The Holliday Timeline, Part 1

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

• November 10, 1975 – The Edmund Fitzgerald sinks on Lake Superior.
• July 20, 1976 – Viking 1 becomes the first American craft to land on Mars.
• May 25, 1977 – Star Wars opens in theaters.
• August 16, 1977 – Elvis Presley dies.
• September 7, 1979 – ESPN is launched.
• November 4, 1979 – The Iran hostage crisis begins.

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.