THE EIGHTIES
A Chronology of Events
Editor: Piero Scaruffi

Back to the History page

    1980
  • Billionaire Ted Turner launches CNN, the first cable tv devoted to world news
  • Peru: Shining Path starts terrorist campaign to overthrow the government. It will claim 26,000 lives over the next dozen years.
  • Polish workers strike and Lev Walesa founds Solidarnosc
  • Bomb at the Bologna station (85 dead)
  • An Italian passenger airplane is downed in mysterious circumstances
  • Iran and Iraq fight an 8-year war
  • E-mail spreads in the US thanks to the acceptance of the Internet
    1981:
  • Mitterrand, a socialist, is elected president of France
  • American Airlines introduces a frequent flyer program
  • Military government in Poland
  • AT&T is dissolved because it violates the antitrust law
  • Racial riots at Brixton, London
  • Lady Diana Spencer marries Prince Charles
  • A bulgarian tries to kill the Pope
  • USA and Libya fighters engage in combat off the coast of Libya
  • Sadat is assassinated, Mubarak takes over
  • The U.S. launches the first space shuttle
  • The IBM PC is launched, running an operating system developed by Bill Gates' Microsoft
  • First cases of AIDS
  • The compact disc (CD)
    1982:
  • Israel invades Lebanon and exterminates Palestinians (10,000 dead)
  • Argentina occupies the Falkland islands, Britain sends the navy to restore order
  • Personal computer
  • First private satellite (Space Services Inc)
  • Breznev dies, Andropov succeeds him as head of the Soviet Union
  • The US government breaks up the largest company in the world, AT&T, worth $60 billion, because it has become a monopoly
    1983:
  • First cellular phone network inaugurated in Chicago by AT&T
  • Tamil separatists led by Velupillai Prabhakaran begin an insurgency against the government of Sri Lanka that will take thousands of lives
  • Philippines: the opposition leader, Aquino, is assassinated
  • Libya invades Chad
  • A Soviet fighter downs a Korean civilian jet with 269 on board
  • Riots and demonstrations across Western Europe against the "Euromissiles" that Reagan wants to install to counter the Soviet nuclear arsenal
  • Nuclear race between Reagan and Andropov
  • Beirut: terrorists blow up American and French barracks
  • Lebanon: anarchy, Syria exterminates the OLP, civil war, car bombs start exploding in Beirut and will kill hundreds of civilians
  • American troops land in Grenada to restore democracy
    1984:
  • HIV is identified as the cause of AIDS
  • Andropov dies, Chernenko
  • Den Xiao Ping pushes China towards the free market
  • Free elections in Argentina and Salvador
  • IRA tries to kill Margaret Thatcher
  • Bhopal, India: 2,000 people die of lethal chemical pollution
  • Indira Gandhi assassinated
  • Apple introduces the first Macintosh
  • Domain Name Server is introduced to classify Internet addresses with extensions such as .com
    1985:
  • the first World Youth Day is held in Rome when Pope John Paul II invites Catholic and Buddhist youth from all over the world to pray with him
  • Russia: Gorbachev elected general secretary in the Soviet Union and launches the politics of grasnost and perestroika. Shevardnadze is appointed prime minister.
  • Gorbacev succeeds Cernenko
  • 38 people die during a soccer match in Bruxelles caused by British "hooligans"
  • The cruise ship Achille Lauro is hijacked by Palestinian terrorists
  • A criminal case is solved thanks to DNA (England)
  • Jun 1985: Sikh militants plant a bomb on an Air India flight out of Canada killing all 329 passengers
    1986:
  • Dictator Duvalier flees Haiti
  • Dictator Marcos flees Pilippines
  • Sweden: Olaf Palme is assassinated
  • A space shuttle explodes
  • The MIR space station (by the Soviet Union) is in orbit
  • A nuclear reactor in Ukrainia (Chernobyl) explodes
  • 16 million vehicles are sold in the U.S.
  • At the peak of the nuclear weapons race, the US has 14,000 warheads and the Soviet Union has 11,000
    1987:
  • India rigs Kashmir elections and Kashmir separatists takes up arms
  • Stock markets crash around the world ("black monday")
  • Jeanne Louise Calment dies at 122, setting the new world record of longevity
  • Palestinians stage the "Intifada" uprising against Israel in the occupied territories of Palestine which will last till 1993
  • Yugoslavia: Slobodan Milosevic seizes power and declares intent to restore Serbia's dominance in the region
  • Nov 1987: A Korean Airlines flights crashes in the sea due to a bomb planted by North Korean agents (115 dead)
    1988:
  • Gorbacev launches a campaign of liberalization, "perestroika"
  • First genetically engineered animal (Harvard Univ)
  • First fiber optic cable across the Atlantic
  • Abortion pill introduced (France)
  • Libyan terrorists blow up a US civil airplane over Scotland
    1989:
  • War between Azerbaijan and Armenia
  • Menem elected president of Argentina
  • Khomeini dies
  • First democratic election in the Soviet Union
  • Pinochet allows and (barely) loses a referendum on his dictatorship
  • December: Charles Taylor invades Liberia. The country is split among militias.
  • Students demonstrate in Tiennamen Square and are shot by the Chinese army
  • Poland elects a government run by Solidarnosc
  • The ozone hole is discovered
  • Anarchy in the Soviet Union: secessionist movements of the republics
  • "Drug war": the USA fights the Colombian cartels
  • A french plane is blown up in Chad
  • 120.000 refugees from the DDR to Western Germany
  • Advent of democratic governments in Eastern Europe
  • San Francisco earthquake
  • The Berlin wall is reopened
  • Panama invasion
  • Caesescu deposed and executed in Romania
  • Germany receives 720.000 refugees from Eastern Europe
  • Berlin holds the first "Love Parade", a festival of electronic dance music (one million people)
  • Peak of the Japanese economic boom, that turned Japan into the second economic power in the world
  • Nov 1989: Narcoterrorists blows up a Colombian flight killing all 107 passengers

Editorial correspondence | Advertising
2000's
1990's
1980's
1970's
1960's
1950's
1940's
1930's
1920's
1910's
1900's