INDEPTH: BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS
Biowar timeline
CBC News Online | February 18, 2004
Neolithic and indigenous people
Native South Americans use curare or amphibian toxins in poison darts.
Roman Empire
Soldiers catapult corpses and dead animals into besieged cities.
1346
Tatar forces besieging Kaffa (now Feodossia, Ukraine) catapult plague corpses into the city
1347-1351
Bubonic plague (the Black Death) kills 25 million people in Europe.
June 24, 1763
Capt. Ecuyer, a British officer under the command of Gen. Sir Jeffrey Amherst, distributes smallpox infected blankets to Indians during the French and Indian War in North America.
1881
Louis Pasteur develops bacterial vaccination.
1918-1919
Spanish flu kills 50 million people around the world
1925
Geneva Protocol for the Prohibition of Use in War of Asphyxiating. Poisonous or Other Gases and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare.
1932-1945
Japanese establish biological weapons program, known as Unit 731, at Pin Fan, Manchuria and other cities in China. Human experiments were used and 3,000 prisoners died.
1941
Japanese attack the city of Changteh with cholera. It is estimated 10,000 civilians and 1,700 Japanese soldiers die.
1942
British test anthrax on sheep on the Scottish island of Gruinard. The uninhabited island is still believed to be contaminated and is still off-limits.
1942
United States begins research into biological weapons
WWII
Czech resistance uses anthrax as a weapon against German occupiers by spreading spores on envelopes.
1960s
Vietcong smear excrement on pungi sticks used as booby traps; the United States develops a biological warfare arsenal.
1968
U.S. conducts biological weapons tests at Johnston Atoll in the South Pacific.
1969
U.S. and U.K. officially end their 'offensive biological weapons program
May 1971- February 1973
United States destroys biological weapons stockpile.
1973
Soviet Union begins Biopreparat biological weapons program.
March 1975
Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention comes into effect
1978
Bulgarian agents assassinate Georgi Markov in London, using a ricin pellet and attempt to assassinate Vladimir Kostov.
1978 - 1980
Natural anthrax epidemic in Zimbabwe. Estimated 10,000 cases
April 2, 1979
Anthrax accident at Sverdlovsk, Russia. More than 66 civilians and an unknown number of military personnel are killed.
1980
World Health Organization eradicates smallpox. Officially, two labs have the virus, the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and the Ivanovsky Institute in Moscow. It is believed biowarfare units may still have smallpox stocks.
1980-1988 Gulf War (Iran-Iraq)
Iraq uses chemical weapons and works on biological weapons.
1984
Soviet Union reportedly creates super plague.
1985-1989
Ken Alibek (Kanatjan Alibekov) develops creates Alibekov Anthrax, a weapons grade strain.
1989
Valdimir Pasechnick defects to the U.K. and reveals Soviet biowar program.
1990-1991 Gulf War (Desert Storm)
Iraq prepares biological weapons for possible use.
April 11,1990
U.S. and U.K. demand that the Soviet Union cease their biological weapons program. Gorbachev later 'officially' cancels the program.
January 1991
U.S. and British experts inspect a Biopreperat facility
1991
Ken Alibek quits Biopreperat and defects to the United States.
1992
Boris Yeltsin officially cancels Russia's 'offensive' weapons program
1993
NATO creates working groups on biological warfare defense.
1995
Aum Shrinikyo releases sarin gas in the Tokyo subway. AUM also researches biological weapons.
1995
U.S. accuses Russia of continuing its bioweapons program and helping Iran develop a biowar program
1996
United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) inspectors destroy Iraqi biological weapons.
1997
Soviet scientists publish details of genetically altered anthrax in Vaccine.
February, 1998
FBI arrests two men, including Larry Wayne Harris in Nevada, alleging they are carrying anthrax. They are later cleared.
March 1998
United States orders that all troops receive anthrax vaccination.
Spring 1998
Canada orders troops in the Gulf to receive anthrax vaccination.
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