Ryan's Journal

"My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?" — David Mitchell

The Holliday Timeline, Part 1

Posted from Culver City, California at 12:01 am, October 30th, 2013

The world has changed a lot since I was born – in November 1975 no American craft had visited Mars, Mount St Helens was still intact, communism was very much a thing, no one knew what it meant to “use the Force”, and Michael Jordan was a twelve year old. While reading through Wikipedia’s yearly summaries of important events the following stood out – part two will follow at some point when there is time to review the next eighteen years.

The 1970s

The 1980s

  • May 18, 1980 – Mount St. Helens erupts.
  • April 12, 1981 – The first shuttle, Space Shuttle Columbia launches on its first orbital flight.
  • November 18, 1981 – IBM introduces the PC computer.
  • October 1, 1982 – Epcot Center opens in Orlando.
  • November 30, 1982 – Michael Jackson’s Thriller album is released.
  • January 3, 1983 – Kīlauea volcano begins erupting in Hawaii; the eruption continues today.
  • October 26, 1984 – Michael Jordan plays his first NBA regular season game, scoring 16 points against Washington.
  • March 1, 1985 – Mikhail Gorbachev becomes Secretary General of the Soviet Communist Party.
  • May 16, 1985 – The ozone hole is discovered by British scientists in Antarctica.
  • November 18, 1985 – Calvin and Hobbes debuts in 35 newspapers.
  • March 14, 1986 – Microsoft holds its initial public offering. By July 2010 the stock had risen to 288 times its IPO price.
  • April 26, 1986 – The Chernoybl nuclear reactor explodes, resulting in the worst nuclear power plant disaster of the twentieth century.
  • November 22, 1986 – Mike Tyson beats Trevor Berbick to become heavyweight champion.
  • March 24, 1989 – The Exxon Valdez runs aground in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, spilling 240,000 barrels of oil.
  • June 4, 1989 – The Tiananmen Square square protests end with thousands of casualties as the Chinese military clears the square after six weeks of occupation by students.
  • November 9, 1989 – Fall of the Berlin Wall.

The 1990s

  • April 24, 1990 – The Hubble Space Telescope is launched aboard Space Shuttle Discovery. Shortly after launch the telescope’s mirror is determined to be flawed, and it will not be fixed until a servicing mission in 1993.
  • November 13, 1990 – The first known web page is written.
  • January 16, 1991 – Operation Desert Storm begins with air strikes and eventually involves over 500,000 US troops.
  • December 4, 1991 – Pan American World Airways ceases operations after 64 years.
  • December 26, 1991 – The Soviet Union is formally dissolved by the Supreme Soviet.
  • May 22, 1992 – Johnny Carson’s final appearance as host of the Tonight Show.
  • October 31, 1992 – Pope John Paul II issues an apology, and lifts the edict of the Inquisition against Galileo Galilei.
  • June 12, 1994 – Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman are murdered outside the Simpson home in Los Angeles, California.
  • March 1, 1995 – Yahoo is founded.
  • September 4, 1995 – eBay is founded.
  • December 31, 1995 – The final Calvin and Hobbes comic strip is published.

2 responses to “The Holliday Timeline, Part 1”

  1. April 26, 1986 – The Chernoybl nuclear reactor explodes, resulting in the worst nuclear disaster of the twentieth century.

    Weren’t the atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima way worse?

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