Spitak, which means white in Armenian, was a town in Northern Armenia of the then Soviet Union. The town had a population under 19,000, but after the earthquake, the town no longer existed.
On this day December 7th, in 1988, an earthquake hit Spitak with a magnitude of 7.1, which destroyed the entire town, though much of this was blamed on the poor structural quality of many of the buildings. The estimated death toll was 25,000.
Mikhail Gorbachev requested help from the world, including the U.S., even though the Cold War was going on, and humanitarian aid was sent from around the world. It cost $5 billion American dollars to rebuild the city.