The incident came to be seen as one of the first -- and the deadliest -- in a series of post-office shooting rampages. It lead to the expression "going postal" to describe someone arbitrarily opening fire on a group of people. Boston hadn't won a World Series since Try again in 76 years: When and where Halley's Comet would be visible from Earth was something people talked about a lot in That's because the comet is only visible from our planet every 76 years.
In October , it swung close enough to Earth to be seen by the naked eye. But just barely. As scientists have noted, some years are better than others. President Reagan's administration was funneling money to the anti-Communist Contras in Nicaragua by selling arms to Iran in exchange for hostages -- despite a congressional ban on such sales. And when Congress began holding hearings into the matter, a riveted nation came to know Lt. Oliver North, an official with the National Security Council who directed the secret operation.
North portrayed his actions as nothing less than patriotic. Baby Jessica: When an month-old baby fell into an abandoned water well in her aunt's backyard in October , millions of Americans spent three days glued to their televisions to see if she had been rescued. After being trapped 22 feet underground for three days, "Baby Jessica" -- as she was known by the end of the week -- was finally rescued on October 16, Black Monday: At the time, it seemed almost unimaginable that the Dow Jones Industrial Average could drop points in a single day of trading.
And yet that was exactly what happened on October 19, , a day that would become known as Black Monday. The market began falling at the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange, and as panic ensued, the losses accelerated until the closing bell. But in , news of chemical attacks by Iraq against a Kurdish minority began to surface.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein ordered the attacks in an effort to squelch a challenge by separatist Kurds. The grisly chemical attacks came after Hussein had deployed thousands of soldiers to the region where most Kurds live in Iraq.
These skirmishes would eventually lead to the first Gulf War. That's gotta hurt: It was the thud heard 'round the world. He had wowed viewers with his strength and grace, and as he stepped up to the diving board four years later, nothing less was expected.
Instead, he hit his head on the board in the middle of a complicated dive. He would go on to win the event's gold medal, but for a moment, America held its collective breath. Dukakis tank gaffe: Democratic presidential hopeful Michael Dukakis appears in an armored tank during a campaign visit to a military equipment manufacturer.
The Bush campaign featured video of the event in a negative TV ad questioning Dukakis' commitment to defense. Gulf Stream celebration: Just days after beating Dukakis in the election, U.
President-elect George H. Bush takes a break to fish in Gulf Stream, Florida. Bush's victory was overwhelming; he got electoral votes, while Dukakis only got An investigation later found that the cause was a bomb planted in a suitcase by Libyan terrorists.
All people on board the plane were killed, as were an additional 11 people on the ground. Oil and water: On March 24, , the Exxon Valdez oil tanker ran aground in Alaska's Prince William Sound, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil into the surrounding Arctic waters. The oil slick spread as far as miles from the crash site and affected 1, miles of shoreline. Prince William Sound, called "one of the last, best places on Earth" is still feeling the effects of what's now considered America's second-worst oil spill.
Game on: Nintendo's Game Boy launched in Japan on April 21, , and it instantly revolutionized the gaming world by allowing users to play anywhere -- as long as they had a pair of AA batteries. It popularized games, such as Tetris, that were once relegated to the PC world. It went on to sell more than million units. Tiananmen massacre: In this iconic photo from Beijing's Tiananmen Square, an unidentified man stands alone on Cangan Boulevard, blocking the advance of military tanks on June 5, Anywhere from hundreds to thousands of people died the day before when Chinese troops fired on civilians who were participating in peaceful anti-government protests in the square.
The demonstrations, initiated by students seeking democratic reform and an end to government corruption, also led to thousands of arrests and several dozen executions. Tiananmen, ironically, means "Gate of Heavenly Peace. Their work was published in as part of a page special section entitled "When AIDS comes home.
Loma Prieta, as it was called, was the worst earthquake the nation had seen since the one that hit the Bay Area in Here, rescuers carry survivor Erick Carlson. A new urban disease: As the s came to a close, evidence of a crack-cocaine epidemic began to surface in America's urban areas. In , The New York Times reported that "crack had more than tripled the number of cocaine users in the city since " and contributed to a significant increase in the local homicide rate.
Heart of a saint: After suffering a major heart attack, Catholic nun Mother Teresa underwent surgery to have a pacemaker implanted in December Another heart attack eventually claimed her life on September 5, A champion of the poor who worked tirelessly to help the disenfranchised in Kolkata, India, for nearly 50 years, Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize in and will be canonized as a saint in September A communist defeat: Eastern Europe saw several uprisings against communism in Here, Romanian citizens stage an anti-government protest in Bucharest's Republican Square on December 21, -- just one day before the country's communist leader of 24 years, Nicolae Ceausescu, was overthrown in a violent revolution.
Ceausescu's execution, which took place three days later, was televised in Romania. As the crowds celebrated and crossed over into either side of the city, Modrow made a speech and said of Brandenburg, "It must be a gate of peace. Story highlights A lot of '80s fashion and entertainment seems bizarre by today's standards CNN's new series "The Eighties" explores this monumental decade Thursdays at 9p starting March 31 What did your '80s look like? Share your photo here. Of course, the trends of any time period always look woefully outdated a few decades down the road, but there was something special about the '80s: The hair was bigger, the world was younger, and everything seemed to operate on a completely different level of weird.
Here are just a few examples:. Everyone's favorite romantic movie was about two teenage cousins. Read More. Oh, and Brooke Shields was 14 years old when it was filmed.
Unsurprisingly, much of the viewing public took issue with seeing an IRL young teenager walk around with her breasts barely covered, doing pretend sex with another IRL teenager. There was plenty to add to the creepiness factor: The whole cousin thing was a bit much for the time now it's practically precious, thanks to "Game of Thrones" , and director Randall Kleiser has said he taped Shields' picture above Atkins' bed so Atkins would fall in love with her.
After all the controversy, the movie ended up being lambasted by critics. Your mom really didn't want you to play Dungeons and Dragons. By today's standards, playing Dungeons and Dragons is a fairly innocuous marker of low-level nerd-dom. In the '80s, though, the table-top role-playing game was seen by some as a work of the devil himself , to be played by only the most disturbed and unsupervised of children.
Groups of religious fundamentalists decried the growing popularity of the game, saying the imagery of mythical beings and pseudo-religious figures represented the "occult. People actually fought each other over Cabbage Patch Kids dolls. Cabbage Patch kids were all the rage in the s. The Cabbage Patch craze may go down as one of America's greatest mysteries. Here are supposedly normal, sane human beings coming to blows over something that looks like a potato with eyes.
Have there been countless inexplicable fads since? Of course we haven't forgotten you, POGs. But the Cabbage Patch insanity was the perfect alchemy of consumer hysteria and creepy soft-sculpted charm.
Coke tried to sell us "New Coke". In , as Coke saw some of its sales flip to the Pepsi camp, the company "reinvented" the original formula. They marketed it as the "New taste of Coke," and people hated it.
Within months, Coke reversed back to the now-"Classic" formula and actually saw a rise in sales. It's kind of like when an actor says they're retiring or a celebrity says they're quitting Twitter, and their publicity skyrockets before they all of a sudden change their minds. As a result, his administration was eager to provide financial and military aid to anticommunist governments and insurgencies around the world.
In November , it emerged that the White House had secretly sold arms to Iran in an effort to win the freedom of U. Oliver North , a member of the National Security Council. By early , the United States was experiencing its worst recession since the Great Depression. Nine million people were unemployed in November of that year. Businesses closed, families lost their homes and farmers lost their land. Despite its mixed track record, a majority of Americans still believed in the conservative agenda by the late s.
When Ronald Reagan left office in , he had the highest approval rating of any president since Franklin Roosevelt. Bush, soundly defeated Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis in the presidential election.
In some respects, the popular culture of the s reflected the era's political conservatism. For many people, the symbol of the decade was the "yuppie": a baby boomer with a college education, a well-paying job and expensive taste.
Many people derided yuppies for being self-centered and materialistic, and surveys of young urban professionals across the country showed that they were, indeed, more concerned with making money and buying consumer goods than their parents and grandparents had been. However, in some ways yuppiedom was less shallow and superficial than it appeared.
They were successful, but they weren't sure they were happy. At the movie theater, the s was the age of the blockbuster. The s was also the heyday of the teen movie. By the end of the s, 60 percent of American television owners got cable service—and the most revolutionary cable network of all was MTV, which made its debut on August 1, The music videos the network played made stars out of bands like Duran Duran and Culture Club and made megastars out of artists like Michael Jackson , whose elaborate "Thriller" video helped sell , albums in the five days after its first broadcast.
MTV also influenced fashion: People across the country and around the world did their best to copy the hairstyles and fashions they saw in music videos. In this way, artists like Madonna became and remain fashion icons. As the decade wore on, MTV also became a forum for those who went against the grain or were left out of the yuppie ideal. Even as Reagan maintained his popularity, popular culture continued to be an arena for dissatisfaction and debate throughout the s.
But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! The popular video arcade game "Pac-Man" is released. Ronald Reagan is elected as the President of the United States.
The United States boycotts the Olympics in Moscow. Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian President, is assassinated. Japan begins selling the first CD players. Motorola introduces the first mobile phones to the United States in Microsoft releases "Word" their word processing program. The Swiss company "Swatch" introduces their watches and they become a fashion craze. The I. The first version of Microsoft Windows is released.
Spain and Portugal are added to the EEC. The first triple organ transplant is performed. Margaret Thatcher is elected as the British Prime Minister for the third time. The Fox television network begins operations. Construction begins on the Channel Tunnel. George H. Bush is elected as the U. President after defeating Michael Dukakis. The site of the original Globe Theater is discovered by archaeologists in London. The Iran-Iraq war ends. Pro-Democracy protests take place at Tiananmen Square in China.
The Nintendo Game Boy portable video game system is released. NASA launches the Galileo spacecraft. Furniture From The 80's It is interesting looking at the furniture and fixtures you might find in a home from each decade, as we move to more smaller computers why have a Computer Work Station, VHS Tapes No Longer used, Bean Bags not anywhere near as popular as during the Eighties Page.
Technology The 80's signaled the start of the computer age , following on from the creation of Microsoft and Apple towards the end of the 70's , the technology and the speed of innovation both in Hardware and Software together with the cheapness provided a speed of growth and take up. Other Major Events From The 80's During the 80's we also saw the collapse of the traditional communism and the end of the cold war. China continued it's growth and liberalization but suffered unrest towards the end of the 80's after student's protested in Tiananmen Square on June 4th and the authorities used force to quell the protests Famine in Ethiopia was shown to the world on our television screens in - and the pain and suffering caused the western world to find new ways to help including the Live Aid concert and many of the most popular stars contributed their time and performed for free in cities throughout the world , This has to be one of the most successful campaigns ever to create awareness and raise much needed funds by those who have the power to draw TV audiences around the globe.
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