Kodak quits making instant cameras and instant film after losing a patent case to Polaroid which is why no one shakes it like a Kodak picture.
The Pennsylvania State University Nittany Lions are voted NCAA Division 1A National Champions in college football. The Chicago Bears win Super Bowl XX by beating down the New England Patriots 46-10.
The first personal computer virus called "@Brain," starts to spread one infected floppy disk at a time.
Voyager 2 probes Uranus [snicker].
I still cry thinking about this: the Space Shuttle Challenger breaks apart just 73 seconds after launch. The crew of 7 astronauts which includes schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe dies in the accident.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducts its first class: Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles, Fats Domino, Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis Presley.
Pixar Animation Studios, a Lucasfilm offspring, opens. Its animated short of a desklamp, "Luxo Jr," becomes is its first film; the lamp is now part of the Pixar logo.
One of the coolest factory built airplanes ever built, the Beechcraft Starship, makes its maiden flight. It has poor sales (and allegedly poor flying characteristics) with only 53 being built.
The United States Senate decides to allow its debates to be televised. Woot! Woot! Long live the CSPANs.
Louisville gets the 72-69 win over Duke for the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship. The Cyclones have a good season and finish 22 and 11 with an appearance in the Big Dance's Sweet 16.
Sammy Hagar takes over as lead singer for Van Halen. I still maintain this sucks.
Geraldo Rivera opens Al Capone's secret vault on live television and startles American viewers by discovering a bottle of aged moonshine.
The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Pripyat, Ukraine (formerly part of the USSR) has an incident (fire, malfunction, meltdown if you will) which eventually kills over 4000 people. Traces of radioactive material (fallout) unique to the Chernobyl reactor have been found in nearly every country in the northern hemisphere
A guy calling himself "Captain Midnight" does the unspeakably unimaginable and interrupts the HBO satellite feed with a test pattern and the message "GOODEVENING HBO,
FROM CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT
$12.95/MONTH ?
NO WAY !
[SHOWTIME/MOVIE CHANNEL BEWARE!]"
At least 5,000,000 people form a human chain from New York City to Long Beach, California, as part of "Hands Across America" to raise money to fight hunger and homelessness. It was supposed to be an unbroken chain of people spanning the country but someone forgot to tell much of the middle part of the U.S. that.
The movie "Platoon" wins a bunch of Oscars and introduces me to Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings," the Navy gets a recruitment boost with "Top Gun," millions yearn to visit Australia after seeing "Crocodile Dundee," rural kids believe if only for a couple hours that they can compete because of "Hoosiers," Captain Kirk proves the Vulcan High Council is wrong about time travel in "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home," a ragtag band of misfits on a journey seems almost cool in "Stand by Me," we learn that Mickey Roarke looks normal and Kim Bassinger is totally hot in the S&M classic "9 1/2 Weeks," and my favorite movie of all-time, "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," makes everyone hum "Danke Schoen."
Ted Knight, a.k.a. Ted Baxter on the "Mary Tyler Moore Show" and Judge Elihu Smails from "Caddyshack" and the narrator of "Super Friends" passes away due to cancer surgery.
Patrick Sherrill kills 14 of his co-workers at a United States Post Office in Edmond, Oklahoma before committing suicide. This is the first instance of someone going "postal."
I graduate from West Harrison Community High School. My classmates are some of the greatest friends I will ever have.
The Fox network begins broadcasting as the fourth network. Finally, some decent television, like "The Late Show with Joan Rivers." The rest of the year in television is pretty lame. Apparently I've learned all that I'm capable of learning because Schoolhouse Rock! ends this year.
The Rutan designed/built Voyager airplane piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager flies non-stop around the world in just 9 days. I still have the photographs I took of the plane and its pilots at Osh Kosh that summer before they made the record breaking trip.
The New York Mets defeat the Boston Red Sox 4 games to 3 to win the World Series but all anyone remembers is Game 6 when Bill Buckner lets an easy grounder roll between his legs.
A little story called the Iran–Contra affair breaks that makes Colonel Oliver North a patsy, his secretary a sex symbol, and slightly tarnishes the Reagan legacy.
I begin my first semester at Iowa State University. My first two weeks are spent in temporary housing (a storage room in the basement of one of the Towers, Wallace Hall). I eventually move into a room in Friley Hall in Bennett House. My Cyclones finish the football season with no bowl appearance but an ok record of 6-5.
The top pop hits of the year are a collection of songs that make me change radio stations and include Falco's "Rock Me Amadeus," Madona's "Papa Don't Preach," and Pet Shop Boys' "West End Girls." The few new songs that don't repulse me are "Real Wild Child (Wild One)" by Iggy Pop, "Small Town" by John Cougar Mellencamp, Cyndi Lauper's "True Colors", and "Walk This Way" by Run DMC/Aerosmith. It's also a great year for the music video format mostly because of Peter Gabriel's "Big Time" and "Sledgehammer," Genesis' "Land of Confusion," and A-Ha's "Take on Me."
This post's title is a line from John Cougar Mellencamp's song "Small Town" which peaked at #6 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Be safe
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