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The Summer Olympics
The 1980 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXVII Olympiad and commonly known as Moscow 1980, were an international multi-sport event held from 19 July to 3 August 1980 in Moscow, Soviet Union, in present-day Russia. -
The 1980 Presidential Election
The 1980 United States presidential election was the 49th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 4, 1980. Republican nominee Ronald Reagan defeated incumbent Democratic president Jimmy Carter in a landslide victory. -
The AIDS Epidemic
HIV/AIDS, or Human Immunodeficiency Virus, is considered by some authors a global pandemic. However, the WHO currently uses the term 'global epidemic' to describe HIV. As of 2018, approximately 37.9 million people are infected with HIV globally. There were about 770,000 deaths from AIDS in 2018. -
The First American Woman in Space
The first woman in space was Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, who flew on Vostok 6 on June 16, 1963. The first American woman in space, Sally Ride, flew aboard the Space Shuttle STS-7 in June of 1983. -
The First Macintosh Computer Created
The Macintosh 128K, which debuted in the legendary “1984” commercial that aired during Super Bowl XVII, was Apple's very first Macintosh computer. Priced at $2,500, it featured a nine-inch black-and-white screen, two serial ports and a 3.5-inch floppy disc slot. -
The Hubble Space Telescope
The Hubble Space Telescope is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most versatile, renowned both as a vital research tool and as a public relations boon for astronomy. -
The Cold War Ends
he Cold War was a period of ideological and geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union, and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc, after World War II. -
The Gulf War
The Gulf War was a war waged by coalition forces from 35 nations led by the United States against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait arising from oil pricing and production disputes. -
The USSR is Dismembered
The collapse of the Soviet Union started in the late 1980s and was complete when the country broke up into 15 independent states on December 25, 1991. This signaled the end of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States. Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary of the Soviet Union in 1985. -
NAFTA is Developed
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is a treaty entered into by the United States, Canada, and Mexico; it went into effect on January 1, 1994. (Free trade had existed between the U.S. and Canada since 1989; NAFTA broadened that arrangement.)