THE EIGHTIES
A Chronology of Events
Editor: Piero Scaruffi
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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
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