Sweden's prime minister Olof Palme, 59, is assassinated at Stockholm February 28 after leaving a movie theater with his wife, Lisbet. Carl Gustav Christer Pettersson will be arrested in December 1988, charged with the crime, and convicted, but a court will overturn his conviction in October 1989.
French voters elect Paris mayor Jacques Chirac, 53, March 15 to head a Conservative Parlement and share power with President François Miterrand, whose has ruled since 1981 (see ).
Former U.S. Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard pleads guilty June 4 to having supplied classified information to Israel (see ; ).
Nuclear submarine pioneer Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, U.S.
Navy (ret.), dies at Arlington, Va., July 8 at age 86.
The Sunday Times of London learns in September that Israel's clandestine nuclear-weapons facility 80 feet below the sands of the Negev Desert at has stockpiled enough fissionable material to produce between 100 and 200 thermonuclear warheads. Moroccan-born technician Mordechai Vanunu, 31, was employed at the facility from 1976 until November of last year and has spoken with reporters from the paper; a female Israeli agent lures him from London to Rome, where he is drugged and kidnapped September 30 on orders from Prime Minister Shimon Peres, taken to Israel, and charged with espionage, although he has received no money for providing information (see ).
Nuclear space weapons are a stumbling block to disarmament as President Reagan and Soviet Party Secretary Gorbachev hold summit meetings at Reykjavik, Iceland, in October.
They reach conditional agreements to ban medium-range missiles, fail to agree on strategic forces, and wind up in icy disharmony when Reagan rejects Soviet demands that he restrict development of his " " ("Star Wars"), which exists only in Reagan's mind, but Gorbachev will later say that their frank exchange about the possibility of a build-down of nuclear weapons has paved the way for mutual disarmament (see ). The four-stage LGM-118A Peacekeeper intercontinental ballistic missile deployed by the United States in December has a range of more than 6,000 miles, travels at a speed of more than 15,000 miles per hour, measures 71 feet (21.8 meters) in length, and weighs 195,000 pounds (87,750 kilograms), including 10 reentry vehicles that can be targeted independently with a high degree of accuracy.
Diplomat (and Nobel Peace Prize co-winner) Alva Myrdhal dies at Stockholm February 1 at age 84; former Turkish president Celâl Bayar at Istanbul August 22 at age 103 (or 104); former president Urho Kekkonen at Helsinki August 31 at age 85; former Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav M. Molotov at Moscow November 8 at age 96; former British prime minister Harold Macmillan, 1st earl of , at Birch Grove, Sussex, December 29 at age 92.
Former Arab Legion commander Sir John B.
Glubb dies at , East Sussex, March 17 at age 88.
U.S.
warplanes from Britain bomb Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi's headquarters at Tripoli April 15 in an 11-minute strike that hits a few other sites and leaves 15 civilians dead, including some of Qadaffi's children. President Reagan has ordered the attack in retaliation for the terrorist bombing of a discothèque that killed a U.S.
soldier and a Turkish woman and wounded 230 April 5 (see energy, ). An American F-111 with two airmen is lost in the attack on Libya, and three hostages are killed in Lebanon in reprisal for the U.S.
action.
Iran and Iraq continue their bloody war, with Iran receiving covert aid in the form of U.S.
arms and aircraft replacement parts. Israel is the chief source of such aid, but a Beirut magazine reveals in November that the United States has sent spare parts and ammunition to Iran in hopes that "moderates" there would help obtain the release of U.S.
hostages. Further investigation will show that other arms sales were made to Iran with the profits going to fund forces in Nicaragua (see ). , Tex.
-born Marine Lieut. Col. Oliver L.
North, 43, and Indiana-born National Security Council adviser Vice-Admiral John M. (Marlin) Poindexter, 58, resign their positions and refuse to answer congressional investigators' questions about their activities in the affair (see ).
Terrorists continue to take their toll.
A bomb aboard a plane over Athens kills four Americans April 2; guards at London's Heathrow Airport avert a tragedy April 17 when they arrest a British woman with explosives in her luggage, planted there by her fiancé in an effort to blow up a Tel Aviv-bound El Al flight; four Arab terrorists posing as airport security guards seize a Pan Am jet at Karachi September 4, a 16-hour standoff ensues, the gunmen storm aboard early September 5 and kill 15 of the nearly 400 passengers, wounding 127 (of whom 6 are dead by September 11); two Arabs fire submachine guns into worshipers at an Istanbul synagogue September 6, killing 21; a bomb at a Parisian department store September 17 kills five after four earlier explosions in September have killed three, injured 170.
Kurds ambush a Turkish Army truck near the Iraqi border August 12, killing 12 soldiers; 10 Turkish F-4s cross into Iraq August 15 and bomb suspected hideouts of guerrillas in retaliation, Premier Turgut Ozol reportedly says the bombing killed "around 150 to 200 people," Iran has supported Kurdish guerrillas fighting for autonomy in Iraq, Iraq has supported those fighting for autonomy in Iran, Iranian officials warn Turkey August 27 to remain neutral in the Iran-Iraq war, Turkey's foreign minister reportedly warns Iran that if her armies succeed in ousting Iraq's regime Turkey will have to seize Iraq's oil-rich northern region but denies the report (see ).
Pakistani authorities arrest opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, 33, August 14 and lock her up after she has addressed an protest rally at .
Her father, Ali, was executed in 1979 at , and she has demanded the resignation of President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, who overthrew her father in 1977. The Reagan administration has supported the repressive Zia regime, which does not free Ms. Bhutto until September 8 (see ).
The Caribbean island of secedes from the Netherlands January 1 to become a self-governing member of the kingdom, but is to remain responsible for the island's defense and foreign affairs until full independence is granted 10 years hence; Curaçao, Bonaire, St. Martin, Saba, and St. Eustatius remain part of the .
Haiti's president Jean-Claude Duvalier, 34, resigns February 6 and receives "temporary" sanctuary in France after 15 years of repressive rule in which "Baby Doc" has looted the nation's treasury. Haitians rejoice, but cronies retain power (see ).
U.
S. authorities arrest Surinamese Army captain Etienne Boerenveen and two accomplices on charges of cocaine smuggling March 24; Boerenveen is a member of 's five-member Supreme Council and describes himself as being second in power only to Lt. Desi Bouterse (see ).
A new cabinet installed by Bouterse July 16 includes representatives of trade unions, private business firms, three leading political parties and the army; Pretaapnarain Radhikishun is appointed premier, but Bouterse remains head of state. A federal jury at Miami convicts Capt. Boenenveen and his cohorts September 17, foreign airlines stop flying to Surinam November 5, Boerenveen receives a 12-year prison sentence November 17, and the rebels advance on under the command of Sgt.
Ronny Brunswijk as they escalate their efforts to overthrow the Bouterse government. They devastate a town 60 miles east of the capital beginning November 20 and force the closing of the country's second largest bauxite mine. Intensified fighting at the end of November and early December leaves 21 dead, and the government announces a state of emergency in eastern and southern Surinam December 2.
Brunswijk says he wants better treatment for his fellow maroons, or bush negroes; descendants of runaway African slaves, they represent 10 percent of Surinam's population (see ).
Corazon C. Aquino assumes the presidency of the Philippines February 26 after winning election amidst charges of ballot tampering by Ferdinand E.
Marcos. Widow of slain opposition leader Benigno Aquino (see ), "Cory" receives support from key military leaders, and a U.S.
military plane flies Marcos to after pressure has been applied to make him leave Manila. Accompanied by his billionaire crony Eduardo Cojuanco, he takes with him crates of gold and pesos and receives sanctuary in Hawaii after a 20-year rule that has bled the country of perhaps $5 billion (his estimated wealth is between $5 million and $10 million). Now 53, Aquino expropriates her estranged cousin Cojuanco's coconut-trading cartel, plantations, ships, pearl farms, cement works, and other properties.
Vietnam's secretary-general Le Dung (Le Duan) dies at Hanoi July 10 at age 78, having witnessed the expulsion of much of the country's ethnic Chinese. Effective at organizing the party and mobilizing manpower for the war against the United States, he has been less pragmatic than the late in dealing with peacetime economic and foreign affairs.
Uganda's government falls January 29 after seizure of by an anti-Obote group that has been excluded from the new regime (see ).
National Resistance Army founder Yoweri Museveni, now 41, is declared president but fighting continues in the northern provinces (see ).
Former Senate Judiciary Committee chairman (and cotton planter) James O. Eastland (D.
Miss.) dies at Greenwood, Miss., February 19 at age 81, having received hundreds of thousands of dollars in government subsidies while fighting civil rights, racial integration, and labor unions, and government aid to the poor during his six terms in the Senate; former secretary of defense Robert A.
Lovett dies at New York May 7 at age 90; diplomat Chester Bowles at Sussex, Conn., May 25 at age 85; former presidential adviser and onetime New York governor W. Averell Harriman of pneumonia-related kidney failure at Yorktown Heights, N.
Y., July 26 at age 94; lawyer and former McCarthy aide Roy M. Cohn of AIDS-related cardiopulmonary arrest at Bethesda, Md.
, August 2 at age 59.
Justice William H. Rehnquist assumes office as chief justice of the U.
S. Supreme Court September 26 (see ). Appointed by President Reagan to succeed Warren Burger, who has retired, Rehnquist has been an associate justice since January 1972 and established a record as the most right-wing member of the high court that he will head into the 21st century.
The Senate has confirmed his appointment by a margin of only 65 to 33; it has confirmed Trenton, N.J.-born jurist , 50, by a vote of 98 to 0 to fill the seat left vacant by Rehnquist, making him the first Italian-American to serve on the high court.
Witty, opinionated, and not a believer in judicial restraint, Scalia will support constitutional liberties while sometimes taking positions even farther to the right than those of Rehnquist.
Congresswoman Barbara Ann Mikulski wins election to the U.S.
Senate with help from $150,000 contributed by women on Emily's List (see ). Now 50, the Maryland politician is the first female to win a Senate seat.
Soviet authorities free political prisoners Anatoly Shcharansky, Yuri F.
Orlov, and two others February 11 and permit them to leave the country in exchange for prisoners held by the West (see ). Mikhail Gorbachev telephones Andrei D. Sakharov in December to let him know that he may return to Moscow from exile in Gorky; Shcharansky emigrates to Israel.
Chinese university students demand democratic freedoms guaranteed by the nation's constitution but denied by her leaders. Tens of thousands engage in demonstrations that risk their future careers, but traditional values preclude rooting of democratic principles in the People's Republic (see ).
Corazon Aquino restores civil rights in the Philippines March 2 in her first public declaration.
South African police fire on crowds of demonstrators March 6, killing 30.
Winnie Mandela returns to (see ); her home and clinic were burned down last year and she has broken her ban to continue the struggle against apartheid. She receives a visit from Coretta Scott King, who pointedly refuses to meet with 's President Botha.
Black civil rights leader Desmond Tutu, 54, is elected archbishop of South Africa April 14. More than 1.5 million blacks strike May 1 to protest apartheid in the nation's largest job action ever.
Fearing violent protests marking the 10th anniversary of the Soweto uprising June 16, President Botha declares a second state of emergency June 12 (see ). His decree covers the whole nation, bans "subversive" press reports, and gives security forces virtually unlimited powers: heavily armed police raid black townships outside , Pretoria, Port Elizabeth, Durban, Pietermaritzburg, and , seizing documents and arresting more than 1,000 antiapartheid activists, clergymen, and trade union officials, but millions of blacks proceed to strike June 16, protesting apartheid. An academic report released August 14 states that 300,000 families in at least 38 black townships are refusing to pay relatively high rates, depriving the townships of their chief revenue source; the government presents Parliament August 18 with a list of 8,501 persons whom it has detained under the state of emergency, but civil rights groups say the actual number could be as high as 13,000; police shoot at least 20 blacks dead and wound nearly 100 at Soweto August 26, an angry mob hacks a white-appointed black township councilor to death in the worst violence at Soweto since 1976 (see ).
The U.S. Senate votes 78 to 21 October 3 to override President Reagan's veto of economic sanctions against South Africa.
Activists, including the TransAfrica group founded by Randall Robinson in 1977, have lobbied in Washington to gain support for the sanctions. takes further measures to quell violence as General Motors and IBM join the Western companies divesting themselves of South African subsidiaries.
Former Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara dies at his suburban Tokyo home July 31 at age 86.
Survivors of the Holocaust will erect a monument to his memory in the early 1990s with chimes and a reflecting pool at his home town, Yaotsu.
The Pentagon issues an order calling for the exposure and dismissal of homosexuals. The action will lead to the discharge of many of the army and navy's most productive personnel, including some top-ranking female officers (see "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," ).
The U.S. Supreme Court upholds a Georgia sodomy law June 30, ruling 5 to 4 in Bowers v.
Hardwick. Chief Justice Warren Burger supports the majority opinion written by Justice Byron White, as do Justices O'Connor, Powell, and Rehnquist, but Powell will say in 1990 that he erred (see ).
Uruguay's president Julio Maria Sanguinetti signs a law December 22 granting amnesty for soldiers accused of human rights abuses during the 12 years of military dictatorship that ended last year (see ).
Tens of thousands of Uruguayans were forced into exile or jailed during the crackdown by the military, more than 100 died in custody, and a parliamentary report issued last year said that 164 had disappeared, most of them from Argentina, which had coordinated her activities with those of the military regime. President Sanguinetti's Colorado Party is widely believed to have pledged itself not to prosecute the military as a condition for a return to democracy, and the all-night debate over the amnesty measure has been interrupted by fistfights and scuffles in the Chamber of Representatives, which finally voted to approve it by a margin of 60 to 37 (see ).
All seven astronauts aboard the U.
S. space shuttle Challenger perish January 28 as their craft explodes 73 seconds after liftoff from Florida's . Included are NASA biomedical engineer Judith A.
Resnik, 36, and Concord, N.H., schoolteacher (Sharon) Christa McAuliffe, 37, who was chosen from 11,000 applicants to be the first ordinary citizen in space.
The unmanned spacecraft Voyager 2 launched in 1977 has come close to the planet Uranus January 24 and made new discoveries of moons and rings, but the Challenger tragedy is a setback for space exploration. National Space and Aeronautics Administration (NASA) has dismissed warnings by engineers at Morton-Thiokol, makers of its booster rockets, not to launch in very cold weather. President Reagan asks former NASA chief James (Chapman) Fletcher, 66, to return to NASA as a way to help restore morale and credibility to the organization; Fletcher is credited with having sold the idea of the space-shuttle program to the Nixon administration, and a congressional investigation next year will clear him of conflict-of-interest charges that he steered a contract for the shuttle's booster rockets to Morton-Thiokol.
The Soviet Union's 20.4-ton Mir core module launched February 20 is a space station that contains living quarters, a laboratory, and two docking ports; it is the first such station set up for continuous habitation (see ).
Spain and Portugal join the European Common Market January 1.
A Single European Act calls for a fully integrated market by 1993.
The Discover Card introduced by Sears, Roebuck in January through its Dean Witter Financial Services division competes with American Express and bank-issued credit cards.
A worker at the Pretoria Mine outside Pretoria, South Africa, discovers a perfect, egg-shaped blue-white diamond in July.
De Beers chairman James Ogilvie Thompson will not reveal the existence of the 599-carat stone until March 11, 1988, when he will name it the Centenary Diamond in honor of the company's 100th anniversary.
A fire in a gold mine September 16 kills 177 workers and injures more than 230 in South Africa's worst mining disaster since 1960. Most of the victims are black migrant workers from and Mozambique; union officials have declared the General Mining Union Corp.
which owns the Kinross mine an official "enemy" for opposing unionization and charges that lax safety standards brought on the fire (see ).
Japan's gross national product reaches $16,552 per person, up from $9,925 in 1981; her trade surplus with the United States reaches $55 billion, up from $15.8 billion; her private sector employs 56 million people, up from 54 million.
The U.S. national debt tops $2 trillion, up from $1 trillion in 1981.
The nation's trade deficit worsens despite a weakening dollar, setting a record of over $170 billion. The budget deficit also worsens.
United States Steel becomes USX July 9, having acquired Marathon Oil Corp.
in 1982 and other oil companies since then; it will change its name to Marathon Oil Corp. in 2002.
Singer stops making sewing machines.
It announces plans to spin off its sewing operations to a separate firm and concentrate on aerospace.
Congress restructures the federal income tax system, consolidating 15 brackets into 2 (15 percent and 28 percent), eliminating many tax breaks for the rich, removing lowest bracket earners from the tax rolls, but hiking taxes on businesses, which will in many cases pass along their higher tax costs in higher prices. President Reagan signs the legislation October 22.
U.S. female professionals outnumber men for the first time, but average substantially less in pay than their male counterparts.
Insider trading scandals rock (see ), but Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average soars nearly 350 points. The financial district's recovery creates hundreds of thousands of jobs, midlevel clerical workers earn $75,000 to $80,000 in salaries and bonuses, secretaries who work past 6:30 in the evening receive overtime pay, dinner money, and a driver to take them home, and the prosperity in the district provides more work for lawyers, accountants, printers, limousine drivers, office temps, building maintenance workers, and the like. The Dow closes at a record 1955.
57 December 2 and closes December 31 at 1895.95, up 27.6 percent from its 1985 close of 1546.
67. The NASDAQ closes at 325.16, up 31.
30 percent.
The first Staples office supplies store opens May 1 at , Mass. Orange, N.
J.-born founder Thomas G. (George) "Tom" Stemberg, 37, had his typewriter ribbon break July 4 of last year while he was working on a business plan for a new retail chain, the local stationer was closed, Stemberg roamed the aisles of a warehouse club in a vain search for a new ribbon, came up with the idea of an office-supplies superstore chain, and has started a company in partnership with Leo Kahn.
Nuclear energy receives a setback April 26 when an explosion blows off the top of reactor Number 4 at the 's power plant near in the Ukraine, sending clouds of radioactive fallout across much of Europe. Operators at the facility have powered down the reactor in a way that made its core less stable, and for some reason they have also disengaged critical safety systems; panicking when the reactor started to destabilize, they took actions that inadvertently set off a power surge in the core, producing the explosion. News of the accident is suppressed, and no effort is made for hours to warn the nearby town of of any danger: children continue to play in streets, young men gather for a football (soccer) match, and housewives hang their laundry out to dry even as reactor technicians and firemen who have responded to the explosion pour into the local hospital.
Trains crowded with relatives of Communist Party officials roll into Moscow from Kiev, but Pripiyat is not evacuated for 48 hours; more than 30 fire fighters and plant workers die of radiation exposure in the first weeks after the accident as a plume of toxic gases and dust laced with plutonium, iodine 131, strontium 90, and cesium 137 spreads across the western USSR, eastern Europe, and ; predictions of future cancer deaths due to radioactive exposure range from 6,500 to 45,000. Vast tracts of Soviet land will remain uninhabitable and unarable for thousands of years.
World oil prices collapse, bottoming out at $7.
20 per barrel in July. Oil baron and philanthropist Charles Bierer Wrightsman has died at New York May 27 at age 90, having given a vast art collection to the .
Saudi Arabia's King Fahd removes Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani from his oil ministry post October 28 after 24 years as the most powerful figure in .
Yamani has been discounting oil.
The first Jeep Wrangler comes off the American Motors assembly line March 12 (see ; Chrysler, ).
Vancouver, B.
C., hails the opening of the Alex Fraser Bridge (initially the Annacis Bridge) across the ; built in 27 months, 3,050 feet (930 meters) in length, its main span is 1,525 feet (485 meters) long, and it will remain the world's longest cable-stayed bridge until 1991.
Romania completes the Danube-Black Sea Canal from Cernavoda to Constanza.
President Ceausescu has used political prisoners and army conscripts to dig the 40-mile waterway that saves ships 150 miles but will have little use, since most shippers use railcars or trucks.
Aviation pioneer Beryl Markham dies at Nairobi August 3 at age 83 following surgery for a broken leg; founder Robert F. Six dies at , Calif.
, October 6 at age 79.
The Windows program introduced by Microsoft Corp. in February employs icons on the computer screen instead of the arcane commands used in its disc operating system (see ; IBM, ).
The new system employs a mouse, imitates other Apple features, and is full of problems, but Microsoft works to upgrade it (see Apple, ; Windows 3.1, ).
The 4-year-old Houston-based Compaq Computer Corp.
introduces a personal computer in the fall containing 's new 386 microprocessor chip (see ; Intel, ). Compaq sales will reach $1.2 billion next year (see PC server, ).
Superconductivity makes news in January as Swiss physicist K. Alex Müller, 58, and German physicist J. Georg Bednorz, 35, at IBM's Zürich Research Laboratory discover zero resistivity in a ceramic material (a compound of copper, oxygen, barium, and lanthanum) that permits superconductivity at -397° F.
#x2014;a much higher temperature than was ever before possible. Their breakthrough (which promptly wins them a Nobel award) opens potentials for more energy-efficient motors, computers, and the like as physicist Paul C. W.
Chu and other scientists seek ways to achieve superconductivity at -283° F. (see ).
Nobel biochemist Fritz Lipmann dies at , N.
Y., July 24 at age 87.
Clergyman-turned-politician Thomas C.
"Tommy" Douglas dies of cancer at Ottawa February 24 at age 81, remembered as the father of Canada's universal healthcare system.
The U.S.
Food and approves the first genetically-engineered vaccine; it will be used for immunization against hepatitis B. The FDA gives approval also to a prostate specific antigen (PSA) blood test to screen men for possible prostate cancer, the second largest cause of cancer deaths in America (lung cancer remains first). The test will be credited with a sharp reduction in deaths from prostate cancer in the next 10 years (improved treatment will also be credited).
Fluoroquinolone antibiotics are introduced with assurances that they will be effective in fighting bacteria without the resistance issues that can make other antibiotics ineffective. Within a few years Bayer AG will be marketing ciproflaxin under the brand name , Abbott Laboratories temafloxacin (Omniflox), Pfizer trovafloxacin ( ), Glaxo Wellcome grepafloxacin (Raxar), Johnson #x0026; Johnson Floxin and ; all fetch high prices and will be widely prescribed, but some will be withdrawn after fatalities from acute liver failure and heart rhythm abnormalities. Physicians will insist that side effects from quinolones are no more severe than those from other antibiotics, and Cipro will generally be regarded as safe, but tendon ruptures and severe psychiatric effects related to Cipro will raise questions.
A U.S. law effective in August makes it illegal for hospitals to turn out patients who can no longer afford to pay, but nearly one third of Americans have inadequate health insurance or none at all, and payments are so low that many physicians avoid taking Medicaid patients.
Epidemiologist E. Cuyler Hammond dies of lymphatic cancer at his New York home November 3 at age 74, having seen more and more Americans give up smoking.
Worldwide Church of God founder Herbert W.
Armstrong dies at Pasadena, Calif., January 15 at age 93, having built up his fundamentalist Christian sect to have 80,000 members (he has claimed 100,000), some of whom have contributed as much as 30 percent of their income to meet the organization's annual budget of $131 million. Armstrong has called himself "Christ's chosen apostle," he excommunicated his son Ted Garner Armstrong in 1978, the two have not spoken since, the state attorney general has investigated claims that the founder siphoned off millions of dollars in Worldwide Church money for his own personal use, and although he has chosen Joseph Tkach as his successor, Tkach will gradually abandon Armstrong's doctrines.
Publisher Rupert Murdoch pays $2 billion to acquire Metromedia's New York television station WNEW-TV from John Kluge and renames it WNYW (seePost, ). Murdoch also acquires five other U.S.
television stations from Metromedia, backing Barry Diller's plan to launch a fourth TV network by establishing the basis for what will become the Fox network. The new network will start next year with 2 nights of prime-time programming; by 1990 it will be on 5 nights, succeeding despite heavy odds against it.
Wired magazine begins publication in a warehouse under the direction of former right-wing student activist and self-described contrarian Louis Rossetto Jr.
, 37, and his domestic partner, Jane Metcalfe. Rossetto writes all the headlines, mixes articles by technology gurus with his anti-authoritarian editorial views, and attracts advertisers of computer hardware and software, purple suede , and other hip paraphernalia.
The London color tabloid Today begins publication March 5.
Financed by Eddie Shah, it is the first British paper to take advantage of cost-cutting direct-input computer technology and whets the appetite of Rupert Murdoch and other publishers to follow its lead. The Lonrho Group headed by Roland "Tiny" Rowland acquires control of the new paper August 21.
The Independent begins publication October 7 at London.
Former Telegraph editor Andreas Whittam Smith heads the new daily, which announces that it will be "an independent voice, neither right nor left, a voice for inquiring, skeptical Britons." The first quality paper launched in Britain since the Financial Times began in 1888, the Independent is owned by 30 financial institutions and its own employees, sells out its initial 650,000-copy printing, needs a steady circulation of at least 350,000 to survive, targets a " " readership, and with help from large front-page photographs will develop a circulation of 415,000 by 1992, slightly exceeding that of either the Times or the Guardian (see ).
Nonfiction: Cadillac Desert by Minneapolis-born environmental writer Marc Reisner, 37, exposes the corruption and shortsightedness behind the creation of water supplies for before and after , with huge sums going to benefit small numbers of influential people and consequent water depletion in the American West; Death of the Soul: From Descartes to the Computer by philosopher William Barrett; The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe with a Design by zoologist Richard Dawkins; The Second Oldest Profession: The Spy as , Patriot, Fantasist, and Whore by Phillip Knightley; MAYDAY: Eisenhower, Khrushchev, and the U-2 Affair by Michael R.
Beschloss; "The Target Is Destroyed": What Really Happened to Flight 007 and What America Knew about It by Seymour M. Hersh; Game Plan: A Geostrategic Framework for the Conduct of the U.S.
-Soviet Contest by Zbigniew Brzezinski; Peasant Protest in Japan, 1590-1884 by Boston-born author Herbert (Philip) Bix, 47, who married a Japanese woman in 1961 and has done research in Japan; Women and Children Last by New York-born writer ( ) Ruth Sidel (née Lipskin), 50, who claims that as many as 33.7 million Americans, most of them women and children, can be called poor by any reasonable standard, that the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer, that the widening gap in income is separating people more and more along racial, ethnic, and gender lines, and that the welfare system is being cut back sharply; You're Only Old Once by Dr. Seuss.
Political scientist and author Louis Hartz dies of an epileptic seizure at Istanbul January 20 at age 66; author (and Scientology founder) L. Ron Hubbard of a stroke at Creston, Calif., January 24 at age 74.
His body is cremated, his ashes are scattered in the Pacific, and his final science-fiction novels are published posthumously (five more will appear next year). More than 600 of his books, stories, and articles were published during his lifetime, more than 23 million copies of his fiction books were sold, and more than 27 million of his non-fiction books (notably his 1950 book Dianetics); Simone de dies at Paris April 14 at age 78; Theodore H. White following a stroke at New York May 15 at age 71; historian Sir Moses I.
Finley following a stroke at Cambridge June 23 at age 74; historian Dumas Malone at , Va., December 27 at age 94.
Fiction: As Birds Bring Forth the Sun (stories) by Alistair MacLeod; Learning by Heart (stories) by Scottish-born U.
S. writer Margot Livesey, 33; The Progress of Love (stories) by Alice Munro; Roger's Version by John Updike; The Sportswriter by Richard Ford; A to Memphis by Peter Taylor, now 69; Monkeys by Manchester, Mass.-born New York novelist Susan Minot, 29; Dessa Rose by University of California at San Diego Afro-American literature professor Sherley Anne Williams, 42, who grew up picking crops in the Fresno-Bakersfield area; Foe (a retelling of the story) by J.
M. Coetzee; Mohawk by Johnstown, N.Y.
-born novelist Richard Russo, 37; Regrets Only by Washington, D.C., journalist-novelist Sally Quinn, 45; The Beet Queen by Louise Erdrich; Tourist Season by Fort Lauderdale-born Miami Herald investigative reporter and novelist Carl Hiaasen, 33; A Perfect Spy by John le Carré.
Novelist Christopher Isherwood dies of cancer at , Calif., January 4 at age 81; Laura Z. Hobson of cancer at her native New York February 28 at age 85; Bernard Malamud of heart disease at his native New York March 18 at age 71; Jorge Luis Borges of liver cancer at Geneva June 14 at age 86 (he has been almost totally blind for decades); Rex Warner dies at , Oxfordshire, June 24 at age 81; Storm Jameson at Cambridge August 30 at age 95.
Poetry: The Marble Queen by , Japan-born U.S. poet (Roger) Henri Cole, 30; Thomas and Beulah by Rita Dove.
Poet Jaroslav Seifert dies of heart disease at his native Prague January 10 at age 84; poet-essayist John Ciardi of a heart attack at Edison, N.J., March 31 at age 69.
Juvenile: The Magic School Bus at the Waterworks by Newark, N.J.-born author Joanna Cole, 42, illustrations by Brooklyn, N.
Y.-born author-illustrator Bruce Degen, 43 (first in a series of science adventures); The Baby-Sitters Club by Princeton, N.J.
-born author-illustrator Ann M. (Matthews) Martin, 41; Love You Forever by Pittsburgh-born author Robert Munsch, illustrations by Sheila McGraw; The Other Side of Dark by Joan Lowery Nixon; The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett; The Christmas Day Kitten by James Herriot.
Elizabeth Coatsworth dies at Nobleboro, Me.
, August 31 at age 93.
Painting: Mural with Blue Brushstroke by Roy Lichtenstein (for the five-story lobby of New York's Equitable Life Assurance Center); Pearlblossom Highway (photo collage) by David Hockney; Chain Gang (oil on four canvases) by Elizabeth Murray; Drum Chorus by Romare Bearden. Georgia O'Keeffe dies at Santa Fe, New Mexico, March 6 at age 98.
Sculpture: Porten/Slugten (corteen steel, two parts) by Richard Serra; Nature Study (bronze) by Louise Bourgeois; Untitled '88 by Donald Judd. Joseph Beuys dies of heart failure at Düsseldorf January 23 at age 64; Henry Moore at Much Hadham, England, August 31 at age 88.
Industrial designer Raymond Loewy dies at Monaco July 14 at age 93.
Photographs: Other Americas by Brazilian photojournalist Sebastião Salgado, 42, records the everyday lives of Latin-American peasants. A member of the co-operative since 1979, Salgado gained fame in 1981 with a picture of John Hinckley's attempt to assassinate President Reagan. His book Sahel: Man in Distress portrays the famine in Africa.
Photographer Ernst Haas dies following a stroke at New York September 12 at age 65; photographer-painter Jacques-Henri Lartigue at Nice September 12 at age 92.
Theater: Lend Me a Tenor by York, Pa.-born playwright Ken Ludwig, 35, 3/6 at London's , with Denis Lawson, John Barron, Ronald Holgate; The House of Blue Leaves by John Guare 4/20 at New York's Vivian Beaumont Theater (to Plymouth Theater 10/14), with Danny Aiello, Stockard Channing, Swoosie Kurtz, New York-born Ben Stiller (son of comedians Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara), 20, 398 perfs.
; A Woman in Mind by Alan Ayckbourn 9/3 at London's Vaudeville Theatre, with Julia McKenzie, Martha Jarvis; Breaking the Code by English playwright Hugh Whitemore, 50, (who has adapted Andrew Hodges's book Alan Turing: The Enigma of Intelligence) 10/21 at London's Haymarket Theater, with Derek Jacobi as the man who helped to crack the code in World War II, laying the groundwork for computer theory and artificial intelligence, was then hounded by the law for his homosexuality, and committed suicide at age 42; Coastal Disturbances by Tina Howe 11/19 at New York's off-Broadway Second Stage Theater, with Topeka-born actress Annette Bening, 28, New York-born actor Tim Daly, 30, Rosemary Murphy, 350 perfs.; Broadway Bound by Neil Simon 12/4 at New York's Broadhurst Theater, with Los Angeles-born actor Jonathan Silverman, 20, Portland, Me.-born actress Linda Lavin, 49, Phyllis Newman, Newark, N.
J.-born actor Jason Alexander, 27, John Randolph, now 71, 756 perfs.
Actress Una Merkel dies at Los Angeles January 2 at age 82; actor Howard Da Silva of lymphoma at , N.
Y., February 16 at age 76; comedian Harry Ritz at San Diego March 29 at age 78, the last of the Ritz Brothers; playwright-novelist Jean Genet dies of throat cancer at Paris April 15 at age 75; director-producer Cheryl Crawford at New York October 7 at age 84 of complications from a fall; actress Siobhan McKenna of a heart attack following lung cancer surgery at Dublin November 16 at age 63.
Television: Yes Prime Minister 1/9 on BBC-2, with Paul Eddington, Nigel Hawthorne (to 1/21/1988, 17 episodes; see ); Lovejoy 1/10 on BBC-1 with Ian McShane as a shady antiques dealer who entangles himself in detective work; Casualty on BBC-1 with Derek Thompson, Catherine Shipton, Julia Watson; The Hogan Family 3/1 on NBC with Valerie Harper, Josh Taylor, Jason Bateman (to 5/4/1987); Perfect Strangers 3/25 on ABC with Mark Linn-Baker as a Chicago photojournalist wannabe, Bronson Pinchot as his distant cousin Balki (to 8/6/1993); Head of the Class 9/17 on ABC with Howard Hesseman, William G.
Schilling, Robin Givens, Dan Frischman (to 1/15/1991); Designing Women 9/29 on CBS with Seattle-born actress Jean Smart, 35, Tennessee-born actress Dixie Carter, 47, Nashville-born actress Annie Potts, 33 (to 5/24/1993, 163 episodes); L.A. Law 10/3 on NBC (after a 9/15 2-hour pilot show) with Pasadena, Calif.
-born actor Harry Hamlin, 34, , Conn.-born actress Jill Eikenberry, 39, Richard Dysart, Baltimore-born actor Michael Tucker, 34, Illinois-born actress Susan Dey (originally Susan Smith), 33, in a series created by Steven Bochco and Terry Louise Fisher; ALF (Alien Life Form) 9/22 on NBC with the voice of puppet creator Paul Fusco, 31; Max Wright, 44, as Willie Tanner; Anne Schedeen, 37, as Kate Tanner (to 6/18/1990); Matlock 9/23 on NBC with Andy Griffith as lawyer Benjamin Matlock (to 5/7/1995); The Singing Detective 11/16-12/21 on BBC-1 with Michael Gambon as Philip Marlow.
Films: Ross McElwee's Sherman's March with McElwee.
Also: James Cameron's Aliens with Sigourney Weaver; Fons Rademakers's The Assault with Derek de Lint, Marc van Uchelen; Eugene Corr's Desert Bloom with Jon Voight, JoBeth Williams, Annabeth Gish; Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters with Allen, Michael Caine, Mia Farrow, Maureen O'Sullivan (Farrow's mother); Claude Berri's Jean de Florette with Yves Montand, Gerard Depardieu; Peter Weir's The Mosquito Coast with Harrison Ford; Ann and Jeanette Petrie's documentary Mother Teresa, narrated by Richard Attenborough; Oliver Stone's Platoon with Chicago-born actor Tom Berenger (Thomas Michael Moore), 36, Wisconsin-born actor Willem Dafoe, 31, New York-born actor Charlie Sheen (Carlos Irwin Estevez), 21; Margarethe von Trotta's Rosa Luxemburg with Barbara Sukowa; Fielder Cook's Seize the Day with Robin Williams, Joseph Wiseman, Jerry Stiller; Erich Rohmer's Summer with Maria Riviere; Juzo Itami's Tampopo with Ken Watanabe, Tsutomu Yamazaki; Lizzie Borden's Working Girls with Louise Smith, Ellen McElduff, Amanda Goodwin.
Donna Reed dies of pancreatic cancer at Beverly Hills January 14 at age 64; Lilli Palmer at Los Angeles January 27 at age 72; director Otto Preminger of cancer at New York April 23 at age 79; Broderick Crawford following a stroke at Rancho Mirage, Calif., April 26 at age 74; Elisabeth Bergner at London May 12 at age 85; Sterling Hayden of cancer at , Calif.
, May 23 at age 70; Dame Anna Neagle in Surrey June 3 at age 81; director Vincente Minnelli at Los Angeles July 25 at age 76; Hermione Baddeley following a stroke at Los Angeles August 19 at age 79; Blanche Sweet following a stroke at New York September 6 age 90; director Hal Wallis at Rancho Mirage, Calif., October 5 at age 88; Keenan Wynn of cancer at Brentwood, Calif., October 14 at age 70; Cary Grant following a stroke at , Iowa, November 30 at age 80.
Film musicals: Frank Oz's Little Shop of Horrors with Rick Moranis, Ellen Greene, Vincent Gardenia; Bertrand Tavernier's Round Midnight with François Cluzot, bebop tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon, music by Herbie Hancock, now 46.
Stage musicals: Phantom of the Opera 10/9 at Her Majesty's Theatre, London, with Michael Crawford, Sarah Brightman, music by , lyrics by Charles Hart, book based on the 1911 Gaston Leroux novel.
Baritone singer-actor Gordon MacRae dies of cancer at Lincoln, Neb.
, January 24 at age 64; onetime "fiddler on the roof" Herschel Bernardi of a heart attack at Los Angeles May 10 at age 62; Broadway musical composer Alan Jay Lerner of lung cancer at his native New York June 14 at age 67.
The first award for polka goes to West Virginia-born "polka king" Frank J. (John) "Frankie" Yankovic, 70, whose Slovenian-style polka music has gained him national renown.
Popular songs: Parade (album) by Prince includes the single " ;" Master of Puppets (album) by 5-year-old Los Angeles heavy metal band (Downey-born singer-songwriter James Hetfield, now 23; Danish-born drummer Lars Ulrich, now 22, and others); Slippery When Wet (album) by the New Jersey-based rock group Bon Jovi (Jon Bon Jovi, 24; Dave Bryan, 24; Richie Sambora, 27; Tico Torres, 33) includes "Let It Rock," "You Give Love a Bad Name," "Livin' on a Prayer," "Social Disease," "Wanted Dead or Alive," "Raise Your Hands," "Without Love," "I'd Die for You," "You Never Say Goodbye," and "Wild in the Streets"; "That's What Friends Are For" by Burt Bacharach and Carole Bayer Sager; Graceland (album) by Paul Simon includes harmonies by the 15-year-old South African singing group Ladysmith Black Mambazo; Whitney Houston (album) by onetime New Hope (Pa.) Baptist Church choir singer Whitney Houston, 23, includes "You Give Good Love" and "Saving All My Love for You"; Live?!
* Like a Suicide (album) by the 1-year-old Los Angeles heavy-metal group Guns N' Roses (Indiana-born vocalist Axl Rose [originally William Bailey], 24; English-born guitarist [originally Saul Hudson], 21; Seattle-born bassist [né Michael] McKagan, 22; Indiana-born guitarist Izzy Stradlin [né Jeff Isbell], 24; Cleveland-born drummer Steve Adler, 21); King of America (album) by Elvis Costello; "We Don't Need Another Hero" by British songwriters Graham Lyle and Terry Britten; Rapture (album) by Anita Baker; Control (album) by Gary, Ind.-born vocalist Janet Jackson, 20, sister of entertainment superstar Michael; Licensed to III (album) by the rap group the Beastie Boys.
Composer Harold Arlen dies at New York April 23 at age 80; clarinetist-bandleader Benny Goodman of cardiac arrest at New York June 13 at age 77; onetime crooner Rudy Vallée of an apparent heart attack at Los Angeles July 3 at age 84; jazz pianist Teddy Wilson of cancer at New Britain, Conn.
, August 1 at age 73; jazz trumpeter-cornetist-composer Thad Jones of cancer at Copenhagen August 20 at age 63; tenor saxophonist Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis of cancer at , Calif., November 3 at age 65; bandleader Horace Heidt of pneumonia and heart disease at Los Angeles December 8 at age 85.
Chicago beats 46 to 10 at New Orleans January 26 in Super Bowl XX.
Former Notre Dame left halfback Jim Crowley of 1924 " " fame dies at , Pa., January 15 at age 83, having coached Fordham's 1937 "Seven Blocks of Granite" defensive line in 1937.
Susan Butcher wins the Iditarod Trail Dog Sled Race (now 1,157 miles; see ).
She will win it again next year, in 1988, and in 1990.
The Boston Celtics beat the 135 to 131 at the Boston Garden April 20 despite a record 63 points scored by Bulls guard in the playoff game. Jordan broke his left foot in October of last year and missed 4½ months of the season.
The Celtics select basketball star Leonard K. "Len" Bias, 22, June 17, but he dies of a cocaine overdose 2 days later.
Texas-born jockey Willie Shoemaker wins the at age 54 riding a 17-to-1 shot (Ferdinand) to crown a 37-year racing career.
Retired jockey Sir Gordon Richards dies at Kintbury, Berkshire, November 10 at age 82.
Boris Becker wins in men's singles at , Martina Navratilova in women's singles; Ivan Lendl wins in U.S.
men's singles, Navratilova in women's singles.
Argentina wins the 13th football (soccer) championship, defeating 3 to 2 at .
Golfer Jack Nicklaus wins his sixth .
Now 46, Nicklaus has won 71 official PGA events, a record topped only by Sam Snead, now 74, who won 84 events, and he has finished among the top three in 45 of the 100 major championships in which he has competed.
Baseball all-star dies at Beverly Hills, Calif., September 4 at age 75.
The New York Mets win the , beating the Boston Red Sox 4 games to 3 after a ball rolls through the legs of Boston's first baseman in Game 6.
New York-born boxer Michael Gerard "Mike" Tyson, 20, wins the world heavyweight boxing title November 23, knocking out Trevor Berbic, 29, in the second round of a bout at .
Nintendo video games debut in America and wow the youngsters with sophisticated graphics and entries like "The Legend of Zelda", in which the hero, Link, must rescue Zelda.
Founded in 1898 to manufacture playing cards, Nintendo has U.S. sales of $300 million as kids demand the $100 players and $35 to $40 cartridges.
Sales will hit $830 million next year and top $3.4 billion by 1990 (see Game Boy, ).
Leather-goods designer Aldo Gucci dies at Rome January 19 at age 84, having suffered from prostate cancer; fashion designer dies at her Sands Point, Long Island, home January 24 at age 74; Wallis Warfield Simpson, duchess of Windsor, at Paris April 24 at age 89.
Her body is flown to England and buried beside that of the late king, , who died in 1972; designer dies of what is believed to be AIDS-related equine encephalitis at New York May 30 at age 46.
Levi Strauss introduces a line of khaki casual pants in the fall under the name Dockers; the line initially consists of just three basic styles #x2014;double-pleated fronted in khaki, olive, navy, and black; non-pleated in the same colors; and the Steamer in cotton canvas; by the early 1990s Dockers will have grown into a $600 million business, more than 20 new styles will be added, and within a decade 70 percent of U.S.
men aged 25 to 45 will own at least one pair of Dockers as khaki pants come to rival bluejeans in popularity.
Whirlpool bath inventor Candido Jacuzzi dies at , Ariz., October 7 at age 83.
The partially nude and bruised body of New York barfly Jennifer Dawn Levin, 18, is found behind the Metropolitan Museum in Central Park August 26. Police arrest "Preppy" Robert E. Chambers Jr.
, 19, shortly afterward; the six-foot-four Chambers makes a videotaped confession that he engaged in rough sex play in which Levin tied his hands with her panties and squeezed his testicles so painfully that he reacted in a "frenzy," locked his arm around her neck, and yanked her off, killing her accidentally. He is indicted September 10 on two counts of second-degree murder (see ).
Nearly 75 metric tons of cocaine come into the United States, up from 19 in 1976, and prices drop from $125 per gram to $75.
Colombia's Calí and Medellín cartels operate drug rings that net hundreds of millions of dollars per week #x2014;money that must be "laundered" through accommodating banks. Congress passes new anti-drug legislation October 17 as use of crack cocaine spreads across the nation. The 13-year-old Drug Enforcement Agency and other law-enforcement agencies are authorized to seize assets derived from, traceable to, or intended to be used for illicit drug trafficking; critics argue that letting agencies keep the lion's share of the drug-related assets that they seize gives them financial incentives which will leave many of them dependent on drug-law enforcement for their operating budgets, encouraging them to violate civil rights with pre-dawn raids on suspected narcotics dealers.
New York's four-block Jacob K. Javits Convention Center opens in the West 30s, replacing the 25-year-old at Columbus Circle.
Architect Minoru Yamasaki dies of cancer at Detroit February 6 at age 73.
Singapore's 66-story Overseas Union Bank Centre is completed to give the city-state its tallest skyscraper thus far (919 feet [280 meters] high) as the largely Chinese population continues to soar above 2 million. The United Overseas Bank Plaza completed in 1992 and the Republic Plaza in 1995 will be just as tall.
The new U.
S. tax law will lead to depressed prices in the housing market by eliminating tax shelters, although interest on mortgages, home-equity loans, and home-improvement loans remains tax deductible.
Great Basin National Park is established in eastern Nevada by act of Congress.
Previously part of the Humboldt National Forest, the 121-square-mile park consists chiefly of the southern part of the Snake Mountains, whose rises to a height of 13,063 feet and has a permanent ice field. The limestone Lehman Caves attract visitors.
Toxic gas kills 1,524 in Cameroon August 26 after an underwater volcanic explosion.
Entire villages are reported devoid of life.
An earthquake in El Salvador October 10 registers 5.5 on the and kills upwards of 1,000.
A fire at a warehouse of the Sandoz pharmaceutical firm at Basel November 1 results in 1,000 tons of toxic chemicals being discharged into the , killing millions of fish and contaminating water supplies. European environmentalists demonstrate in protest as the chemicals make their way out to the .
The appearance of ruffe (Gymnocephalus cernuus) in 's St.
Louis River harbor on raises fears that fish discharged in ballast from foreign vessels will spread through the and other inland waters, taking a heavy toll of native yellow perch and walleye populations (see zebra mussel, ).
The U.S.
Department of Agriculture approves release of the first genetically altered virus and the first outdoor test of genetically altered plants. The virus is used to fight a form of swine herpes, the plants are high-yield tobacco plants.
More than 60,000 U.
S. farms are sold or foreclosed as depression continues in the rural West and Midwest. Foreign grain exporters undersell U.
S. exporters despite the falling dollar, and the $14.21 billion U.
S. trade deficit in May includes the first agricultural deficit in 20 years. Sales of farm tractors bottom out at 47,000 units, down from a peak of 157,000 in 1973 when grain prices were high, and combine sales fall to below 10,000, down from 30,000 per year in the 1970s.
Prices of poultry, eggs, and many vegetables and fruit climb in late July throughout much of the United States as drought in the Southern states reduces crop yields.
Soviet authorities pour more rubles into fertilizers and pesticides in an effort to increase output under a collective system that has proved notoriously unproductive. Engineers have drained the Aral Sea #x2014;once the world's fourth largest freshwater lake #x2014;to create more farmland, and millions of rubles have been wasted on ill-conceived and irresponsible irrigation schemes (see ).
The People's grows 65.5 million metric tons of corn (maize), second only to the 210 million produced by U.S.
farmers (see ; ).
President Reagan defends his administration's budget priorities May 21, telling reporters that America's hungry are not suffering because assistance is unavailable but only from lack of knowledge of where and how to get help, but the Physicians Task Force on Hunger in America and other private groups dispute claims that hunger in America has largely been eradicated, citing problems of the "new poor" #x2014;the unemployed, underemployed, and homeless who are forced to depend on government aid or private charity.
Hands Across America brings out an estimated 6 million Americans May 25 to hold hands and sing across 4,150 miles of road in support of the hungry and homeless.
Even Tennessee farmers who have fallen on hard times participate in the event, which has been organized by promoter Kenneth Allan Kragin, 49, clears an estimated $15 million for distribution to private groups such as the Aid to Africa Program.
A nutritional survey of U.S.
food shoppers indicates that concern about chemical additives among those questioned has declined since 1980 from 27 percent to 16 percent, and concern about preservatives from 22 percent to 15 percent. The number of people looking for "natural" foods and therefore avoiding processed foods has dropped from 12 percent to 3 percent, but the number concerned about avoiding fats (17 percent) and calories (11 percent) has almost doubled and the number wishing to avoid dietary cholesterol has risen from 5 percent to 13 percent.
Nobel biochemist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi dies of kidney failure at , Mass.
, October 22 at age 93, having isolated vitamin C (ascorbic acid) in his youth and gone on to become an antiwar activist; Nobel biochemist Edward A. Doisy dies at St. Louis October 23 at age 92, having synthesized vitamin K.
Pop Secret Microwave Popcorn is introduced by General Mills in January; it comes in natural or butter flavor, requires no refrigeration, and can be popped in less than 5 minutes in a microwave oven. U.S.
consumption of popcorn has reached nearly 11 billion quarts #x2014;46 per capita, and Pop Secret will soon be second only to Orville Redenbacher in the $240 million microwave popcorn market. Pop Secret Light in both flavors will be introduced in 1990 with 50 percent less fat than the original.
Campbell Soup Co.
replaces the aluminum trays in its Swanson frozen dinners with plastic trays that permit the products to be microwaved.
McDonald's and stop frying most foods in beef fat and release ingredient information for the first time, partly in response to pressure from the 15-year-old Center for Science in the . McDonald's introduces salads in its outlets and will reduce the fat content in its Big Mac sauce, adopt a policy of using only 100 percent vegetable oil in frying, serve 1 percent low-fat milk, make all its milkshakes and frozen yogurt desserts from 1 percent milk, and serve cholesterol-free blueberry and apple-bran muffins.
The U.S. Supreme Court rules 5 to 4 June 11 that a Pennsylvania statute is unconstitutional because it requires (among other things) that a physician use the abortion method that provides the best opportunity for the fetus to be born alive (Thornburgh v.
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists).
The steroid abortifacient drug RU-486 (mifepristone) developed in 1980 by French endocrinologist Etienne-Emile Baulieu, now 60, wins approval in September for testing in France and the People's Republic of China. Roussel-Uclaf withdraws the drug in October but promptly resumes sale on orders from the French government after women put pressure on their representatives (see ).
Congress enacts sweeping revisions in the U.S. immigration law.
The Simpson-Mazzoli Act signed into law by President Reagan November 7 permits millions of illegal immigrants to remain in the country legally and imposes criminal sanctions on employers who hire undocumented workers; illegal aliens continue to cross into the country from Mexico.
At Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, Tim White [b. August 24, 1950] and Donald Johanson locate 302 pieces of a female Homo habilis 1,800,000 years old, now known as OH62.
It is the first time that bones from the limbs of H. habilis have been found. OH62 was short, only about 1 m (3 ft) tall, giving her the nickname "dik-dik hominid" (the dik-dik is a tiny African antelope); her body was more apelike than had been expected.
See also A fisherman wading in the Acula River near Veracruz, Mexico, discovers a stone stele in the riverbed. When raised, the stele is discovered to be covered with a previously unknown form of writing, dating from the first century ce. The writing is similar to glyphs used by the and other groups.
Brickyard workers digging clay in Sanxingdui, Sichuan, China, uncover two pits from about 1000 bce in which bronze, jade, and gold masks and other objects were left as sacrifices.
Harold L. Dibble invents a system based on the electronic theodolite, a surveying device that records the exact three-dimensional position of artifacts as they are found in a "dig.
" Combined with a computer, entire levels can be shown or graphed, saving archaeologists hours of drudgery.
Astronomy A team of seven astronomers called the Seven Samurai, which includes Alan Dressler and Sandra M. Faber, discover that our galaxy, the galaxies of the local group, and other components of the local supercluster of galaxies move toward a point in the direction of the , called the Great Attractor.
The name is coined by Dressler during a news conference to announce the discovery. See also The U.S.
space probe Voyager 2 passes within 82,000 km (51,000 mi) of the planet . It passes the planet and its moons at a speed of more than 51,000 km (32,000 mi) per hour, taking pictures and measurements that are radioed to Earth. Ten more satellites of Uranus are discovered, as well as much new basic information about the system.
See also Arthur Ashkin [b. September 2, 1922] and his colleagues trap individual living bacteria and particles of DNA using refraction and the radiation pressure of a laser, allowing new methods for observing them and manipulating them. See also On May 29 Agracetus, a biotechnology company in Wisconsin, conducts the first field trials of genetically engineered organisms, genetically altered tobacco.
See also The U.S. Department of Agriculture grants the Biologics Corporation of Omaha, Nebraska, the world's first license to market a living organism produced by genetic engineering, a virus used as a vaccine to prevent a herpes disease in swine.
See also Richard Morris, Gary Lynch, Michel Baudry, and coworkers show that by blocking NMDA (N-methyl-D-asparate) receptors in the brain they can interfere with learning in rats. NMDA receptors, when stimulated by an electrical charge and the neurotransmitter glutamate, cause calcium ions to enter nerve cells. See also Rita Levi-Montalcini [b.
, Italy, April 22, 1909] of Italy and Stanley Cohen of the United States win the in physiology or medicine for their studies of the mechanisms of cell and organ growth. See also Americans Dudley R. Herschbach and Yuan T.
Lee, inventors of the crossed-beam molecular technique, and Canadian John C. Polanyi, inventor of chemiluminescence as a way of studying chemical reactions and bonds, win the Nobel Prize for chemistry. See also On February 21 France launches SPOT, a satellite designed to photograph surface details of Earth as small as 9 m (30 ft) across.
See also In Europe, FM radio stations begin to utilize the radio data system ( ) to transmit digital data via the subcarrier signal of FM. RDS can be used to transmit messages that appear on a small display screen attached to suitably equipped radios or for other purposes. See also The first (digital audio tape) recorders are demonstrated in Japan.
See also Terrence J. Sejnowski at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore develops a neural network computer that can learn to read a text out loud without knowing any pronunciation rules. See also Compaq leaps past IBM by introducing the DeskPro, a computer using an advanced 32-bit microprocessor, the Intel 80386.
DeskPro can run software three times faster than the fastest 16-bit computers, such as the IBM and its clones. See also David Miller [b. Hamilton, Scotland, February 19, 1954] develops a tiny optical switch that later becomes the basis of the first optical computer.
See also The Annacis Bridge in Canada is completed using the cable-stayed design, a method involving a deck supported by cables strung from isolated towers (as opposed to a suspension bridge in which the cables are from strung from another cable between towers); at 465 m (1525 ft), its main span is the longest to date for the cable-stayed design. See also In August oceanographers discover a vast plume of hot water rising off the Juan de Fuca Ridge in the Pacific; the plume is thought to have been caused by a vent in the ocean's floor where two tectonic plates are moving apart. See also Lake Nyos in emits a gas that kills about 1750 people and much of the livestock around the lake.
Later, investigators decide that the gas was largely carbon dioxide released in an underwater eruption of the volcano that formed the lake, or possibly caused by turnover of the lake waters. See also A miner in the La Toca amber mine in the finds a complete frog, 35,000,000 to 40,000,000 years old, preserved as a fossil in amber.
Ecology the environment Chernobyl nuclear reactor number 4, near , U.
S.S.R.
, explodes at 1:23 a.m. local time on April 26, leading to a catastrophic release of radioactivity that kills 31 people within a few weeks and forces the mass evacuation of all families within 30 km (18.
6 mi) for an indefinite period. Later studies will show a higher death rate from thyroid cancer in the region as well. See also A worldwide ban on whaling, with limited exceptions for traditional societies, begins by international agreement.
See also All the known black-footed ferrets in the wild are captured and put into a captive breeding program after canine distemper kills most of the known population. See also The U.S.
government sets lower standards for the permissible amount of lead in air and bans the use of solder containing lead. See also The experimental laser fusion device Nova at (LLNL) creates the first fusion reaction induced by a laser. Ten laser beams that deliver total energy of 100 trillion watts during one-billionth of a second converge on a hydrogen-filled glass sphere.
A small number of hydrogen nuclei fuse into helium nuclei. See also The giant Guri Dam (a.k.
a. Raul Leoni Dam) is built in Venezuela to supply 100,000 megawatts of power to that country -- the world's largest hydroelectric power source of its time. See also Los Alamos National Laboratory in the United States uses a two-well system to produce geothermal power; the 4-km (2.
5-mi) wells are connected at the bottom. Water inserted in one well emerges at a temperature of 190°C (375°F) from the other. The plant produces 4 megawatts of electricity.
See also Ramachandran Balasubramanian, Jean-Marc Deshouillers, and François Dress show that every natural number is the sum of at most 19 fourth powers, a conjecture first put forth by Edward Waring in 1770. Waring also thought every natural number is the sum of at most nine cubes, which remains unproven. See also A team from MIT led by Robert A.
Weinberg announces on October 16 the discovery of a gene that can suppress the cancer retinoblastoma. It is the first gene known to inhibit tumor growth.
Louis Kunkel [b.
New York, October 13, 1949] and coworkers discover the gene that is defective in , a common, fatal form of the disease. See also The U.S.
Food and in July approves a hepatitis B vaccine made by yeast ( 's Recombivax HB), the first vaccine to be approved for humans that is produced by genetic engineering. See also In Europe the first stent is implanted in a coronary artery. The stent is a coil that is used to keep the artery from narrowing again after angioplasty.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves OKT3, the first monoclonal antibody to be approved for therapeutic use in humans; it aids in organ transplants.
See also Tony Hodges patents a split computer keyboard (the two halves can be adjusted to different angles of attack for each hand) to prevent such repetitive stress injuries as carpal tunnel syndrome. See also K. Alex Müller [b.
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