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On August 1, 1981, MTV: Music Television goes on the air for the first time ever, with the words (spoken by one of MTV’s creators, John Lack): "Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll." The Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star" was the first music video to air on the new cable television channel...

John Lennon, formerly of the Beatles, was shot dead in New York City on 8 December 1980. He was killed by Mark David Chapman, an American Beatles fan who had travelled from Hawaii. As Lennon walked into the archway of his apartment at The Dakota, Chapman fired five shots at Lennon from a few...

On June 5, 1981, the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) publishes an article in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR): Pneumocystis Pneumonia—Los Angeles. The article describes cases of a rare lung infection, Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia(PCP), in five young, previously healthy...

The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the No. 4 reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the city of Pripyat in the north of the Ukrainian SSR in the Soviet Union. It is the worst nuclear disaster in history both in cost and casualties. It is...

On October 17, 1989, a magnitude 6.9 earthquake rocks northern California during Game 3 of the World Series between the San Francisco Giants and Oakland Athletics at Candlestick Park, forcing postponement of the matchup. The series resumes 10 days after the earthquake, which kills 67, injures...

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall pays tribute to the brave members of the U.S. Armed Forces who fought in the Vietnam War and were killed or missing in action. The memorial consists of three separate parts: The Three Soldiers statue, the Vietnam Women’s Memorial and the Vietnam...

On November 17, 1989, nine days after the fall of the Berlin Wall roughly 200 miles to the north, students gather en masse in Prague, Czechoslovakia to protest the communist regime. The demonstration sets off what will become known as the Velvet Revolution, the non-violent toppling of the...

Nevado del Ruiz, the highest active volcano in the Andes Mountains of Colombia, suffers a mild eruption that generates a series of lava flows and surges over the volcano’s broad ice-covered summit. Flowing mixtures of water, ice, pumice and other rock debris poured off the summit and sides of...