1979

World Health Organization certifies eradication of smallpox from the world, with the last naturally occurring case appearing in Somalia in October 1977. Repositories of the virus in the U.S. and Russia were scheduled to be destroyed on June 30, 1999, but in April of that year, the U.S. announced that it would retain its stores of the virus, a response to recent intelligence that clandestine supplies of Variola were at large as a potential agent of biological terror (Fenn, Introduction).