1983: Information and Much More from Answers.com
- ️Mon Feb 26 2085
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The Soviet Union is "the focus of evil in the modern world," President Reagan tells an evangelical group at Orlando, Fla., March 8. Former Soviet president Nikolai Podgorny has died of cancer at Kiev January 11 at age 79. Reagan calls the USSR "an evil empire" and proposes a "Strategic Defense Initiative" (SDI) to protect America and her allies with a high-tech shield against nuclear missiles; his March 23 speech envisions flocks of satellites that will shoot down incoming missiles with lasers, and critics will charge that he borrowed the idea either from his role as Secret Service Agent Brass Bancroft in the 1940 film Murder in the Air, where he stopped enemy planes by paralyzing their electrical circuits, or from the 1966 film Torn Curtain, in which actor Paul Newman said, "We will produce a defensive weapon that will make all nuclear weapons obsolete, and thereby abolish the terror of nuclear warfare." Projected costs of what Sen. Kennedy calls a "Star Wars" program are staggering, and since it will have to be virtually 100 percent effective, few scientists believe it is feasible at any cost, but military contractors see the program as a potential bonanza and will make substantial campaign contributions to congressmen of both parties in their zeal to encourage spending on the effort. Some moderate members of Reagan's cabinet want to use SDI as a bargaining chip for Soviet strategic weapons, Moscow views SDI as a move to escalate the arms war into outer space. Hard-liners such as Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and his aide Richard Perle see SDI as a means to block the offensive arms reduction required under the 1972 ABM treaty; tensions over the phantom missile shield will continue for decades.
Europeans turn out by the thousands April 1 in a "Green" movement to protest the presence of U.S. nuclear weapons on the Continent. Green Party leader Petra Kelly, now 36, is among 17 Green members elected to the West German Bundestag (parliament).
Nicholas Meyer's film The Day After with Jason Robards Jr. airs on U.S. television November 20, giving 100 million Americans a chilling view of the fictional after-effects of a nuclear bombing of Kansas City. The United States proceeds in November nevertheless to deploy Pershing II intercontinental ballistic missiles in Britain and Europe pursuant to President Reagan's plan to outspend the Soviet Union on armaments as a way to force the Russians to realize that they lack the means to continue the arms race. Caspar Weinberger and Richard Perle have persuaded Reagan that last year's "walk in the woods" formula favored the Soviets, since slow-flying Tomahawk missiles would be no match for Moscow's speedy SS-20s. Soviet representatives walk out of intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) talks, leaving chief negotiator Paul H. Nitze without a negotiating partner; now 76, he will move to the State Department in the fall of next year and become special arms-control adviser to Secretary of State George P. Shultz (see 1986).
Italian Socialist Party leader Bettino Craxi forces an early election in February and becomes prime minister August 4 at age 49, having helped to bring down three governments (see 1976). He will preside over an economic boom and retain power until he resigns in March 1987 after the longest continuous period in office of any postwar Italian prime minister (see commerce, 1984).
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party wins a landslide victory at the polls June 9, assuring it of at least 5 more years in power. Labour leader Denis Healey, 65, says the election has "put the people at the mercy of the most reactionary, right-wing, extremist government in British history."
Former French Résistance leader Gen. Georges Bidault dies of a stroke at Cambo January 26 at age 83; former Italian king Umberto II of cancer at Geneva March 18 at age 78 (he ruled for just 26 days in 1946 and has lived since then in Portugal); former king of the Belgians Leopold III dies of a heart attack at Brussels September 25 at age 81.
Polish authorities formally lift martial law restrictions July 21 after 19 months, but many of the law's regulations have been written into the nation's legal code (see 1982). "Any attempts at anti-socialist activities will be muzzled no less decisively than before," says Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski. Lech Walesa is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in December but is not permitted to leave the country (his wife, Danuta, travels to Oslo to accept it in his place).
Terrorists in Lebanon blow up the U.S. Embassy at Beirut April 18, killing 63 people (see 1982). Two U.S. marines are killed and 13 wounded August 29 when mortar shells and rockets land in an airport compound during clashes between Lebanese Army and Shiite Muslim and Druse rockets. Israeli defense minister Ariel Sharon resigns but will remain a member of the cabinet until 1992; Israeli forces withdraw from Lebanon's central mountains September 4 as rival Christian and Druse militia intensify their battles.
Israel's ailing prime minister Menachem Begin resigns September 15 and is succeeded as leader of the Herut Party by Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, 67, who, like Begin, was born in Poland and fought in the underground against Palestine's British authorities in the 1930s and '40s.
U.S. Marines in Lebanon come under increasing attack in September and October. A terrorist drives a truck packed with explosives into a building full of sleeping marines and sailors October 23 while another bomb-laden truck slams into a French paratroop barracks; the U.S. death toll is 241, the French toll 58. A suicide truck bomber blows up an Israeli military installation November 4, killing 60, including 28 Israelis.
Turkey's prime minister Turgut Ozal, 56, forms the Motherland Party, whose candidates win in the general elections; Ozal heads a new civilian government and will serve as president until his death in 1993.
Australia's Labor Party ousts Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser's Liberal Party in the general election March 5, and a new government takes office headed by Robert James Lee "Bob" Hawke, 53, who has been elected head of his party in February and will hold office until December 1991, overseeing the final constitutional separation of Australia from Britain. Former politician Francis M. Forde has died at Brisbane January 28 at age 92.
Former Thai prime minister Pridi Phanomyong dies at Paris May 2 at age 82, having lived abroad since late 1947.
Tamil Tiger separatists in Sri Lanka kill 13 soldiers at a northern city in July and Sinhalese mobs at Colombo wreak vengeance: they attack Tamils July 23, massacre at least 600, and destroy property in the worst outbreak of violence since the island became a republic in 1972. The incident triggers a civil war that will continue for years (see 1987).
Former Philippine senator Benigno S. Aquino Jr., 50, returns from exile August 21 and is shot dead upon his arrival at Manila by an unknown gunman who is himself immediately shot dead. The last national leader still held in detention in 1980, Aquino was permitted to leave the country that year for open-heart surgery in the United States. He formed an anti-Marcos coalition in January 1982 and worked from abroad to restore democracy to the Philippines. Despite warnings that ailing President Marcos, his wife, Imelda, or their political allies (or opponents) would kill him if he returned, Aquino had decided it was time to organize opposition to Marcos at home (see 1986).
A Korean Air Lines Boeing 747 carrying 269 passengers and crew bound from New York to Seoul violates Soviet air space near Sakhalin Island in the North Pacific and is shot down at 3:30 in the morning of September 1 by an air-to-air missile fired from a Soviet fighter jet. All aboard are killed. Sen. Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson holds a news conference at his native Everett, Wash., deploring the incident but dies of a burst blood vessel there September 1 at age 71, having served in Congress nearly 43 years. Moscow makes no apology, insists the commercial jetliner was on a U.S. spy mission, and criticizes the United States for casting aspersions on the "peace-loving" Soviets. Washington reveals that a U.S. reconnaissance plane was in the vicinity earlier. U.S.-Japanese efforts to recover the 747's "black box" recording all its moves are unsuccessful. Arms-control talks resume at Geneva despite growing tensions between the world's two superpowers.
A Tokyo district court convicts former Japanese prime minister Kakuei Tanaka October 12 of having accepted a $2.2 million bribe from Lockheed Corp. to use his influence to persuade All Nippon Airways to use Lockheed Tristar jets (see 1976). Fined the amount of the bribe and sentenced to 4 years in prison, Tanaka files an appeal; opposition parties threaten to boycott Diet proceedings unless he resigns his seat.
Beijing begins in October to purge China's Communist Party of left-wing extremists who remain from the Mao Zedong era. The move is an effort to ensure that party members adhere to the more pragmatic policies of Deng Xiaoping.
A time-bomb planted by North Korean terrorists explodes October 9 at the Martyrs' Mausoleum in Rangoon, killing 19 and wounding 49. The dead include 16 South Koreans, among them four cabinet ministers and the ambassador to Burma. South Korea's president Chun Doo Hwan is en route to the mausoleum for a wreath-laying ceremony when the bomb goes off and is saved by a hitch in his schedule that has delayed him. The mausoleum commemorates the assassination July 19, 1947, of seven members of Burma's Executive Council, including its 33-year-old head U Aung San during the transition between internal autonomy and full Burmese independence from Britain. Burmese Brig. Gen. Tin Oo is sentenced to life imprisonment November 14, having been stripped of all official positions in May, charged with misuse of public funds and property, and convicted. Once considered a likely successor to former president Ne Win, he is a former head of the National Intelligence Bureau and is blamed by some for the security lapses that have permitted the October 9 explosion at Rangoon.
Surinam expels two U.S. diplomats January 3 for "destabilizing activities" and then recalls her ambassador to the Netherlands, asking him to form a new government (see 1982), but an Organization of American States (OAS) commission issues a report October 12 charging Surinam's miitary government with "serious violations of important human rights." The government announces November 29 that it has prevented another coup attempt and arrested 10 alleged conspirators for passing out leaflets, bauxite workers go on strike in December to protest military rule, and bauxite exports account for some 80 percent of Surinam's foreign-exchange earnings (see 1984).
Former Mexican president Miguel Alemán dies at Mexico City May 14 at age 80.
Chilean police shoot two people dead and arrest as many as 350 May 11, and the military helps them seize an estimated 1,000 May 14 as the country prepares to mark the 10th anniversary of President Augusto Pinochet's 1973 coup. Violence erupts at Santiago and other major cities beginning September 8, crowds demand Pinochet's resignation and a return to civilian rule, but the army remains in its barracks, there is no curfew, and although close to a dozen people are killed and hundreds are wounded or arrested, the protest against Pinochet's repressive rule limits itself for the most part to passive resistance, with bonfires lit on street corners while residents bang pots and pans to indicate their dissatisfaction.
Grenada has a coup d'état October 12 as Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard, a Marxist hardliner, overthrows Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, now 39. When his supporters engineer a prison break a week later, Bishop is assassinated along with most of his cabinet. Growing ties between the little Caribbean island (population: 110,000) and Havana have worried Washington, as has construction of a 10,000-foot runway that could be used as a way-station for shipping Soviet and Cuban arms to Central America. U.S. Marines and Army Rangers land on the island October 25 (2 days after the disaster to marines in Beirut) with 300 military personnel from Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Jamaica, St. Kitts-Nevis, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent supporting the Americans, who soon number more than 3,000 and control the island. President Reagan justifies the action on grounds that political thugs had taken over Grenada, that U.S. medical students on the island were in danger, that Cuba was bent on making Grenada a new bastion for communism in the Caribbean and Central America (where the United States has been supporting anti-Sandanista forces in Nicaragua). Longtime U.S. friends condemn the action, suggesting that it was made to distract attention from the losses suffered in Lebanon.
Argentina returns to civilian rule in December after an 8-year military regime and disastrous war with Britain have plunged the nation into deep financial straits. Public pressure has forced the discredited military to hold free elections, and Raul (Ricardo) Alfonsín (Foulkes), 56, has won election to the presidency as the leader of the moderate Radical Party (Unión Civica Radical); he will serve until 1989, prosecuting members of the armed forces for human rights abuses (but pardoning most convicted officers after some armed revolts), negotiating loans from the International Monetary Fund, and trying to deal with the nation's high inflation, heavy national debt, and labor disputes.
Gen. Sir Alan G. Cunningham (ret.) dies at Royal Tunbridge Wells January 30 at age 95, having scored victories in World War II that enabled Ethiopia's late emperor Haile Selassie to regain power.
Ousted Zimbabwe leader Joshua Nkomo flees to Botswana and then to London, saying that troops sent by Robert Mugabe raided his home and killed his driver in an assassination attempt (see 1982).
Sudan's Islamic government at Khartoum imposes Islamic rule on the entire nation, including non-Muslim areas such as those in the south, where most people are either Christian or cling to traditional animist beliefs (see 1971). Rebellious Dinka and Nuer tribesmen in the south form the Sudanese Liberation Army and begin to carry AK-47s instead of the spears that they have used heretofore (see 1985).
Former Libyan king Idris I dies at Cairo May 25 at age 93; former South African president Balthazar J. Vorster at Cape Town September 10 at age 67.
Nigeria's 5-year-old democratic experiment ends December 31 in a military coup. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, 41, deposes President Alhaji Shehu Shagan, now 58, and says his armed forces have saved the nation from "total collapse."
The Greek Parliament votes unanimously January 29 to adopt a law intending to give wives an equal voice to their husbands in all matters of family life, but Greece continues to have a male-dominated society in which wives cannot work outside the home without their husbands' permissions and daughters cannot obtain passports without their fathers' permission.
A congressional committee reports February 24 that the World War II imprisonment of Japanese-Americans was a "grave injustice" prompted by "racial prejudice, war hysteria, and failure of political leadership" (see 1942; 1989).
February riots protesting immigration of Muslim refugees from Bangladesh leave 600 dead in India's state of Assam. Student agitators try to stop state elections.
Bolivia agrees in February to extradite Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie to stand trial in France (see 1951). Now 69, Barbie was twice sentenced to death by a postwar French military tribunal, the U.S. government has apologized to the French for its part in helping him escape justice, the Bolivian government has resisted extraditing him since his discovery in 1972, a Lyons court will convict him of "crimes against humanity" in 1987 and sentence him to life imprisonment, but he will remain unrepentant.
The U.S. Civil Rights Commission criticizes the Reagan administration June 15 for failing to appoint more women and members of minorities to high-level positions in the federal government. Members of the commission serve at the president's pleasure, and President Reagan fires all four members, including Prof. Mary Frances Berry, 45, who was appointed by President Carter in 1980 and strongly supports an active federal-government role in civil-rights enforcement. Berry sues in Federal District Court, wins her case, and is reinstated after a law signed by Reagan November 30 reconstitutes the commission as an independent agency jointly administered by the president and Congress. Its eight members need not be confirmed by the Senate and may be removed only for neglect of duty or malfeasance.
The National Women's Political Caucus opens a meeting at San Antonio July 10 with 400 delegates. Many wear buttons bearing such messages as, "Jane Wyman was right" (a reference to President Reagan's first wife, who divorced him), "I'm a Republican woman and I want my party back," and, "We haven't come that far, and don't call me baby."
Legislation signed by President Reagan November 2 makes the third Monday in January a national holiday beginning in 1986 to celebrate Martin Luther King's birthday (see 1968). Reagan had originally opposed the holiday, financial markets and most business firms will ignore it.
Congress votes November 15 to defeat a bill that would revive the Equal Rights Amendment.
The return of Argentina to civilian rule in December ends the nightmare period of "disappearances" that began in March 1976 (see 1981). A commission will establish that 11,000 people have been kidnapped and killed, another 10,000 kidnapped and detained for long periods of time. The Center for Legal and Social Studies will find mass graves containing the remains of some of "the disappeared" (see 1995).
Los Angeles-born physicist Sally (Kristin) Ride, 32, lands in the space shuttle Challenger at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., June 24 after a 6-day mission—the first American woman to go into space.
Chile emerges from a serious economic crisis in which the unemployment rate has exceeded 20 percent and the inflation rate 30 percent; the country begins a boom that will continue for 16 years without a single major downturn, but President Pinochet has lost much of his political support even from right-wing elements.
Social Security legislation signed by President Reagan April 20 delays the 1983 cost-of-living increase for 6 months, boosts payroll deductions beginning in 1984, gradually raises the minimum retirement age to 67 by 2027, requires that new federal employees join the system, and mandates that some benefits of higher-income retirees be subject to federal incomes taxes. The Reagan administration has said the system was 3 months away from being unable to pay full benefits, a bipartisan presidential commission headed by New York economist Alan Greenspan, now 57, began studying the issue in February of last year, Senate Majority Leader Robert J. (Joseph) "Bob" Dole (R. Kans.) and Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D. N.Y.) have agreed to a $168 billion package that boosts payroll deductions and raises the cap on eligible income to $35,700, and Rep. Barber B. Conable, Jr., (R. N.Y.) has told the House, "This is not a work of art, but it's an artful work." The reforms are designed to assure the system's solvency for the next 75 years, but despite all the talk about lower income taxes, payroll taxes will rise in 1990 to 15.30 percent (7.65 percent from both employer and employee) and remain at that level at least through 2005, the maximum eligible income will rise each year (it will reach $90,000 in 2005), and salaried employees will in many cases be paying slightly more in total federal income taxes than they did before taxes were "reduced" (see politics [presidential election], 2000).
Washington State's Public Power Supply System (WPPS) admits in court July 22 that it cannot pay $2.25 billion owed on municipal bonds issued for two canceled nuclear plants. It is the largest governmental bond default in U.S. history.
Los Angeles-born Drexel Burnham Lambert executive Michael R. Milken, 37, suggests in November that high-yield "junk" bonds be used to facilitate both friendly and hostile takeovers, and for buy-outs of companies "going private" (buying up publicly-owned stock). Assets of a target company are pledged to repay the principle of the junk bonds, which yield 13 to 30 percent and are bought by many insurance and savings & loan companies.
Economic recovery in the United States sends Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average to new heights. Inflation remains low, unemployment begins to drop, but the national debt continues to mount and the Census Bureau reports that 35.3 million Americans live in poverty—the highest rate in 19 years. But the Dow closes the year at 1258.64, up from 1046.55 at the end of 1982.
Detroit's J. L. Hudson department store closes in January after 102 years of operation.
The Gap acquires the Banana Republic chain of casual-clothing stores (see 1969). It will operate them under their original name along with Gap stores.
Costco Inc. is founded under that name at Seattle, where a membership warehouse retailer starts up on the model pioneered by The Price Co. at San Diego in 1976 (see merger, 1993).
General Motors and Toyota Motors sign an agreement February 17 to produce a subcompact car on a joint basis in a GM plant at Fremont, Calif. Toyota CEO Eiji Toyoda, now 69, has decided that the cheapest way for his company to produce cars in America is through a joint venture and Toyota will invest $150 million while GM provides the obsolete plant valued at $130 million and puts up another $20 million. The NUMMI company created under terms of the joint venture transforms the plant into one of the most modern automobile factories in North America, partly by adopting the Toyota system (borrowed from Ford Motor Company) of implementing employee suggestions.
Ford Motor Company begins using the slogan, "Have You Driven a Ford Lately?"
Chrysler Corp.'s Lee A. Iacocca drives his company's first mini-van off the assembly line at Windsor, Ontario, November 2. The Plymouth Voyager is lower and shorter than a regular van, its front-wheel drive permits it to have a flat floor, its single sliding door has a childproof handle for safety, and although it is underpowered (its four-cylinder engine is more appropriate to a compact car and will be superseded in 1987 by a V-6), it challenges Ford's dominance of the station-wagon market, revives Chrysler's flagging fortunes, and will virtually supplant the station wagon as family transportation in America.
American Airlines announces March 14 that it will set fares for its flights according to distance in order to "reduce confusion and make airline ticket prices more equitable." The new pricing structure will reduce basic fares to 720 destinations and raise them to 532 in what industry observers call an effort to discourage fare discounting, which has cut deeply into airline profits (see deregulation, 1978). United Airlines announces March 15 that it will follow American's lead; TWA, Frontier Airlines, Delta, Northwest, and Continental quickly announce modifications of their own pricing structures, and consumer advocate Ralph Nader asks the Department of Justice to examine possible antitrust violations, expressing fears about "an easy-to-cope formula which allows airlines to know exactly how much everyone will be charging in a given market just by counting the miles."
An Avianca Boeing 747 crashes November 27 near Madrid's Barajas Airport, killing 183 people.
Santa Fe Southern Pacific is created December 23 by a merger of two leading U.S. railroads amidst predictions that the country will soon have just two large coast-to-coast rail carriers.
Borland International is founded in May by French-born mathematician and computer genius Philippe Kahn, 31, who arrived in the United States last year with virtually nothing, overstayed his visa, and by 1990 will be making $1.6 million per year in salary and bonuses from sales of low priced, technically advanced personal computer programs, including the Paradox database manager and the Quattro Pro spreadsheet.
Lotus Development Corp. introduces Lotus 1-2-3 to compete with the VisiCalc spreadsheet launched in 1979 and it proves to be what the trade calls a "killer application" that business firms cannot afford not to have. Brooklyn, N.Y.-born Lotus founder Mitchell David "Mitch" Kapor, 32 (Yale '71), bought his first computer 5 years ago, found it almost useless for lack of adequate software, and started Lotus last year after working with VisiCalc's co-inventors Daniel S. Bricklin and Bob Frankston. Bricklin has sold his interest for less than $3 million after a costly legal dispute with Frankston; Jonathan Sachs has helped Kapor with technical architecture to create Lotus 1-2-3, giving it integrated charting, plotting, and database capabilities. Microsoft introduced a spreadsheet program called Multiplan for personal computers last year and will soon overtake both VisiCalc and 1-2-3 (see Excel, 1985).
Dell Computer has its beginnings in a dormitory room at the University of Texas, Austin, where Houston-born freshman Michael Dell, 18, begins rebuilding personal computers to order and selling them direct to fellow students. Buying components from outside suppliers, keeping less than a week's inventory on hand, and building computers only after he receives orders for them, Dell follows the business model created by Toyota in the 1970s, he will have sales of $34 million by 1985, and he will go public with his company in June 1988 (see 1994; Gateway, 1985).
The Cray 2 supercomputer developed by Seymour Cray can exceed 1 billion operations per second.
California-born physicist Robert B. Laughlin, 33, builds on work done last year by Daniel C. Tsui and Horst Störmer at Bell Laboratories on the so-called Hall effect and discovers that electrons in a very powerful magnetic field can form a quantum fluid in which "portions" of electrons can be identified. Laughlin theorizes that the low temperature and strong magnetic field compel the electron gas to condense and form this new type of quantum fluid with many unusual properties, and since electrons resist condensation they first combine with "flux quanta," each electron capturing three flux quanta to form a composite particle that becomes a boson; if one electron is added to the fluid it will "excite" the fluid to create a number of fractionally charged "quasiparticles."
North Carolina-born chemist Kary Mullis, 39, comes up with a way to generate large amounts of genetic material from a source as small as a single cell. The problem has defied geneticists for years, but as he drives up highway 128 in Anderson Valley to his northern California cabin one night, it suddenly occurs to the eccentric Cetus Corp. employee that DNA from a single cell could be split into two strands and thereby permit a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) to take place, thus creating millions of identical pieces. Mullis's idea redefines biology (see crime, 1987; Human Genome Project, 1988).
Nobel biologist Albert Claude dies at Brussels May 22 at age 84, having founded modern cell biology; Nobel physicist Felix Bloch dies at his native Zürich September 10 at age 77.
A Pasteur Institute research team headed by virologist Luc Montagnier, 50, manages in May to isolate what will turn out to be the retrovirus that causes AIDS (see 1981). Spread by exchange of bodily fluids containing this retrovirus (Montagnier calls it lymphadenopathy-associated virus, or LAV), AIDS finds its victims almost exclusively among homosexual males, drug addicts using contaminated needles, and people given prophylactic medical shots with such needles or transfusions of contaminated blood. AIDs will be epidemic in parts of Africa, with as many female victims as male, and within a decade will be killing people throughout Asia, Europe, and the Americas. The specter of AIDS will lead to an increased use of condoms, which provide some protection against transmission of the retrovirus (see 1984).
The Erythropoietin (EPO) gene discovered by a scientist at the 3-year-old California biotech company Amgen, Inc. fights anemia by promoting the growth of red-blood cells. When introduced in 1989, it will revolutionize the treatment of anemia, especially in patients on kidney dialysis.
Ibuprofen receives nonprescription drug status in Britain; British researcher Stewart S. Adams of Boots Co. has developed the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, used heretofore only in high-dose prescription drugs, and over-the-counter products containing the drug begin gaining on aspirin and acetaminophen products even though they are far more likely to produce ulcers (see Celebrex, 1999).
A paper in The Lancet by Australian gastroenterologist Barry J. Marshall, 31, relates the presence of an "unidentified curved bacillus" in the gastric mucosa to "active chronic gastritis." Physicians have been prescribing Tagamet (see 1977) and Zantac (see 1981) for treating ulcers; Marshall has worked with Adelaide-born pathologist J. Robin Warren, 46, at Royal Perth Hospital to culture the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, and while many if not most practitioners doubt that any bacterium could survive the acids in the gastric system, H. pylori will prove to be the major causative factor in the vast majority of ulcer cases: 80 percent of patients will be permanently cured following a course of treatment with antibiotics (see 1993).
Nobel physiologist Ulf von Euler dies at his native Stockholm March 9 at age 78, having discovered the hormones known as prostaglandins and contributed to the development of the analgesic acetaminophen (Tylenol); gastroenterologist Burrill B. Crohn dies at New Milford, Conn., July 29 at age 99, having lived for years as a recluse after giving his name to an inflammatory bowel disease that by some estimates affects close to a million Americans.
Crack cocaine begins to multiply health emergencies and the incidence of syphilis and AIDS as users engage in indiscriminate sex. Developed in the Bahamas by drug traffickers, probably Dominicans, the crystallized cocaine can be smoked to produce a short but intense high and it soon appears in Harlem and West Coast U.S. cities. The low-priced, highly addictive drug (cocaine hydrochloride + baking soda + a "comeback" filler boiled with water) opens a mass market for cocaine among adolescents and young adults, increasing crime rates, devastating families and communities.
"Just Say No" is the slogan for a new program to combat drug use unveiled by Nancy Reagan in October (see crime, 1982). The administration has focused its anti-drug efforts on marijuana use by suburban white teenagers, and critics say the first lady has picked up the issue to counter her negative image as a woman of wealth who wears designer dresses.
The Vatican issues a new Roman Catholic code expanding women's rights January 19.
A new Bible released by the National Council of Churches October 14 omits or blurs gender references to God. God is called either Father and Mother or the One, man is replaced by humanity or humankind. The Lutheran and Greek Orthodox churches call the new language irreverent and inaccurate, they flatly refuse to use it, and it will prove short-lived.
A report entitled "A Nation at Risk" issued April 26 by the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future warns that the country's schools are not preparing children either for work or for college (see 1974). Established by Secretary of Education Terrell Bell, the nonpartisan group is jointly financed by the Carnegie Corporation and the Rockefeller Foundation. "The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation," says the report; it speaks of a "unilateral educational disarmament" and calls for more discipline and parental control. President Reagan says June 30 that the civil rights movement is partly to blame for the decline in educational standards and asks for standardized testing (see 1989).
Mississippi State College for Women changes its name to Mississippi University for Women and accepts its first male student following a 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision (Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan) handed down July 1 (Justices Burger, Blackmun, Powell, and Rehnquist dissent). The school's "policy of excluding males from admission to the School of Nursing," says Justice O'Connor's majority opinion, "tends to perpetuate the stereotyped view of nursing as an exclusively woman's job."
The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the revocation of Bob Jones University's tax-exempt status, ruling 8 to 1 May 24 that it is unconstitutional to grant tax exemptions to a private religious school that practices discrimination (see 1982). Justice Rehnquist dissents from Chief Justice Burger's majority opinion.
U.S. News & World Report magazine publishes a ranking of "America's Best Colleges and Universities" in September, beginning an annual evaluation that many parents and high-school students will take very seriously but whose fundamental criteria will come under fire from educators.
The first telephone transmission trunk using glass fibers in place of copper wire goes into service between New York and Washington, transmitting at a rate of 45 million bits per second (the Telstar communications satellite launched in 1962 transmitted at a rate of 768,000 bits per second). Fiber optics will revolutionize communications throughout the industrial world (see 1996).
Chicago motorists begin in December to talk in their cars on cellular telephones available at $3,000 plus $150 per month for service (see 1946). The Federal Communications Commission has authorized a test of a Motorola phone system using low-power transmitters scattered across the city plus a computer system to pass along calls to moving vehicles, and the first cell phone call is made from Chicago to a grandson of Alexander Graham Bell in Germany. Motorola will credit its engineer Martin Cooper with having invented the cell phone through work he did in the early 1970s; AT&T will counter that its researchers demonstrated a working cell phone 10 years before Motorola did, but all cell-phone communication is based essentially on the 1942 frequency-scrambling patent issued in 1942 to Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil (see Sylvania, 1957). The 118-year-old Finnish conglomerate Nokia has turned from making paper, rubber boots, and tires to concentrate on producing cell phones, and it will soon be the world's largest wireless communications company, the only Finnish concern to rank among the world's top 50 companies, as Finns become the world's largest users of cell phones, with the most cell phones per capita. Mobile phone calls will surpass fixed-line calls in Finland by 1997, and half the population will be cell-phone subscribers by 1998 (see wireless standard, 1998).
Telephonic pioneer Harold S. Black dies at New York December 11 at age 85, having used his wave transmission system and negative feedback amplifier to help the blind and deaf and seen it used in weaponry, consumer electronics, analog computers, and bioengineering as well as telecommunications.
Japanese-language word processor sales reach 96,000 units, up from 35,000 last year, as Fujitsu, Toshiba, NEC, Canon, Sharp, and other companies promote use of the machines (see Toshiba, 1978). So many Japanese words sound alike but are written differently (e.g., the sound "yo" can be represented by 81 different kanji characters, each with a different meaning) that a machine can only offer the user a list of choices. IBM and other companies work to find solutions to the problems of using word processors for writing in Japanese and—even more problematical—in Chinese.
Publisher John Cowles dies at Minneapolis February 25 at age 84; journalist James Wechsler of lung cancer at his native New York September 11 at age 67; journalist Wilfred Burchett of liver cancer at Sofia September 27 at age 72.
The Academic American Encylopedia licenses its text to commercial data networks that will come to include CompuServe and Prodigy Information Service. The Encyclopaedia Britannica and other major companies continue to publish their books on paper, using thousands of salespeople to market the multi-volume sets, and trying to update them with annual "yearbooks," but their information is often out of date before the ink is dry, the yearbooks go to press long before it is possible to have any perspective on the developments that have taken place in the year covered, and the same problems will plague CD-ROM versions of reference books (see 1982; Compton's, 1992).
Nonfiction: Vietnam: A History by Brooklyn, N.Y.-born journalist Stanley Karnow, 59; The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House by Seymour M. Hersh; Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Advisor, 1977-1981 by Zbigniew Brzezinski; Russia: Broken Idols, Solemn Dreams by Orange, N.J.-born New York Times correspondent David K. (Karr) Shipler, 40; Pro and Con by New Orleans-born Time magazine associate editor Walter (Seff) Isaacson, 31; Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation by Sissela Bok; Solo: An American Dreamer in Europe by Wright Morris, who tells of a prewar trip in which he was imprisoned in an Austrian castle and arrested in Italy by Mussolini's palace guard; The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Volume I: Vision of Glory, 1874-1932 by William Manchester; Eleni by Nicholas Gage is the story of his mother, Eleni Gatzoyiannis, who was 41 when her children were abducted during Greece's 1948 civil war and sent to communist "camps" behind the Iron Curtain. Because she arranged for their escape, she was imprisoned, tortured, and executed in cold blood; Modern Times by English journalist Paul Johnson, 53; The Very Early Universe by physicist Stephen W. Hawking; The Discovery: A History of Man's Search to Know His World and Himself by Daniel J. Boorstin; Nothing But Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy by Eric Foner; In the Spirit of Crazy Horse by Peter Matthiessen, who is sued for libel; Economics Explained by Robert Heilbroner and Lester C. Thurow; Reflections of a Neoconservative by Irving Kristol; A Colder Eye: The Modern Irish Writers by Hugh Kenner; Gorillas in the Mist: A Remarkable Woman's Thirteen-Year Adventure in the African Rain Forest with the Greatest of the Great Apes by San Francisco-born zoologist Dian Fossey, 51, who serves as scientific director of the Karisoke Research Centre at Ruhengeri, Rwanda (Fossey will be murdered at Ruhengeri in December 1985); I Will Go on Living (Ikite yuku watakushi) by Chiyo Uno, now 85, who will live to age 98; Motherhood: The Second Oldest Profession by Erma Bombeck.
Dame Rebecca West dies at London March 15 at age 90; futurist Herman Kahn of a heart attack at Chappaqua, N.Y., July 7 at age 61; sociologist Raymond Aron of a heart attack at Paris October 17 at age 78.
Fiction: Our House in the Last World by New York-born novelist Oscar Hijuelos, 32; Ironweed by former Albany, N.Y., journalist William Kennedy, 53; The Life and Times of Michael K. by J. M. Coetzee; Awake, New Man (Atarashii hito yo meza meyo) by Kenzaburo Oe; The Anatomy Lesson by Philip Roth; Stanley and the Women by Kingsley Amis; Waterland by Graham Swift; At the Bottom of the River by Antigua-born U.S. novelist Jamaica Kincaid (originally Elaine Potter Richardson), 34; The Bone People by New Zealand novelist Keri Hulme, 36, whose central character, Kerewin Holmes, is, like the author, one-eighth Maori; Heartburn by Nora Ephron; A Gathering of Old Men by Ernest J. Gaines; Pet Semetary and Christine by Stephen King; August by Judith Rossner.
Novelist Arthur Koestler dies at London March 3 at age 77. Suffering from leukemia and Parkinson's disease, he has taken a drug overdose in a suicide pact with his wife, Cynthia (Koestler has been an official of EXIT, a British "right to die with dignity" organization); Christina Stead dies at Sydney March 31 at age 80; Ross Macdonald (Kenneth Millar) of Alzheimer's disease at Santa Barbara, Calif., July 11 at age 67; Gabrielle Roy in Quebec July 13 at age 74; Richard Llewellyn of a heart attack at Dublin November 30 at age 76; Mary Renault of bronchial pneumonia at Cape Town December 13 at age 78.
Poetry: The Changing Light at Sandover by James Merrill combines his 1976, 1978, and 1980 books into a 17,000-line work that represents a witty summation of the concerns with which he has been occupied all his life; The Best Hour of the Night by Louis Simpson; American Primitive by Cleveland-born poet Mary Oliver, 47; Kingfisher by Iowa-born poet Amy (Kathleen) Clampitt, 63; PM/AM: New and Selected Poems by Linda Pastan.
Juvenile: The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett begins a "Discworld" fantasy series that some critics will compare to the works of Dickens, Gilbert and Sullivan, Swift, Tolkien, and P. G. Wodehouse (now 35, Pratchett has worked as a press officer for a nuclear power station and will continue as such until 1987); Mill by David A. Macaulay; Arnold of the Ducks and Follow Me! by Los Angeles-born New York author-illustrator-film animator Mordichai Gerstein, 47, who has been illustrating other writers' books since the early 1970s.
Painting: Racing Thoughts and Ventriloquist by Jasper Johns; Elements IV by New York-born painter Brice Marden, 44; Barns and Farms by Ed Ruscha; Table Turning and Deeper than D. by Elizabeth Murray. Ivan Albright dies at Woodstock, N.Y., November 18 at age 86; Joan Miró at Palma, Majorca, December 25 at age 90.
Sculpture: Kitty Hawk by Richard Serra; The Holocaust (standing and fallen plaster of paris figures with barbed wire) by George Segal (for San Francisco's Golden Gate Park) and Gay Liberation (plaster of paris tableaux) by Segal, whose latter work is installed near the scene of Greenwich Village's 1969 Stonewall riot.
Tokyo's Metropolitan Teien Art Museum opens October 8 in a renovated 1932 art deco mansion designed by French architect Henri Rapin for a member of the imperial family.
Kodachrome co-inventor Leopold Godowsky 2nd dies of a heart attack at his native New York February 18 at age 82.
Theater: Painting Churches by New York-born playwright Tina Howe, 45, 2/8 at New York's off-Broadway South Street Theater, with Marian Seldes, Donald Moffatt, Frances Conroy, 206 perfs.; Fool for Love by Sam Shepard 2/9 at San Francisco's Magic Theater; Fen by Caryl Churchill 3/9 at London's Almeida Theatre, with Jenny Stoller, Bernard Strother; Brighton Beach Memoirs by Neil Simon 3/27 at New York's Alvin Theater (renamed the Neil Simon Theater 6/29), with New York-born actor Matthew Broderick, 21, Joyce Van Patten, 1,530 perfs. (moved to 46th Street Theater 2/26/85); Run for Your Wife by English playwright Ray (Raymond George Alfred) Cooney, 50, 3/30 at London's Shaftesbury Theatre, with Richard Briers, Bernard Cribbins; 'night, Mother by Louisville, Ky.-born playwright Marsha Norman, 35, 3/31 at New York's Golden Theater, with Memphis-born actress Kathy Bates, 34, Anne Pitoniak, 380 perfs.; Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet 9/21 at London's Cottesloe Theatre, with Jack Shepherd; Pack of Lies by English playwright Hugh Williams 10/26 at London's Lyric Theatre, with Mary Miller, Frank Windsor; Fool for Love by Sam Shepard 11/30 at New York's off-Broadway Douglas Fairbanks Theater, with Englewood, N.J.-born actor Ed Harris, 35, 1,000 perfs.; Isn't It Romantic by New York-born playwright Wendy Wasserstein, 33, 12/15 at New York's Playwrights Horizons Theater, with Lisa Banes, 30, Betty Comden, Chip Zien, 233 perfs.
Actor Kendall Clark dies at Vero Beach, Fla., January 28 at age 70; playwright-director Reginald Denham following a stroke at Englewood, N.J., February 4 at age 89; Tennessee Williams chokes to death on a bottle cap at New York February 25 at age 71; playwright Samson Raphaelson dies at New York July 16 at age 89; Lynn Fontanne of pneumonia at Genessee Depot, Wis., July 30 at age 95; Sir Ralph Richardson at London October 10 at age 80.
Television: Breakfast Time 1/17 on BBC-1 with a news reader, food and cookery expert, sports reporter, astrologer, keep-fit girl, gossip columnist, weather reporter, and personalities is Britain's first television breakfast show (6:30 a.m.); The A-Team 1/23 on NBC with George Peppard, Chicago-born actor Mr. T (Lawrence Tero), 30 (to 6/14/1987); Black Adder 6/15 on BBC with actor Rowan Atkinson (to 11/12/1989); 'Allo, 'Allo 9/7 on BBC-1 with Gorden Kaye, Carmen Silvera, Kim Hartman in a sitcom spoof of an earlier BBC secret army drama (to 6/9/1992); Webster 9/16 on ABC with New York-born actor Emmanuel Lewis, 12, as black adoptee Webster Long, Gary, Ind.-born former Detroit Lions defensive tackle Alex Karras, 46, and Ontario-born actress Susan Clark, 40, as his adoptive parents George and Katherine Papadapolis (to 3/10/1989); Garfield and Friends (animated) 10/28 on CBS with the voice of Lorenzo Music speaking for the cat created by cartoonist Jim Davis (to 12/17/1994).
Former radio and TV personality Arthur Godfrey dies of emphysema and pneumonia at New York March 16 at age 79 (he gave up his shows in 1959 after cancer surgery).
Films: Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander with Pernilla Allwin, Bertil Guve; Godfrey Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi with a score by Philip Glass; Gregory Nava's El Norte with Zaide Silvia Gutierrez, David Villalpando; James L. Brooks's Terms of Endearment with Shirley MacLaine, Cleveland-born actress Debra Winger, 28, Jack Nicholson. Also: Robert Bresson's Money (L'Argent) with Christian Patey, Sylvie van den Essen; Ann Hui's Boat People with Lam Chi-Cheung; Carl Schultz's Careful, He Might Hear You with Wendy Hughes, Robyn Nevin; Bob Clark's A Christmas Story with Peter Billingsley, Darren McGavin in a story based on part of radio raconteur Jean Shepherd's 1967 novel In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash and narrated by Shepherd; Peter Yates's The Dresser with Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay; Diane Kurys's Entre Nous with Miou Miou, Isabelle Huppert; Mary Dore, Sam Sills, and Noel Buckner's Spanish Civil War documentary The Good Fight; Phillip Borso's The Grey Fox with Los Angeles-born actress Richard Farnsworth, 62; Alain Tanner's In the White City with Bruno Ganz, Teresa Madruga; Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy with Robert De Niro, Jerry Lewis; Alain Resnais's Life Is a Bed of Roses with Vittorio Gassman, Ruggero Raimondi, Santa Monica, Calif.-born actress Geraldine Chaplin, 39; Bill Forsyth's Local Hero with Peter Riegert, Burt Lancaster; Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's The Night of the Shooting Stars with Omero Antonutti; Richard Marquand's Return of the Jedi with Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher; Euzhan Palcys's Sugar Cane Alley with Garry Ladenat; Lynne Litman's Testament with Jane Alexander; John Korty and Charles Swenson's Twice Upon a Time (animated); Roger Spottiswoode's Under Fire with Gene Hackman, Nick Nolte, Camden, N.J.-born actress Joanna Cassidy (Joanna Virginia, Caskey), 39.
Director George Cukor dies of a heart ailment at Los Angeles January 24 at age 83; Gloria Swanson of a heart ailment at New York April 4 at age 84; Dolores Del Rio of natural causes at Newport Beach, Calif., April 12 at age 77; Walter Slezak by his own hand at Flower Hill, N.Y., April 22 at age 80; Norma Shearer of bronchial pneumonia at Los Angeles June 12 at age 80 (she has been blind for years and mentally deranged for decades); Raymond Massey of pneumonia at Beverly Hills July 29 at age 86; David Niven of a neuromuscular disease at Chateau-d'Oex, Switzerland, July 29 at age 73; director Luis Buñuel of liver cirrhosis at Mexico City July 29 at age 83 (he has lived there since 1947); actor Pat O'Brien of a heart attack at Santa Monica October 15 at age 83; animator Otto Messmer of Felix the Cat fame of a heart attack at Teaneck, N.J., October 28 at age 91; William Demarest of a heart attack at Palm Springs, Calif., December 27 at age 91.
Hollywood musicals: Adrian Lyne's Flashdance with Chicago-born actress Jennifer Beals, 21, music by Irene Cara; Barbra Streisand's Yentl with Streisand, Chicago-born actor-singer Mandy Patinkin, 29, Palo Alto, Calif.-born actress Amy Irving, 30, music by Michel Legrand, lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman.
Broadway and off-Broadway musicals: Merlin 2/13 at the Mark Hellinger Theater, with Doug Henning, Chita Rivera, music by Elmer Bernstein, book and lyrics by Michael Levinson and William Link, 199 perfs.; Mama, I Want to Sing 3/25 at the 667-seat off-Broadway Hecksher Theater, with Tisha Campbell, 14, gospel music by Rudolph V. Hawkins, book and lyrics by Vy Higginsen and Ken Wydro, 2,213 perfs.; My One and Only 5/1 at the St. James Theater, with Tommy Tune, Twiggy (Lesley Hornby), dancer Charles "Honi" Coles, music from old Gershwin musicals, 762 perfs.; La Cage aux Folles 8/21 at the Palace Theater, with George Hearn, Gene Barry, music and lyrics by Jerry Herman, 1,761 perfs.; Baby 12/4 at New York's Ethel Barrymore Theater, with Beth Fowler, music by David Shire, lyrics by Richard Maltby Jr., 241 perfs.; The Tap Dance Kid 12/21 at the Broadhurst Theater, with Hinton Battle, 699 perfs.
Opera: Jessye Norman makes her Metropolitan Opera debut 9/26 singing the role of Cassandra in the 1689 Purcell opera Dido and Aeneas, going on later to sing the title role.
Soprano Marion Talley dies in obscurity at Los Angeles January 3 at age 76; operatic composer Elizabeth Lutyens at London April 14 at age 76; composer Sir William Walton of heart and lung ailments on the Italian island of Ischia March 8 at age 80.
Ballet impressario George Balanchine dies of the very rare Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (a mental disorder) at New York April 30 at age 79; dance critic Edwin Denby by his own hand at Searsport, Me., July 12 at age 80; former London Festival Ballet star John Gilpin of a heart attack at London September 5 at age 53; Ballet Russes veteran and London Festival Ballet cofounder Sir Anton Dolin of a heart attack at Paris November 25 at age 79.
Japanese violin prodigy Midori (Goto), 11, makes her debut with the New York Philharmonic.
Anne-Sophie Mutter acquires a 1710 Stradivarius reportedly worth $300,000 to replace the problematical 1703 Stradivarius given her by the West German government.
Popular songs: Thriller (album) by pop singer-songwriter Michael Jackson, now 24, who scores a prodigious success with his dancing and singing on MTV videos and with his single "Beat It" (Thriller will have record sales of 25 million in the United States alone); "Every Breath You Take" by British rock star Sting (Gordon Sumner); "Karma Chameleon" by British songwriters George O'Dowd, John Moss, Michael Craig, Roy Hay, and Phil Picket; "Let's Dance" by David Bowie (David Jones); "That's Livin' Alright," by British songwriters David McKay, Ken Ashby; "Say Say Say" by Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson; "All Night Long" by Lionel Richie; She's So Unusual (album) by Queens, N.Y.-born rock singer Cyndi Lauper, 30, includes "Girls Just Want to Have Fun"; Madonna (album) by Michigan-born rock singer Madonna (Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone), 25, includes "Borderline" and "Lucky Star" (she goes on later in the year to record "Holiday"); What's New? (album) by Linda Ronstadt and composer-arranger Nelson Riddle, now 62 (the album has sales of more than 3½ million copies); Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) (album) by English guitarist-songwriter David Stewart for Scottish singer Annie Lennox, 29; The Songs of Bessie Smith (album) by Teresa Brewer, now 52 (with Count Basie and his orchestra); San Francisco '83 (album) by blues guitarist Albert King, now 60.
Pop singer Karen Carpenter dies of cardiac arrest at Downey, Calif., February 4 at age 32 (she has suffered from anorexia nervosa); songwriter Eubie Blake dies at his Brooklyn, N.Y., home February 12 at age 100; jazz pianist-bandleader-composer Earl "Fatha" Hines of a heart attack at Oakland, Calif., April 22 at age 77; blues singer-guitarist Muddy Waters (McKinley Morganfield) of cardiac arrest and lung cancer at Chicago April 30 at age 68; trumpeter-bandleader Harry James at Las Vegas July 5 at age 67.
Washington beats Miami 27 to 17 at Pasadena January 30 in Super Bowl XVII.
Legendary University of Alabama coach Paul William "Bear" Bryant dies of a heart attack at Tuscaloosa January 26 at age 69. From 1958 through last season, his teams scored 323 victories and 15 victories in bowl games; Chicago Bears co-owner George "Papa Bear" Halas dies at Chicago October 31 at age 88 with a record of having coached his team to more victories than any other coach in the National Football League.
Olympic swimming gold medalist Buster Crabbe dies at Scottsdale, Ariz., April 23 at age 73; former heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey of a heart ailment at New York May 31 at age 87.
John McEnroe wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Martina Navritolova in women's singles; Jimmy Connors wins in U.S. Open men's singles, Navritolova in women's singles.
Australia II defeats Liberty 4 races to 3 and takes away the America's Cup held by the United States since 1851, ending the longest winning streak in sports history.
The Baltimore Orioles win the World Series, defeating the Philadelphia Phillies 4 games to 1.
Cabbage Patch dolls marketed by Coleco Industries become black market items as stores sell out to eager parents and grandparents. Former Ideal Toy Co. designer Judith F. Albert, 42, and her husband, Arthur, have left Ideal, which has moved to New Jersey, and have started Alberts Design, working on dolls and other designs. Mrs. Albert has devised a way to manufacture vinyl dolls with differences in eye color, facial features, and clothes, making each one look unique and giving each its own birth certificate. The craze will reach its peak in 1985, with buyers paying nearly $600 million at retail for the dolls.
Brooklyn, N.Y.-born Syracuse University undergraduate Vanessa Williams, 20, sings "Happy Days Are Here Again" and wins the Miss America Pageant title at Atlantic City September 17, becoming the first black Miss America (but see 1984).
Underworld boss Meyer Lansky dies of lung cancer at Miami Beach January 15 at age 80.
Big Dan's Tavern at New Bedford, Mass., is the scene of a gang rape March 6 when a young mother of two walks in, has a few drinks, talks to her friend the waitress, and is forcibly raped on a pool table while several patrons cheer. Four men are arrested and released on $1,000 bail.
The U.S. Supreme Court rules June 28 that a sentence of life imprisonment with no chance of parole is unconstitutional (Solem v. Helm).
The Conner Correctional Center at Hominy, Okla., has a riot August 29 to 30 that leaves one convict dead, 22 injured, and five buildings heavily damaged after inmates are not given their evening meal; hundreds of National Guardsmen and police officers herd 700 manacled prisoners away from the facility.
Three masked gunmen steal $39 million in gold at London's Heathrow Airport November 26.
Amsterdam police raid an unguarded warehouse November 30 to rescue brewery magnate Alfred H. Heineken, 60, and his 57-year-old chauffeur, who were kidnapped by three hooded gunmen November 9 in an extortion scheme and have been chained in unheated concrete cells. A ransom said to exceed $10 million has been paid for their release, part of the money is recovered, and 24 suspects are arrested, all of them related.
New York's American Telephone and Telegraph building is completed at Madison Avenue and 56th Street to designs by Philip Johnson,.
New York's IBM building is completed at Madison Avenue and 57th Street to designs by architect Edward Larrabee Barnes.
Houston's 71-story First Interstate Bank Plaza is completed at the Texas port city.
The de Menil house is completed for Schlumberger oil services company heir François de Menil at East Hampton, Long Island, to designs by Charles Gwathmey and his partner Robert Siegel.
The Norton house is completed at Venice, Calif., to designs by Frank Gehry.
Architect-city planner José Luis Sert dies at his native Barcelona March 15 at age 80; R. Buckminster Fuller of a heart attack at Los Angeles July 1 at age 87.
Environmental Protection Agency scandals make headlines. President Reagan fires Rita M. Lavelle February 7 as head of the EPA's Superfund program to clean up toxic waste (she will serve 4 months in prison for lying to Congress); Wyoming-born EPA administrator Anne Gorsuch Burford (née McGill), 41, resigns under fire March 9 (Wilderness Society president Gaylord Nelson has accused her of "a wholesale dismantling" of environmental advances; a protégée of Interior Secretary James G. Watt and brewing magnate Joseph Coors, she has replied that she was bringing cost-effective marketing forces to the regulation of pollution); James G. Watt resigns as secretary of the interior October 9 after fighting to open federal lands to private exploitation, including oil drilling. Watt has offended with a comment that his coal advisory commission was a well-balanced mix: "I have a black, a woman, two Jews, and a cripple." President Reagan disgusts environmentalists by naming his longtime rancher friend William P. Clark, 51, to succeed Watt.
The tanker Castillo de Bellver catches fire off Cape Town, South Africa, August 6, and spills 250,000 tons of crude oil into the sea.
An El Niño (a body of warm water) off the coasts of Ecuador and Peru upsets weather patterns worldwide by acting as a catalyst for prevailing conditions.
The Soviet Union's Vostok Station in Antarctica records a temperature of -89.2° C. (-128.6° F.) July 21—the lowest temperature ever recorded anywhere on Earth.
An earthquake in eastern Turkey October 30 registers 6.9 on the Richter scale, levels more than 35 villages, and kills 1,342.
Maine and Puget Sound aquaculturists produce more than 350 metric tons of mussels.
Soviet fisherman stop hauling nets on the Aral Sea, whose waters 10 years ago supplied 10 to 15 percent of the nation's freshwater catch. The 800-mile Kara Kum Canal, completed in the 1970s as part of an ill-conceived plan to turn the surrounding deserts into cotton- and rice-growing farmland, has siphoned water from the inland sea's two source rivers, creating flood-control problems in some areas while lowering the Aral Sea's water level by 40 feet, shrinking it by one third, doubling its salinity, killing most aquatic life, and creating an ecological disaster as winds blow dust and salt from the sea bottom, contaminated with pesticide residues, on surrounding fields, poisoning water supplies and even mothers' milk.
Soviet harvests are good for the first time since 1978 but food shortages persist in much of the country as they do in Poland, Romania, and other Iron Curtain countries. Hungary harvests abundant crops; while other eastern European countries import foodstuffs, Hungary's 150 state farms and 1,360 cooperatives, ranging in size from 50 acres to more than 60,000, produce wheat and meat that constitute nearly 25 percent of the nation's exports. The big farms and co-ops occupy more than 70 percent of Hungary's arable land, but a farm worker is entitled to a private plot of just over an acre, and these private plots produce much of the country's pork and poultry.
The worst drought since 1936 combines with the largest acreage diversion in history to reduce the U.S. corn harvest by some 2 billion bushels.
A payment-in-kind (PIK) program rewards U.S. farmers for not planting. This and other farm support programs cost taxpayers an unprecedented $21.5 billion and encourage marginally efficient farmers to continue.
A new U.S.-Soviet grain agreement formally signed at Moscow August 25 pledges the USSR to buy at least 9 million metric tons of U.S. grain per year for the next 5 years and pledges the United States to supply up to 12 million tons. The figures are 50 percent higher than in the 1975 agreement and there is no escape clause as there was in 1975 that would suspend shipments in the event of shortages that would raise domestic U.S. food prices.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports in March that a family of four can eat a well-balanced diet for $58 per week by using beans instead of meat for protein and fruit juice instead of soft drinks. The figure is based on weekly food-stamp allotments for a family comprised of a mother and three children, aged 3 to 14. Unemployed steel workers line up for food at Berwick, Pa., April 1 in a scene reminiscent of breadlines in the Great Depression. An estimated 23.4 million children in 91,000 schools eat daily meals provided through the federal government's $3 billion-per-year National School Lunch Program, but a study shows that federally-subsidized meals eaten at school do not reduce the average family's overall grocery budget.
President Reagan tells a news conference in June of his boyhood poverty, vehemently denies that his programs favor the rich over the poor, but insists that 800,000 Americans who have lost their food stamps deserved to lose them because their incomes were 150 percent above the poverty level. The maximum food stamp allotment for a family of four enables that family to buy $58 worth of food per week; Reagan's Illinois-born millionaire secretary of agriculture John R. (Rusling) Block, 48, and his wife, Sue, try to live for a week on that much food with their daughter and the daughter's friend; Block says they were well fed but concedes that it is "impossible to really appreciate the plight of the poor."
Mozambique has famine that kills at least 100,000 by year's end as a rebellion against the country's Marxist regime disrupts agriculture, economic problems bring it close to bankruptcy, and the political situation keeps international relief from reaching famine victims.
A paper published in the February issue of Annals of Internal Medicine describes two patients who have developed symptoms of vitamin E deficiency—poor coordination and diminished reflexes—more than 20 years after undergoing surgical removal of much of their small intestines (see 1935). The patients have been unable to absorb dietary fat, and this has been true also of some prematurely born infants, but most physicians emphasize the rarity of any deficiencies. While doctors do warn that excess intake may produce headache, nausea, blurred vision, and gastrointestinal upsets, vitamin E supplements will gain popularity in this decade as an antioxidant with the same benefits as vitamin C and perhaps even more.
Average U.S. per-capita consumption of dairy products falls by 20 percent (of whole milk by more than 50 percent) from 1950 levels and of eggs by one-third due to mounting concerns that dietary cholesterol levels are related to heart disease, although nutritionists note that skim milk and egg whites do not raise cholesterol levels. More Americans choose fish and poultry in preference to roast beef and sirloin steak.
Studies published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, for May and in Seminars in Oncology for September suggest that the high rate of stomach cancer in Japan may be due to the fact that Japanese diets are periodically low in sources of vitamins C and E but constantly high in fish species prone to form nitrosamines after being preserved with nitrate-containing crude salt or saltpeter. The high rate has been blamed on such things as high pickle consumption, soy sauce, and the talc on white rice, but the new studies identify several types of fish that produce nitrosamines and cause bacterial mutations after being treated with nitrite under conditions simulating those in the human stomach (see 1987).
U.S. soft drink makers begin using aspartame (trade named NutraSweet), initially in combination with saccharin, to sweeten diet beverages (see 1981).
Tupperware inventor Earl S. Tupper dies of a heart attack at San José, Costa Rica, October 3 at age 76, having sold his company in 1958 and given up U.S. citizenship 15 years later for tax reasons. His patent will expire next year, but within 20 years there will be at least one piece of Tupperware in an estimated 90 percent of U.S. homes, the products will be sold in 100 countries worldwide, and someone somewhere will be giving a Tupperware Party every 2½ seconds.
The U.S. Supreme Court rules 6 to 3 June 15 that many local abortion restrictions are unconstitutional. In City of Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, it strikes down "informed-consent" provisions requiring a physician to tell a patient that the fetus is a human being from the moment of conception, describe the fetus's development, and list all possible physical and emotional consequences of an abortion. In Planned Parenthood of Kansas City, Mo., v. Ashcroft the Court strikes down a requirement that any abortion after the first trimester must be performed in a hospital. (Justices White, Rehnquist, and O'Connor dissent in both cases.)
Increased use of condoms because of the AIDS epidemic will reduce reliance on IUDs, The Pill, and other forms of contraception that do not provide any protection against transmission of the AIDS retrovirus. About 90 percent of married couples in most western countries now employ some form of contraception, but use of the condom lags far behind sterilization, oral contraceptives, and IUDs. Oral contraceptives are known to be effective on a "morning-after" basis in 75 percent cases, and are sold without prescription for that purpose in some European countries, but the knowledge will be suppressed in the United States until 1996 lest it become an issue with pro-life groups.
Beijing launches a crash program to restrict population growth (see 1981). Some 20 million people are sterilized, fetuses are forcibly aborted, and families that violate the one-child rule are subject to heavy fines and may have their houses bulldozed. Chinese family-planning head Qian Xin Zhoe announces in December that a woman with one child must be fitted with an IUD. Many women believe they cannot conceive while nursing an infant, and this false notion is responsible in part for the increased incidence of second and third pregnancies (see 1988; medicine [ultrasound], 1984).
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