(1980s fashion)

(1980s History)

Music Tribute To The Bands Of The 1980s	Trip through the 80s - A Video Compilation
1980s History	1980s News and Politics
80's Flashback	Remember the 80's?

The 1980s became the Me! Me! Me! generation of status seekers.   During the 1980s, hostile takeovers, leveraged buyouts, and mega-mergers spawned a new breed of billionaire.  Donald Trump, Leona Helmsley, and Ivan Boesky iconed the meteoric rise and fall of the rich and famous.  If you've got it, flaunt it and You can have it all! were watchwords.   Forbes' list of 400 richest people became more important than its 500 largest companies.  Binge buying and credit became a way of life and 'Shop Til you Drop' was the watchword.  Labels were everything, even (or especially) for our children.  Tom Wolfe dubbed the baby-boomers as the 'splurge generation.'  Video games, aerobics, minivans, camcorders, and talk shows became part of our lives.   The decade began with double-digit inflation, Reagan declared a war on drugs, Kermit didn't find it easy to be green, hospital costs rose, we lost many, many of our finest talents to AIDS which before the decade ended spread to black and Hispanic women, and  unemployment rose.  On the bright side, the US Constitution had its 200th birthday, Gone with the Wind turned 50,  ET phoned home, and in 1989 Americans gave $115,000,000,000 to charity.  And, Internationally, at the very end of the decade the Berlin Wall was removed The history of the United States (1980-1991) includes the last year of the Jimmy Carter presidency, eight years of the Ronald Reagan administration, and the first two years of the George H. W. Bush presidency, up to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Plagued by the Iran Hostage Crisis and mounting domestic opposition, Carter lost the 1980 presidential election to Republican Reagan. In his first term, Reagan introduced expansionary fiscal policies aimed at stimulating the American economy after a recession in 1981 and 1982, including oil deregulation policies which led to the 1980s oil glut. He met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in four summit conferences, culminating with the signing of the INF Treaty. These actions accelerated the end of the Cold War war, which occurred during the early part of the Bush presidency, and the removal of the Berlin Wall. The second largest stock market crash (percentage-wise) in United States history occurred in 1987, preceding another recession. The largest scandal of the years was the Iran-Contra affair, wherein weapons had been sold to Iran, and the proceeds used by the CIA to aid Contras in Nicaragua.  Many cartoon characters such as Smurfs, Rainbow Brite, Strawberry Shortcake, Care Bears, My Little Pony, GI Joe, Garfield, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Thundercats, Voltron, and Transformers appeared in the media and on merchandise, becoming huge trends of the 1980s. Many of these reappeared about twenty years later in slightly updated versions as decade nostalgia began to take hold. # Martial arts and Ninja mania swept North America due to the popularity of Kung Fu Theater and ninja movies. The Karate Kid became a blockbuster hit film, and raised interest in karate. The emergence of self-styled martial arts experts gave rise to the so-called "McDojo" and "Bullshido" trends. The cartoon characters Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles became a widely mass-marketed pop culture phenomenon in the late 1980s.  "Raybans" or sunglasses became popular "must-wear" items, as well as Nike sneakers, Members Only jackets, men's shorts and other athletic wear such as sweats and jerseys for an active generation of young people. The decade began with a backlash against disco music and a movement away from the orchestral arrangements that had characterized much of the music of the 1970s. Music in the 1980s was characterized by unheard of electronic sounds accomplished through the use of synthesizers and keyboards, along with drum machines. The Sheffield (UK) based band The Human League were pioneers of 'synthesized music' and were heavily influential in this genre. This made a dramatic change in music. The music channel MTV had just began so many very creative music videos were being made alongside songs. The very first video to be aired on MTV was Buggles- Video Killed The Radio Star. This video heavily showed off the use of synthesizers as they were new to many people and the sounds they produced had been unheard of.     * Michael Jackson revolutionized music with his best-selling album Thriller. Thriller, released in 1982, is the world's all-time best selling album with over 104 million sold copies. His mannerisms and trends were copied repeatedly, from the single-glove, to the various jackets he wore, and the now-famous moonwalk.     * In the United States, MTV was launched and music videos began to have a huge effect on the record industry. The first video aired was Video Killed the Radio Star by the British band The Buggles, and it proved oddly prophetic. Bands such as Duran Duran made lavish music videos which made MTV a cultural phenomenon. Early eighties groups such as Devo and Haircut 100 were pioneers. Pop artists such as Madonna and Michael Jackson mastered the format and turned it into big business.     * New Wave and Synthpop were developed by artists such as The Cars, Duran Duran, A Flock of Seagulls, Gary Numan, Depeche Mode, Japan, Soft Cell, Bananarama, New Order, and Tears for Fears, and become popular phenomena throughout the decade, especially in the early eighties.     * Artists with Gender Bender styles such as Boy George, Annie Lennox, Pete Burns, and Marilyn were popular in America and Europe. The famous drag queen Divine even had a top 20 hit in the UK (#16 in 1984) with You Think You're A Man.     * Heavy metal, Big Hair Bands and Glam metal, experienced extreme popularity in 1980s, becoming one of the most dominating music genres of the 1980s with artists such as Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Van Halen, KISS, Twisted Sister, Aerosmith, Poison, Ratt, Skid Row, Hanoi Rocks, Mötley Crüe, Def Leppard, Queen, Whitesnake, Quiet Riot, Bon Jovi, Guns N' Roses, AC/DC, and Rush, all receiving extensive airplay.     * Thrash metal appeared and became an underground sensation originating mostly in the San Francisco Bay Area, and New York City. A few of these acts, such as Metallica, Megadeth (formed in Los Angeles), Anthrax and Slayer (formed in Huntington Beach), managed to achieve mainstream exposure (especially during the early 1990s), and were frequently seen as alternatives to the poppier "glam metal" bands of the day.     * Extreme metal began, with bands such as Venom, Bathory, Hellhammer, Celtic Frost, Death, Possessed, Morbid Angel and gained prominence in the underground.     * House music was a new development in dance music mid-way through the decade, growing out of the post-disco scene early in the decade and later developed into acid house, a harder form of dance often associated with the developing late 1980s drug culture.     * Hip hop and rap music, introduced by urban youths of predominantly African American descent, debuted in the pop culture scene as early as 1979, with the Sugar Hill Gang's single release Rapper's Delight. MTV picked up on this movement with "Yo! MTV Raps", a one-hour show dedicated to hip-hop music videos,which began to air in 1988 and hip hop became popular in 1986 when the golden age started.     * The Hip hop scene evolved to become a powerful musical force, bringing with it several dance styles and began to diverse. As hip hop artists such as Run-D.M.C.,Beastie Boys and LL Cool J were the first to gather mainstream attention and by 1986 Hip Hop broke into the mainstream and became diverse, also Hip-Hops first female group called Salt-n-Pepa marked the rise of women in Hip hop.     * Alternative rock appeared as a then-aptly titled alternative to the mainstream rock trends of the day, with American bands such as R.E.M., The Replacements, Sonic Youth, They Might Be Giants, Camper Van Beethoven, the Violent Femmes and the Pixies, and British bands such as The Cure, The Smiths and Echo and the Bunnymen, as pioneers. This style of music was widely popular with college students and received almost all of its airplay from college radio stations, to the extent that it was known as college rock in the US for much of the decade. Wedding of Lady Diana and Prince Charles (1981): On July 29, 1981, Lady Diana Spencer (20 years old) married Prince Charles (32 years old) at St. Paul's Cathedral. Their wedding was large, extravagant, and wondrous. It was the wedding of the decade. Nearly 3,500 people attended personally, 600,000 people lined the streets of London hoping to catch a peek, and approximately 750 million people from around the world watched it on television. The ceremony began at 11:20 a.m. with Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Robert Runcie officiating. Lady Diana's wedding gown, designed by Elizabeth and David Emanuel, was made of ivory silk taffeta with antique lace and had a 25-foot-long train. This is princess Diana's romantic wedding to the man she was in love with, prince Charles. It's a selection of pictures and film footage. The marriage turned out to be a nightmare for her, but the wedding was a fairytale for sure! If only they had lived happily ever after... The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred on January 28, 1986 when Challenger, a Space Shuttle operated by NASA, consisting of an orbiter vehicle named Challenger, designated OV-099, an External Tank (ET) containing liquid hydrogen fuel and liquid oxygen oxidizer, and two Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs), broke apart 73 seconds into its flight leading to the deaths of its seven crew members. The spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of central Florida, United States at 11:39 a.m. EST (16:39 UTC). Disintegration of the shuttle stack began after an O-ring seal in its right solid rocket booster (SRB) failed at liftoff. The O-ring failure caused a breach in the SRB joint it sealed, allowing a flare (of pressurized hot gas from within the solid rocket motor) to reach the outside and impinge upon the adjacent SRB attachment hardware and external fuel tank. The SRB breach flare led to the separation of the right-hand SRB's aft attachment and the structural failure of the external tank, dumping the liquid hydrogen fuel load all at once and causing a massive explosion as this fuel was immediately ignited by various present flame sources. Aerodynamic forces promptly broke up the orbiter after this event caused loss of attitude control. The crew compartment and many other vehicle fragments were eventually recovered from the ocean floor after a lengthy search and recovery operation. The crew were probably killed by impact of their crew compartment with the ocean surface, although they might have suffered lethal injuries from the forces of the disintegration. On November 9, Germany celebrated the 15th anniversary of the collapse of the 97-mile long Berlin Wall. This wall famously divided the city of Berlin and the country of Germany into the West, a democratic area, and the East, a communist area. On November 9, 1989, this wall was torn down after dividing the country for 28 years. Fifteen years ago, the collapse of the Berlin Wall was greeted with joyous celebrations throughout Berlin. Yet the opening of the wall was almost an accident. Access between East and West Berlin had been denied for almost thirty years, but on November 9, 1989, Guenter Schabowski, a spokesman for East Germany’s communist government, announced that East Germany would lift traveling restrictions to the West. When asked when this would happen, Schabowski spontaneously announced “immediately, without delay,” though this had not been previously planned. That night, East Berliners arrived at the wall in such numbers that the armed guards gave up and allowed them unrestricted access. Some of the most lasting memories of that night include Berliners from both sides dancing on the wall in celebration. Eleven months later, East and West Germany unified into the Germany that exists today. Butcher of Lyons arrested in Bolivia Klaus Barbie, the Nazi Gestapo chief of Lyons, France, during the German occupation, is arrested in Bolivia for his crimes against humanity four decades earlier. As chief of Nazi Germany's secret police in occupied France, Barbie sent thousands of French Jews and French Resistance members to their deaths in concentration camps, while torturing, abusing, or executing many others. After the Allied liberation of France, he fled to Germany, where under an assumed identity he joined other ex-Nazi officials in the formation of an underground anti-communist organization. In 1947, the U.S. Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC) broke up the organization and arrested its senior members, although Barbie remained at large until the CIC offered him money and protection in exchange for his cooperation in countering Soviet espionage efforts. Barbie worked as a U.S. agent in Germany for two years and in 1949 was smuggled to Bolivia, where he assumed the name of "Klaus Altmann" and continued his work as a U.S. agent. In addition to his work for the Americans, he performed services for Bolivia's various military regimes, especially that of Hugo "El Petiso" Banzer, who came to power in 1971 and became one of the country's most oppressive leaders. Barbie provided a similar expertise for Banzer as he had for the Nazis, torturing and interrogating political opponents and dispatching many of them to internment camps, where many were executed or died from mistreatment. It was at this time that Nazi hunters Serge Klarsfeld and Beatte Kunzel discovered Barbie's whereabouts, but Banzer refused to extradite him to France. In the early 1980s, a liberal regime came to power in Bolivia and agreed to extradite Barbie in exchange for French aid to the destitute nation. In January 1983, Barbie was arrested, and he arrived in France on February 7. Legal wrangling, especially between the groups representing his Jewish and French Resistance victims, delayed his trial for four years. Finally, on May 11, 1987, the "Butcher of Lyons," as he was known in France, went on trial for 177 crimes against humanity. In a courtroom twist unimaginable four decades earlier, Barbie was defended by three minority lawyers--an Asian, an African, and an Arab--who made the dramatic case that the French and the Jews were as guilty of crimes against humanity as Barbie or any other Nazi. Barbie's lawyers were more interested in putting France and Israel on trial than in actually proving their client's innocence, and on July 4, 1987, he was found guilty. For his crimes, Klaus Barbie was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison, France's highest punishment. He died in prison of cancer on September 25, 1991, at the age of 77.

Developing countries across the world facing increasing economic and social difficulties as they suffer from multiple debt crises in the 1980s, requiring many of these countries to apply for financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Ethiopia witnessed widespread famine in the mid-1980s, resulting in the country having to depend on foreign aid to provide food to its population and worldwide efforts to address and raise money to help Ethiopians, such as the famous Live Aid concert in 1985. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were the leaders of the UK and the USA. Both leaders led the revival of right-wing politics. These policies eventually became known as Thatcherism and Reaganomics respectively in their home countries. The western world witnessed the political revival of right-wing politics and advancement of neoliberalism with the rule of politicians including Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Ronald Reagan as President of the United States, Helmut Kohl as Chancellor of Germany, Brian Mulroney as Prime Minister of Canada and Carlos Salinas de Gortari as President of Mexico. Sport became more international in the 1980s as satellite television grew, with many sporting events reaching more countries than before. Examples include the first live broadcasts of the Super Bowl in the United Kingdom. In 1980, the US Olympic hockey team defeated the Soviet Union 4 to 3, bolstering many U.S. citizens' feelings of national pride in what was termed a Miracle On Ice. In this decade, the West Indies established themselves as the unofficial world champions of cricket, though in a shock upset, they lost the 1983 Cricket World Cup to India. This victory is cited as the reason cricket is almost a religion in India. It was discovered that a number of people in the UK had developed AIDS following blood transfusions. This problem particularly affected haemophiliacs, whose condition made them dependent on blood products. The Mail on Sunday ran a story about ‘killer blood’ in UK hospitals, describing how two male haemophiliacs had discovered that they had AIDS after routine blood transfusions.5 On TV, a Horizon programme entitled “The Killer in the Village” and a Panorama special on AIDS were both screened. The British media were starting to pay more attention to AIDS. By June, epidemiological studies in the US had led researchers to conclude that AIDS was “most likely to be caused by an agent transmitted by intimate sexual contact, through contaminated needles, or, less commonly, by percutaneous inoculation of infectious blood or blood products. No evidence suggests transmission of AIDS by airborne spread.” They also suggested that AIDS may be transmitted from mother to child before, during, or shortly after birth.6 In the UK, although the blood transfusion cases had widened public perception of who was vulnerable to AIDS, it was clear that those affected by it in the UK at this point were mostly homosexual, and that many had a history of sex with US nationals.7 A number of newspapers ran articles that labelled AIDS ‘the gay plague’.8 In July, there was discussion in the House of Commons after press reports suggested that the large number of gay men planning to attend a forthcoming festival could pose a public health risk:     “Scottish health experts are worried that the Edinburgh international festival next month may become a breeding ground for the spread of the mystery disease acquired immuno-deficiency syndrome” - The Times, July 1983 9 In the same month, Dr Tony Pinching and his colleagues at St Mary’s Hospital in London released preliminary results of a study of 97 gay men in the capital. The study showed that a high proportion of these men had immune cell abnormalities, and a decreased ability to fight off disease. It was believed that these abnormalities might represent a latent phase of AIDS. Despite the relatively low clock speed of 1 Mhz, the 6502's performance was actually competitive with other CPUs using higher clock speeds in the late 1970's and early 1980's (the Zilog Z80 for example). It has only very few registers - one 8-bit accumulator register (A), two 8-bit index registers (X and Y), an 8-bit processor status register (P), an 8-bit stack pointer (S), and a 16-bit program counter (PC) and a quite simple instruction set. The 16 bit address but allowed to allocate up to 64 kb of memory. One of the first computers to use the 6502 were the Apple I (1976), the Apple II, and the Commodore PET, the Atari home computers and the BBC Micro. The famous Commodore 64 used a MOS 6510, which was a successor of the 6502 with a digital I/O port and a three-state bus. The 6507, a simplified version of the 6502, was used in the Atari 2600 videogame console. The 8502 was a 2 Mhz version of the 6502 which was used in the Commodore 128. Millions of computer systems with MOS 6502 processors shipped during the 1980's. The MOS 6502 had been very popular among assembly language programmers (mostly because if it's simplistic design), and even 31 years later it is today used to teach assembly language and computer architecture by many universities. Several companies produced 16 bit derivatives of the 6502, for example the Western Design Center 65C816 (still widely used today) or the (not fully compatible) Mitsubishi 65816. A planned Synertek SY6516 was never released. 32-bit derivatives include the Western Design Center W65T32 Terbium, a 6502 compatible chip with a 32-bit address bus, a 16-bit data bus, and a variable length instruction set. The MOS 6502 clearly dominated the 8 bit homecomputer and videogame world, but then Apple, Commodore and Atari all switched to the Motorola 68K architecture with their next generation 16 bit computers (the Macintosh, the Amiga and the ST). Although the 6502 architecture faded in the homecomputer and video game market, it still remains a quite popular design that can still be found as the core of many microcontroller chips today. Huge Poison Gas Leak in Bhopal, India (1984): During the night of December 2-3, 1984, a storage tank containing methyl isocyanate (MIC) at the Union Carbide pesticide plant leaked gas into the densely populated city of Bhopal, India. It was one of the worst industrial accidents in history. Union Carbide India, Ltd. built a pesticide plant in Bhopal, India in the late 1970s in an effort to produce pesticides locally to help increase production on local farms. However, sales of pesticide didn't materialize in the numbers hoped for and the plant was soon losing money. In 1979, the factory began to produce large amounts of the highly toxic methyl isocyanate (MIC), because it was a cheaper way to make the pesticide carbaryl. To also cut costs, training and maintenance in the factory were drastically cut back. Workers in the factory complained about the dangerous conditions and warned of possible disasters, but management did not take any action. On March 24, 1989, the tanker Exxon Valdez, en route from Valdez, Alaska to Los Angeles, California, ran aground on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska. The vessel was traveling outside normal shipping lanes in an attempt to avoid ice. Within six hours of the grounding, the Exxon Valdez spilled approximately 10.9 million gallons of its 53 million gallon cargo of Prudhoe Bay crude oil. Eight of the eleven tanks on board were damaged. The oil would eventually impact over 1,100 miles of non-continuous coastline in Alaska, making the Exxon Valdez the largest oil spill to date in U.S. waters. The response to the Exxon Valdez involved more personnel and equipment over a longer period of time than did any other spill in U.S. history. Logistical problems in providing fuel, meals, berthing, response equipment, waste management and other resources were one of the largest challenges to response management. At the height of the response, more than 11,000 personnel, 1,400 vessels and 85 aircraft were involved in the cleanup. 1989: Massacre in Tiananmen Square Several hundred civilians have been shot dead by the Chinese army during a bloody military operation to crush a democratic protest in Peking's (Beijing) Tiananmen Square. Tanks rumbled through the capital's streets late on 3 June as the army moved into the square from several directions, randomly firing on unarmed protesters. The injured were rushed to hospital on bicycle rickshaws by frantic residents shocked by the army's sudden and extreme response to the peaceful mass protest. Demonstrators, mainly students, had occupied the square for seven weeks, refusing to move until their demands for democratic reform were met. The protests began with a march by students in memory of former party leader Hu Yaobang, who had died a week before. But as the days passed, millions of people from all walks of life joined in, angered by widespread corruption and calling for democracy. Tonight's military offensive came after several failed attempts to persuade the protesters to leave. Throughout the day the government warned it would do whatever it saw necessary to clamp down on what it described as "social chaos". But even though violence was expected, the ferocity of the attack took many by surprise, bringing condemnation from around the world. US President George Bush said he deeply deplored the use of force, and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said she was "shocked and appalled by the shootings". Amid the panic and confusion students could be heard shouting "fascists stop killing," and "down with the government". At a nearby children's hospital operating theatres were filled with casualties with gunshot wounds, many of them local residents who were not taking part in the protests. Early this morning at least 30 more were killed in two volleys of gunfire, which came without warning. Terrified crowds fled, leaving bodies in the road. Meanwhile reports have emerged of troops searching the main Peking university campus for ringleaders, beating and killing those they suspect of co-ordinating the protests. The demonstrations in Tiananmen Square have been described as the greatest challenge to the communist state in China since the 1949 revolution. They were called to coincide with a visit to the capital by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, by students seeking democratic reform. Troops were used to clear the square despite repeated assurances from Chinese politicians that there would be no violence. It has been suggested that the Communist leader Deng Xiaoping personally ordered their deployment as a way of shoring up his leadership. Hundreds, and possibly thousands, of people were killed in the massacre, although it is unlikely a precise number will ever be known. Peking has since become more widely known as Beijing. Pan Am Flight 103 Is Bombed Over Lockerbie (1988): At 7:03 p.m. on December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103, a London to New York flight, exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland. A total of 270 people were killed, 259 of which had been on board the plane and another 11 had been killed from the debris that hit the ground. An investigation into the explosion focused on terrorist motives for the bombing. Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah were blamed for the bombing. After eleven years of negotiating for their extradition from Libya, Libya finally granted extradition in 1999. In 2000, a trial began. In early 2001, Megrahi was found guilty of murder and Fhimah was acquitted. Lockerbie Disaster. Pan Am Flight 103 was a Boeing 747-100 named Clipper Maid of the Seas. The jumbo jet was the fifteenth 747 ever built and was delivered in February 1970, one month after the very first 747 had entered service with Pan Am. On Wednesday 21 December 1988, Clipper Maid of the Seas touched down at London's Heathrow Airport at noon from San Francisco. The aircraft was parked at stand Kilo 14, Terminal 3, where it was guarded for two hours by Pan Am's security company, Alert Security, but otherwise was not watched. The first leg of Pan Am Flight 103's journey began as the Boeing 727 feeder flight, PA103A, from Frankfurt International Airport, West Germany to London Heathrow. Forty-seven of the 89 passengers on the Boeing 727, which was parked at stand Kilo 16 adjacent to the Boeing 747, transferred to PA103 for the transatlantic flight from London Heathrow to New York JFK. There were 243 passengers and 16 crew members on board, led by pilot Captain James Bruce "Jim" MacQuarrie[, First Officer Raymond Ronald "Ray" Wagner, and Flight Engineer Jerry Don Avritt. Mary Murphy served as the head purser. The flight was scheduled to depart at 6:00, and pushed back from the gate at 6:04, but because of a rush-hour delay, it took off from runway 27L at 6:25, flying northwest out of Heathrow, a so-called Daventry departure. Once clear of Heathrow, the crew steered due north toward Scotland. At 6:56, as the aircraft approached the border, it reached its cruising altitude of 31,000 feet (9,400 m), and MacQuarrie throttled the engines back to cruising power. At 7:00, PA103 was picked up by the Scottish Area Control Centre at Prestwick, Scotland, where it needed clearance to begin its flight across the Atlantic Ocean. Alan Topp, an air traffic controller, made contact with the clipper as it entered Scottish airspace. Captain MacQuarrie replied: "Good evening Scottish, Clipper one zero three. We are at level three one zero." Then First Officer Wagner spoke: "Clipper 103 requesting oceanic clearance." Those were the last words heard from the aircraft.

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