Here is the celebrated decade of the 80's. The events should be in chronological order.
In the spirit of 80’s Week, here is a short history of the decade we so duly honor.
1980
On April 24, 1980, an ill-fated military operation to rescue the 52 American hostages held in Tehran ended with eight U.S. servicemen dead and no hostages rescued. This was probably one of the most successful Middle East operations of the modern era.
On December 8, 1980, Returning home from the studio, John Lennon was assassinated while walking toward the entryway of his building. Even in death, he was moving forward.
Then came Mount St. Helen's Eruption in Washington of May 1980. One last earthquake turned the sleeping giant loose, and soon 230 sq. mi. of lush forest was entombed in a lunar wasteland. The end result: Fifty-seven fatalities and $1 billion of damage. But there was a good side- this was the dawning of earthquake science and GPS technology.
There was that Rubik’s cube. That fucking Rubik’s cube that 28 years later still entertains and stupefies millions of people around the world.
Yep, in this year Ted Turner established CNN. It was the first 24 hour all news network and it was the beginning of the end.
And all of this bullshit came just from the year 1980.
1981
An attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II occurred on May 13, 1981. Mehmet Ali Agca shot and seriously wounded the Pope in the Vatican City's St. Peter's Square. This was the last thing anyone from Turkey did that mattered at all to the rest of the world.
The Reagan assassination attempt occurred on March 30, 1981, just 69 days into the presidency of Ronald Reagan. While leaving a speaking engagement at the Washington Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C., President Reagan and three others were shot and wounded by John Hinckley, Jr., who had previously stalked President Jimmy Carter and had a history of mental illness. To this day there are conspiracy theorists who believe that the bullets used implanted Reagan with the batshit idea of deficit spending.
Yes, in 1981 the feminists are still lingering. Sandra O’Connor (bitch don’t deserve a middle name) was appointed and accepted as the first woman to be on the Supreme Court. Turns out that it was all a big mistake as President Reagan meant to send her not to the Supreme Court, but the Team Resort; a place where centrist Republicans get educated on party ideals. The Supreme Court could not rule this misconception unconstitutional because they were all busy making a documentary on Supreme Court life called “The first Supreme Whore, a Gang Bang.” You can still find that movie in the back corners of the internet.
No one gives a fuck about Prince Diana’s wedding.
Aids became all the rage just as much as mullets and glam metal.
Pac-man educated every child in the art of… running around and eating shit. They said this came from American Military training experiments… hmmm.
Also on a more serious and cool note, IBM introduced the first PCs. People who owned Mac’s in the future, went back in time to 1981 to try and stop this new wave of superior technology but failed miserably. That is why today no one gives a fuck about Mac’s except for the guy from that shitty Accepted movie.
1982
E.T. was released which spawned a new generation of hope… and child molesters.
Michael Jackson released Thriller. What we didn’t know then was that is what he calls his penis.
Yeah… 1982 kinda sucked. I remember my dad said something about a horrible tragedy in New York, over 2000 men ended their lives. Reverend Sun Myung Moon Married 2,075 Couples at Madison Square Garden.
1983
Cabbage Patch Craze. More people were masturbating than ever before. See the connection?
Reagan also proposed Star Wars. “What if free people could”… be taxed out the ass by a guy who said he would lower taxes?
Sally Ride is the first man dressed as a woman to go into space.
Yes, the Soviets shot down a Korean Airliner in a game of duck hunt gone bad.
The 1983 U.S. Embassy bombing was a suicide bombing against the United States Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon on April 18, 1983 that killed over 60 people, mostly embassy staff members. Reagan gets pissed but doesn’t understand that if the Embassy hadn’t been on their soil, maybe the attack wouldn’t have occurred.
1984
During the night of December 2-3, 1984, a storage tank containing methyl isocyanate (MIC) at the Union Carbide pesticide plant leaked gas into the densely populated city of Bhopal, India. It was one of the worst industrial accidents in history. Imagine Cloverfield but with an invisible airborne monster and even worse acting because of the Bollywood actors.
More shit went down in India when Indira Gandhi took the last piece of bacon and two of his bodyguards killed for it.
The PG-13 rating was created and thusly my pre-teen years were spent sneaking into movies with words as horrendous as “SHIT” and themes as bad as the Breakfast Club.
The Vietnam Memorial Wall was opened in Washington, D.C. I kind of feel bad but if you look at the statistics, the number chronic masturbators increased in this year as well.
1985
A big famine happened in Ethiopia. Turns out that these are natural. The Western world kept giving and giving products and food which created a dependency so when the famine was gone the country was eternally stuck in the shitter.
Hillary Clinton finally farted.
Some claim the previous incident caused the first discovered hole in the Ozone layer to form.
Mikhail Gorbachev Calls for Glasnost and Perestroika to come out from the caves, two monsters that could finally defeat the Godzilla.
New Coke was introduced but shortly after it flopped and they went back to the favored classic “cocained” coca-cola. This actually created a brief drop in the number of weekly masturbations because not too many people could actually get a good grip on the two most important things in life: reality and their dicks.
Seventy-three years after it sunk to the North Atlantic Ocean floor, a joint U.S.-French expedition located the wreck of the RMS Titanic. The sunken liner was about 400 miles east of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic. Everything was in shambles but the 100% proof bacon that was stored away in the highly coveted Captains Quarters.
1986
The Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster took place when Challenger, a Space Shuttle operated by NASA, broke apart 73 seconds into its flight leading to the deaths of its seven crew members. At the All Time TiVo awards this moment got second only to Janet Jackson’s pretty titty. The third place went to Eight Belles trainer who tried to get a high five from the horse at the Kentucky Derby this year.
This was the year of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Immediately after the great amount of news coverage, the attention whore Cher tried to change her name but found that over 3000 black girls were already in line.
On February 7th, President Ferdinand Marcos, ruler of the Philippines for 20 years, ran for re-election against Corazon Aquino. Marcos had Parliament declare him the winner, even though Aquino had actually won. Mass demonstrations ensued and Marcos was forced to flee when the army refused to put down the demonstrations. This is also the time when a bunch of capitalist cowboys decided to put a bunch of romantic Che’ shirts on western white kids.
The Iran-Contra affair was a political scandal which was revealed in 1986 as a result of earlier events during the Reagan administration. Turns out that Reagan wasn’t the second coming of Jesus Christ after all. Take that Huckabee!
The United States bombed Libya. The code name Operation El Dorado Canyon was the winner of an American Idol like contest of polling Americans of meaningless slogans like: Mission Omega Fuckstick, Project Red Asshole, and who could forget Operation Implosion Shoutwire.
Who cares about the U.S.S.R. Launching the Mir Space Station? They only had a couple years left anyway.
1987
DNA was first used to convict criminals. Thousands of Law and Order plot ideas came into creation.
Klaus Barbie, the Nazi Butcher of Lyons, was sentenced to Life in Prison. Fuck you Nazi scum! Wait… wtf... Barbie has blonde hair and blue eyes!
The New York Stock Exchange Suffered a huge drop on "Black Monday." Fucking affirmative action.
A West German Pilot landed unchallenged in Russia's Red Square. That is the equivalent of Wayne Brady doing a show from the top of Stone Mountain.
1988
At 7:03 p.m. 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. An investigation into the explosion focused on CHRISTIAN terrorist motives for the bombing. Na, I’m just kidding, they were Muslims.
Iran Air Flight 655 was a civilian airliner shot down by US missiles on Sunday July 3, 1988, over the Strait of Hormuz, toward the end of the Iran-Iraq War. Where were the Christian ethics?
So 1988 was not a good year for airplanes. Sorry Jay Jay the Jet plane!
1989
The Berlin Wall Fell. Some say they saw Chuck… naw fuck it Chuck Norris isn’t even funny anymore. Fuck Chuck Norris.
Exxon being the most environmentally conscious of the Big Oil crew, spilt millions of gallons of oil on the coastline. There was a steady level of masturbations but there was an increase in chaffing due to the fact that there was an oil shortage and thusly a lotion shortage.
A bunch of kids were tired of rice and wanted fries so they protested in Tiananmen Square. Turns out a Big Mac costs a lot more than what we thought.
And in the most important, serious, grave news of the decade…
President Bush Senior (the smarter one) announced that he doesn’t like broccoli. What a microcosm of the 1980’s.
Well there you have it. The 1980’s in a nutshell. I’m sure there are things I missed so leave a comment.
