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Period: to
80s timespan
Year by year historic events -
John Lennon Assassinated
John Lennon is one of the most influential people of all time who was a member of The Beatles. Lennon was coming home from an autograph signing with his wife, Yoko Ono and as he was entering the carriageway of his apartment. Mark David Chapman was standing behind the wall. As Lennon walked past him, Chapman took five steps, took his gun out, aimed it at Lennon and then shot him five times. When Lennon died, the world was in shock. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=By_IGRhIhn4 -
A new plague is found: AIDS
AIDS /HIV became one of the world's most dangerous diseases. The disease was believed to have originated in Africa, but the disease spread to Europe and the United States. By the time it reached the USA , doctors kept getting reports of gay men and IV drug users whose immune systems were being damaged They decided to call the disease AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome). A couple years later, HIV was discovered. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LKJ5ZzzL0w -
The movie ET was released
ET (the Extra Terrestrial) by Steven Spielberg was named one of the greatest science fiction movies ever made. Spielberg came up with the idea of ET when his parents divorced in 1960. The movie is shot low to the ground in order to be viewed from a child’s perspective. It is about an alien who landed on Earth and befriended a local boy. The boy and his family hide ET from their mom and the US government and try to help him get home. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7-2PB4jj2o -
President Reagan announces the Star Wars Missile Defense Program
On March 23, 1983, President Reagan proposed the creation of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), an ambitious project that would construct a space-based anti-missile system. This program was immediately called "Star Wars." The SDI was intended to defend the United States from attack from Soviet ICBMs by intercepting the missiles at various phases of their flight. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hGLBA65tZg -
a huge poison gas leak in Bhopal, India
On the night of December 2, 1984, an accident at the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, released at least 30 tons of a highly toxic gas called methyl isocyanate, as well as a number of other poisonous gases. The pesticide plant was surrounded by poor, shanty towns. More than 600,000 people were exposed to the deadly gas cloud. The gases stayed low to the ground, causing victims throats and eyes to burn, nausea, and many deaths. -
Back to the Future is released
Back To The Future was another great science fiction movie directed by Robert Zemeckis. The idea for making the film came when Bob Gale was thinking if he would befriend his father if they attended school together. The film is about a teenager who meets up with a scientist who created a time machine out of the 1985 delorean which sends Marty back to 1955, where he meets his parents. The movie made up to $389 million worldwide, the most in 1985. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LnShmQ_hLc -
he Space Shuttle Challenger explodes
In Cape Canaveral on 1/28/86 the space shuttle was about to launch. The engineers were warned that the O-rings that sealed the joints of the shuttle’s rocket boosters would be vulnerable to failure at low temperatures. At 11:39 AM the Challenger took off. 73 seconds later it had combusted and killed everyone on board including Christa Mcauliffe, a schoolteacher who was going to teach students about space. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYX35Z_L-dw -
DNA is used to convict criminals
Florida rapist Tommie Lee Andrews became the first person in the U.S. to be convicted as a result of DNA evidence; he was sentenced to 22 years behind bars. The next year, a Virginia killer dubbed the "South Side Strangler" was sentenced to death after DNA linked him to several rapes and murders. Since then DNA has become a great tool for finding criminals. Forensic testing has emerged as the most reliable physical evidence at a crime scene. -
flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie
Pan Am Flight 103 exploded 31,000 feet over Lockerbie, Scotland, 38 minutes after takeoff from London. Two hundred fifty-nine people on board the New York-bound Boeing 747 were killed, along with 11 people on the ground. Afterward, United States and British investigators found fragments of a circuit board and a timer, and ruled that a bomb, not mechanical failure, caused the explosion. -
The Berlin Wall falls in Germany
The Berlin wall was a barrier that divided East and West Germany in Berlin from 1961 to 1989. They built the wall to stop communism from spreading. About 5,000 people attempted to climb the wall. They crossed the wall by digging holes underneath the wall and they flew by hot air balloon. About 100 people died trying to escape. Crowds of East Germans crossed and climbed onto the wall, joined by West Germans on the other side in a celebratory atmosphere.
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