THE 1980's What a decade!!

The 1980's was the start of the whole self-centered what about ME! ME! ME! The Minium wage was 3 dollars and 10 cents. In fashion, nerds were a hot commodity because the movie Revenge of the Nerds was released as a hit movie. In clothing everything was bright and bold even the colors. Neon was in and bell-bottoms were out.

In the 1980 Election between then-presdient Jimmy Carter against Calforina Governor Ronald Reagen. Ronald won the election and came into office with the Iran Hostage Crisis going on for more then a year. A few hours after he was sworn in the American hostages were released. He also came in with a economy that was in danger of having a recession. This caused "Reagenomics" to be born. In Reagenomics you cut government spending and cut taxes for americans because when the top get tax breaks it sparkles down the classes and hits the bottom class. It does this because the rich pay money by businesses and with luxury items then creats jobs. This didn't work right away but started to work in 1984. Most Americans didn't understand this concept and was wondering if this would work.

The cold war was still in effect and many Americans were worried there might be a nuclear holocaust. In March of 1981 the Presdient of the United States was shot by John Hickley. Not only but the entire world was in fear because they didn't know if this was done by the Soviets, or the Iranians, maybe even a crazy person. He was also a very popular presdient and no one wants to see the presdient assinated. Thank Goodness he was fine a month later he was released from the hospital and it was just a crazy person that shot him. 1983 was a tough year for the Soviets and America because it looked more and more likely that a nuclear war was about to start. On
March 23rd 1983 Reagen shocked his fellow countrymen and the world when he annouced that American scientist came up with the ultimate weapon called the SDI which the media called "Star Wars". This involved space stations being in space and stop any missles before they even entered the atmosphere. June 8th 1983 in a speech in Orlando he called the USSR "a evil empire" this scared both countries because they thought either Reagen was going to attack the Soviets or the Soviets were going to attack America. He had courage to say that and most people admire that. Then for many years it was in a standstill until in 1987 when Ronald Reagen said the famous words "Mr Gorbachev open this gate, tear down this wall". Then later in that year Soviet Presdient Gorbachev and US presdient Ronald Reagen signed a agreement to remove all medium and long range nuclear weapons. America, USSR and the World sighed in relief. Maybe this 40 year cold war was almost over. In 1988 Mr. Gorbachev shocked the world when he spoke at the United Nations when he unvielded his vision of the future. He said that the world is facing a nuclear annihilation, enviromentally pollution and terrible poverty in 2/3 of the world. He argued that the USSR could not afford the Cold war any more. Instead, everyone should come together to bring peace to the world's hotspots and pool the resources of the world to end poverty. The world was shocked and then was wondering what now; is this the first step to the end of the cold war? Then the cold war took another step in ending when Reagen's dream came true when the Berlin Wall was torn down on November 9th
1989. Then in Decmeber of 1989 the Communist goverments of Romania, Bulgaria, Lovakia and Czechoslovakia collapsed. It was the end of the cold war.

Terrorism didn't start on September 11th 2001 there as many terrorist attacks before that. The first one of the 80's was the Iran Hostage Crisis. The next attack was in June of 1985 when TWA Jet was hijacked by Islamic extremist group called the PLO. This standoff didn't last longer then a year but just 2 weeks. The PLO did this because they wanted Iseral to release the 700 prisioners they had in their prisions. The PLO let the prisioners go and the next day Iseral let their prisioners go. Then the PLO hijacked a cruise that had 454 people on board. The one unforunte passager who died was a Jewish American who was in a wheelchair that was thrown overboard. It ended when the PLO terrorist surrendered to the Egyptians on the promise they would have safe passage to ally Tunisia. America took action and intercept the plane and forced them to land in Sicily. The United States troops attempted to arrest the terrorist but failed when the Italians wanted to arrest them. They allowed the leader of the terror group to walk free.

There was also tragedy that occured because of human error. On November 4th 1985 in Ukraine there was a explosion. At the time they said it was minor but a few weeks later they admited that it was actually serious. Then in the summer of 1986 they finally told the whole truth. During the night of November 4th right before midnight the employees of a nuclear plant decided to do a experiment where they wanted to see how long the generator would continue to produce power when the steamer was closed down. Doing this broke safety rules and caused a hige surge of heat, which turned the water into steam and caused a explosion that ruptured the fuel tanks. Seconds later, as Hydrogen and Carbon Dixiode released in the 1st explosion came in contact with the air. Then a second explosion, throwing a plum of radioactive dust gas into the atmosphere. Some of the men fled and ran off without reporting the accident. Then in 1989 the Communist China had enough of the protests the people have done and at Tian-An-Men square there was a massacre when student protested and ran them over with a tank.

The 1980's wasn't only a scary or a tragic time there was good times as well. On July 29th 1981 Princess Diana and Prince Charles were married. On August 1st 1981 a brand new cable channel debut where music was on 24 hours a day. It was called MTV. If a band or a singer wanted to be #1 on the charts what they would do is create a music video. MTV didn't charge the band or singer but gave them free air time. Benzir Bhutto became the presdient of Pakistan and doing that she became the first women to be a leader of a moderate muslim state.

The 1980's was a intresting time. The United States went thru the cold war and Reagen's peace thru strength helped America defeat the USSR and ran them out of business. Without Reagen's philosphy we might of lost the war but he knew what he was doing and we won. If only more politicians would be like him.