1980's Major Events

1. April 1, 1980 - The 1980 census shows a population in the United States of 226,542,203, an 11.4% increase since 1970. For the first time, one state had over 20 million people living within its borders, the state of California with 23.7 million. Due to a trend of western migration, Missouri now contained the geographic population center of the United States, one quarter mile west of De Soto in Jefferson County.
2. April 12, 1980 - The United States Olympic Committee, responding to the request of President Jimmy Carter on March 21, votes to withdraw its athletes from participation in the Moscow Summer Olympic Games due to the continued involvement of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
3. April 24-25, 1980 - The attempt to rescue the American hostages held captive in the U.S. Embassy in Iran fails with eight Americans killed and five wounded in Operation Eagle Claw when a mid-air collision occurs.
4. May 18, 1980 - The Mt. St. Helens volcano, in Washington State, erupts, killing fifty-seven people and economic devastation to the area with losses near $3 billion. The blast was estimated to have the power five hundred times greater than the Hiroshima atomic bomb.
5. April 12, 1981 - The first launch of the Space Shuttle from Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center occurs as Columbia begins its STS-1 mission. The Space Shuttle is the first reusable spacecraft to be flown into orbit, and it returned to earth for a traditional touch down landing two days later.
6. August 12, 1981 - IBM introduces the IBM-PC personal computer, the IBM 5150. It was designed by twelve engineers and designers under Don Estridge of the IBM Entry Systems Division. It sold for $1,565 in 1981.
7. September 21, 1981 - Sandra Day O'Connor is approved unanimously, 99-0, by the United States Senate to become the first female Supreme Court associate justice in history.
8. June 18, 1983 - Astronaut Sally Ride becomes the first American woman to travel into space.
9. October 23, 1983 - A terrorist truck bomb kills two hundred and forty-one United States peacekeeping troops in Lebanon at Beirut International Airport. A second bomb destroyed a French barracks two miles away, killing forty there.
10. January 20, 1986 - Martin Luther King Day is officially observed for the first time as a federal holiday in the United States.
11. January 28, 1986 - The Challenger Space Shuttle explodes after lift off at Cape Canaveral, Florida, killing seven people, including Christa McAuliffe, a New Hampshire school teacher.
12. May 25, 1986 - Five million people make a human chain across the United States in the Hands Across America campaign to fight hunger and homelessness.
13. December 8, 1987 - The United States and the Soviet Union sign an agreement, the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, to dismantle all 1,752 U.S. and 859 Soviet missiles in the 300-3,400 mile range.
14. March 24, 1989 - The Exxon Valdez crashes into Bligh Reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound, causing the largest oil spill in American history, eleven million gallons, which extended forty-five miles.
15. Voyager program: The NASA space probe Voyager I makes its closest approach to Saturn, when it flies within 77,000 miles of the planet's cloud-tops and sends the first high resolution images of the world back to scientists on Earth.