Timeline

1955:
The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union, China and other communist allies; South Vietnam was supported by the United States, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, Thailand, and other anti-communist allies. The war lasted almost 20 years, with direct U.S. involvement ending in 1973, and included the Laotian Civil War and the Cambodian Civil War, which ended with all three countries becoming communist states in 1975.

1961:
The Berlin Wall was constructed as a concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. The Wall cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany, including East Berlin. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, accompanied by a wide area (later known as the “death strip”) that contained anti-vehicle trenches, beds of nails and other defenses. The Eastern Bloc portrayed the Wall as protecting its population from fascist elements.

1962:
The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 or the Missile Scare, was a one month, 4 day (16 October – 20 November 1962) confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union which escalated into an international crisis when American deployments of missiles in Italy and Turkey were matched by Soviet deployments of similar ballistic missiles in Cuba. It is often considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war.

1975:
The Killing Fields are a number of sites in Cambodia where collectively more than a million people were killed and buried by the Khmer Rouge regime (the Communist Party of Kampuchea) during its rule of the country from 1975 to 1979, immediately after the end of the Cambodian Civil War (1970–1975). The mass killings are widely regarded as part of a broad state-sponsored genocide.

1982:
The Falklands War was a 10-week undeclared war between Argentina and the United Kingdom which began on April 2nd 1982 over two British dependent territories in the South Atlantic – the Falkland Islands and its territorial dependency, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.

1986:
The Chernobyl disaster, a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the No. 4 reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Soviet Union. It was the worst nuclear disaster in history both in cost and casualties, rated at seven — the maximum severity — on the International Nuclear Event Scale. The initial emergency response, together with later decontamination of the environment, involved more than 500,000 personnel and cost an estimated 18 billion Soviet rubles.

1990:
The Gulf War was a war waged by coalition forces from 35 nations led by the United States against Iraq in response to Iraq’s invasion and annexation of Kuwait arising from oil pricing and production disputes. On 2 August 1990, the Iraqi Army invaded and occupied Kuwait, which was met with international condemnation. An array of nations joined the coalition, forming the largest military alliance since World War II. Most of the coalition’s military forces were from the US, with Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom and Egypt as leading contributors, in that order. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia paid around US$32 billion of the US$60 billion cost.

1992:
The Bosnian War was an international armed conflict that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. The war is commonly seen as having started on April 6, 1992, following a number of earlier violent incidents. The war ended on December 14, 1995. The main belligerents were the forces of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and those of Herzeg-Bosnia and Republika Srpska, proto-states led and supplied by Croatia and Serbia.

2001:
The September 11 attacks, also commonly referred to as 9/11, were a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by the militant Islamist terrorist group al-Qaeda against the United States on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. Four commercial airliners traveling from the northeastern U.S. to California were hijacked mid-flight by 19 al-Qaeda terrorists.Two of the planes hit the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, and a third hit the west side of the Pentagon. In late 2001, the United States, supported by its close allies, invaded Afghanistan and toppled the Taliban government.

2003:
The invasion of Iraq began on 19 March 2003 and lasted just over one month, including 26 days of major combat operations, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq. U.S. military forces later remained in Iraq until the withdrawal in 2011.

2006:
The execution of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein took place on 30 December 2006. Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging, after being convicted of crimes against humanity by the Iraqi Special Tribunal for the Dujail massacre — the killing of 148 Iraqi Shi’ites in the town of Dujail in 1982, in retaliation for an assassination attempt against him.

Andrew Bayntun Starky was born January 31st 1956 in Christchurch into a family with a strong sense of tradition and heritage on his father’s side stemming back to Wiltshire in England. His father John Michael Bayntun Starky also attended Christ’s College, and his mother, Margaret Suzanne Wells was from a large South Australian family and graduated as a teacher. Andrew was the eldest son of an eldest son of an eldest son and a respected and adored addition to the family – the fourth generation of Starky to live on the farm west of Amberley. His sister, Barbara, was born some years later.

The mischievous young boy spent his childhood with his siblings and loved to play in mud puddles in the garden. He developed a passion for music from an early age and would belt the chorus with pride and perfect pitch in his school choir. He dabbled in the violin, which his family tolerated, and later taught himself to play guitar, which they loved.

His mother, who was devoted to the children's academic success, moved him from Amberley School to Medbury School as a boarder in Christchurch and then attended Christ's College. He was part of the school choirs at both schools and really enjoyed this part of his school life. He graduated with good academic results and was grateful for his education, returning in recent years as a priest to preach at services at College.

After leaving school, Andrew spent a year working on the land at Dunrobin Station in Southland, before going to Lincoln College where he completed a Bachelor of Agricultural Commerce. He worked for the Rural Bank in Invercargill for two years, before returning to the family farm which he then ran on his own account for the next 13 years.

It was then he felt called to serve the church and attended St John’s Theological College in Auckland and the University of Auckland for three years. He obtained his Bachelor of Theology Degree and was ordained a priest in 1998. Andrew had responsibilities as priest on the West Coast – a long, narrow and sparsely populated region of stunning natural beauty which took four hours to drive. In the five years he was there he drove a quarter of a million kilometres! The next 10 years were spent in South Canterbury as Vicar and Ministry Enabler with a passion for rural communities and ministry. During this time, he became a Canon in the Cathedral Chapter and Archdeacon of South Canterbury. In 2013, he became Vicar of St. Michael and All Angels in Christchurch, New Zealand.