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Copyright © 2015 Bert N. Langford (Images may be subject to copyright. Please send feedback)​
  This Web Page Covers the 1980s as the years 1980 through 1989​.
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Culture:

The decade saw great social, economic, and general change as wealth and production migrated to newly industrializing economies. As economic liberalization increased in the developed world, multiple multinational corporations associated with the manufacturing industry relocated into Thailand, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan, and China. Japan and West Germany were the most notable developed countries that continued to enjoy rapid economic growth during the decade.

Mount St. Helens erupted in Washington, U.S. on May 18, 1980, killing 57 people.

The 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow were disrupted by a boycott led by the United States and 64 other countries in protest of the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.



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Television:

The 1980s was the decade of transformation in television. Cable television became more accessible and therefore, more popular. By the middle of the decade, almost 70% of the American population had cable television and over 85% were paying for cable services such as HBO or Showtime.

The 1980s also saw the debut of prime-time soap operas such as
TV talk shows expanded in popularity: The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson remained popular into its third decade, and some of the most viewed newer shows were hosted by Geraldo Rivera, Arsenio Hall and David Letterman.

The 1980s also was prominent for spawning several popular children's cartoons such as
Some of the most popular TV series which premiered during the 1980s or carried over from the 1970s include:
The 1980s also was prominent for spawning several popular children's cartoons such as




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Movies: 

Oscar winners for Best Picture:
Oscar Winners for Best Actor Include:
1980: Robert De Niro ("Raging Bull")
1981: Henry Fonda ("On Golden Pond")
1982: Ben Kingsley ("Gandhi")
1983: Robert Duvall ("Tender Mercies")
1984: F. Murray Abraham ("Amadeus")
1985: William Hurt ("Kiss of the Spider Woman")
1986: Paul Newman ("The Color of Money ")
1987: Michael Douglas ("Wall Street")
1988: Dustin Hoffman ("Rain Man")
1989: Daniel Day-Lewis ("My Left Foot")

Oscar Winners for Best Actress Include:
1980: Sissy Spacek ("Coal Miner's Daughter")
1981: Katherine Hepburn ("On Golden Pond")
1982: Meryl Streep ("The French Lieutenant's Woman")
1983: Shirley MacLaine ("Terms of Endearment")
1984: Sally Field ("Places in the Heart")
1985: Geraldine Page ("The Trip to Bountiful")
1986: Marlee Matlin ("Children of a Lesser God")
1987: Cher ("Moonstruck")
1988: Jodie Foster ("The Accused")
1989: Jessica Tandy ("Driving Miss Daisy")



The highest-grossing films of the decade are (in order from highest to lowest domestic grossing):
The 1980s also spawned the Brat Pack films, many of which were directed by John Hughes. Films such as Class (film) (1983), The Breakfast Club (1985), Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), Mannequin (1987), Porky's (1981), Pretty In Pink (1986), Sixteen Candles (1984), St. Elmo's Fire (1985), Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), Weird Science (1985), and Valley Girl (1983) were popular teen comedies of the era and launched the careers of several major celebrities such as: Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Forest Whitaker, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Andrew McCarthy, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, Sean Penn, and Nicolas Cage.

Other popular films included,
These launched the careers of high-profile celebrities like Demi Moore, Joe Pesci, Keanu Reeves, Kevin Bacon, Rob Lowe, and Patrick Swayze.

Horror films were a popular genre during the decade, with several notable horror franchises being born during the 1980s. Among the most popular were Child's Play (1988), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Friday the 13th (1980), Hellraiser (1987), and the Poltergeist franchises (1982-1988).

Aside from these films, the concept of the B horror film gave rise to a plethora of horror films that went on to earn a cult status. An example of such is the 1981 film The Evil Dead, which marked the directorial debut of Sam Raimi.

Several action film franchises were also launched during the 1980s. The most popular of these were,
These films propelled the careers of modern celebrities such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Eddie Murphy, Mel Gibson, and Sylvester Stallone* to international recognition.
* -- Sylvester Stallone also starred in the "Rocky" boxing movie franchise from 1976 through 2015.





Music:

Michael Jackson was the definitive icon of the 1980s and his leather jacket, glove, and Moonwalk dance (Click Here to see the dance) were often imitated. Jackson's 1982 album Thriller became—and currently remains—the best-selling album of all time, with sales estimated by various sources as somewhere between 65 and 110 million copies worldwide. Madonna and Whitney Houston were regarded as the most ground breaking female artists of the decade.

The keyboard synthesizer and drum machine were among the most popular instruments in music during the 1980s, especially in new wave music. After the 1980s electronic instruments were no longer popular in rock but continued to be the main component of mainstream pop.

Hard rock, heavy metal, and glam metal became some of the most dominant music genres of the decade, peaking with the arrival of such bands as,And virtuoso guitarists such as Joe Satriani and Yngwie Malmsteen.

The scene also helped 1970s hard rock artists such as AC/DC, Ozzy Osbourne, Queen, Van Halen, KISS, Ronnie James Dio, and Judas Priest reach a new generation of fans.

By 1989, the hip hop scene had evolved, gaining recognition and exhibiting a stronger influence on the music industry. This time period is also considered part of the golden age of hip hop. including,
Ex-Beatle John Lennon released his last album, Double Fantasy, in 1980 and won Album of the Year at the 1982 Grammy Awards.

Several notable music artists died of unnatural causes in the 1980s. Bon Scott, at the time lead singer of rock band AC/DC died of acute alcohol poisoning on February 19, 1980. Coincidentally, English drummer John Bonham of the rock band Led Zeppelin also died that year in similar fashion. John Lennon was shot outside his home in New York City on the night of December 8, 1980. Tim Hardin died of a heroin overdose on December 29, 1980.

Bob Marley died from a lentiginous skin melanoma on May 11, 1981. Marvin Gaye was shot dead by his father at his home in Los Angeles on April 1, 1984, one day before what would have been his 45th birthday. Ozzy Osbourne's guitarist Randy Rhoads died in an airplane crash on March 19, 1982. Metallica bassist Cliff Burton was killed in a bus accident in Sweden on September 27, 1986. Andy Gibb died in 1988 as a result of myocarditis.





Technology:

The 1980s saw the development of the global Internet, starting with the specification of File Transfer Protocol in 1980 and ARPANET's move to TCP/IP around 1982–83. Approximately 1.1 million people (86% of them in the United States) were using the Internet at the end of the 1980s and the network.

Personal computers experienced explosive growth in the 1980s, going from being a toy for electronics hobbyists to a full-fledged industry. The IBM PC, launched in 1981, became the dominant computer for professional users. Commodore created the most popular home computers of both 8-bit and 16-bit generations. MSX standard was the dominant computer platform in Japan.

Apple phased out its Apple II and Lisa models, and introduced the first Macintosh computer in 1984. It was the first commercially successful personal computer to use a graphical user interface and mouse, which started to become general features in computers after the middle of the decade.

American interplanetary probes continued in the 1980s, the Voyager duo being the most known. After making a flyby of Jupiter in 1979, they went near Saturn in 1980–1981. Voyager 2 reached Uranus in 1986 (just a few days before the Challenger disaster), and Neptune in 1989 before the probes exited the solar system.





Economy:

The early 1980s was marked by a severe global economic recession that affected much of the developed world.

Inflation peaked in the U.S. in April 1980 at 14.76% and subsequently fell to a low of 1.10% in December 1986 but then rebounded to 4.65% at the end of the decade.

On the other hand, Finland's economy grew by almost the fastest pace in the world, which eventually culminated in the recession of the 1990s Finnish economy. In Finland, the 1980s called the "Nousukausi", namely

The economic upswing Revival of laissez faire/neoliberal economics in the developed world led by the UK and US governments emphasizing reduced government intervention, lower taxes and deregulation of the stock markets associated with an economic revival in the mid- to late 80s. Consumers became more sophisticated in their tastes (a trend begun in the 1960s), and things such as European cars and designer clothing became fashionable in the US.
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Political Climate:

Ronald Reagan was elected U.S. President in 1980. In international affairs, Reagan pursued a hardline policy towards preventing the spread of communism, initiating a considerable buildup of U.S. military power to challenge the Soviet Union. He further directly challenged the Iron Curtain by demanding that the Soviet Union dismantle the Berlin Wall. Despite a peak in tensions in the early part of the decade, the Cold War was coming to an end by the late-1980s.

In the eastern bloc hostility to authoritarianism and the rise of nationalism in communist-led socialist states, combined with economic recession resulted in a wave of reformist policies instigated by Mikhail Gorbachev in the USSR - such as perestroika and glasnost, along with the overthrow and attempted overthrow of a number of communist regimes, such as in Hungary, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 in China, the Czechoslovak "Velvet Revolution", Poland, and the overthrow of the Nicolae Ceauşescu regime in Romania and other communist Warsaw Pact states in Central and Eastern Europe including the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

It came to be called the "end of history". By 1989, the Soviet Union announced the abandonment of political hostility toward the Western world and the Cold War ended with the USSR's demise after the August Coup of 1991. 




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​Military Engagements:

The Cold War split the temporary wartime alliance against Nazi Germany, leaving the USSR and the US as two superpowers with profound economic and political differences: the former being a single-party Marxist–Leninist state operating planned economy and controlled press while professing state atheism and owning exclusively the right to establish and govern communities, and the latter being a capitalist state with generally free elections and press, which also granted freedom of religion and freedom of association to its citizens.

A self-proclaimed neutral bloc arose with the Non-Aligned Movement founded by Egypt, India, Indonesia and Yugoslavia; this faction rejected association with either the US-led West or the Soviet-led East.

The two superpowers never engaged directly in full-scale armed combat but they each armed heavily in preparation for a possible all-out nuclear world war. Each side had a nuclear deterrent that deterred an attack by the other side, on the basis that such an attack would lead to total destruction of the attacker: the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD).

Aside from the development of the two sides' nuclear arsenals, and deployment of conventional military forces, the struggle for dominance was expressed via proxy wars around the globe, psychological warfare, massive propaganda campaigns and espionage, rivalry at sports events, and technological competitions such as the Space Race. In the mid-1980s, the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the liberalizing reforms of perestroika ("reorganization", 1987) and glasnost ("openness", c. 1985) and ended Soviet involvement in Afghanistan.

Pressures for national independence grew stronger in Eastern Europe, especially Poland. Gorbachev meanwhile refused to use Soviet troops to bolster the faltering Warsaw Pact regimes as had occurred in the past. The result in 1989 was a wave of revolutions that peacefully (with the exception of the Romanian Revolution) overthrew all of the Communist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union itself lost control and was banned following an abortive coup attempt in August 1991. This in turn led to the formal dissolution of the USSR in December 1991 and the collapse of Communist regimes in other countries such as Mongolia, Cambodia and South Yemen.

The United States remained as the world's only superpower.

Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno (born February 11, 1934) is a former Panamanian politician and military officer. He was military dictator of Panama from 1983 to 1989. He was forceably removed from power by the United States, wherein Noriega was captured, detained as a prisoner of war, and flown to the United States. Noriega was tried on eight counts of drug trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering in April 1992.
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