailed). The filming outside Griffith Observatory happened on Wednesday 14th August, 1996 (according to Memory Alpha) and so it seems as good a time as any to set the story.

Tuesday 6th August, 1996
Study of a meteorite collected in Antarctica reveals that it originated on Mars. Some features of its microscopic structure may be the fossilized remains of living organisms. The evidence is not conclusive, but the publicity surrounding the claims excites public interest in space exploration in general, and in further missions to Mars in particular.

Saturday 22nd March, 1997
Comet Hale-Bopp makes its closest approach to Earth.

Monday, 21st April, 1997
The first “space burial” is performed, and Timothy Leary’s ashes are among those sent into space.

Tuesday 1st July, 1997
Hong Kong (香港) reverts to China.

Friday 4th July, 1997
Mars Pathfinder, the first Mars rover, lands on Mars.

Wednesday 4th February, 1998
Severe earthquake in Afghanistan, followed by another on Saturday 30th May.

Friday 27th March, 1998
Viagra® becomes available.

Monday 11th May, 1998
India and Pakistan (on Thursday 28th May) detonate nuclear weapons.

Mid May to early July 1998
Fires in Florida.

Friday 3rd July, 1998
The first (but unsuccessful) Japanese Mars probe, Nozomi (のぞみ), is launched.

Friday 17th July, 1998
Tsunami hits New Guinea.

Thursday 29th October, 1998
Hurricane Mitch hits the Caribbean and Central America.

December 1998
Element 114 is discovered in Russia.

1999

In DS9 “Future Tense, Part II”, Vin claims that the New York Yankees team for this year is the greatest of all time. Oddly enough, they did win this year, but informed (and after the fact) opinion says that it is the 1998 Yankees team that might reasonably be considered as exceptional.

Monday 1st March, 1999
Landmines banned by international treaty.

Saturday 10th July, 1999
The government of Afghanistan rejects an extradition request for Osama Bin Laden, who is wanted by the American government.

Friday 23rd July, 1999
Eileen Collins becomes the first woman to command a space shuttle mission.
Comment: Ha! Take that, TOS “Turnabout Intruder”!

Tuesday 17th August, 1999
Earthquake in Izmit, Turkey.

Tuesday 12th October, 1999
According to UN estimates, this is when the Earth’s population reached six billion.

Friday 5th November, 1999
The existence of a planet beyond the Solar System is confirmed for the first time by (almost) direct observation. Astronomers on Earth measure its transit across the star HD 209458. Improved astronomical techniques have made it possible to detect objects down to planetary size, and from 1995 onward, hundreds of extrasolar planets have been discovered.
Comment: Close analysis of star “wobbles” led astronomers to announce the likelihood of a number of extrasolar planets rather earlier than this. These were inferences, not direct detections. Later techniques have not confirmed the earlier work, unfortunately. As one astronomer has said, a lot of the measurement seems to have been of wobbly telescopes, not wobbly stars.

Friday 31st December, 1999
The Republic of Panama takes control of the Panama Canal.

2000
Element 116 is discovered in Russia.

Monday 26th June, 2000
The Human Genome Project announces completion of a “working draft” DNA sequence of the human genome.

Thursday 2nd November, 2000
The three members of Expedition One take up residence on the International Space Station (ISS). For the first time, humanity will have a permanent presence in space.

Monday 20th November, 2000
The first commercial wave-powered electricity generating station goes into operation, in Scotland.

VOY “11:59”

05:00 on Wednesday 27th to 23:59 on Sunday 31st December, 2000 (EST)

Estimated duration: 5 days
Chronology: The dates are given in the story. The “frame” is in “2375”, April 2376. I’m assuming that the bit of Indiana we see uses Eastern Standard Time, but it’s also possible that Shannon O’Donnell is in the parts of the state that use Central Time.

Approximately 2000

Todd Matthews’ classic novel “Hotel Royale” is published, according to TNG “The Royale”. Since the whole point is that the novel’s really bad, great care was taken not to be in any way similar to a real book. I’m assuming that it was contemporary when it came out, and that the reference to a ’91 Caddy with 80,000 miles on the clock would be the middle to late nineties. 2000 seemed a good round number, but it could easily have been earlier. Presumably the copy on the Charybdis was one of the many, many reprints of this American literary classic.


1901 to1965
2001 to 2050

by StrauchiusStrauchius on 27 Nov 2010 21:28, last updated on 27 May 2022 10:40