History

Extract from the minutes of the first DistriPress conference in Bad Kissingen of September 10, 1955: The basic idea: The purpose of the international contacts between wholesalers shall be to arrive at a general exchange of ideas about professional problems of (press) distribution as well as, if necessary, a common statement of opinion regarding organization and distribution, which may be beneficial to all European wholesalers.

• Suez Crises: Egyptian leader Nasser nationalizes the Suez Canal, which reopens a year later under pressure of UK and France
• Tunisia gains independence from France
• First TV remote control comes on the market

• British colonies Gold Coast and British Togoland become the independent Republic of Ghana
• Launch of Sputnik I – the first artificial satellite to orbit the earth
• The first Frisbee is on the market

• American Express comes out – credit cards gain in importance
• The atomic submarine Nautilus undercruises the North Pole – only ice, no land!
• Barbie doll on the market – to become girls’ favourite

• Fidel Castro becomes Premier of Cuba
• Hawaii becomes the 50th American state
• The Shah of Persia marries the young Farah Diba
• The film Ben Hur wins 11 Academy Awards

• French Colonies of western Africa gain independence
• Brasilia becomes the Capital of Brazil
• France tests its first atomic bomb
• Contraception pill on the market – birth rate drops immediately

• Erection of the Berlin Wall
• Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by the US
• South Africa withdraws from British Commonwealth and Sierra Leone gains
• independence from Britain
• Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man in the All

• Start of the Cuba Crisis due to discovery of soviet missile bases on Cuba
• Crick, Watson and Wilkins receive the Nobel Prize for determining the molecular
• structure of DNA
• Inauguration of the highway Hamburg – Frankfurt – Basel

• First edition of DistriPress News
• November 22 – Assassination of US President John F. Kennedy
• Martin Luther King gives his famous speech ‘I Have A Dream
• Invention of the felt tip pen

• First meeting since the 15th century between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox church
• Italy asks for help to prevent the leaning tower of Pisa from toppling over
• Beatles hit ‘I Want to Hold your Hand

• 10th anniversary – 69 member companies in 26 countries
• First US combat forces enter Vietnam
• First constant radio communication: Europe – USA
• The mini skirt (designed by Mary Quant) conquers the world

• DistriPress, formerly with membership for distributors only, opens to publishers and associate members
• Chinese cultural revolution under Mao Zedong
• The Vatican cancels the Index – a list of banned books
• Invention of hand-held calculators

Six-Day War between Israel and Syria

Vietnam War protests in Washington DC

Premiere of the Musical Hair

First successful heart transplantation

• Warsaw Pact troops and tanks invade Czechoslovakia to end the ‘Prague Spring
• First passenger supersonic aircraft – the Soviet TU-144 starts
• Windsurfing is invented and becomes fashionable

• July 20, 10:56 pm (EDT) – Neil Amstrong is the first man to walk on the moon
• Woodstock Festival
• First Concorde test flight is conducted

• DistriPress Convention in Nairobi, Kenya
• Founding of the Distripress Training Foundation
• Tonga and the Fiji islands gain independence
• Chile elects Salvador Allende president

• Qatar regains independence from the UK
• Switzerland introduces the right for women to vote and elect
• The four billionths baby is born

• President Nixon becomes the first US president to visit the Soviet Union and the People?s Republic of China
• The Monarchy of Ceylon becomes Sri Lanka
• First Weather satellite Nimbus 5

• Denmark, Ireland and the UK join the European Community – together with the founding states Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and Netherlands, the Community counts 9 members
• Worldwide oil shortage leading to energy crisis
• Invention of the Internet by Vinton Cerf

• Richard Nixon becomes the first US President to resign from office in response to his role in the Watergate scandal
• Invention of Post-it Notes by Arthur Fry and Spencer Silver
• VW launches the Golf c

• 20th anniversary – 328 member companies in 61 countries
• End of Francisco Franco’s reign in Spain
• Vietnam War ends as Communist forces take Saigon and South Vietnam surrenders unconditionally

• DistriPress Convention in Singapore
• Ratification of the UNESCO Nairobi-Protocol for free circulation of the press
• Invention of the Personal Computer
• The first telephone cards are sold in Rome
• First laser printer introduced by IBM

• First free elections in Spain since 1936
• Civil war breaks out in Lebanon
• Last guillotine execution in France
• The New York City Blackout lasts for 25 hours, resulting in looting and disorder

• The test tube baby – first human birth from in-virto fertilization
• Charlie Chaplin’s coffin is stolen from a Swiss cemetery
• Comic strip Garfield debuts in newspapers
• Sweden becomes the first nation to ban aerosol sprays that are thought to damage earth’s protective ozone layer

• DistriPress Convention in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
• Introduction of the one-child-policy in China
• Nuclear accident at Three Mile Island
• Sony presents the first Walkman
• Mother Teresa is awarded the Peace Nobel Prize

• The St. Gothard Tunnel in Switzerland opens as the world?s longest highway tunnel at 16,32 km
• Earthquakes in southern Italy kill 4800 people
• Nigel Short (14) becomes youngest Chess Grandmaster

• Assassination of Anwar al-Sadat, Prime Minister of Egypt
  Greece joins the European Community
• Pope John Paul II is shot at and nearly killed
• First recognized cases of AIDS
• July 29 – Prince Charles marries Diana

• Falklands War: Argentina invades the British-owned Falkland Islands
• Astronomy – Syzygy: all 9 planets align on the same side of the sun
• E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial’ is in the cinemas

• The spacecraft Pioneer 10 becomes the first man-made object to leave the solar system
• Music goes digital – the Compact-Disc is on the market
• Swatch introduce their first watch
• The Internet Domain Name System is invented

• The African republic Upper Volta changes its name to Burkina Faso
• Olympic Winter Games in Sarajevo
• This year is the title of George Orwell’s most famous work
• Margaret Thatcher survives an IRA bomb

• DistriPress Convention in Abidjan, Ivory Coast 30th anniversary – 441 member companies in 88 countries
• Michail Gorbatschev becomes head of state of the Soviet Union
• The first artificial heart patient leaves the hospital

• Spain and Portugal join the European Community
• Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme is assassinated
• Launch of the Mir space station by the Soviet Union
• Nuclear incident in Tschernobyl

• Black Monday on October 19: sharp stock market falls around the world
• A supernova (stellar explosion creating a new star) is observed – the first ?naked-eye? supernova since 1604
• The film Dirty Dancing becomes a hit

• Olympic Summer Games in Seoul (Korea)
• End of the Gulf War between Iran and Iraq
• Total solar eclipse in the West Pacific
• Heavy earthquake in Nepal and India kills 1450

• Fall of the Berlin Wall – end of the Cold War
• The democracy movement in Beijing comes to a bloody end
• Dalai Lama is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
• Nintendo releases the popular Game Boy

• German Unification
• Second Gulf War: Iraqi forces invade Kuwait
• Nelson Mandela is released after 27 years in Prison – 3 years later he is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

• The Soviet Union officially dissolves and president Gorbatschev resigns
• Last day of broadcasting of the former German Democratic Republic TV
• UNESCO Declaration of Windhoek, later leading to World Press Freedom Day on May 3

• Maastricht treaty: the European Community becomes the European Union
• Secession of Bosnia and Herzegovina from Yugoslavia
• Introduction of the current flag of Albania after the fall of communism

• Czechoslovakia divides into independent Czech Republic and Slovakia
• Last troups of the former Soviet Union leave Cuba
• The term spamming is introduced to describe a bug incident in mail systems

• Mandela is elected first black president of South Africa
• Opening of the Euro tunnel under the English Channel
• The Church of England ordains its first female priests
• Ferry MS Estonia sinks in Baltic Sea, killing 852

• DistriPress Convention in Budapest, Hungary 40th anniversary – 441 member companies in 85 countries
• Austria, Finland and Sweden join the EU
• First flight of the European low-cost airline easyJet
• Strikes against the sinking of the oil platform Brent Spar

• EU ban on beef exportation due to BSE danger
• Dolly, the first mammal clone, is born
• Gran Kropp reaches the top of Mount Everest, alone and without oxygen after having cycled there from Sweden

• First DistriPress Expo at the Congress
• UK hands the control of Hong Kong over to China
• Tragic death of Lady Diana
• J.K. Roiwling’s first Harry Potter novel is published

• Introduction of the DistriPress Code of Practice
• Viagra is approved the first pill to treat impotence
• VW presents the New Beatle – the successor of the legendary VW Beatle

• NATO launches air strikes against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
• A 7,4-megatude earthquake strikes north western Turkey
• First successful circumnavigation of the globe with the silver balloon of Piccard

• The NASDAQ reaches an all-time high of 5048
• The Tate Modern opens in London

• 9/11 – over 3000 killed in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in NY
• October 6 – War against terrorism: As a reaction to 9/11 the USA intervenes in Afghanistan
• Grounding of the Swiss national airline Swissair due to bakruptcy

• Introduction of Euro banknotes and coins
• East Timor becomes independent
• Flood of the century in Germany, Austria and Czech Republic

• The US, in alliance with Britain, invades Iraq, ousting the regime of Saddam Hussein
• Dolly the sheep clone dies young
• By June the SARS virus caused 8069 cases of disease and 775 deaths

• EU extension by 10: Cyprus, Czech republic, Esotnia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia
• The 3rd film of the series “The Lord of the Ring” wins a stunning 11 Academy Awards
• Tsunami strikes South-East Asia, according to estimates killing more than 280000 people

• DistriPress celebrates its 50th anniversary – over 470 member companies in almost 100 countries

• 250th anniversary of Mozart
• Winter Olympics Torino
• FIFA World Cup Germany

• Bulgaria and Romania join the EU
• Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto assassinated
• Nicolas Sarkozy elected Prime minister of France

• Tony Jashanmal becomes the 21st President of Distripress
• Cyprus and Malta join the Euro
• Barack Obama elected US President

• Michael Jackson’s death sparks unprecedented web traffic
• Iceland appoints World’s first openly Lesbian Head of State
• Treaty of Lisbon came into force

• Volcanic ash disrupts air travel across Europe
• Wikileaks releases 90,000 documents to the public
• Britain sees its first Coalition Government for over 60 years

• Arab Spring: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigns after widespread protests calling for his departure
• A 9.1-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit the east of Japan
• An estimated two billion people watch the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton

• Greek government debt crisis: Eurozone finance ministers reach an agreement on a second, ?130-billion Greek bailout
• CERN announces the discovery of a new particle with properties consistent with the Higgs boson after experiments at the Large Hadron Collider
• The 2012 Summer Olympics are held in London, United Kingdom
• Hurricane Sandy kills at least 209 people in the Caribbean, Bahamas, United States and Canada. Considerable storm surge damage causes major disruption to the eastern seaboard of the United States.

• American Edward Snowden discloses operations engaged by a US government mass surveillance program to news publications and flees the country, later being granted temporary asylum in Russia
• Croatia becomes the 28th member of the European Union
• Delegates from some 140 countries and territories sign the Minamata Treaty, a UNEP treaty designed to protect human health and the environment from emissions and releases of mercury and mercury compounds

• Election of the EC and President

• 60th anniversary of the association

• 1st DistriPress Congress in the Gulf region
• UK votes to leave the European Union (Brexit)
• Donald Trump elected 45th President of the United States of America

• General Assembly
• Election of new Executive Committee for term 2017-2020
• Election of President Carine Nevejans and Vice-President Ian Denhard for term 2017-2020
• Global Growth Picks Up. Ten years after the Great Recession growth accelerated. The IMF said in October 2017 that “The outlook is strengthening, with a notable pickup in investment, trade, and industrial production, together with rising confidence.”
• Donald Trump Champions America First.
• In September 2017, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that 2017 was shaping up as the second warmest year on record, after 2016.

• First bionic hand with a sense of touch, for use outside a lab unveiled in Rome
• Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg admits they “made mistakes” after data on 50 million users is harvested by Cambridge Analytica

• 30 years of the fall of the Berlin Wall
• Donald Trump impeached
• Notre Dame Cathedral on fire

• COVID-19 Pandemic hit the world
• Worldwide lockdowns
• The world stopped

• Reignited connections and reflections by the lake
• Health is wealth
• COVID-19 vaccines available to all
• The billionaire space race

• Get connected and inspired
• Inflation surges around the world
• Russia invades Ukraine
• Record-breaking heatwaves
• Queen Elizabeth II 70th Jubilee and Funeral