The Dot Eaters

The screw-top bottle is patented by Dan Rylands of Hope Glass Works, Yorkshire, England.
A dock strike cripples the city of London.
The punch-card information storage system is developed by H. Hollerith.
Fruit-peddler William Kemmler axes his lover Matilda Ziegler to death in Buffalo, NY., and is the first person sentenced to die in the newly designed electric chair. In the culmination of a viscious PR war between competing electricity delivery systems Direct Current championed by Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse's stronger and more lethal Alternating Current as to who would actually provide the killing voltages, Westinghouse loses and it is his AC that rips through Kemmler's body when he is "Westinghoused" the following year.
Danish inventor Vlademar Poulson invents magnetic wire recording.
Charles Spencer Chaplin is born in London, England to two music hall performers.
The Pacific Phonograph Company sets up the first public juke box, at the Palais Royale Salon in San Francisco, named the Nickel-In-The-Slot. Invented by Louis Glass and William S. Arnold, it is comprised of an Edison cylinder phonograph with a coin slot mechanism, mounted inside an upright oak case. With only one song available, patrons have to stand by the contraption and hold listening tubes up their ears.
George Eastman markets the first flexible picture film roll.
Vincent Van Gogh voluntarily admits himself into an insane asylum at Saint-Remy in France. He paints his "Garden at the Hospital", "Self-Portrait with a Bandaged Ear", and "Wheat Fields and Cyprus Trees" during this period. The next year he kills himself with a revolver shot to the chest.
The Paris Exposition opens, with the recently completed Eiffel tower as a centerpiece..
The Birdcage Theatre, located near the end of Allen St. in Tombstone, Arizona, closes its doors after nearly 9 years of operation. Called "the wildest, roughest, wickedest honky tonk between Basin Street and the Barbary Coast" by the New York Times, it was a frequent haunt of Old West characters like "Doc" Holliday and Wyatt Earp. A poker table in the basement ran a non-stop game 24 hours a day for over 8 years. The Birdcage was the site of 20 gun and knife fights over its operation, resulting in 26 deaths. 140 bullet holes in the floors, walls and ceilings remain to tell the tale.
The Moulin Rouge opens.
Mary Sawyer Tyler dies. She was born in Sterling, Massachusetts, and at 10 received a pet lamb called Nethaniel which would follow her to the Red Stone schoolhouse occasionally. Visitor to the school John Roulstone was endeared by this and composed the famous poem "Mary Had a Little Lamb", which was later expanded on by Sarah J. Hale.
May day, or Worker's Day, is first observed.
Johannes Brahms' performance of "Hungarian Dance" is recorded on an Edison Phonograph cylinder.
While in Turin, Italy, German philospher Frederich Nietzsche suffers a complete mental breakdown upon witnessing the cruel flogging of a horse by its owner. He remains an invalid until his death in 1900.
Dishwashing machines are first sold, in Chicago.
During a Berlin stop of the Euopean tour of "Buffalo" Bill Cody's Wild West Show, crack shot Annie Oakley jokingly asks the crowd for a volunteer in a bit where she shoots the ashes off a cigarette held in someone's mouth. She is dismayed when a someone actually steps up: the young leader of Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm II. Lamenting the night of whiskey drinking the night before, Annie nervously performs the stunt, executing it perfectly. Some years later, at the advent of WWI, Oakely reportedly writes the Kaiser requesting a second shot.
"The Sneeze", a groundbreaking film experiment by Thomas Edison, is screened. It features sound effects from a syncronized phonograph player.
"Customers' Afternoon Letter", called a "flimsie" by its creators Charles Henry Dow, Edward Davis Jones and Charles Milford Bergstresser, and delivered by messenger to subscribers in the Wall Street area of New York City, morphs into a newspaper labelled "The Wall Street Journal". It consists of four pages, selling for 2 cents and charging 20 cents a line for advertising.
The first Bell Telephone logo is introduced.
50,000 white settlers pour into Oklahoma during the land rush, with all 1.9 million acres available claimed by sundown.
Two white men in Missouri, newspaper editorial writer Chris L. Rutt and miller Charles G. Uncerwood, invent the first self-rising pancake mix. After seeing a show at the local vaudeville house with two comedians in blackface, Rutt take the name of the show stopping song sung by one as a household "mammy" for the trademark name of his creation, "Aunt Jemima".
The Savoy hotel opens in London, England.
Staring in Victor Clairmont's cabinet-making shop, a fire breaks out that eventually devours 25 city blocks of Seattle, Washington.
In Pennsylvania, on the afternoon of May 31, 20 million gallons of water rush from the burst South Fork Dam, an embankment dam created from rock, earth and clay in order to create Lake Conemaugh, a recreational playground for the weathy members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting club. The 40 foot wave, cruising at a speed of 40 miles an hour, slams into the prospering city of Johnstown Pennsylvania, killing 2,209 people and virtually wiping out the town. The collapse of the dam is attributed to a poorly maintained spillway, aggrivated by a heavy rainfall.
Recording technology reaches marketable acceptance.
On Monday, June 24, four men enter Telluride, Colorado. After surveying the town, they proceed to enter and rob the local bank, reportedly absconding with 10-30 thousand dollars. Not only is it the first major bank robbery in Colorado history, it is the first foray into such activity by the group, including two men: Robert Leroy Parker and Harry Longabaugh, also known respectively as Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. Longabaugh had received his nickname due to his release from Sundance prision in Wyoming earlier in the year.
The centennial of George Washington's inauguration becomes the first observed U.S. national holiday.
Igor Sikorsky is born, who eventually founds the Sikorsky Aero Engineering Company and realizes the first sucessful helicopter flight in the 3-blade, 75 horsepower Vought-Sikorsky 300, in 1940.
William Gray from Hartford, CT obtains the patent for the first coin-operated telephone.
George Eastman's Kodak box camera, the mechanical adding machine, the death of Coca-Cola inventor Dr. John S. Pemberton, the National Geographic Society, Adolf Hitler, the hamburger, and the Jack the Ripper killings are all one year old.

There are approximately 2550 computer systems in the United States.
Approximately 47.1 million transistors are produced, compared to 397.4 million vacuum tubes.
Modern-day LEGO brick design patented.
Under the U.S. Congressional 'Space Act', NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) is formed, taking over the role of the National Advisory Comittee on Aeronautics.
Alaska is brought into America as the 49th state of the union.
A "one-eyed, one-horned, flying, purple people eater" descends to Earth and rises to #1 on the Billboard charts in Sheb Wooley's novelty hit song Flying Purple People Eater.
EMI releases the first sterophonic record album.
Seymour Cray builds the first fully-transistorized super-computer, the CDC (Control Data Corporation) 1604.
The first transatlantic jet flight is flown by PanAm, from New York City to Paris.
92 days after launch, after 1400 orbits around the Earth, first ever launched satellite Sputnik 1's orbit decays and burns up in the Earth's atmosphere. The Soviet satellite leaves behind a trail of recriminations from a shocked America.
The Canadian Broadcasting Company's microwave broadcasting system is the largest television network in the world.
A federal investigation into the Twenty-One game show scandal begins.
James Maury Henson founds The Jim Henson Company.
The Winnipeg Blue Bombers beat the Edmonton Eskimos in the first CFL game, 29 to 21.
Charles Starkweather engages in a killing spree across Nebraska and Wyoming, accompanied by his teenage girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate, eventaully claiming 11 victims. He is executed the following year, with his accomplice getting a life sentence. His rampage becomes the basis for several films, including Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers, as well as influencing several Stephen King characters.
ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency - the agency that spawns the ARPANet, which subsequently becomes the Internet) is one year old.
Elvis Presley's burgeoning music career is interrupted as he joins the U.S. army at a Memphis, Tennessee induction center.
IBM announces computer models 7070 and 7090, among the first to be fully transistorized.
111 people take part in the first U.S. domestic passenger jet trip, consisting of a National 707 flight from New York City to Miami.
The looming threat of long-range USSR bombers armed with nuclear weapons precipitates the formation of NORAD, or North American Aerospace Defense Command, a joint strategic operation between Canada and USA.
Johhny Hart's prehistoric comic strip B.C. first sees print.
Slamming into the back of local junk dealer James Horn's truck, schoolbus 27 veers off the road and into the swollen Big Sandy River near Prestonsburg, Kentucky. In the ensuing panic, 16 children escape, but 26 others plus the driver are swept away in the swift-moving current to their deaths.
Jack Tramiel moves his Commodore Portable Typewriter company from the Bronx to Toronto and renames it Commodore Business Machines. It is a typewriter sales and repair shop.
Vladimir Nabokov's controversial book Lolita is published.
The US Army launches the first American earth satellite Explorer I from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It contains Texas Instruments transistors, along with an experiement by James Van Allen which discovers Earth's radiation belt.
Videotape is invented the previous year by Ampex in Sunnyvale, California.
Nikita Khrushchev becomes Premier of the Soviet Union.
Recently relocated from New York City, the Los Angeles Dodgers play their first game in California, winning 6-5 over another team newly moved from NYC, the San Francisco Giants.
Arnold Palmer wins his first Masters tournament.
15 year-old George Harrison joins The Quarrymen, a music group comprised of John Lennon, Eric Griffiths, Pete Shotton, Bill Smith and Paul McCartney.
Starting in a wing of Chicago's Our Lady of the Angels catholic school unprotected by fire alarms, a fire sweeps through the building, resulting in the deaths of 87 children and 3 nuns. A boy with known arsonist tendencies confesses to the crime, but later recants. The reasons for the fire are officially labeled as unknown.
Coach George "Punch" Imlach takes the helm of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The first public demonstration against nuclear weapons takes place in Aldermaston, England.

IBM U.S. reaches over $1 billion in computer sales, beating its other interests for the first time in the company's history.
EDS (Electronic Data Systems) of Dallas Texas is founded by 32 year old Ross Perot with an initial outlay of $1000.
Having been recruited to CBS News by Edward R. Murrow 12 years earlier, Walter Cronkite becomes anchor of Walter Cronkite With the News, soon to be renamed CBS Evening News.
The first U.S. Army troops move into Vietnam.
"Yogi", a sedated, 2 year old female black bear is ejected from a Convair B-58 Hustler bomber at 850 mph from 35,000 feet. She safely snoozes her way back to earth and becomes the first living creature ejected from a vehicle at supersonic speed.
The world teeters on the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Hewlett-Packard, making electronic testing and measuring equipment, breaks into Fortune Magazine's top 500 US companies listing for the first time. It ranks #460.
Changing their name from Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys, The Rolling Stones cut a demo tape that is rejected for a record contract by EMI.
First use of Agent Orange defoliant in Vietnam.
The Beatles record 12 songs for a demo tape, sent to Decca records in an effort to get a record deal. A&R head Dick Rowe rejects the group, saying they sound too much like The Shadows, an immensley popular group that had pioneered the 4-man rock band format in the UK. Eight months later the Beatles would eventually be signed by George Martin, head of Parlophone records.
Barbara Striesand signs her first recording contract, with Columbia Records.
John Glenn becomes first American to orbit the Earth.
Bell Telephone introduces radio paging in the U.S.
Frank Lee Morris and brothers Clarence and John Anglin use sharpened spoons to dig their way out of their cells to escape Alcatraz island prison in San Francisco Bay. They are never recaptured, but FBI investigations rule they died in the attempt. Nonetheless, the event is immortalized in the Clint Eastwood film Escape From Alcatraz.
Navy SEALs first deployed, into South Vietnam, as advisors to train Army of South Vietnam commandos.
Ken Kesey's seminal book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is published.
First communications satellite Telstar I is launched, allowing transcontinental audio and video transmissions.
Thomas G. Doty, a passenger on Continental Airlines Flight 11 from Chicago, Il. to Kansas City, MO., places a dynamite bomb in the trash receptacle of a rear lavatory of the aircraft during the flight. The resultant explosion and crash kills all 44 of the passangers and crew, with a passenger surviving the crash but dying later in hospital. Married, with a four-year-old daughter, Doty had taken out $300,000 worth of insurance before the flight, and was due to be arraigned on armed robbery charges.
Bob Dylan's first album is released.
Mariner 2 becomes the first interplanetary spacecraft launched from Earth, passing within 34,773 kilometers of the planet Venus and providing the first up-close view of this second planet from the Sun.
Hanna-Barbera cartoon The Jetsons becomes the first television program aired in colour on ABC-TV.
Jackie Robinson becomes first black man inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Ringo Starr replaces Pete Best as Beatles drummer. The group releases its first record, called Love Me Do.
There are over 70 million TV sets installed in American homes. Over 90 percent of homes have at least one.
Johnny Carson replaces Jack Parr as host of the Tonight show.
Sebastian S. Kresge opens the first KMart department store, in Garden City, Michigan.
At the age of 36, Marilyn Monroe is found lying on her bed naked, dead from an apparent self-inflicted overdose of barbiturates. Due to missing evidence and conflicting testimony, the exact nature of her death is surrounded in controversy, and leads to many questions including her relationship with the Kennedy family and Bobby Kennedy in particular.
Jack Nicklaus wins the U.S. Open as his first professional victory as a golfer, beating Arnold Palmer.
West Side Story wins 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Direction, and two Supporting Actor Oscars.
The Milwaukee Braves' "Hammering" Hank Aaron hits his 500th home run.
Chubby Checker's hit song The Twist is banned by Bishop Joseph A. Burke of the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo, NY, calling it "impure".
Stanley Kubrick's controversial film Lolita opens.
Albert DeSalvo, aka The Boston Strangler, murders his first victim, Anna Slesers.
The James Bond movie series starts with Dr. No.
18 year-old bricklayer's apprentice Peter Fechter is shot while trying to escape East Berlin over the Berlin Wall, erected almost exactly one year before. At the base of the wall in no-man's-land, he lay bleeding to death and crying for help for a full 50 minutes before dying. He becomes the 50th victim of the wall.
Canada's Alouette I is launched, becoming the first satellite built entirely by a country other than the USA or USSR.

Even while swinging one-handed and encumbered by a stiff space suit, Commander Alan Shepard Jr. drives a golf ball estimated to travel in the 200 to 400 yard range, while on the moon as part of the Apollo 14 lunar mission.
General interest magazine Look ceases publication.
Computed axial tomography or CAT scan machines first used.
An exploding propane tank results in a fire in the Taeyokale Hotel, in Seoul, South Korea. 163 people die in the blaze.
Integrated Electronics (Intel) introduces the first microprocessor, the Intel 4004. Selling for around $200USD, the 1/6" x 1/8" chip has the approximate computing power of an entire 1946 era ENIAC computer.
Mark Spitz wins seven gold medals, for swimming, at the Munich Summer Olympics.
Dan "D.B." Cooper jumps out of a Boeing 727 flying at low-speed and low altitude, into both a stormy night and aeronautical infamy, with no trace of him and his parachute ever being found. A small portion of the $200,000 in ransom he receives after hi-jacking the plane is eventually recovered next to the banks of the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S..
The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour debuts on CBS as a mid-season replacement.
Armed cadets from the Abermoumou military school swarm the Skhirat summer palace of King Hassan II of Morocco, in an attempted military coup orchestrated by Moroccan Army General Mohamed Medbouh, during a party celebrating the 42nd birthday of the King. 92 guests and royal household staff are killed, along with 133 of the attackers.
Rolls-Royce declares bankruptcy and is placed into receivership.
Eight members of Palestinian militant group Black September infiltrate Olympic Village at the Munich Olympics and take nine members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage, after killing two others. The ordeal ends in more bloodshed, with the terrorists machine-gunning the hostages at close range during a botched rescue attempt by German police at a NATO airbase.
The first digital watch is designed by Pulsar.
Days of heavy rain in West Virginia's Buffalo Creek strain the Buffalo Mining Company's slag dams to the breaking point, and when they break they send 132 million gallons of black waste water careening through Buffalo Creek hollow, leaving 125 dead and property damages estimated at $50 million.
Cigarette advertising is banned from U.S. television.
The Ed Sullivan Show is cancelled by CBS.
Canadian environmental group Don't Make a Wave Committee changes its name to the Greenpeace Foundation.
Duel airs as a Saturday Night Movie on CBS. Telling the tale of harried driver Dennis Weaver's battle against an imposing tractor-trailer rig whose driver he never sees, it is director Steven Spielberg's first stint at long-form film-making.
JAT airline hostess Vesna Vulovic takes an unscheduled three minute ride straight down when a terrorist bomb rips apart the DC-9 she is traveling in, at an altitude of 31,000 feet. Pinned inside the middle section of the fuselage, she is removed unconscious from the wreckage but makes a full recovery. She also gets a Guinness World Re cod for highest fall without a parachute.
The term 'Silicon Valley' is coined by Don Hoefler in a trade journal.
The Coca-Cola company airs their Hilltop TV ad, featuring a group of young people of many nationalities standing on a hillside in Italy singing I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke , which becomes one of the most recognized corporate jingles of all time. The song is reworked into a brand-less version by The New Seekers titled I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing which becomes a major hit record. 1971 also sees the Crying Indian anti-litter ad from environmental organization Keep America Beautiful, new slogans from McDonalds (You deserve a break today) and American Express (Don't leave home without it), and introduces Life cereal with the cry "Hey Mikey! He likes it!".
Imagine, John Lennon's second solo album, is released.
Charles Manson and three other defendants are convicted of first degree murder for the Sharon Tate murders, notwithstanding the fact that Manson had not actually killed anyone directly. Originally sentenced to death, this is later commuted to life in prison when California abolishes the death penalty.
CBS TV series Hogan's Heroes ends its six year run.
British Army troops open fire on protesters in Northern Ireland, killing 14 in what comes to be termed Bloody Sunday.
Designed as a reaction to the USSR's MiG-25 'Foxbat' jet interceptor, the U.S. Air Force's F-15 Eagle air-superiority fighter first takes to the air.
Anik I, Canada's first telecommunications satellite, is launched. It can relay 12 channels simultaneously.
American Pie, an 8:33 minute folk-rock song by Don McLean, becomes a four week #1 hit in the U.S..
IBM reaches over $2 billion in sales.
Warner Bros. releases Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork Orange, which earns an X rating in US theatres.
1st Lieutenant William Calley is sentenced to life in prison for his role in the My Lai Massacre, perpetrated in 1968 by the U.S. Army Charlie Company, and which resulted in the murder of 504 unarmed civilians, mostly women, children and elderly people. His sentence is later commuted by President Richard Nixon to four years under house arrest.
LANSA Flight 508 flies into a violent storm and is struck by lightning, igniting the right-wing fuel tank and causing an explosion that results in the total separation of the wing. As the plane breaks up, a German 17 year-old named Juliane Köpcke falls 3 kilometers to the Amazon rainforest below still strapped to her seat, surviving the fall but suffering a broken collar bone, gashes to her arms and legs, a concussion and eye injury. She is the only survivor of the crash. Following a river for 10 days, she is rescued by loggers and transported back to civilization. The amazing story is later related in the documentary Wings of Hope, directed by Werner Herzog. He has a special connection to the event, as he is scheduled for the same flight while location scouting for the movie Aguirre, Wrath of God before his reservation is cancelled due to a change of itinerary.
Kenback I, the first personal computer, is built by John Blankenbaker. Input is made by a series of switches, and output comes in the form of blinking lights above them.Priced at $750USD, only 40 are eventually sold.
Ford Motor Company's first domestic sub-compact car, the Pinto, rolls off the assembly line and into automotive infamy when it is discovered later that its faulty design makes the fuel tank a veritable molotov cocktail in low-speed rear-end collisions. A recall is finally ordered in 1978.
Extreme rainfall precipitates the Black Hill Flood, causing Rapid Creek and other tributary rivers to flood, as well as the Canyon Creek Dam to fail. This deluge of water sweeps through Rapid City, North Dakota killing 238 and injuring over 3000.
Four-time Stanley Cup champion, Gordie Howe retires from the NHL after a five-decade career.
The first "memory disk", an 200K 8" flexible storage disk soon to be known as the "floppy", is invented by IBM engineer Alan Shugart. He later founds premiere media storage company Seagate.
Richard Nixon visits communist China, the first U.S. President to do so.
Electronic Labyrinth: THX-1138: 4EB, an award-winning student film short made at USC in 1966, is redone to feature length size as simply THX 1138 by its creator...George Lucas.
While attending high school, Steve Jobs meets and befriends fellow co-worker Steve Wozniak at their part-time job at Hewlett-Packard.
Stephen Schwartz's theatrical production of the gospel musical Godspell, riding on the biblical coattails of the previous Jesus Christ Superstar, opens for a long off-Broadway run. The Toronto production soon follows, launching the careers of Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Gilda Radner, Paul Shaffer, Dave Thomas and Martin Short.
A riot over living conditions at Attica Correctional Facility in Attica NY ends with the retaking of the prison and the deaths of nine hostages and 28 inmates.
The moon rover is deployed on the lunar surface during the Apollo 15 mission.
All Nippon Airways Flight 58, a Boeing 727, collides with a F-86 Sabre jet of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force, at an altitude of 26,000 feet, 275 miles north of Tokyo. The pilot of the Sabre is Yoshimi Ichikawa, a 22 year-old JASDF trainee with only 21 hours of flight training in the fighter jet. He successfully ejects from his aircraft, while all 162 people aboard the passenger jet perish in the crash.
Mid-season replacement series All in the Family premieres on CBS. It runs for nine seasons, hitting #1 in the ratings for five of them.
ARPAnet designers choose "@" to separate user names from domain names as they refine email (electronic mail) delivery. The net now includes 50 universities.
Novel Cyborg, by former Air Force pilot and NASA PR agent Martin Caidin, is published by Arbor House Publishing. It and three other subsequently published books by Caidin later become the inspiration for ABC's hit TV series The Six Million Dollar Man.
Programming language C is created by Dennis Ritchie.
Having been sold by Colonel Sanders seven years earlier for US$ 2 million, KFC Corporation is bought by Heublein Inc. for US$ 285 million.
M*A*S*H premieres on CBS.
Security guard Frank Wills notices some doors taped open at the Watergate Office Complex in Washington, D.C. and calls the police, who arrest five men burglarizing the offices of the Democratic National Committee.
The first hand-held scientific calculator HP-30 is debuted by Hewlett-Packard Company for $350 USD.
The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system begins operation, in San Francisco.
Phase One of Walt Disney World, situated inside a total of 43 square miles of swamplands in central Florida, opens to the public. Built by 9000 workers at a cost of 400 million dollars, it is the largest private construction project in the modern world.
Sanford and Son debuts on NBC.
The compact disc is invented by Klass Compaan of Philips Research.
Airwest Flight 706, a DC-9 en route to Seattle, Washington From Los Angeles, California, collides with a US Marine Corps F-4B Phantom jet fighter, at an altitude of 15,1500 feet. The commercial flight crashes into the San Gabriel mountains in California, killing all 49 people aboard. The radar officer from the fighter jet ejects after the collision, parachuting safely to the ground. The pilot of the Phantom jet is found dead in the wreckage.
Gene Wilder trips out a generation of kids as Willy Wonka in the movie version of Roald Dahl's classic children's book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Paul Henderson scores the winning goal in the final period of the final game of the eight game Summit Series, pitting the USSR national hockey team against Canada's squad. Team Canada 6, CCCP 5.
Steve Jobs begins classes at Reed College in Portland, Oregon as a Physics major. He drops out one semester later.
A massive outbreak of tornadoes kill 123 people across three states in the Southeastern United States.
Richard Adams' seminal fantasy tail Watership Down is released by London based book publisher Rex Collings.
Sergeant Shoichi Yokoi of the Imperial Japanese Army is brought out of the Guam jungle after hiding in an underground cave for 28 years, refusing to accept Japan's surrender in WWII.
The first ever 8-bit processor, the 8008, is introduced by Intel.
The British comedy troupe Monty Python's Flying Circus release their first film, And Now For Something Completely Different.
Apollo 17 is the last manned mission to the moon for 30 years.
Creedence Clearwater Revival disbands.
Running in the Democratic Presidential primaries, George McGovern is shot four time by Arthur Bremer. McGovern survives the assassination attempt, but a bullet lodged in his spine leaves him paralyzed from the waist down.
The remains of Martin Bormann, private secretary to Adolf Hitler, are unearthed by construction workers in West Berlin.

While touring to promote the concept double album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Peter Gabriel announces his departure from the prog-rock band Genesis.
The first widely popular personal computer, the MITS Altair 8800, is released. The kit costs $439USD, $540USD pre-assembled.
John Denver scores the top spot on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard Hot Country Singles with Thank God I'm a Country Boy.
Stephen King's second novel, Salem's Lot, is published by Doubleday.
The Cray-1 supercomputer is manufactured by Cray Research. It sells for $9 million.
William Jefferson Clinton marries fellow Yale Law School student Hillary Rodham.
Pink Floyd's album Wish You Were Here, recorded at Abby Road Studios in London, is released.
Game show Wheel of Fortune premieres on NBC in a daytime slot, hosted by Chuck Woolery.
Translating the Basic programming language to the Altair, Bill Gates and partner Paul Allen create software company Micro-Soft.
Paul Terrell's The Byte Shop in Mountain View, CA is the first computer store in the US.
Opening Soon...at a Theatre Near You debuts on Chicago's public broadcasting station WTTW Channel 11. It features two rival newspaper movie critics, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert.
Epson America, a division of Seiko Epson Corporation of Japan, begins marketing printers in the US.
The metric system of measurement begins its integration into Canadian society.
Sony releases the Betamax home videocassette format.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show, a film adapted from the original British stage musical Rocky Horror Show, premieres in London, England. Garnering a cult following after its release, the movie goes on to become the longest-running theatrical film release of all time.
BankAmericard, Chargex and several other credit card systems are combined to create the Visa card.
Eastern Air Lines Flight 66, a Boeing 727 on approach to JFK airport in NYC, experiences an extreme wind shear and crashes short of the runway, resulting in 113 deaths.
Facing impeachment over his involvement with the Watergate break-in and cover-up, Richard Milhouse Nixon resigns as US President.
Robert C. O'Brien's SF novel Z for Zachariah is published.
FBI Special Agents Jack R. Coler and Ronald A. Williams enter the Jumping Bull Compound on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota. They are in pursuit of a member of the activist organization, American Indian Movement (AIM). They are executed at close range after being injured in a fierce gun battle. AIM leader Leonard Peltier is eventually charged and convicted for the crime.
Finding current special effects facilities inadequate, George Lucas founds Industrial Light and Magic to produce the effects for his film Star Wars.
The congressional Church Committee and presidential Rockerfeller Commission reveal the covert mind control project MK-ULTRA to the American public, detailing the CIA's use of psychoactive drugs such as LSD on United States citizens test subjects, without their knowledge of the nature of the experiments.
While mowing his lawn at his longtime home in Interlaken, NY., The Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling suffers a minor heart attack. After another infarction, he is rushed to Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester for heart bypass surgery. Succumbing to the stress caused by a lifetime of heavy smoking, Serling has another attack on the operating table and dies the next day at the age of 50.
The Vietnam war comes to a close as the last Americans are airlifted out of Siagon while North Vietnamese soldiers swarm into the city.
Uri Geller is a global sensation as a psychic bending spoons with his mind.
Cher divorces Sonny.
IBM sales reach 4.5 billion.
On his way to meet two Mob bosses, former president of the Teamsters labour union, Jimmy Hoffa disappears from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in suburban Detroit. His body is never found.
Recorded during a jam session with John Lennon, Fame becomes a #1 hit for David Bowie.
Former Indianapolis, Indiana radio booth announcer, news reader, kids' show host, late-night movie show M.C. and weatherman David Letterman first takes to the stand-up stage, at the Comedy Store on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. He's a smash.
Muhammad Ali wins a TKO decision against Joe Frazier in the Thrilla in Manilla.
U.S. President Gerald Ford survives two assassination attempts occurring in a span of 17 days.
Opening with a sketch featuring Buck Henry trying to teach John Belushi english (and collapsing of a heart attack at the end, which Belushi promptly emulates), NBC'S Saturday Night premieres on, you guessed it, NBC.
That "deaf, dumb and blind", "pinball wizard" makes his way to the silver screen in Tommy, based on rock band The Who's rock opera album. Who front man Roger Daltry stars in the titular role.
The Norman Lear created TV sitcom One Day at a Time debuts on CBS.
The first organized computer users group, The Homebrew Computer Club, is formed.
Peter Sutcliffe, aka The Yorkshire Ripper, tales his first victim, 28 year-old mother of four Wilma McCann. Eventually arrested in 1981, Sutcliffe confesses to 13 murders.
Shot on a shoestring budget of 229,000 GPB, Monty Python releases Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
The 6500 series of processors are introduced by MOS Technology. Among them is the 6502 which will soon end up in every popular home computer of the era.
Jaws, Steven Spielberg's second feature-length film, opens.
BYTE, the first computer industry magazine, premieres.
The Sex Pistols inaugurate Britain's punk rock scene by playing their first gig, at Saint Martins College.
Called Space Port while under development, manic indoor roller-coaster Space Mountain opens at Walt Disney World in Florida.
A Chorus Line opens at the Shubert Theatre on Broadway, running for 6,137 performances and becoming the longest-running production up to that point.
The Z80, an improved version of the 8080, is released. It will be used as the processor of almost every arcade game released in the next ten years.
A bundle of TNT wired to a cheap alarm clock and placed in a public locker in the baggage claim area of La Guardia airport in NYC explodes, killing 11.

Saturday Night Live episode 14, season 3 introduces America to Beldar, Prymatt and their daughter Connie, The Coneheads.
Second-wave personal computers Apple II, Commodore's PET (Personal Electronic Transactor), and Radio Shack's TRS-80 are all released.
Annie Hall wins best picture Oscar, Woody Allen gets Best Director.
Saturday Night Fever premieres, popularizing the disco scene and spawning one of the best-selling movie soundtracks of all time.
The day after his inauguration as 39th President of the United States, Jimmy Carter issues a pardon to all draft dodgers of the Vietnam war.
The first LAN (Local Area Network), ARCNET, is offered by Datapoint corp.
On a foggy evening at Los Rodeos airport on Tenerife Island in the Canary Islands, KLM Flight 4805 slams into the taxiing Pan Am Flight 1736 during takeoff, destroying both Boeing 747 passenger jets. With 583 fatalities from both planes, it remains the deadliest accident in aviation history.
Space shuttle test orbiter Enterprise, originally planned to be called Constitution before a write-in campaign to NASA by Star Trek fans causes the name change, makes several operation test flights, launched from atop a Boeing 747 carrier.
Charles Chaplin dies at age 88 in Switzerland.
The Normal Lear serial comedy TV show Soap premieres on ABC, with controversy leading up to the airing causing the network to post a "viewer discretion advised" disclaimer before the show.
Missile Attack, the first handheld game using LED's (Light Emitting Diode), is released by Mattel.
Two words: Star Wars
Peter Gabriel releases his first solo album after leaving Genesis, the self-titled Peter Gabriel. The album spawns the hit single Solsbury Hill.
A smoldering electrical fire eventually bursts into the overcrowded Cabaret Room of the Beverly Hills Supper Club, located six miles outside of Cincinnati, Ohio, resulting in the deaths of 165 people.
Charles Hayes starts CH Products, maker of radio control devices for hobby aircraft.
IBM sales reach over $7 billion.
Rumours is released by Fleetwood Mac.
The original Broadway production of Annie opens at the Alvin Theatre, where it runs for 6 years and 2,377 performances.
Publisher Doubleday releases Stephen King's third book, The Shining.
Microsoft sales reach over $500,000. Bill Gates drops out of Harvard to work at the company full-time, much to the chagrin of his parents.
*WARNING* International agreements and national laws protect copyrighted motion pictures, videotapes and sound recordings. Unauthorized reproduction, exhibition or distribution of copyrighted motion pictures can result in severe criminal and civil penalties under the laws of your country. The International Criminal Police Organization - INTERPOL - has expressed its concern about motion picture and sound recording piracy to all of its member national police forces. (Resolution adopted at INTERPOL, General Assembly, Stockholm, Sweden, September 8, 1977.)
Elvis Presley dies.
A plethora of B-actors set sail with the maiden voyage of ABC's The Love Boat.
Maybe I'm Amazed becomes a top 10 hit in America for Paul McCartney and Wings.
While designing the solid rocket boosters for NASA's new Space Shuttle project, contractor Thoikol discovers low-temperature sensitivity flaws with the rubber O-Rings used to seal in boiling fumes during ignition. Under budget and time pressures, NASA ignores the warnings and deems the problem as an "acceptable risk".
Jay Leno makes the first of many appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
After scoring an 85 in 18 holes of golf on a course near Madrid, Spain, 73 year-old crooner Bing Crosby falls face-first to the pavement approaching the clubhouse, dead from a massive heart attack.
Son of Sam killer David Berkowitz is arrested in Yonkers, NY.
Celebrity hot-spot Studio 54 nightclub opens in NYC.
First fiber optic technology is tested in Chicago.
A fire starting in the lobby of a crowded cinema on Lunar New Year's Day in Xinjiang, China kills 694 people, 597 of whom are children.
The Burt Reynolds vehicle Smokey and the Bandit premieres.
The final installment of the ABC miniseries Roots becomes the most watched television program up to that point, with over half of U.S. households watching the finale.
There are approximately half a million computer systems installed in the US.
The new MLB franchise Toronto Blue Jays play their first game, at Exhibition Stadium.
Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind hits theatres.
A chartered Convair 240 prop plane runs out of fuel while approaching Greenville, SC and crashes into a forest, killing half of the members of Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Approximately 730,000 personal computers are sold world-wide.
17,000 ship builders go on strike at Gda?sk Shipyard, Poland, led by shipyard electrician Lech Wa??sa.
First operational nuclear submarine, USS Nautilus is decommissioned.
ABC premiers their Saturday Night Live wanna-be ensemble comedy show Fridays. Among the castmates, two future collaborators: Michael Ritchie and Larry David (Sienfeld/Curb Your Enthusiasm).
Seagate Technologies develop the first hard drive for the microcomputer, featuring five megabytes of storage.
Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is released to theatres. Author Stephen King compares it to "a big, shiny Cadillac with no engine".
Susan Lucci loses her Daytime Emmy bid as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, for her role as Erica Kane in All My Children. It is the first of 18 such nominations and subsequent losses, although she does finally win the prize in 1999.
Terry Fox dips his artificial right leg into the Atlantic Ocean at St. John's, Newfoundland, starting his Marathon of Hope across Canada in support of cancer research. His run ends just outside of Thunder Bay, Ontario when it is discovered that his bone cancer has metastasized to his lungs.
Apple computer magazine Nibble is started by Mike Harvey.
America asks "who shot J.R.?".
Ted Turner's 24 hour news channel CNN (Cable News Network) begins broadcasting, with 2.4 million subscribers.
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage premieres on PBS, presented by Carl Sagan.
Japan, West German, China, Canada and the Philippines are some of the 64 countries that join the United States in a boycott of the Moscow Summer Olympics, in protest of the USSR's war in Afghanistan.
First issue of Computer Shopper is published.
O Canada is officially proclaimed Canada's national anthem via the National Anthem Act, 100 years after the song is composed by Calixa Lavallee. It replaces the Royal Anthem of Canada, God Save the Queen.
The Empire Strikes Back is the top grossing movie of the year, pulling in $290,158,751 domestically in the US.
Satellite Software International is founded, and releases Word Perfect 1.0.
A locomotive heads down the wrong tunnel in South Africa's Vaal Reefs gold mine, and plunges down Shaft No. 2 and onto the top of a rising elevator bringing 104 men to the surface at the end of their shift. With its cables cut, the two-level elevator plunges over two kilometers to the bottom of the shaft, with the 12-ton train landing on top of it immediately after. There are no survivors.
Asked to add two minutes of direct Canadian content to an episode of SCTV, Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas create hoser history with Bob and Doug Mackenzie, two canuck caricatures who drink beer, fry up back-bacon and ramble on about Canadian culture (or lack of it).
Commodore president Jack Tramiel announces plans at a strategy meeting in London, England to produce a $300 USD personal computer.
Alfred Hitchcock dies.
Macaulay Culkin is born.
Fed up with Gary Kildall's Digital Research delays with porting a version of its CP/M operating system to their line of computers, Seattle Computer Products decides to create an OS themselves. Employee Tim Patterson begins work on it.
Pink Floyd's double album The Wall reaches #1 in the U.S..
Steve Ballmer goes to work for Microsoft.
Colonel Harland Sanders is struck down by leukemia at the age of 90.
400 residents of Love Canal in Niagara Falls, NY, are evacuated in the aftermath of thousands of tons of toxic waste leeching into houses and school built on the land.
Six American diplomats, having barely escaped the taking of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, leave the sanctuary of the Canadian Embassy and board a flight to Switzerland using Canadian passports issued via the first secret session of Canadian Parliament since WWII.
Operation Eagle Claw ends in failure and the death of eight American servicemen, in an aborted attempt to rescue the 52 American hostages held captive in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.
Weather forecaster Willard Scott joins The Today Show on NBC.
Serial killer John Wayne Gacy is tried and convicted for the murder of 33 young men and boys in Chicago, IL. He is executed by lethal injection in 1994.
John Lennon is assassinated while entering his apartment building in New York City.
Speak and Spell is released by Texas Instruments.
New Tonight Show guest host and rising star David Letterman's doomed morning program The David Letterman Show hits the airwaves weekdays on NBC from 10-11:30am. After introducing such concepts as kamikaze street interviews, roaming remotes from inside NBC's New York headquarters and "Stupid Pet Tricks", as well as winning two Emmy awards, the show is cancelled in 19 weeks despite viewers' protests to keep it on the air.
"Non" beats "Oui" in a Quebec provincial referendum on whether to pursue separation from the rest of Canada. The proposal is defeated by a 59.56 to 40.44 percent margin, with a voter turnout rate of 85.61%.
During morning rush hour, the 609ft. Liberian-registered freighter Summit Venture loses its way while negotiating a turn in a narrow channel during a storm and heads through the wrong opening between cement abutments of a bridge section of the Sunshine Skyway, linking St. Petersburg with Bradenton and Sarasota in Florida, taking out 1400 feet of roadway in the collision. Three cars, a pickup truck and a Greyhound bus carrying 23 people plummet 140 feet into the water below. 35 people perish in the accident.
Microsoft signs a deal with IBM to port BASIC over to the new IBM PC. IBM gets a cold shoulder from Killdall and Digital Research about using the CP/M operating system as the PC's Disk Operating System (DOS).
While guesting on Tom Snyder's talk show Tomorrow, Chevy Chase casually jokes about Cary Grant being a homosexual and is promptly sued by Grant for 10 million dollars. The eventual settlement between the two reportedly equals one million.
Tim Berners-Lee begins toying with the idea of HTML, the language of the World Wide Web.
After the sun sets at Ayers Rock, Australia, a cry rings out into the night, "the dingo's got my baby!", shouted by Lindy Chamberlain about her ten-week-old daughter, Azaria. Reported taken from a campsite by a wild Australian dog, Azaria's disappearance leads to the most famous trail in Australian legal history. Lindy and her husband Michael are eventually found guilty of murder, with Lindy sentenced to life in prison. She is eventually exonerated when an English hiker named David Brett falls off Ayers Rock in 1986, dying in the fall. While police investigate the surrounding area of the fall, they find Azaria Chamberlain's white jumper in a nearby Dingo lair. The whole affair forms the basis of the 1988 film A Cry in the Dark, starring Meryl Streep as Lindy Chamberlain.
Commodore releases the VIC-20, selling for $300 USD. One million units are sold.
A Vostok-2M rocket explodes on the pad while being fueled at Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia, killing 50.
Over 78,000 Apple II's are sold.
On a mission from God, Jake and Elwood Blues move from SNL musical skits and onto the big screen in The Blues Brothers, directed by John Landis.
Iraq invades Iran, beginning an eight year war between the two countries.
"Weird Al" Yankovic appears on the Dr. Demento radio show and records parody song Another One Rides the Bus live.
Former actor and California governor Ronald Reagan defeats Jimmy Carter in the U.S. Presidential election.
Televangelist Jim Bakker engages in an extra-marital sexual encounter with Long Island church secretary Jessica Hahn.
The death of Arthur McDuffie, a black man, and the subsequent acquittal of five white police officers charged with beating him to death after a high-speed chase, moves thousands of people to take to the streets of Miami in one of the worst race-riots in U.S. history. 15 people are killed in the riots.
Paul Allen purchases Seattle Computer's Quick and Dirty Operating System (QDOS) for under 100,000 dollars. After some modifications Microsoft renames it MS-DOS and it is integrated into IBM's PC.
Having lost his precarious minority government in a no-confidence Parliamentary motion, Joe Clark loses to Pierre Trudeau in national elections in Canada.
Apple Computers goes public, selling 4.6 million shares at $22 a share.
After freebasing cocaine for several days straight, comedian Richard Pryor douses himself with cognac and sets himself ablaze with a Bic lighter in a deranged suicide bid. He ends up with third-degree burns over most of his upper-body.
The CD-Audio standard is created by Sony and Phillips.
Cabbie Eugene Phillips takes CBS reporter and heir apparent to Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather on a rollicking high-speed journey through the streets of Chicago after Rather refuses to pay a $12.50 cab fare from O'Hare International Airport, due to the cabbie being unable to produce his taxi licence, which had been taken in lieu of bond concerning a recent traffic offense. Phillips finally pulls over and is arrested by police at the scene.
After attending rehearsals for an upcoming tour of the U.S., Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham consumes the equivalent of 40 shots of vodka and is then trundled off to bed, left lying on his side. He is found dead the next morning, his lungs filled with vomit. Led Zeppelin disbands shortly after his death.
The volcano Mount St. Helens blows its top, killing 57 people in Washington State, USA.

Broadway production of Annie closes after 2,377 performances.
Personal computer sales hit $10 billion dollars world-wide, $6 billion in the US alone. The software industry sells $2.4 billion.
ABC television show Lavern and Shirley ends after eight seasons.
Margaret Thatcher is re-elected as PM of Great Britain, and survives a bombing attempt against her life by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) while staying at Brighton's Grand Hotel.
Apple introduces the first GUI driven home computer, LISA, with a development cost of about US$150 million for the hardware and software.
She Blinded Me With Science, by Thomas Dolby, peaks at #5 in U.S. music charts.
Michael Jackson's Thriller stays #1 for 37 weeks.
Lisa, the first GUI based computer from Apple, is released. Priced prohibitively high at around US$10,000, the machine experiences slack sales.
The Last Starfighter, containing the largest amount of computer generated effects ever in a movie, is released to theatres.
Alvin and the Chipmunks debuts on NBC.
Davong Systems introduces its 5 megabyte Winchester Hard Drive for the IBM-PC. It retails for US$2000 .
A fire in the rear lavatory of Air Canada Flight 797, a DC-9 en route to Toronto, Ontario from Houston, Texas, forces an emergency landing in Cincinnati. 23 of the 41 passengers die from smoke inhalation, as well as a flash fire that occurs when the exit doors are opened.
Terms of Endearment sweeps the Academy Awards.
IBM has 40 billion dollars in revenues.
Arpanet decides on TCP/IP as their net control protocol.
Syndicated cartoon show Thundercats debuts.
While addressing the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida, Ronald Reagan first accuses the Soviet Union of being "an evil empire".
Stephen King books Christine, Pet Semetary and Thinner are published. The Talisman, written by King and Peter Straub, is also released.
One of the early microcomputer pioneers, Osborne Computer Corp, goes under.
Terry Pratchett's first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic, is published in the U.K..
Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters, becoming the highest-grossing comedy film of the 1980's.
The America's Cup sailing regatta trophy goes to its first non-U.S. winner, the Royal Perth Yacht Club's Australia II.
The personal computer is selected as Time magazine's Man (machine) of the Year.
Korean Air Lines Flight 007, a Boeing 747 commercial jet, is shot down by a Soviet Su-15 interceptor jet, after straying into Soviet airspace en route to Seoul from NYC via Anchorage. All 269 passengers and crew on board the aircraft are killed.
The 12 year run of CBS Saturday morning cartoon show Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids comes to a close.
The one pound coin is introduced in Britain.
Pink Floyd's The Final Cut is released. It will be the last Floyd album with Roger Waters, signifying the creative death of the band.
Microsoft demonstrates its new product Interface Manager, later to be renamed Windows. Referred to now as the "Smoke and Mirrors Demo", it is later revealed that the windows appearing to be running different programs were simply a graphical kludge.
Diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease, Microsoft Executive Vice President Paul Allen leaves this post but remains on the board of directors.
Vanessa Williams becomes the first African American to win the Miss America beauty pageant. She is forced to relinquish the title when nude photos of her surface in Penthouse magazine.
Apple releases the Macintosh to dealers, priced at US$2,495. The introduction is heralded by the now-infamous $US1.5 million budgeted "1984" TV ad directed by Ridley Scott, broadcast during the Super Bowl.
Amiga Corporation demonstrates their prototype pre-emptive multitasking computer, nicknamed Lorraine. Soon after, Commodore buys the company for $40 million.
Tokyo Disneyland becomes the first Disney park built outside the United States.
America launches "Operation Urgent Fury" as 1,200 U.S. combat troops assault the Caribbean island of Grenada, following a bloody coup that had installed a Marxist, pro-Cuban regime there headed by former Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard. 1000 American medical students residing on the island, taking advantage of relaxed medical certification standards, provides additional impetus for the attack. After several days of fighting with the invasion force increasing to over 7,000, island defenders flee into the mountains as America takes control and installs a pro-U.S. government.
"G.I. Joe is the code-name for America's daring, highly-trained special missions force. It's purpose, to defend human freedom against C.O.B.R.A., a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world!"
Commodore sells its 1 millionth VIC-20 computer.
"Return of the Jedi" tops the box office, taking in $309,125,409.
Stern magazine of West Germany publishes extracts of the Hitler Diaries, having paid 10 million German marks for the privilege. They are later determined to be blatant forgeries.
The $200 USD Microsoft Mouse is introduced, along with their word processing package Microsoft Word.
2000 people die in Union Carbide leak in Bophal India.
Founder Steve Jobs is muscled out of Apple as John Scully, previously head of Pepsi, moves in as CEO.
After 11 years and 251 episodes, the final episode of M.A.S.H. airs. This is the second most-watched TV event up to that point, beaten only by the first moon landing.
78 people perish when fire breaks out in a basement discotheque in Madrid, Spain.
Ham the Chimp, the first U.S. 'AstroChimp' sent into space in 1961, is buried in Alamogordo, New Mexico at the age of 27. He followed two other simians of lesser species launched in 1958. Strangely, Ham's burial occurs the same year and in the same town as Atari's mass burial of surplus equipment.
700,000 AT&T employees strike for 22 days.
The 3.5 inch floppy disk is introduced by Sony Electronics.
The seventh space shuttle mission sends Sally Ride into orbit on the Challenger as the first American woman into space.
241 U.S. Military personnel are killed when a truck containing a 12,000 lb. bomb smashes its way through security sentries and into the United States Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. It is part of a simultaneous suicide bombing attack carried out by Muslim extremist group Islamic Jihad against U.S. and French compounds in Beirut which also results in the death of 48 French troops.
The first cordless phone is introduced, by British Telecom, at £175.
10 year-old Samantha Smith of Maine writes a letter to newly appointed Soviet leader Yuri Andropov, pleading for peace between the two countries. To her sup rise, she receives a response from Andropov with an invitation to tour the USSR as his guest. She and her parents embark on a two week tour of the country.
The movie Flashdance creates a craze in ripped sweatshirts.
In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... The A-Team.
Soviet Air Defense Forces Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov correctly interprets an incoming ICBM launch from the U.S. as a computer glitch and refuses to return fire, saving the world from nuclear war.
Paul Simon and Carrie Fisher wed.
A judge orders the breakup of American telco monolith AT&T, spawning seven new independent "Baby Bells", along with phone deregulation and about a million phone sex and psychic hotlines.
Klaus Barbie, former Gestapo head of Lyon, France and also known as the Butcher of Lyon, is arrested in Bolivia and extradited to France to face a war crimes trial.
Richard Branson forms Virgin Atlantic Airways.
Spacelab is launched into orbit by space shuttle Columbia.
The AIDS virus is officially identified.
While waiting atop a Soyuz-U rocket as part of the Soyuz T-10-1 space mission, Russian Cosmonauts Vladimir Titov and Gennady Strekalov are launched one kilometer into the air as the launch escape system activates, due to a fuel spill and subsequent fire in the launch vehicle which causes it to explode on the pad.
The doomed PCjr is released by IBM.
Carl Sagan publishes The Nuclear Winter, exposing the catastrophic environmental effects of even a small-scale nuclear war.
Alice Walker's The Color Purple is published, and wins the Pulitzer Prize.
Monty Python releases Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.
Bernhard Goetz shoots four black youths on a NYC subway car after being accosted for money.
A rough, working version of Windows is previewed for IBM, who show absolutely no interest in the product.
The Gimli Glider is born as Air Canada Flight 143 runs out of fuel at 41,000 feet, only half-way to its intended destination of Edmonton, Alberta from Ottawa, Ontario. Left with no engine power to the hydraulic systems and minimal, battery powered flight instruments, Captain Robert Pearson must 'deadstick' the crippled Boeing 767 jet into Gimli Industrial Park Airport in Manitoba. No one on board is seriously injured.
Paperback version of William Gibson's novel Neuromancer is released, heralding the cyberpunk SF genre.
David Bowie's Let's Dance music single hits #1.
The early 80's resurrection of 3-D movies is mercifully brought to an end, reaching its apex with Amityville 3-D and Jaws 3-D. In a strange twist of fate, one of the actors in the former, Meg Ryan, and the star of the latter, Dennis Quaid, eventually marry on Valentine's day 1991.
Novell introduces Netware.
100 million people tune in to the ABC TV movie The Day After, presenting a realistic portrayal of nuclear war.