Prof.

Michael Stafford
Mercy College

The 1980s
The Decade That Made America
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The light that shines farthest shines brightest nearest home. C.T. Studd

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The 1980s is about a decade of people, decisions, and inventions that changed our future, told from the perspective of the unknowing history makers who lived these iconic moments. We worked out, worked harder, played harder and consumed morebecause the 1980s was the decade when we went forward to the future.

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The 1970s A Decade of Misery

A bitter end to the Vietnam War Watergate Nixons Resignation Recession The Arab oil embargo Iranian Hostage standoff Soviets in Afghanistan

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The 1980s
The Miracle on Ice

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Tied 2-2 after the first period, the Soviets shot in the only goal for the second period. Mark Johnson's goal in the third brought the US back. With ten minutes left to the game, Mike Eruzione scored the famous fourth and winning goal and with Jim Craig's solid play at the net the US team defeated the Soviets 4-3.

USA, USA, USA

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Hostages Freed

February 1, 1979 - Ayatollah Khomeini returns to Iran after 14 years in exile, to lead the country. November 4, 1979 - About 500 Iranian students seize control of the U.S. embassy in Tehran and take 90 people hostage including 66 Americans working in the embassy April 24, 1980 - Eight U.S. servicemen are killed when a helicopter and a transport plane collide during a failed attempt to rescue the hostages. January 19, 1981 - The U.S. and Iran sign an agreement to release the hostages and unfreeze $8 billion dollars of Iranian assets. January 20, 1981 - Ronald Reagan is sworn in as president of the U.S. January 20, 1981 - The remaining 52 U.S. hostages are released and flown to Weisbaden Air Base in Germany. Then to West Point.
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Mt. St. Helen

May 18th, 1980, at 8:32 a.m., a magnitude 5.1 earthquake shook beneath Mount St. Helens in Washington state. It set off one of the largest landslides in recorded history. It exposed the heated core of the volcano setting off gigantic explosions and eruptions. The blast was heard hundreds of miles away, the pressure wave flattened entire forests, the heat melted glaciers and set off destructive mudflows, and 57 people lost their lives. The erupting ash column shot up 80,000 feet into the atmosphere for over 10 hours, depositing ash across Eastern Washington and 10 other states.

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The Music
John Lennon - 44 - shot to death outside of his New York City apartment on the night of Dec. 8, 1980. Bob Marley - 36 - died of cancer in a Miami hospital on May 11, 1981. Harry Chapin - 38 - was killed when the car he was driving was hit from behind by a tractor-trailer on the Long Island Expressway in Jericho, L.I.,

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The Last of the Protest Singers

Harry Chapin

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MTV
August 1, 1981
"Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll"

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Breaking Down Walls

Michael Jackson
1983- MTV had launched two years earlier, Difficult to imagine how different a network it was back then. Not only did it play nothing but music videos, 24 hours a day, but it played music videos only by white artists. The performer who broke MTV's unofficial blacklist or whitelist was Jackson, with his song and video for "Billie Jean. "Beat It," which borrowed its imagery from a gang street fight in "West Side Story," became another number one hit for Jackson two months later. March 1983, Jackson appeared on a live NBC entertainment special honoring the 25th anniversary of Motown Records. He reunited with his brothers but he also made a solo appearance. While performing "Billie Jean," he introducing a new dance move he had concocted for the occasion a backwards-gliding step he called the moonwalk.
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The Moonwalk
Billie Jean

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Breaking Down Walls

Run-D.M.C and Aerosmith
Fusion of rock and rap broke into the mainstream in 1986 in Run-D.M.C.s album, Raising Hell. The group's biggest hit single, a cover of Aerosmith's "Walk This Way." "Walk This Way" was the first hip-hop record to appeal to both rockers and rappers. Its peak position was number four on the pop charts. In the wake of the success of "Walk This Way Run-D.M.C. were the first rap act to received airplay on MTV. They were the first rappers to cross over into the pop mainstream.

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Run-D.M.C. & Aerosmith

Walk this Way

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Sony Walkman

The 1980s could well have been the Walkman decade. The popularity of Sony's device helped the cassette tape outsell vinyl records for the first time in 1983. By 1986 the word "Walkman" had entered the Oxford English Dictionary. Its launch coincided with the birth of the aerobics craze, and millions used the Walkman to make their workouts more entertaining.

Between 1987 and 1997 the number of people who said they walked for exercise increased by 30%.
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Jane Fonda

Jane Fonda's Workout, released in 1982, spawned a series of at-home fitness programs from Fonda and competitors alike. In it, she coined the phrase, "Feel the burn. The workout videos made a "big difference" to many women.

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Rubiks Cube

The Rubiks Cube ushered in the 80s and the simple puzzle-like toy took the decade by storm. The Rubiks Cube was so popular that more than 100,000,000 of them were sold between 1980 and 1982. The goal is to then rearrange the smaller single cubes back the way they were so that all sides of the cube are a single, solid color again. Sounds easy, right? Tell that to the millions of people who have spent hours trying to figure the Rubiks Cube out. Ill admit that I was part of the move-the-stickers-to-solve crowd that simply became too frustrated to continue turning the sides of the infernal thing.
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Pacman
It really doesnt get any more retro than the little yellow greedy guts who used to eat Pac-Dots whilst avoiding those pesky ghosts. The fact that Pacman still lives on to this present day pretty much says it all! Pacman is probably the greatest game ever to be developed by Namco, which is really saying a lot!

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Ryan White

Ryan, a hemophiliac who contracted the AIDS virus through a blood transfusion when he was 13. Ryan White became a household name in 1985, when as a 14-yearold he began his successful fight to attend the public school in Kokomo that had banned him. Ryan went on the Talk Show circuit and testified in front of Congress as an advocate for AIDS awareness. At the age of 18, Ryan died on April 8, 1990, just months before Congress passed the AIDS bill that bears his name the Ryan White CARE (Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency) Act.

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Ryan Whites Funeral

Skyline Pigeon

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The Gipper

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January 20, 1981 - The inauguration of Ronald Reagan as the 40th president of the United States. March 30, 1981 Attempt to assassinate Reagan in Washington, D.C. March 23, 1983 - Proposal to develop technology to intercept incoming missiles, the Strategic Defense Initiative Program, or Star Wars, is made by Reagan. November 19, 1985 - The first meeting in six years between the leaders of the Soviet Union and the U.S. occurs in Geneva. December 8, 1987 - The U.S. and the Soviet Union sign an agreement, the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. November 9, 1989 - The Berlin Wall, after 38 years begins to crumble when German citizens are allowed to travel freely between East and West Germany. One day later the wall comes crumbling down.
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Reaganomics

Reagan conservative policies amounted to the most successful economic experiment in world history. 20 million new jobs were created. Unemployment fell to 5.3% by 1989. American standard of living increased by almost 20% in just 7 years. The poverty rate declined every year from 1984 to 1989. The stock market more than tripled in value from 1980 to 1990. The Reagan Recovery kicked off a historic 25-year economic boom (with short recessions in 1990 and 2001.) The period from 1982 to 2007 is the greatest period of wealth creation in the history of the planet.

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The Space Shuttle

April 12, 1981 - The first launch of the Space Shuttle as Columbia begins its STS-1 mission. The Space Shuttle is the first reusable spacecraft to be flown into orbit, and it returned to earth for a traditional touch down landing two days later. June 18, 1983 - Astronaut Sally Ride becomes the first American woman to travel into space. January 28, 1986 - The Challenger Space Shuttle explodes after lift off at Cape Canaveral, Florida, killing seven people, including Christa McAuliffe, a New Hampshire school teacher. That night Reagan speaks to the nation about Challenger after cancelling the State of the Union Address. Sharon Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher to fly in space "I watched the Space Age being born and I would like to participate."
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The Crew of Challenger

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Challenger Blows Up
Disaster

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November 13, 1982 - The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C., holding the names of the more than 58,000 killed or missing in action during the conflict.

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Bill Gates & Microsoft

In 1975, Bill Gates and Paul Allen create Microsoft. Microsoft begins small, but has a huge visiona computer on every desktop and in every home. In June 1980, Gates and Allen hire Gates former Harvard classmate Steve Ballmer to help run the company. The next month, IBM approaches Microsoft about a project codenamed "Chess. Microsoft focuses on a new operating system. They name their new operating system "MS-DOS. Microsoft Disk Operating System makes Microsoft a fortune in royalties alone.
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August 12, 1981 - IBM introduced the IBM-PC personal computer, the IBM 5150. It was designed by twelve engineers and designers under Don Estridge of the IBM Entry Systems Division. It sold for $1,565 in 1981.

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The VIDEOCASSETTE RECORDER (VCR) allowed Americans to record television shows and watch them according to their own schedule and view feature films in the privacy of their own homes.

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The movie E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial was a hit from the day it was released (June 11, 1982) and quickly became one of the most beloved movies of all time.

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September 11, 1985 - Pete Rose breaks Ty Cobb's record for most career hits in Major League Baseball history. He would be banned from baseball in 1989 for gambling, thus making him ineligible for election into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

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March 24, 1989 - The Exxon Valdez crashed into Bligh Reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound, causing the largest oil spill in American history, eleven million gallons, which extended fortyfive miles.

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Dallas
Dallas was the soapy, backstabbing machinations of Dallas oil magnate J.R. Ewing and his family. For millions of people around the world the most important news of the 80`s was Who shot J.R. Ewing? It happened in America on March 21st 1980 and was the simulated shooting of a rapacious Texas oil baron at the hands of his low-life mistress, his wife's sister, in a popular American Tv Series.

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