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The Failed Rescue of American Hostages in Iran
On April 24, 1980, in a stretch of barren, salt desert 200 miles southeast of Tehran, one of eight American military helicopters whose secret mission to rescue 52 American hostages held in Tehran since the previous November had just been aborted, slammed into a fuel transport, igniting both planes. Eight servicemen were killed. President Carter, who’d ordered the rescue under pressure from hawks, was humiliated and his reelection doomed -
Pac-Man video game was released in October of the same year it was released in the United States.
The yellow, pie-shaped Pac-Man character, who travels around a maze trying to eat dots and avoid four mean ghosts, quickly became an icon of the 1980s. To this day, Pac-Man remains one of the most popular video games in history. -
John Lennon Assassinated
evening of December 8, 1980, was as surreal as it was horrifying. John Lennon, probably the world's most famous rock star, lay semiconscious, hemorrhaging from four flat-tipped bullets blasted into his back. -
Pan Am Flight 103 Is Bombed Over Lockerbie
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 -
The Fall of the Berlin Wall
In the evening of November 9, 1989, East German government official Günter Schabowski stated during a press conference that travel through the border to the West was open. People who heard the broadcast were shocked. They went to the border to see if it was true. The border guards, who had no explicit instructions as to what to do, let them through. As the news spread on both sides of the Wall, huge numbers of people flocked to the Berlin Wall and celebrated. -
Otzi the Iceman
two German tourists were hiking in the Otzal Alps near the Italian-Austrian border when they discovered Europe's oldest known mummy sticking out of the ice. Otzi, as the Iceman is now known, had been naturally mummified by the ice and kept in amazing condition for approximately 5,300 years. Research on Otzi's preserved body and the various artifacts found with it continues to reveal much about the life of Copper Age Europeans. -
Channel Tunnel Opens, Connecting Britain and France
the Channel Tunnel, also known as the Chunnel, officially opened. The Channel Tunnel is a set of three 31.25-mile long tunnels that connect the island of Great Britain to the mainland of France. The Channel Tunnel, which took six years and over $15 billion to construct, is considered one of the greatest feats of engineering of the 20th century -
Sarin Gas Attack in Tokyo Subway
members of the Aum Shinrikyo religious cult orchestrated a coordinated sarin gas attack on subway trains in Tokyo, Japan. The sarin gas killed a dozen people, injured thousands more, and is still considered the worst terrorist attack in Japan. -
Oklahoma City Bombing
Timothy McVeigh drove a truck containing a home-made bomb up to the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. When the bomb exploded at 9:02 a.m., the building was decimated and 168 people were left dead. -
Princess Diana Dies in Car Crash
Diana, Princess of Wales died after being involved in a car accident. Diana had been riding in the Mercedes-Benz with her boyfriend (Dodi Al Fayed), bodyguard (Trevor Rees-Jones), and chauffer (Henri Paul) when the car crashed into a pillar of the tunnel under the Pont de l'Alma bridge in Paris while fleeing from paparazzi.
