Timeline 1985
Return to home
1985 Jan 1, The
1st US mandatory seat belt law went into effect in NY.
(www.nysgtsc.state.ny.us/seat-ndx.htm)
1985 Jan 1, Mustafa Maarouf Saad
(d.2002), Lebanese militia leader, lost his sight in a car explosion in
front of his house in Sidon. His daughter (13) was killed and his wife
lost one eye.
(SFC, 8/3/02, p.A18)
1985 Jan 3, Soprano Leontyne
Price, part of the Met since 1961, bid adieu to the Metropolitan Opera
in New York. She sang the title role of Aida.
(440 Int'l. 1/3/99)
1985 Jan 3, President Reagan
condemned a rash of arsons on abortion clinics.
(HN, 1/3/99)
1985 Jan 5, Boris Weisfeiler (43),
a Russian émigré and naturalized US citizen, disappeared
while hiking in Chile. US declassified documents in 2000 indicated that
Boris, a mathematics professor, was detained by the Chilean military
and handed over to Colonia Dignidad.
(SFC, 6/19/00, p.A8)(SFC, 6/12/08, p.A10)
1985 Jan 5, Israel’s 6-week
Operation Moses for the resettlement of 8,000 Ethiopian Jews ended. It
began Nov 18, 1984, but new was blacked out for security reasons.
(www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/ejhist.html)
1985 Jan 6, Dan White (1946-1985),
former SF supervisor and the killer in 1978 of SF Mayor Moscone and
Supervisor Harvey Milk, was released from prison in Los Angeles.
(SSFC, 1/3/10, DB p.46)
1985 Jan 6, Robert Welch,
co-founder of the anti-Communist John Birch Society (1958), died. Welch
was the editor and publisher of the monthly magazine American Opinion
and the weekly "The Review of the News."
(SFC, 8/5/96,
p.A5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Welch_Jr.)
1985 Jan 7, Vietnam seized the
Khmer National Liberation Front headquarters near the Thai border.
(HN, 1/7/99)
1985 Jan 8, The Rev. Lawrence
Martin Jenco was kidnapped in Lebanon. He was released 19 months later.
(AP, 1/8/05)
1985 Jan 13, A train plunged into
a ravine in eastern Ethiopia and killed at least 392 people.
(http://tinyurl.com/yznz8w)
1985 Jan 15, Tancredo Neves
(1910-1985) became the 1st elected president of Brazil in 21 years.
Just one day before he was scheduled to take the oath of office (March
15, 1985), Neves became severely ill. He suffered from abdominal
complications and developed generalized infections. After seven
operations, Tancredo Neves died on April 21, 1985. He was succeeded by
José Sarney, who served to 1990.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tancredo_Neves)
1985 Jan 17, A jury in New Jersey
ruled that terminally ill patients have the right to starve themselves.
(HN, 1/17/99)
1985 Jan 18, President Reagan
declared that the U.S. would not take part in the World Court ruling on
Nicaraguan charges.
(HN, 1/18/99)
1985 Jan 18, In Sudan Mahmud
Mohammed Taha (b.1909) was hanged for refusing to recant his unorthodox
views on Islam. Sudanese president Jaafar Nimeiri, on the advice of
Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi, ordered the execution.
(AFP,
4/23/06)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Mohamed_Taha)
1985 Jan 20, The SF 49ers defeated
the Miami Dolphins 38-16 in the Super Bowl played at Stanford Stadium.
This capped the winningest season in national Football League history,
with 18 wins and only one loss.
(www.superbowl.com/history/recaps/game/sbxix)(SSFC,
1/17/10, DB p.42)
1985 Jan 20, President Reagan and
VP Bush were sworn in for 2nd terms of office in a brief White House
ceremony. It being a Sunday, the public swearing-in was held the
following day.
(AP, 1/20/05)
1985 Jan 21, 19F (-28C) was
recorded at Caesar's Head, South Carolina, a state record. 34F (-37C)
was recorded at Mt. Mitchell, North Carolina, a state record.
(http://tinyurl.com/yaleou)
1985 Jan 21, James Beard (b.1903),
US culinary expert, author (Delights & Prejudices), died.
(http://members.localnet.com/~jgeorge/jbeard.htm)(SFC, 5/4/05, p.E1)
1985 Jan 22, A cold wave damaged
90% of Florida's citrus crop.
(http://prop1.org/inaugur/85reagan/850122in.htm)
1985 Jan 23, A debate in Britain's
House of Lords was carried live on TV for the first time.
(AP, 1/23/00)
1985 Jan 24, The space shuttle
Discovery was launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on the first secret,
all-military shuttle mission.
(AP, 1/24/05)
1985 Jan 27, Pope John Paul said
mass to one million in Venezuela.
(HN, 1/27/99)
1985 Jan 28, The song "We are the
World" was recorded in Hollywood, Ca.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Are_the_World)
1985 Jan 29, In SF the US Army
trucked the historic Goldie Shack from 485 34th Ave. to the Presidio,
where it will be stored and eventually reopened to the public. It was
one of 5,610 shacks built in 1906-1907 to house earthquake refugees.
The 34th Ave site will be used for a shopping mall.
(SSFC, 1/24/10, DB p.42)
1985 Jan, National Geographic
published pictures and the story of Koko the gorilla and her kitten.
(NG, May 1985, members forum)
1985 Jan, Rev. Lawrence Martin
Jenco (1935-1996), the director of Catholic Relief Services, was
kidnapped by the Islamic Jihad in Beirut. He was freed in July 1986
after negotiations involving the Reagan administration, Shiite radicals
and Anglican envoy Terry White. In 1995 he wrote “Bound To Forgive- the
Pilgrimage to Reconciliation of a Beirut Hostage.” He shared captivity
with Terry Anderson, AP correspondent, David Jacobsen, administrator of
Beirut’s American Univ., and Thomas Sutherland, the Univ.'s acting dean
of agriculture.
(SFC, 7/20/96, p.A19)(SFC, 8/4/01, p.A3)
1985 Jan, Israel pulled back to a
security zone in southern Lebanon to protect its border.
(SFC, 5/24/00, p.A15)
1985 Feb 1, Greenland left the
European Community but remains associated with it as an overseas
territory.
(http://europa.eu.int/abc/history/1985/index_en.htm)
1985 Feb 2, David Raley, a
caretaker at the Carolands Chateau in Hillsborough, Ca., lured 2
teenage girls inside, where he assaulted and stabbed them, killing one.
The 2nd girl survived and identified her assailant. In 2006 an appeals
court upheld his death sentence.
(SFC, 8/19/97, p.A17)(Ind, 2/26/00, p.5A)(SFC,
4/15/06, p.B3)
1985 Feb 3, Frank Friedman
Oppenheimer (b.1912), American physicist, died. He had worked on the
Manhattan Project, was a target of McCarthyism, and was later the
founder of the Exploratorium in San Francisco (1969). He was the
younger brother of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the first director of Los
Alamos National Laboratory.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Oppenheimer)
1985 Feb 5, The US halted a loan
to Chile in protest over human rights abuses.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1985 Feb 7, "New York, New York"
became the official anthem of NYC.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985)
1985 Feb 7, US drug agent Enrique
“Kiki” Camarena Salazar was tortured and killed at a house in
Guadalajara in the presence of a half-dozen top Mexican officials.
Mexican authorities found his body on March 6 at a ranch east of
Guadalajara. In 1992 Ruben Zuno Arce, the brother-in-law of former
president Luis Echeverria, was convicted and sentenced to life in
prison. In 1989 Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo was arrested for complicity
in the murder along with drug charges and sentenced to 40 years in
prison. In 2000 Gallardo received a 2nd 40-year sentence for smuggling
and bribery.
(WSJ, 3/5/97, p.A1)(SFC, 4/20/00, p.A10)(SFC,
8/12/00, p.A11)
1985 Feb 9, Madonna's album "Like
a Virgin," released in 1984, reached #1.
(http://tinyurl.com/2vfje9)
1985 Feb 9, Seoul admitted using
force against opposition leader Kim Dae Jung.
(HN, 2/9/97)
1985 Feb 11, Jordan’s King Hussein
and PLO leader Arafat signed an accord.
(http://tinyurl.com/yy39mx)
1985 Feb 13, Polish police
arrested 7 Solidarity leaders.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Solidarity)
1985 Feb 14, Hanoi troops
surrounded the main Khmer Rouge base at Phnom Malai, Cambodia.
(HN, 2/14/98)
1985 Feb 14, Cable News Network
reporter Jeremy Levin, who was being held hostage by extremists in
Lebanon, was freed.
(AP, 2/14/98)
1985 Feb 15, The STS 51-E vehicle
was moved to the launch pad. Deployment of the vehicle aboard the
Challenger was cancelled in March.
(440 Int’l.,
2/15/99)(www.astronautix.com/flights/sts51e.htm)
1985 Feb 15, The World Chess
Championship match in Moscow between Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov
was abandoned due to psychological strain. The match was resumed in
September.
(http://tinyurl.com/y9d9nd)
1985 Feb 17, Murray Haydon became
the third person to receive an artificial heart.
(HN, 2/17/98)
1985 Feb 19, William Schroeder
(d.1986) was the 1st artificial heart patient to leave hospital. He
spent 15 minutes outside Humana Hospital in Louisville, Ky.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Schroeder)(http://tinyurl.com/yj2fc3)
1985 Feb 19, Mickey Mouse was
welcomed in China.
(www.440.com/twtd/archives/feb19.html)
1985 Feb 19, 150 were killed when
a Spanish jetliner crashed approaching Bilbao, Spain.
(http://tinyurl.com/ylaall)
1985 Feb 20, Clarence Nash (80),
voice of Donald Duck, died of leukemia, in Calif.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Nash)
1985 Feb 23, Indiana basketball
coach Bobby Knight threw a chair during a game.
(http://www2.indystar.com/library/factfiles/people/k/knight_bob/knight.html)
1985 Feb 23, US Senate confirmed
Edwin Meese III as attorney general.
(www.ashbrook.org/events/memdin/meese/home.html)
1985 Feb 25, Edwin Meese III was
sworn in as US Attorney General.
(www.reaganfoundation.org/reagan/biography/reagan_revoultion.asp)
1985 Feb 26, In the 27th Grammy
Awards Tina Turner’s "What's Love Got to Do With It" won as record and
song of the year. Cyndi Lauper won as best new artist.
(www.rockonthenet.com/archive/1985/grammys.htm)
1985 Feb 27, Henry Cabot Lodge
(82), former ambassador, died in Beverly, Mass. He had served 3 terms
as a U.S. senator and ran as the 1960 Republican vice-presidential
nominee.
(AP, 2/27/05)
1985 Feb, The song “We Are the
World” was recorded during the Grammy Awards to raise money for African
famine relief.
(SFC, 8/10/96, p.E4)(SSFC, 7/3/05, p.A17)
1985 Feb, Steve Wozniak left Apple
Corp. to start his own company making home video products.
(SFC, 1/24/04, p.A12)
1985 Feb, In SF Armen Baliantz
(1921-2007) closed her Bali’s restaurant at Pacific and Battery. The
original had opened in the early 1950s on Sansome St.
(SFC, 8/4/07, p.A1)
1985 Feb, New Zealand under PM
David Lange (1942-2005) turned away nuclear-armed and nuclear-powered
warships from its ports. This led the US to abrogate its ANZUS alliance
responsibilities to new Zealand in 1986.
(SFEC, 8/2/98,
p.A23)(www.bartleby.com/65/an/AnzusTre.html)
1985 Feb, In Pakistan Mohammed
Khan was elected prime minister in the first elections since imposition
of martial law in 1977. Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party
boycotted the elections.
(SFC, 1/30/97, p.A9)
1985 Mar 1, The Pentagon accepted
the theory that an atomic war would block the sun, causing a "nuclear
winter."
(HN, 3/1/98)
1985 Mar 1, Herb Kohl (b.1935),
Milwaukee businessman and later US Senator (1988), purchased the
Milwaukee Bucks basketball team.
(www.nba.com/bucks/history/history.html)
1985 Mar 2, Country singer, Gary
Morris hit #1 on the country charts for the first time with "Baby Bye
Bye" from his album, "Faded Blue". Other chart toppers included:
Careless Whisper, Wham! featuring George Michael; California Girls,
David Lee Roth; Can't Fight this Feeling, REO Speedwagon.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_in_country_music)(http://eightiesclub.tripod.com/id201.htm)
1985 Mar 2, The US government
approved a screening test for AIDS that detected antibodies to the
virus, allowing possibly contaminated blood to be excluded from the
blood supply.
(AP, 3/2/98)
1985 Mar 2, The Gordo cartoon
strip, one of the first in the US to celebrate Mexican culture, ended.
Gus Arriola (1917-2008) had begun the strip in 1941.
(SSFC, 2/3/08, p.B1)
1985 Mar 2, Three Assyrians were
executed by the Baath regime of Iraq for distributing literature
against the Arabization policies of the government.
(www.unpo.org/article.php?id=741)
1985 Mar 3, The TV series
"Moonlighting" with Cybill Shepard and Bruce Willis, premiered.
(www.imdb.com/title/tt0088571/episodes#season-1)
1985 Mar 3, "My One and Only"
closed at St. James Theater in NYC after 767 performances.
(www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=4221)
1985 Mar 3, Kevin McHale of
Memphis State University set a Boston Celtics scoring record this night
as he poured in 56 points in a 138-129 win over the Detroit Pistons.
(http://celticsbandwagon.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html)
1985 Mar 3, The group, Women
Against Pornography awarded one of its dubious "Pig Awards" to Huggies
Diapers! The activists said that the diaper TV ads have "crossed the
line between eye-catching and porn."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_3)
1985 Mar 3, National Union of Mine
Workers in Britain voted to end a 51 week strike that proved to be the
longest and most violent walkout in British history.
(SC, 3/3/02)(AP, 3/3/05)
1985 Mar 4, The EPA ordered a
virtual ban on leaded gas.
(http://www.epa.gov/history/topics/lead/01.htm)
1985 Mar 4, New Zealand floated
its currency.
(http://tvnz.co.nz/view/news_business_story_skin/477448?format=html)
1985 Mar 6, Yul Brynner appeared
in his 4,500th performance of "King & I."
(www.weekender.co.jp/new/040305/this-month-history.html)
1985 Mar 6, In Mexico authorities
found the body of kidnapped US drug agent Enrique Camarena Salazar and
a Mexican pilot at a ranch east of Guadalajara.
(AP, 3/6/05)
1985 Mar 7, Victor W. Farris (75),
inventor of paper clip and paper milk carton (1932), died in Palm
Beach, Fla. [see 1824 and Oct 19, 1915]
(www.msu.edu/~daggy/cop/bkofdead/obits-fa.htm)
1985 Mar 7, George Schick (76),
Czech conductor (Chicago Symphony), died.
(http://tinyurl.com/ycj6qk)
1985 Mar 7, Robert W. Woodruff
(b.1889), CEO (Coca-Cola), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Woodruff)
1985 Mar 8, Thomas Creighton (33)
died at the Univ. of Arizona after having three heart transplants in a
46-hour period.
(HN, 3/8/98)(http://tinyurl.com/tbw75)
1985 Mar 10, Konstantin U.
Chernenko (b.1911), Soviet leader for just 13 months (1984-1985), died.
(AP,
3/10/98)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Chernenko)
1985 Mar 11, The Soviet Union
announced the death the day before of its leader, Konstantin U.
Chernenko. Politburo member Mikhail S. Gorbachev was chosen to succeed
him and became general-secretary of the Communist party and the Premier
of the Soviet Union. He liberated the Soviet Union from old Communist
structures and opened the door for Russian democracy.
(TMC, 1994, p.1985)(SFEC, 12/22/96, BR p.7)(AP,
3/11/98)(HN, 3/11/98)(WSJ, 9/3/98, p.A6)
1985 Mar 11, Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev visited Lithuania.
(LHC, 3/11/03)
1985 Mar 12, The US and the USSR
began arms control talks in Geneva.
(HN, 3/12/98)
1985 Mar 12, Conductor Eugene
Ormandy (85), director of the Philadelphia Philharmonic for more than
four decades, died.
(AP, 3/12/05)
1985 Mar 13, Konstantin Chernenko
was buried near the Kremlin Wall in Moscow. Mikhail Gorbachev became
the new leader of the Soviet Union. He oversaw the dismantling of the
Soviet nuclear arms stockpile and the end of the Soviet Union itself.
(HN, 3/13/99)
1985 Mar 16, Terry Anderson, chief
Middle East correspondent for The Associated Press, was abducted in
Beirut; he was released in December 1991.
(AP, 3/16/97)(HN, 3/16/98)
1985 Mar 17, President Reagan
agreed to a joint study with Canada on acid rain.
(HN, 3/17/98)
1985 Mar 18, Baseball commissioner
Peter Ueberroth reinstated Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle.
(http://tinyurl.com/y34t69)
1985 Mar 18, The 1st remote
location for ABC’s "Nightline" news was in South Africa.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1985-3/1985-03-18-ABC-19.html)
1985 Mar 19, In a legislative
victory for President Reagan, the Senate voted, 55-45, to authorize
production of the MX missile.
(AP, 3/19/97)
1985 Mar 20, Libby Riddles of
Teller, Alaska, became the first woman to win the Iditarod Trail Dog
Sled Race.
(AP, 3/20/05)
1985 Mar 21, Michael Redgrave
(b.1908), English actor, died. His films included Alfred Hitchcock's
“The Lady Vanishes” (1938), “The Stars Look Down” (1939) and the film
of Robert Ardrey's play “Thunder Rock” (1943).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Redgrave)
1985 Mar 21, Police in Langa
(Uitenhage), South Africa, opened fire on blacks marching to mark the
25th anniversary of the Sharpeville shootings; the reported death toll
varied between 29 and 43.
(AP,
3/21/08)(www.un.org/av/photo/subjects/apartheid.htm)
1985 Mar 23, Joshua Silver, Oxford
physicist, began contemplating the development of self adjusting
eyeglasses. By 2009 some 30,000 of Silver's specs had been distributed
to the poor in 15 countries; his eventual target is 100 million pairs.
(SSFC, 1/11/09, p.A6)(http://tinyurl.com/96buv9)
1985 Mar 24, Thousands
demonstrated in Madrid against the NATO presence in Spain.
(HN, 3/24/98)
1985 Mar 25, 57th Academy Awards
"Amadeus," F. Murray Abraham and Sally Field won.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/57th_Academy_Awards)
1985 Mar 25, British journalist
Alec Collett (64) was abducted in Beirut as he covered Lebanon’s civil
war. His remains were found in 2009 in the eastern Bekaa Valley. The
following year a group belonging to Palestinian guerrilla leader Abu
Nidal said it killed him in retaliation for US air raids on Libya.
(www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-3752719.html)(Reuters,
11/23/09)
1985 Mar 28, Neil Simon's "Biloxi
Blues," premiered in NYC.
(http://tinyurl.com/ygdptw)
1985 Mar 28, Marc Chagall
(b.1887), Belarus-born French painter, died. In 2008 Jackie
Wullschlager authored “Chagall: A Biography.”
(www.artelino.com/articles/marc_chagall.asp)(Econ,
9/20/08, p.101)
1985 Mar 29, In Santiago, Chile,
police killed Rafael and Eduardo Vergara. The 2 young brothers, active
members of the often violent “Movement of the Revolutionary Left”
(MIR), were peppered with bullets by military police during an
anti-Pinochet protest in the low-income Villa Francia district. The
event became known as the “Day of the Young Combatants.”
(SFC, 3/31/08,
p.A3)(http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90777/90852/6384027.html)
1985 Mar 31, In San Diego 2 white
police officers stopped a pickup truck driven by Sagon Penn (d.2002). A
scuffle ensued and Penn killed officer Thomas Riggs with the officer’s
gun. Penn was acquitted under allegations of police brutality and
racism.
(SFC, 7/5/02, p.A24)
1985 Mar, Ann Getty and Lord
Weidenfeld (b.1919) bought Grove Press for $2 million.
(SFC, 1/8/95,
p.7)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grove_Press)
1985 Mar, The Well Online
conferencing service went live from Sausalito, Ca., with a VAX
computer, 6 modems and 6 phone lines.
(Wired, 5/97, p.106)
1985 Mar, In Greece a socialist
government forced Constantine Karamanlis (1907-1998) from the
presidency. He was succeeded by Christos Antoniou Sartzetakis (b.1929).
(SFC, 4/23/98,
p.B4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christos_Sartzetakis)
1985 Mar, Nick Blake, a free lance
US journalist, and photographer Griff Davis were shot and killed by
Guatemalan civil militia. Their remains were found in 1992.
(WSJ, 8/17/00, p.A23)
1985 Mar, Devan Nair resigned as
president of Singapore in the wake of a sex scandal.
(Econ, 12/24/05, p.122)(Econ, 1/21/06, p.14)
1985 Apr 3, The landmark Brown
Derby restaurant in Hollywood closed after 56 years in business.
(AP, 4/3/97)
1985 Apr 4, Gary Dotson, who
served six years of a prison sentence for rape, was freed on bail from
the Joliet Correctional Center in Illinois after his accuser, Cathleen
Crowell Webb, testified that the attack had never occurred.
(AP, 4/4/05)
1985 Apr 4, A coup in Sudan ousted
President Nimeiry and replaced him with Gen. Dahab.
(HN, 4/4/99)
1985 Apr 6, William J. Schroeder
became the first artificial heart recipient to be discharged from the
hospital as he moved into an apartment in Louisville, Ky.
(AP, 4/6/97)
1985 Apr 8, India filed suit
against Union Carbide over Bhopal disaster.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_8)
1985 Apr 11, Enver Hoxha (b.1908),
Albania’s Stalinist dictator, died. He was succeeded by Ramiz Alia
(b.1925).
(USAT, 2/11/97, p.A1)(SFC,10/21/97,
p.A13)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enver_Hoxha)
1985 Apr 12, Sen. Jake Garn of
Utah became the first senator to fly in space as the shuttle Discovery
lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla.
(AP, 4/12/97)
1985 Apr 12, In Australia the
charred remains of Sandra White (34) were found in rural Victoria. In
2009 Steven Hutton (54) was later accused of strangling her and setting
her on fire. He is alleged to have confessed to the killing after being
detained in a London psychiatric hospital following a road accident in
1990. In 2009 he was set to be extradited from Britain.
(AFP, 3/20/09)
1985 Apr 12, A bombing in Madrid,
Spain, killed 18 and injured 82. Shia Muslim extremists claimed
responsibility.
(WSJ, 3/12/04, p.A11)
1985 Apr 15, Jenia Hamley, a
medical assistant, was stuck in the left index finger while recapping a
Becton Dickinson needle. Hamley was pregnant and 5 months later she
tested positive for hepatitis B. She sued BD and claimed that the
infection caused brain damage to her newborn son. BD settled the case
confidentially and denied liability.
(SFC, 4/13/98, p.A8)
1985 Apr 21, Rudi Gernreich
(b.1922), US fashion designer, died. His creations included the
“monokini” topless swimsuit, the transparent “no-bra bra,” and the
introduction of the thong.
(WSJ, 9/18/01,
p.A20)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudi_Gernreich)
1985 Apr 21, Tancredo Neves,
elected president of Brazil on Jan 15, died. José Sarney became
president.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Brazil_%281985-present%29)
1985 Apr 23, The Coca-Cola Co.
announced it was changing the secret formula for Coke. Negative public
reaction soon forced the company to resume selling the original version.
(AP, 4/23/97)
1985 Apr 23, Sam J Ervin Jr
(b.1896), Democratic Senator from North Carolina, died. He was the
leader of the Watergate Hearings that led to Pres. Nixon's resignation.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Ervin)
1985 Apr 23, Russia’s Communist
Party Sec. Gen. Mikhail Gorbachev (b.1931) announced economic reforms
known as perestroika (reconstruction and opening). This Gorbachev era
in the Soviet Union (1985-1992) is covered in the 2007 book “Seven
Years That Changed the World: Perestroika in Perspective” by Archie
Brown.
(Econ, 5/12/07, p.88)(WSJ, 12/1/07,
p.A8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Gorbachev)
1985 Apr 25, Richard Haydn
(b.1905), British actor, died of a heart attack in Los Angeles.
(http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0370821/)
1985 Apr 25, Murray Matheson
(b.1912), film and TV actor, died, in Woodland Hills, Ca.
(http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0558569/)
1985 May 1, US president Reagan
ordered an embargo against Nicaragua.
(http://tinyurl.com/2qxpo3)
1985 May 2, US financial firm E.F.
Hutton pleaded guilty to charges that that it carried out a large
check-kiting scam.
(WSJ, 10/15/05,
p.B3)(http://my.econedlink.org/calendar.php?month=05)
1985 May 5, President Reagan kept
a promise to West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl by leading a
wreath-laying ceremony at the military cemetery in Bitburg.
(AP, 5/5/05)
1985 May 8, Theodore Sturgeon
(b.1918), sci-fi author (Hugo, It, Caviar), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Sturgeon)
1985 May 9, Laurent Fabius, head
of the French Socialist government, blocked the sale of an AIDS virus
detection test made by Abbott Laboratories. Fabius and others were
later charged with criminal negligence and manslaughter in the deaths
of hundreds who died from transfusions of tainted blood. In 1999 Fabius
and Georgina Dufoix were cleared of the charges. Edmond Herve, the
health minister under Dufoix, was convicted of negligence in 2 cases.
(SFEC, 2/7/99, p.A2)(SFC, 3/10/99, p.A1)
1985 May 11, 56 people died when a
flash fire swept a jam-packed soccer stadium in Bradford, England.
(AP, 5/11/07)
1985 May 12, Illinois Gov. James
Thompson commuted the sentence of Gary Dotson, who'd served six years
in prison for a rape that the alleged victim later said never happened.
(AP, 5/12/05)
1985 May 12, Amy Eilberg was
ordained in New York as the first female rabbi in the Conservative
Jewish movement.
(AP, 5/12/05)
1985 May 13, Police in
Philadelphia dropped a bomb on the headquarters of the radical group
MOVE. A fire resulted that killed 11 people, 5 of them children. Ramona
Africa and her 13 year old son were the only two people to escape the
inferno at 6221 Osage St. Africa was charged with rioting and
conspiracy, was convicted and served 7 years in state prison. No
charges have ever been filed against any city officials or employee.
The lawsuit was re-opened in 1996. On Jun 24, 1996, a jury in
Philadelphia awarded $1.5 mil to the survivors of the MOVE cult.
(SFC, 4/3/96, p.A-4)(USAT, 6/25/96, p.3A)(AP,
5/13/97)
1985 May 15, A booby-trapped book
detonated in the hands of graduate student John Hauser at UC Berkeley.
He was severely injured, lost partial vision in his left eye and four
fingers of his left hand. It was later attributed to the Unabomber
Theodore Kaczynski.
(SFEC,11/9/97, Z1 p.4)
1985 May 15, Edmond O'Brien
(b.1915), film actor, died. His films included "Hunchback of Notre
Dame" (1939) and "The Wild Bunch" (1969).
(www.hollywood.com)
1985 May 16, Michael Jordan of the
Chicago Bulls was named NBA Rookie of Year.
(http://tinyurl.com/2tostx)
1985 May 16, Margaret Hamilton
(b.1902), American film actress, died. She was best known for her role
as the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton)
1985 May 18, In the 111th
Preakness: Pat Day aboard Tank's Prospect won in 1:53.4.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1985-5/1985-05-18-NBC-21.html)
1985 May 18, Tex Terry (b.1902),
American film actor, died. His films included “Apache Rose” (1947) and
“Timberjack” (1955).
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0856084/)
1985 May 20, US began broadcasts
to Cuba on Radio Marti.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Mart%C3%AD)
1985 May 20, FBI arrested John A.
Walker. US Navy Chief Petty Officer Walker began spying for the Soviet
Union in 1968 for $1,000 per week. Walker’s ex-wife turned him into the
FBI.
(www.dss.mil/training/espionage/1985.htm)
1985 May 20, Israel exchanged
1,150 Palestinian prisoners for 3 Israeli soldiers. The exchange was
later referred to as the Jibril deal after the leader of the PFLP-GC,
Ahmad Jibril.
(www.passia.org/palestine_facts/chronology/19631988.htm)(http://tinyurl.com/6qrln3)
1985 May 21, Patti Frustaci of
Riverside, Calif., who was expecting septuplets, gave birth to six live
babies, three of whom died in the following weeks.
(AP, 5/21/05)(http://tinyurl.com/ypm8k4)
1985 May 22, Baseball player Pete
Rose passed Hank Aaron as the National League run scoring leader with
2,108.
(HN, 5/22/98)
1985 May 22, In Lebanon Michel
Seurat, a French history researcher, was abducted. In 1986 the Islamic
Jihad said he had been executed.
(AP, 3/5/00)(AP, 3/7/06)
1985 May 23, Thomas Patrick
Cavanagh, an aerospace engineer who admitted trying to sell "stealth"
bomber secrets to the Soviet Union, was sentenced in Los Angeles to
life in prison.
(AP, 5/23/05)
1985 May 25, A cyclone ravaged the
Meghna River delta of Bangladesh. Some 10,000 people and 500,000 head
of cattle died; hundreds of thousands were left homeless.
(www.emergency-management.net/cyclone.htm)
1985 May 25, Robert Nathan
(b.1894), US writer, poet (Portrait of Jennie), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Nathan)
1985 May 26, Harold Hecht
(b.1907), choreographer, died of cancer.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Hecht)
1985 May 27, In a brief ceremony
in Beijing, representatives of Britain and China exchanged instruments
of ratification on the pact returning Hong Kong to the Chinese in 1997.
(AP, 5/27/97)
1985 May 28, David Jacobsen,
director of the American University Hospital in Beirut, Lebanon, was
abducted by pro-Iranian kidnappers. He was freed 17 months later.
(AP, 5/28/97)
1985 May 29, At Heysel Stadium
rioting erupted between British and Italian spectators at the European
Cup soccer final in Brussels, Belgium. 39 people were killed when
rioting broke out and a wall separating British and Italian soccer fans
collapsed. This led to a 5-year ban on English clubs playing on the
Continent.
(SFEC, 6/11/00, p.A28)(AP, 5/29/08)
1985 May 29, Madge West (b.1892)
American TV actress (Grandma-McLean Stevenson Show), died.
(http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0922212/)
1985 May 30, The play "Woman in
Mind" by Alan Ayckbourn (b.1936) was first staged in Scarborough at the
Stephen Joseph Theatre in the Round.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman_In_Mind)
1985 May 31, At least 41 tornadoes
hit Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, and southeastern Ontario, Canada,
during an eight-hour period killing 88 people with over 1,000 injured.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_US-Canadian_Outbreak)(AP, 5/31/05)
1985 May, "One Night In Bangkok"
by Murray Head (b.1946) hit #3.
(http://tinyurl.com/2pysj5)
1985 May, In Colombia FARC
communist guerrillas sponsored the formation of a legal political
party, the Patriotic Front (Union Patriotica). Death squads and the
army carried out a campaign against the UP and in the ensuing decade
3,000 party activists and 2 presidential candidates were assassinated
by right-wing death squads.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriotic_Union_(Colombia))(SFC, 1/8/99,
p.A13)(SFC, 12/18/00, p.A11)(Econ, 4/10/04, p.71)
1985 Jun 1, The song "Axel F" by
Harold Faltermeyer peaked at #3 on the pop singles chart.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_F)
1985 Jun 1, In his Saturday radio
address, President Reagan, saying special interests in Washington were
trying to "pick apart" his tax overhaul plan, asked for Americans'
support.
(http://tinyurl.com/38akmh)
1985 Jun 1, The first phone call
was made on Vodafone United Kingdom's analogue network. This event was
staged, due to a network failure; the first calls were actually being
made the next day. Sir Christopher Gent founded Vodaphone, a British
mobile phone operator. The company name was coined from a combination
of voice and data.
(Econ, 6/3/06,
p.57)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vodaphone#History)
1985 Jun 3, Jerry A. Whitworth was
arrested by the FBI, accused of being part of a spy ring headed by John
A. Walker Jr. Whitworth was later sentenced to 365 years in prison.
(AP, 6/3/05)
1985 Jun 4, The Supreme Court
upheld a lower court ruling striking down an Alabama law providing for
a daily "moment of silence" in public schools.
(AP, 6/4/97)(http://tinyurl.com/2lqt4u)
1985 Jun 6, Authorities in Brazil
exhumed a body later identified as the remains of Dr. Josef Mengele,
the notorious "Angel of Death" of the Nazi Holocaust near Sao Paolo,
Brazil.
(AP, 6//97)(HN, 6/6/98)
1985 Jun 9, American educator
Thomas Sutherland was kidnapped in Lebanon. He was released in November
1991 along with fellow hostage Terry Waite.
(AP, 6/9/97)
1985 Jun 10, Socialite Claus von
Bulow was acquitted by a jury in Providence, Rhode Island, at his
retrial on charges he’d tried to murder his heiress wife, Martha
“Sunny” von Bulow.
(AP, 6/10/00)
1985 Jun 10, The Israeli army
pulled out of Lebanon after 1,099 days of occupation
(HN, 6/10/98)
1985 Jun 11, Karen Ann Quinlan,
the comatose patient whose case prompted a historic right-to-die court
decision, died in Morris Plains, N.J., at age 31.
(AP, 6/11/97)
1985 Jun 12, The US House of
Representatives approved $27 million in aid to the Nicaraguan contras.
(HN, 6/12/98)
1985 Jun 12, The town of Xintan on
the Yangtze was obliterated by a landslide that sent a 128-foot surge
wave down the river. It had been evacuated a few days earlier.
(NH, 7/96, p.32)
1985 Jun 12, Spain and Portugal
signed Accession Treaties to the European Community.
(http://europa.eu.int/abc/history/1985/index_en.htm)
1985 Jun 13, Aldrich Ames handed
over the names of 20 Soviets working for the CIA, to a Soviet agent,
several of whom were later executed.
(SFC, 9/17/97, p.A3)
1985 Jun 13, A parcel mailed from
Oakland, Ca., to Boeing Co. in Washington state was found to be a bomb
and defused. It was later attributed to the Unabomber Theodore
Kaczynski.
(SFEC,11/9/97, Z1 p.4)
1985 Jun 14, European states
signed the Schengen Agreement, which allowed for the abolition of
systematic border controls between the participating countries. The
agreement was incorporated into EU law in 1997.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_treaty)(Econ,
10/13/07, p.53)
1985 Jun 14, The 17-day hijack
ordeal of TWA Flight 847 began as a pair of Lebanese Shiite Muslim
extremists seized the plane with 104 Americans shortly after takeoff
from Athens, Greece. The hijackers killed Petty Officer Robert Dean
Stethem and dumped his body on the tarmac in Beirut. In 2002 Stethem’s
family was awarded $21.4 million in compensatory damages from the US
Treasury. In 1987 Mohammed Ali Hamadi was arrested at the Frankfurt
airport, when customs officials discovered liquid explosives in his
luggage. The Lebanese man was convicted and served a life sentence in
Germany for the 1985 hijacking of a TWA jetliner and killing of a US
Navy diver. In 2005 he returned to Lebanon after being paroled in
Germany.
(AP, 6/14/97)(HN, 6/14/98)(SSFC, 4/21/02, p.A9)(AP,
12/20/05)
1985 Jun 15, In St. Petersburg,
Russia, a middle-aged Lithuanian man pulled out a knife and slashed the
stomach and thigh of the nude woman, Danaë, depicted in the
Rembrandt masterpiece. He then hurled a jar of acid at the picture and
splashed a militiaman in the face. He was overpowered by guards who
found explosives strapped to his legs and trousers. The painting was
restored and put back on exhibit in 1997.
(SFC, 10/14/97, p.B5)
(AP, 1/26/07)
1985 Jun 16, The Grateful Dead
performed in a 20th anniversary concert in Berkeley, Ca.
(SFC, 7/5/96, p.E4)
1985 Jun 19, In El Salvador 4
off-duty US Marines and 9 others were killed at sidewalk restaurants in
the Zona Rosa section of San Salvador. Pedro Antonio Andrade Martinez
(aka Mario Gonzalez), a Marxist guerrilla, was one of the reputed
masterminds of the massacre. Andrade later became an informant for the
CIA and sought US asylum. Andrade was deported from the US in 1997.
(SFC, 11/22/96, p.A21)(SFC,11/6/97, p.C3)
1985 Jun 21, American, Brazilian
and West German scientists announced that skeletal remains exhumed in
Brazil were those of Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele.
(AP, 6/21/97)(www.paperlessarchives.com/mengele.html)
1985 Jun 23, All 329 people aboard
an Air India Boeing 747 were killed when Flight 182 from Montreal to
London crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near Ireland, apparently because
of a bomb. An hour earlier, a bomb in baggage intended for another Air
India flight exploded in a Tokyo airport, killing two baggage handlers.
In 2000 Canadian police arrested 2 men of Sikh origin for the bombing.
In 2001 Canadian prosecutors filed murder charges against Inderjit
Singh Reyat. In 2003 Reyat was sentenced to 5 years for his role in
making the bomb. In 2005 a Canadian judge acquitted 2 men who had been
accused of conspiring in the case. Talwinder Parmar (1944-1992) was
later assumed to have been the mastermind behind the attacks.
(AP, 6/23/97)(SFC, 10/28/00, p.A13)(SFC, 6/6/01,
p.C3)(AP, 2/11/03)(AP, 3/17/05)(Econ, 6/16/07, p.47)
1985 Jun 24, A federal judge in
New York found former Wall Street Journal reporter R. Foster Winans
guilty of illegally using his position at the paper in a get-rich-quick
insider-trading scheme. Winans served eight years in federal prison.
(AP, 6/24/05)
1985 Jun 27, The legendary Route
66, which originally (see 1926) stretched from Chicago to Santa Monica,
Calif., passed into history as officials decertified the road.
(AP 6/27/97)
1985 Jun 27, The U.S. House of
Representatives voted to limit the use of combat troops in Nicaragua.
(HN, 6/27/98)
1985 Jun 27, A hotel strike in NYC
took place. It ended June 27.
(http://tinyurl.com/yr7tgw)
1985 Jun 30, 39 American hostages
from a hijacked TWA jetliner were freed in Beirut after being held for
17 days.
(AP 6/30/97)
1985 Jun 30, James A. Dewar,
creator of the Twinkie (1930), died.
(www.foodreference.com/html/wjamesadewar.html)
1985 Jun, Israel pulled back to a
security zone in southern Lebanon to protect its border.
(SFC, 5/24/00, p.A15)
1985 Jul 2, The European Space
Agency launched the Giotto space probe for a close-up of Halley’s
Comet. It made its closest approach to the comet on March 13, 1986.
(SFEC, 9/28/97, p.A14)(http://tinyurl.com/2hnfnw)
1985 Jul 10, Bowing to pressure
from irate customers, the Coca-Cola Company said it would resume
selling old-formula Coke, while continuing to sell New Coke.
(AP, 7/10/00)
1985 Jul 10, French security
forces sank the Rainbow Warrior, a ship operated by Greenpeace near NZ.
Fernando Pereira, a Dutch photographer, was killed in the sinking.
(SFC, 5/7/99,
p.A14)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Warrior)
1985 Jun 10, The Israeli army
pulled out of Lebanon after 1,099 days of occupation.
(HN, 6/10/98)
1985 Jul 10, A Soviet Tu-154
crashed in Uzbekistan and all 200 people aboard were killed.
(SFC, 7/4/01,
p.A10)(http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19850710-0)
1985 Jul 11, Houston Astro's Nolan
Ryan became the first pitcher to strike out 4000 batters as he fanned
Danny Heep of the New York Mets.
(www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/hallfame/ryan.htm)
1985 Jul 12, Doctors discovered
what turned out to be a cancerous growth in President Reagan’s large
intestine, prompting surgery the following day.
(AP, 7/12/00)
1985 Jul 12, Lance Cpl. Suzanne
Marie Collins (b.1966) was raped, murdered and mutilated near the Naval
Air Station base at Millington, Tenn. Sedley Alley was convicted for
the murder in 1987 and sentenced to death. In 2006 Alley (50) was
executed by lethal injected for the murder.
(SFC, 6/29/06,
p.A3)(www.answers.com/topic/suzanne-marie-collins)
1985 Jul 13, Live Aid, an
international rock concert in London, Philadelphia, Moscow and Sydney,
took place to raise money for Africa's starving people. It was
organized by Bob Geldof of Ireland.
(TMC, 1994, p.1985)(AP 7/13/97)(Econ, 6/4/05, p.56)
1985 Jul 13, Lt. Cmdr. Michael
Gershon, a Navy Blue Angel pilot, was killed when 2 planes collided
during an air show at Niagara Falls, NY.
(SFC, 10/29/99,
p.A3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donnie_Cochran)
1985 Jul 14, Carolyn Muncey’s
badly beaten body was found near her home in eastern Tennessee. Paul
House was convicted in 1986 and sentenced to die for the murder. In
2008 DNA evidence indicated he was not responsible for her sexual
assault and a federal judge ordered that he be quickly retried or
released.
(SFC, 5/29/08,
p.A2)(www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/12/10/60minutes/main660438.shtml)
1985 Jul 15, A gaunt-looking Rock
Hudson appeared at a news conference with actress Doris Day to promote
her cable television program. It was later revealed Hudson was
suffering from AIDS.
(AP, 7/15/99)
1985 Jul 19, Christa McAuliffe of
New Hampshire was chosen to be the first schoolteacher to ride aboard
the space shuttle. McAuliffe and six other crew members died (1/28/96)
when the Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff. Black astronaut
Robert McNair was one of the dead.
(SFC, 12/18/96, p.A3)(TMC, 1994, p.1986)(AP
7/19/97)(SFC,11/12/97, p.A3)
1985 Jul 19, British agents helped
Oleg Gordievsky (b.1938) escape from Moscow to Finland. He was the
highest ranking KGB defector in its history.
(AP,
11/25/07)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_Gordievsky)
1985 Jul 20, US divers found the
wreck of Spanish galleon Atocha.
(www.atochastory.com/)
1985 Jul 23, Bandleader Kay Kyser,
known for his “Kollege of Musical Knowledge,” died in Chapel Hill,
North Carolina, at age 79.
(AP, 7/23/00)
1985 Jul 25, A spokeswoman for
Rock Hudson confirmed that the actor, hospitalized in Paris, was
suffering from “AIDS.” Hudson died the following October.
(AP, 7/25/00)
1985 Jul 28, Grant Williams
(b.1930), film and TV actor, died of toxic poisoning.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0930695/)
1985 Jul 28, In Peru Alan Garcia,
leader of the American People’s Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), assumed
the presidency and led until 1990. Under his rule much of the nation's
external debt was not serviced and the period was marked by 4-digit
inflation, food shortages, int’l. isolation and terrorist attacks.
(WSJ, 10/31/95, p.C-17)(WSJ, 12/27/96, p.A7)(SFC,
1/18/01, p.A14)
1985 Jul 29, The space shuttle
Challenger began an eight-day mission that got off to a shaky start.
The spacecraft achieved a safe orbit even though one of its main
engines shut down prematurely after lift-off.
(AP, 7/29/05)
1985 Jul 30, Germaine Krull
(b.1897), Polish born German photographer, died.
(SFEM, 4/9/00,
p.4)(www.kingkong.demon.co.uk/ngcoba/kr.htm)
1985 Aug 1, The French government
began to require the testing of all donated blood for AIDS following
the launch of a test by Diagnostic Pasteur. By this time some 1,300
hemophiliacs were contaminated with AIDS-tainted blood. By 1997 over
500 had died, most of them children. Four health officials were charged
and convicted in the case.
(SFEC, 2/7/99, p.A2)
1985 Aug 2, In Texas 137 people
were killed when a Delta Air Lines jumbo jet crashed while attempting
to land at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
(AP, 8/2/97)
1985 Aug 4, A pair of milestones
were achieved in major league baseball as Tom Seaver of the Chicago
White Sox gained his 300th victory and Rod Carew of the California
Angels got his 3,000th hit.
(AP, 8/4/05)
1985 Aug 6, Linden Forbes Burnham
(b.1923), president of Guyana, died.
(SFC, 9/10/08,
p.A5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbes_Burnham)
1985 Aug 7, Spc. Edward Pimental
(20), a US Army soldier, left a discotheque in the western German city
of Wiesbaden with a woman and was soon killed. Terrorists used
Pimental's ID card to enter the US Rhein-Main air base in Frankfurt.
The following day, explosives packed in a Volkswagen rocked the parking
lot behind the base headquarters. Two Americans were killed and 23
people were injured. In 1994 a Frankfurt court found Eva Haule guilty
of killing Pimental. In 1996 a judge said Birgit Hogefeld, who was also
convicted in the Pimental killing and the Rhein-Main bombing, had lured
Pimental out of the disco. In 2007 Haule (53) was released from jail
after serving 21 years of a life sentence.
(AP, 8/17/07)
1985 Aug 9, A federal judge in
Norfolk, Va., found retired Navy officer Arthur J. Walker guilty of
seven counts of spying for the Soviet Union.
(AP, 8/9/97)
1985 Aug 8, Mary Louise Brooks
(b.1906), American silent film star, died. In 1982 she authored her
memoir “Lulu in Hollywood.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Brooks)
1985 Aug 11, "Dreamgirls" closed
at the Imperial Theater in NYC after 1521 performances.
(www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=4152)
1985 Aug 12, The world's worst
single-aircraft disaster occurred as a crippled Japan Air Lines Boeing
747 on a domestic flight crashed into Mount Otsuka, 70 miles northwest
of Tokyo, killing 520 of 524 people onboard. A flawed splice made by
Boeing 7 years earlier was the probable cause. In 2006 Japan opened a
museum to remember the crash. Boeing and JAL paid undisclosed
settlements to each victim’s family.
(AP, 8/12/97)(WSJ, 7/27/06, p.A1)
1985 Aug 15, The Assam Accord was
signed between Rajiv Gandhi and Assamese nationalists. A Congress
government led by Hiteshwar Saikia, widely viewed in Assam as
illegitimate, was dissolved as part of the terms of the Assam Accord.
Under the accord the government promised to identify and deport people
who had crossed the border since the creation of Bangladesh in 1971,
but the promise went unfulfilled.
(http://tinyurl.com/ypjjgw)(Econ, 10/11/08, p.60)
1985 Aug 15, Iraq launched its
first air raid on Iran’s Kharg oil-island.
(www.eia.doe.gov/cabs/iraqchron.html)
1985 Aug 16, The Mary Gioia (22)
of New York and Gregory Kniffin (18) of Connecticut shot and killed.
Their bodies were soon found in the SF Bay with gunshot wounds to the
head. They had been staying at a homeless encampment in the Berkeley
Marina while waiting for the next Grateful Dead concert. Ralph
International Thomas was convicted of the murders. In 2009 the 2
convictions against Thomas (55) were overturned.
(http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20060307/ai_n16166652/)(SFC,
9/16/09, p.D3)
1985 Aug 17, More than 1,400
meatpackers walked off the job at the Geo. A. Hormel and Co.'s main
plant in Austin, Minn., in a bitter strike that lasted just over a year.
(AP, 8/17/05)
1985 Aug 17, Rajiv Gandhi
announced Punjab state elections in India.
(http://tinyurl.com/yru62e)
1985 Aug 21, Tunisia expelled 253
Libyans in apparent retaliation for Libya’s expulsion of over 20,000
Tunisian workers in recent weeks.
(http://tinyurl.com/yq3x4e)
1985 Aug 22, A fire broke out
aboard a British Airtours charter jet on a runway at Manchester Airport
in England and 55 people died.
(AP, 8/22/05)
1985 Aug 25, Samantha Smith, the
schoolgirl whose letter to Yuri V. Andropov resulted in her famous
peace tour of the Soviet Union, was killed with her father in an
airplane crash in Maine.
(AP, 8/25/97)
1985 Aug 26, Thirteen-year-old
AIDS patient Ryan White began "attending" classes at Western Middle
School in Kokomo, Indiana, via a telephone hook-up at his home. School
officials had barred Ryan from attending classes in person.
(AP, 8/26/00)
1985 Aug 26, French government
claimed no knowledge of assault on Rainbow Warrior.
(www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1689202,00.html)
1985 Aug 27, Dr. Fisher was a
mission specialist on STS 51-I which launched from Kennedy Space
Center, Florida.
(www.astronautix.com/astros/fislliam.htm)
1985 Aug 27, In Nigeria Gen’l.
Ibrahim Babangida began his rule. He gave up power in 1993.
(www.nigeriabusinessinfo.com/nigeria-elections2003/babangida-regime.htm)
1985 Aug 28, Ruth Gordon (88),
American actress (Big Bus), died of a stroke in her sleep.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0002106/)
1985 Aug 29, In Missouri the St.
Louis Union Station, purchased by a New York financier, reopened as a
Grand Hyatt hotel. The massive, Romanesque-style building, designed by
architect Theodore Link in 1894, was once the largest and busiest
railroad terminal in the world. In 1976, the Saint Louis Union Station
was designated a National Historic Landmark.
(SFC, 10/12/97,
p.T5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis_Union_Station)
1985 Aug 31, Richard Ramirez,
later convicted of California's "Night Stalker" killings, was captured
by residents of an East Los Angeles neighborhood.
(AP, 8/31/97)
1985 Sep 1, A US-French expedition
located the wreckage of Titanic, sunk in 1915, about 560 miles off
Newfoundland, Canada.
(www.titanic-titanic.com/discovery_of_titanic.shtml)
1985 Sep 6, All 31 people aboard a
Midwest Express Airlines DC-9 were killed when the Atlanta-bound
jetliner crashed just after takeoff from Milwaukee's Mitchell Field.
(WSJ, 6/14/96, p.A15)(AP, 9/6/05)
1985 Sep 8, Pete Rose of the
Cincinnati Reds tied Ty Cobb's career record for hits with a single for
No. 4,191 during a game against the Cubs in Chicago.
(AP, 9/8/99)
1985 Sep 9, President Ronald W.
Reagan issued Executive Order No. 12532 establishing sanctions against
South Africa. Reagan banned the sale of computers to South African
security agencies, barred most loans to the Pretoria government, halted
the importation of the Krugerrand, South Africa's gold coin (effective
Oct 11), and stopped exports of nuclear technology until South Africa
signs an accord to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
(www-tech.mit.edu/V105/N38/apart.38n.html)(http://tinyurl.com/2ruefg)
1985 Sep 9, In Birmingham,
England, race riots took place and continued thru Sep 11.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handsworth_riots)
1985 Sep 9, In Thailand there was
a failed coup attempt. Former PM Kriangsak was caught with other
retired military officers at the headquarters of the plotters.
(AP, 12/23/03)
1985 Sep 11, Pete Rose of the
Cincinnati Reds made his career hit 4,192 off Eric Show of San Diego
Padres, eclipsing Ty Cobb's record.
(AP, 9/11/05)
1985 Sep 11, A U.S. satellite
glided through the tail of the Giacobini-Zinner comet in the first-ever
on-the-spot sampling of a comet.
(AP, 9/11/05)
1985 Sep 14, The situation comedy
"The Golden Girls" premiered on NBC and continued to 1992. The show
included Beatrice Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty
as 4 older women living together in Florida.
(AP, 9/14/05)(www.imdb.com/title/tt0088526/)(LSA,
Spring, 2009, p.44)
1985 Sep 14, Shiite Muslim
kidnappers in Lebanon released the Rev. Benjamin Weir after holding him
captive for 16 months.
(AP, 9/14/05)
1985 Sep 15, In Sweden Olof Palme
(1927-1986) formed a minority government.
(www.brandt21forum.info/Bio-Palme.htm)
1985 Sep 19, The Mexico City area
was struck by the first of two devastating quakes (8.1) that officially
claimed 9,500 lives. Some 40,000 people were injured.
(HFA, '96, p.38)(SFC, 12/31/96, p.C9)(AP,
9/19/97)(SSFC, 4/16/06, p.F4)
1985 Sep 19, Italo Calvino
(b.1923), Italian writer, died. A collection of his essays was soon
published titled "The Literature Machine." In 1999 the original
11 essays and 25 others were published under the title: "Why Read the
Classics," translated by Martin McLaughlin. In 2003 McLaughlin
published “Hermit in Paris: Autobiographical Writings By Italo Calvino.”
(SFEC, 10/24/99, BR p.5)(SSFC, 4/6/03, p.M4)
1985 Sep 22, Rock and country
music artists participated in FarmAid, a concert staged in Champaign,
Ill., to help the nation's farmers. The first Farm Aid concert was held
to support problems facing US farmers and their families.
(SFEC, 10/13/96, p.A9)(AP, 9/22/05)
1985 Sep 22, In the 37th Emmy
Awards the winners included Cagney & Lacey, Cosby Show and Tyne
Daly.
(www.imdb.com/Sections/Awards/Emmy_Awards/1985)
1985 Sep 22, In NYC ministers of
America, Japan, West Germany, France and Britain (the Group of Five,
G-5) unified and adopted the Plaza Accord for currency intervention and
struggled to control capital exchange-rate movements. Led by the US
Treasury's Sec. James Baker, it was the first effort to restore some
semblance of order to the monetary system since the collapse of the
postwar Breton Woods gold-anchored finance systems in the early 1970s.
In the wake of the accord the dollar lost almost 30% of its value.
(www.g7.utoronto.ca/finance/fm850922.htm)(WSJ,
3/8/04, p.A2)(Econ, 10/9/04, p.72)
1985 Sep 22, The body of Betty
Stuart (22) was found at Aquatic Park in Berkeley, Ca. In 2008
prosecutors using DNA evidence said Anthony McKnight (54), already in
prison for rape and attempted murder, was responsible for her murder.
He had been arrested in 1986 and was already serving a 63 year sentence
for the rape and murder of 3 other women. In 2008 McKnight, a former
sailor, was convicted on an additional 5 counts of first-degree murder.
(SFC, 7/17/08, p.B2)(SFC, 9/18/08, p.B2)
1985 Sep 22, In France the premier
confessed to the June 10 attack of Green Peace's Rainbow Warrior.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenpeace)
1985 Sep 22, Axel Springer
(b.1912), German newspaper magnate (Bild Zeitung), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_Springer)
1985 Sep 25, The Tyrell Museum of
Paleontology was opened to the public. It is located 140 km. northeast
of Calgary at Drumheller, Alberta, Canada.
(CFA, '96, p.63)
1985 Sep 26, Shamu, the killer
whale, was born in Orlando, Florida. She was the first killer whale
born in captivity to survive.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamu)
1985 Sep 27, Hurricane Gloria,
having come ashore at North Carolina with winds of 130 mph, proceeded
to head up the Atlantic coast toward New England.
(AP, 9/27/97)
1985 Sep 28, There was a race riot
in the London area of Brixton.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brixton_riot_(1985))
1985 Sep 29, Andre Kertesz
(b,1894), Hungarian-born photographer, died in NYC.
(Econ, 8/27/05,
p.69)(http://galeria.origo.hu/kertesz/akeng.html)
1985 Sep 30, Maxxam Corp. made a
tender offer for Pacific Lumber at $36 a share. The same day it
demanded and received a 50% cut in fees due to Drexel Burnham Lambert.
During the summer the Wall Street firm Drexel Burnham Lambert and
Maxxam Corp. had hired a timber consultant to fly over the holdings of
Pacific Lumber and estimate their worth. Charles Hurwitz announced his
intention to acquire Pacific Lumber and had Michael Milken of Drexel
arrange junk bond financing. Control of Pacific Lumber passed to
Hurwitz of Texas-based Maxxam by the end of the year. The bonds were
sold to United Savings Association, a Texas S&L whose parent
corporation was owned by Charles Hurwitz. The thrift failed in 1988 and
taxpayers were stuck with a $1.6 billion bailout.
(SFC, 9/4/96,
p.A4-5)(www.mcn.org/e/iii/politics/hurwitzm.htm)
1985 Sep 30, Charles Richter
(b.1900), American seismologist, died. He developed the Richter Scale
for measuring the amplitude of earthquakes. In 2007 Susan Elizabeth
Hough authored “Richter’s Scale: Measure of an Earthquake, Measure of a
Man.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Francis_Richter)(SSFC, 1/21/07,
p.M3)
1985 Sep 30, Simone Signoret,
German-French actress (Room at Top, Gina), died at 64.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0797531/)
1985 Sep, Steven Jobs left Apple
Computer Corp. after losing control over the Macintosh division to
Jean-Louis Gasee, appointed by John Sculley. Jobs went on to start NeXt.
(I&I, Penzias, p.185)(SFC, 1/24/04, p.A12)
1985 Sep, Edward Lee Howard
(1951-2002), CIA officer, vanished from Santa Fe, NM. He fled the US to
Russia while under FBI investigation for spying for the Soviet Union.
He was accused of disclosing CIA agents in Moscow. Howard died in 2002
of a broken neck from an accident at his residence outside Moscow. In
1995 Howard’s memoir “Safe House” was ghost written by Richard Cote.
(SFC, 11/19/96, p.A17)(SFC, 7/22/02, p.A6)
1985 Sep, In Texas Patrick Rogers
shot a killed police officer David Roberts (23) after a robbery.
Rogers, a black man, was convicted and sentenced to death. His story
was made into a 1997 Dateline NBC documentary.
(WSJ, 1/5/98, p.20)
1985 Oct 1, Israeli forces staged
an air raid on PLO-headquarter at Tunis and 68 people were killed.
Yasser Arafat narrowly escaped death.
(WSJ, 11/12/04, p.A11)
1985 Oct 1, E. B. White (Elwyn
Brooks White, b.1899), writer, author of “Charlotte's Web” and “The
Elements of Style,” died in Maine.
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/ebwhite.htm)
1985 Oct 2, Rock Hudson (b.1925),
film star, died at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. after a battle
with AIDS. Upon his death it was publicly made known that he had been a
closet homosexual. Marc Christian McGinnis (1953-2009), Hudson’s lover,
soon sued Hudson’s estate alleging emotional distress. In 1989 a jury
awarded him $21.75 million in damages, but this was later reduced to
$5.5 million and settled in 1991. McGinnis never contracted AIDS, but
died of pulmonary problems.
(SFC, 11/28/96, p.C14)(AP, 10/2/97)(SSFC, 12/6/09,
p.C8)
1985 Oct 3, Charles Collingwood
(b.1917), CBS newscaster, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Collingwood_(journalist))
1985 Oct 4, Islamic Jihad issued a
statement saying it had killed American hostage William Buckley. Fellow
hostage David Jacobsen, however, later said he believed Buckley had
died (in Lebanon) of torture injuries four months earlier.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1985 Oct 6, Nelson Riddle,
American bandleader, died. In 2001 Peter J. Levinson (1934-2008)
authored “September in the Rain: The Life of Nelson Riddle.”
(SFC, 11/18/08,
p.B4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Riddle)
1985 Oct 7, The United States
announced it would no longer automatically comply with World Court
decisions. This was in response to a June 25, 1985, World Court ruling
that U.S. involvement in Nicaragua violated international law. The
ruling stemmed from a suit brought in April 1984 after revelations that
the CIA had directed the mining of Nicaraguan ports. The U.S. later
vetoed two U.N. resolutions calling for compliance to the World Court
ruling.
(HNQ, 6/9/99)
1985 Oct 7, Four Palestinian
Liberation Organization (PLO) gunmen hijacked the Italian cruise ship
Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean and demanded the release of 50
Palestinians held by Israel. 413 people were held hostage for 2 days in
the seizure that was masterminded by Mohammed Abul Abbas. American Leon
Klinghoffer was shot while sitting in his wheelchair and thrown
overboard. A case was filed against the PLO and settled in 1997. The
hijackers surrendered to Egyptian authorities and were turned over to
Italy which let Abbas slip out of the country. Abbas was captured in
Baghdad in 2003.
(SFC, 8/12/97, p.A4)(AP, 10/7/97)(HN, 10/7/98)(SFC,
4/16/03, p.A16)
1985 Oct 7, In Ponce, Puerto Rico,
a mudslide followed Tropical Storm Isabel and killed at least 129
people in the island's worst disaster this century.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_Storm_Isabel_(1985))
1985 Oct 8, The hijackers of the
Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro killed American passenger Leon
Klinghoffer, dumping his body and wheelchair overboard. A case was
filed against the PLO and settled in 1997. The hijackers surrendered to
Egyptian authorities and were turned over to Italy which let Abbas slip
out of the country.
(SFC, 8/12/97, p.A4)(AP, 10/8/97)
1985 Oct 9, Major Koch of New York
City designated 11 acres of Central Park as Strawberry Fields in honor
of John Lennon.
(www.centralparknyc.org/virtualpark/southend/strawberryfields)
1985 Oct 9, The hijackers of the
Achille Lauro cruise liner surrendered after the ship arrived in Port
Said, Egypt.
(AP, 10/9/97)
1985 Oct 10, U.S. fighter jets
forced an Egyptian plane carrying the hijackers of the Italian cruise
ship Achille Lauro to land in Italy, where the gunmen were taken into
custody.
(AP, 10/10/98)
1985 Oct 10, Actor Yul Brynner
died of lung cancer in NYC at age 65.
(AP, 10/10/97)
1985 Oct 10, Orson Welles (70),
actor-director, died of a heart attack in Los Angeles. In 1972 Joseph
McBride authored “Orson Welles,” in 1989 Frank Brady authored “Citizen
Welles: A Biography of Orson Welles.” In 2006 Simon Callow authored
“Orson Welles: Hello American,” the 2nd volume of a 3-part biography.
(AP,
10/10/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orson_Welles)(WSJ, 8/19/06, p.P8)
1985 Oct 11, President Reagan’s
ban on the importation of South African Krugerrands went into effect.
(http://tinyurl.com/2ruefg)
1985 Oct 11, Alex Odeh, regional
director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), was
killed by a bomb blast in Santa Ana, Calif.
(AP,
10/11/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Odeh)
1985 Oct 15, Shelley Taylor of
Australia made the fastest swim ever around Manhattan Island, doing it
in 6 hours 12 minutes 29 seconds.
(www.scopesys.com/cgi-bin/today2.cgi?askmonth=10&askday=15)
1985 Oct 16, Intel introduced its
32-bit 80386 microcomputer chip.
(www.islandnet.com/~kpolsson/micropro/proc1980.htm)
1985 Oct 18, Benjamin Moloisi
(30), South African poet, was hanged for his role in the 1982 murder of
a security policeman.
(http://tinyurl.com/2mubof)
1985 Oct 21, Former San Francisco
Supervisor Dan White committed suicide by carbon monoxide in his wife’s
car in the Excelsior. He killed Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey
Milk in 1978, for which he served barely 5 years after a diminished
capacity defense called the "Twinkie defense."
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W23)(SFC, 11/26/98, p.A19)
1985 Oct 25, Morton Downey
(b.1901), popular singer and TV host for “Star of the Family” (1950s)
died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morton_Downey)
1985 Oct 27, Billy Martin was
fired by Yankees for the 4th time.
(www.baseballlibrary.com/baseballlibrary/ballplayers/M/Martin_Billy.stm)
1985 Oct 27, Hurricane Juan
ravaged US Gulf states and east coast and 49 died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Juan_(1985))
1985 Oct 28, John Walker, the
leader of the so-called "Walker family spy ring," pleaded guilty to
giving U-S Navy secrets to the Soviet Union.
(www.dss.mil/training/espionage/1985.htm)
1985 Oct 28, In Sierra Leone Pres.
Siaka Stevens retired from office at the end of his term. After
pressuring all other potential successors to step aside, Major-General
Joseph Saidu Momoh was sworn in as the new President of the Republic.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siaka_Stevens)
1985 Oct 29, Bear Stearns
Companies, Inc., the holding company that owns Bear, Stearns &
Company, Inc., was created as the successor to Bear Stearns &
Company and Subsidiaries, a partnership organized in 1957. The
partnership, in turn, was the successor to a company founded in 1923 by
Joseph Bear, Robert Stearns, and Harold Mayer as an equity-trading
house.
(www.referenceforbusiness.com/history2/90/Bear-Stearns-Companies-Inc.html)
1985 Oct 30, The launch of the
space shuttle “Challenger” was witnessed by schoolteacher Christa
McAuliffe, who was fated to die when the spacecraft exploded after
liftoff the following January.
(AP, 10/30/00)
1985 Oct 30, American Brands was
removed as a component of the Dow Jones. It had begun as American
Tobacco in 1890.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, p. R-45)
1985 Nov 1, Phil Silvers (b.1911),
American comedic actor (Sgt. Bilko), died in his sleep.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Silvers)
1985 Nov 5, Spencer W. Kimball,
president of the Mormon Church, died at age 90; he was succeeded by
Ezra Taft Benson.
(AP, 11/5/05)
1985 Nov 6, An exploratory oil
well at Ranger, Tx., exploded and spilled 150,000 barrels of oil.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980-1989_world_oil_market_chronology)
1985 Nov 6, Some 35 leftist M-19
rebels took over Colombia’s Palace of Justice. A military raid to
liberate hostages held by M-19 guerrillas at the Supreme Court followed
and cost more than 100 lives, including 11 Supreme Court justices and
all 30 guerrillas. Intelligence unit soldiers under the command of Ivan
Ramirez escorted 11 people out of the building as the military stormed
the palace. Witnesses, including soldiers from Ramirez's unit, later
said the captives were tortured and killed. In 2008 Ramirez was
arrested and faced "forced disappearance" charges. In Oct prosecutors
ordered the arrest of Gen. Jesus Armando Arias, who led Bogota's army
brigade during the assault.
(WSJ, 1/3/97, p.A6)(WSJ, 1/8/97, p.A12)(SFC,
4/20/98, p.A8)(AP, 5/28/08)(AP, 10/11/08)
1985 Nov 9, Gary Kasparov became
the world chess champion. He was born in 1963 in Azerbaijan to an
Armenian mother and a Jewish father. Anatoly Karpov had held the world
chess title for 10 years until he was defeated this year by Kasparov.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_Kasparov#Early_career)(SFC,
10/3/96, p.A8)
1985 Nov 12, Xavier Suarez was
elected Miami's first Cuban-American mayor (1985-1993).
(SFC,12/13/97, p.A9)(AP, 11/12/03)
1985 Nov 12, The Unabomber mailed
a pipe bomb to Prof. James V. McConnell of Ann Arbor, Mich. 3 days
later research assistant Nick Suing opened the package and was injured
by the exploding bomb.
(WP, 6/29/96, p.A3)(SFEC,11/9/97, Z1 p.4)
1985 Nov 13, Some 23,000 residents
of Armero, Colombia, died when a mudslide, triggered by the Nevado del
Ruiz volcano, buried the city under 30 feet of mud.
(PacDisc. Spring/’96, p.27)(AP, 11/13/97)(SFEC,
7/12/98, p.A22)
1985 Nov 15, Britain and Ireland
signed an accord giving Dublin an official consultative role in
governing Northern Ireland.
(AP, 11/15/97)
1985 Nov 17, Olaf Palme stopped an
illegal shipment of 80 HAWK missiles through Sweden from Israel to
Teheran, as he mediated an end of the Iran-Iraq war for the UN.
(http://www.skog.de/writers/e040831.htm)
1985 Nov 18, Bill Watterson’s
comic strip Calvin and Hobbes began a 10-year run that ended Dec 31,
1995. In 2005 Watterson published his 3-volume set: The complete Calvin
and Hobbes.”
(SSFC, 10/16/05,
p.M1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_and_Hobbes)
1985 Nov 19, Herb Gardner's "I'm
Not Rappaport," premiered in NYC.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I'm_Not_Rappaport)
1985 Nov 19, President Reagan and
Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev met for the first time as they began
their summit in Geneva.
(AP, 11/19/97)
1985 Nov 19, Stepin Fetchit (83),
born as Lincoln Perry, 1st black film star, died of pneumonia. His
films included “Miracle in Harlem” (1948). In 2005 Mel Watkins authored
“Stepin Fetchit: The Life and Times of Lincoln Perry.”
(www.nndb.com/people/913/000091640/)
1985 Nov 21, Former U.S. Navy
intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard was arrested, and accused of
spying for Israel. Pollard was sentenced to life in prison in 1987.
(AP, 11/21/97)(WSJ, 1/28/98, p.A18)(SFC, 3/1/00,
p.A23)
1985 Nov 21, Yonkers was found
guilty of intentional discrimination in its housing and schools.
(http://tinyurl.com/2oegnj)
1985 Nov 22, The largest US
swearing-in ceremony took place as 38,648 immigrants become US citizens.
(http://tinyurl.com/2dxw3m)
1985 Nov 23, Retired CIA analyst
Larry Wu-tai Chin was arrested and accused of spying for China. He
committed suicide a year after his conviction.
(AP, 11/23/97)
1985 Nov 23, Egypt Air flight 648
was hijacked to Malta by Palestinian militant Omar Mohammed Ali Rezaq,
a member of the Abu Nidal terrorist group.
(SFC, 7/20/96, p.A6)(SFEC, 10/8/96,
D1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EgyptAir_Flight_648)
1985 Nov 24, The hijacking of an
Egyptair jetliner parked on the ground in Malta ended violently as
Egyptian commandos stormed the plane. Fifty-eight people died in the
raid, in addition to two others killed by the hijackers. Ali Rezaq of
the Abu Nidal terrorist group was imprisoned in Malta for 7 years and
then released. The US FBI apprehended him in Nigeria in 1993 and he was
convicted by a US federal jury in 1996 and sentenced to life in prison.
(SFC, 7/20/96, p.A6)(SFEC, 10/8/96, D1)(AP, 11/24/97)
1985 Nov 25, Ronald W. Pelton, a
former employee of the National Security Agency, was arrested on
espionage charges. Pelton was later convicted of selling secrets to
Soviet agents.
(AP, 11/25/05)
1985 Nov 25, Elsa Morante
(b.1912), Italian writer, died. Her books included “House of Liars”
(1948). In 2008 Lily Tuck authored the biography “Woman of Rome: A Life
of Elsa Morante.”
(WSJ, 9/27/08, p.W11)
1985 Nov 26, The space shuttle
Atlantis roared into the nighttime sky over Cape Canaveral, Fla.,
carrying seven astronauts on a seven-day mission.
(AP, 11/26/05)
1985 Nov 27, The British House of
Commons approved the Anglo-Irish accord giving Dublin a consultative
role in the governing of British-ruled Northern Ireland.
(AP, 11/27/97)
1985 Nov 27, Fernand Braudel
(b.1902) died at age 83. He was a French historian, educator and one of
the most important historiographers of the 20th century.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernand_Braudel)
1985 Nov 28, NBC's Ahmad Rashad
heard the acceptance of his marriage proposal from Phylicia Ayers-Allen
during halftime of the Detroit Lions-New York Jets football game.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad_Rashad)
1985 Nov 28, In Lake Worth, Texas,
two men and a teenager (15) died as a result of a briefcase bomb on
Thanksgiving Day. Another man and woman were injured by the explosion.
In 2009 Michael Roy Toney (43) was released from prison after his 1999
conviction in the bombing was overturned.
(www.justicedenied.org/michaeltoney.htm)(SFC,
9/4/09, p.A7)
1985 Nov 28, The Irish Senate
approved the Anglo-Irish accord concerning Northern Ireland.
(AP, 11/28/00)
1985 Nov, The US FDA approved
imipenem, a penicillin-like drug.
(SSFC, 1/20/08, p.A10)(http://tinyurl.com/2px4jy)
1985 Nov, In Peru rebels took over
a Lima newspaper. Nestor Cerpa revealed himself as the leader. As
Comrade Evaristo he had begun a series of attacks, takeovers and
kidnappings.
(SFC, 12/25/96,
p.A12)(www.emergency.com/peruhos3.htm)
1985 Dec 2, Philip Larkin
(b.1922), English poet, died of esophageal cancer. He had received the
Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 1965. His books included “High
Windows” (1974).
(WSJ, 12/8/07, p.W18)
1985 Dec 2, The 2nd round of free
elections in Guatemala gave a decisive majority of almost 70% to the
centrist Christian Democratic Party candidate, Vinicio Cerezo (b.1942).
The army still held much behind-the-scenes power.
(NG, 6/1988,
p.779)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Vinicio_Cerezo_Ar%C3%A9valo)
1985 Dec 4, Robert McFarland
resigned as US National Security Advisor. Admiral John Poindexter was
named to succeed.
(HN, 12/4/98)
1985 Dec 4, In SF, Ca., Barbara
Martz (28) was raped and stabbed to death when she walked in on a
robbery at her Potrero Hill home. In 2007 DNA evidence linked John
Davis, already in prison at Pelican Bay, to her murder. On Aug 27 Davis
was convicted of murder. On Dec 17 he sentenced to life in prison
without parole.
(SFC, 8/16/07, p.B3)(SFC, 8/28/07, p.B1)(SFC,
12/18/07, p.B3)
1985 Dec 5, Christie’s auctioned a
bottle of 1787 Chateau Lafite Bordeaux, thought to have once been part
of Thomas Jefferson’s cellar, and part of a cache said to have been
recently unearthed from a Paris house by German pop band manager Hardy
Rodenstock. Lot 337 sold for $156,000 on a bid by Kip Murdoch, bidding
for his father Malcolm Forbes. In 2006 Bill Koch of Florida, who
purchased 4 bottles of alleged Jefferson wine in 1987, sued Rodenstock
for fraud. In 2008 Benjamin Wallace authored “The Billionaire’s
Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine.
(Econ, 5/10/08, p.95)
1985 Dec 7, Retired Supreme Court
Justice Potter Stewart died in Hanover, N.H., at age 70.
(AP 12/7/97)
1985 Dec 7, Robert Graves, British
author, died. He was the author of historical novels that included "I,
Claudius" and "Collected Poems" (1966). His book "The White Goddess"
(1948) purported to prove that the affairs of men have been controlled
since the dawn of civilization by an all-destroying, all-creating
goddess who manifests herself in living women for the purpose of
inspiring poets. A new biography on Graves was written by Miranda
Seymour and titled "Robert Graves: Life on the Edge."
{Britain, Writer, Poet, Biography}
(WSJ, 10/24/95,
p.A-20)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Graves)
1985 Dec 11, A mail bomb killed
Sacramento computer store owner Hugh Scrutton. The murder was
attributed to the Unabomber. He had picked up a piece of nail-riddled
wood that was impact a bomb.
(SFC, 4/4/96, p.A-16)(SFEC,11/9/97, Z1 p.4)
1985 Dec 12, 248 American soldiers
and eight crew members were killed when an Arrow Air charter crashed
after takeoff from Gander, Newfoundland.
(AP 12/12/97)
1985 Dec 13, France sued the U.S.
over the discovery of an AIDS serum.
(HN, 12/13/98)
1985 Dec 14, Roger Maris (51), HR
hitter (61 in 61, NY Yankees), died of cancer.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Maris)
1985 Dec 14, Wilma Mankiller
became the first woman to lead a major American Indian tribe as she
took office as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.
(AP 12/14/97)
1985 Dec 16, Reputed
organized-crime chief Paul Castellano was shot to death outside a New
York City restaurant on orders from John Gotti (d.2002). Gotti seized
power in the Mafia after he had Paul Castellano killed.
(AP 12/16/97)(SFC, 6/11/02, p.A2)(SSFC, 8/11/02, Par
p.5)
1985 Dec 18, The UN Security
Council unanimously condemned "acts of hostage-taking."
(www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-4118333.html)
1985 Dec 19, In Minneapolis,
Minnesota, Mary Lund became the first woman to receive a Jarvik VII
artificial heart. Lund received a human heart transplant 45 days later;
she died October 14, 1986.
(AP, 12/19/05)
1985 Dec 20, The passage of US
Public Law 99-194 established the position of American Poet Laureate.
In 1986 Robert Penn Warren became designated as the 1st Poet Laureate
Consultant in Poetry.
(www.barclayagency.com/lc_press.html)
1985 Dec 23, James Vance (20)
& Raymond Belknap (18), committed suicide, sparking their families
to sue rock group Judas Priest for subliminal messages. Mr. Belknap
died instantly. Mr. Vance was seriously injured and lived in pain until
his death three years later.
(http://tinyurl.com/29rwhh)
1985 Dec 23, A small plane
(Buchanon Field Airport) crashed into Sunvalley Shopping Mall in
Concord, Ca., and 6 people were killed.
(SFC, 4/15/04, p.B10)
1985 Dec 26, Dian Fossey (53),
American zoologist who had studied gorillas in the wild (Gorillas in
the Mist), was murdered in Rwanda. Her body was found the next day.
Wayne Richard McGuire, a doctoral candidate working with Fossey, was
later found guilty in absentia in Rwanda. A native tracker was also
charged and died in jail. McGuire claimed total innocence.
(AP, 12/27/01)(SFC, 3/15/05, p.A7)
1985 Dec 27, Palestinian
guerrillas opened fire inside the Rome and Vienna airports; a total of
twenty people were killed, including five of the attackers, who were
slain by police and security personnel. Abu Nidal was considered
responsible. President Reagan blamed Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.
(AP, 12/27/97)(SFC, 8/25/98, p.A6)(NYT, 10/8/04,
p.A12)
1985 Dec 27, American naturalist
Dian Fossey, who had studied gorillas in the wild, was found hacked to
death at a research station in Rwanda.
(AP, 12/27/05)
1985 Dec 28, A Syrian sponsored
peace agreement was signed in Damascus between warring Lebanese Moslem
and Christian leaders.
(www.lebanese-forces.org/lebanon/agreements/damascus85.htm)
1985 Dec 31, Singer Rick Nelson
(45) and six other people were killed when fire broke out aboard a DC-3
that was taking the group to a New Year's Eve performance in Dallas.
(AP, 12/31/97)
1985 Dec, IBM-PC DOS Version 3.2
was released.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC-DOS)
1985 Rodrigo Betancur of SF made
his clay and copper sculpture “Movement,” a part of his Movimento
series.
(SFEC, 1/25/98, DB p.18)
1985 Christo wrapped the 12 arches
of Pont-Neuf in Paris with some 450,000 square-feet of fabric. The
project cost some $3.5 million.
(SFC, 3/2/97, p.E4)(SSFC, 2/13/05, p.A10)
1985 British Petroleum of America,
headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, commissioned Claes Oldenburg to do
one of his famous oversized sculptures. They were not happy with the
result, a 70,000 lb. rubber stamp with the word FREE, and donated it to
the city. It was parked near City Hall on Nov 15, 1991.
(SFC, 6/2/96, T10)(Smith., Aug. 1995, p.80)
1985 The 90-foot Lady of the
Rockies statue, located on the Continental Divide east of Butte, Mont.,
was erected.
(SFC, 6/16/96, p.A4)
1985 The 1st Cowboy Poetry
Gathering was held in Elko, Nevada. Baxter Black and Waddie Mitchell
were among the performing poets.
(WSJ, 3/5/00, p.A1)
1985 Herb Gardner wrote his play
“I’m Not Rappaport.” In 1997 it was released as a film with Walter
Matthau and Ossie Davis.
(SFEC, 8/18/96, DB p.34)
1985 Wallace Shawn, playwright,
wrote “Aunt Dan and Lemon.”
(SFEC, 5/30/99, DB p.37)
1985 Sam Shepard wrote his play
“Lie of the Mind.”
(SFC, 7/10/97, p.E3)
1985 Leatrice Gilbert Fountain
wrote an autobiography of her father and silent film star John Gilbert:
“Dark Star.”
(SFC, 10/15/96, p.B3)
1985 David Brin published his
novel “The Postman.” It was made into a Kevin Costner post-apocalyptic
film in 1997.
(SFEC, 8/24/97, DB p.65)
1985 Seymour Chatman wrote
"Antonioni, or, the Surface of the World" about the Italian film
director.
(SFEC, 1/17/99, DB p.42)
1985 Deepak Chopra self-published
his first book: “Creating Health.”
(SFEC, 1/5/97, BR p.4)
1985 Dominick Dunne (1925-2009)
authored “The Two Mrs. Grenvilles,” based on the sensational Woodward
murder case of 1955. It was made into a television movie in 1987,
directed by John Erman, and starring Genevieve Allenbury, Ann-Margaret,
Elizabeth Ashley, Claudette Colbert and Stephen Collins. It proved to
be Claudette Colbert's last film.
(SFC, 8/27/09, p.A9)
1985 Richard Feynman, physicist,
published: “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman.”
(SFEC, 8/3/97, BR p.3)
1985 William Gaddis (d.1998 at 75)
published his novel “Carpenter’s Gothic.”
(SFC, 12/18/98, p.A38)
1985 Mark Gruenwald (d.1996), the
editor of Marvel Comics issued a 12-comic series, “Squadron Supreme,”
as an homage parody to DC Books Justice League of America featuring
Superman and Wonder Woman. The squadron included the superheroes Zarda
and Nuke.
(SFC, 8/29/97, p.A15)
1985 Kathy Keeton Guccione (d.1997
at 58), associate founder of Penthouse Magazine, wrote “Women of
Tomorrow.”
(SFC, 9/25/97, p.B2)
1985 J. Anthony Lukas (d.1997)
published “Common Ground,” an exploration of school desegregation
through the experiences of three Boston families.
(SFEC, 10/5/97, BR p.1)
1985 Marc Orkrand, linguist,
convinced Pocket Books to publish “The Klingon Dictionary.”
(Wired, 8/96, p.90)
1985 R.J. Schoenberg published
“Geneen,” a book on Harold Geneen, who probably did more than any other
business leader to establish the modern system of corporate financial
accountability.
(I&I, Penzias, p.80)
1985 “Look at My Ugly Face: Myths
& Musings on Beauty & Other Perilous Obsessions with Women’s
Appearance” by Sara Halprin was published.
(SFEM, 7/14/96, p.31)
1985 “Making It in America” was
published by Barry Minkow. It was the ghost written story of an
entrepreneur whiz kid who started a carpet cleaning business called
ZZZZ Best at age 14 and became a millionaire while still a teenager. In
1987 he was convicted of fraud and served 7 years in Lompoc, Ca. He
then published Clean Sweep, his confessions from prison. His latest gig
was as a radio talk show host and star of a self-help video series
“Fraud-Dynamics.” He was working to repay $26 million lost by
stockholders when ZZZZ Best collapsed. In 2005 Minkow authored
“Cleaning Up.”
(WP, 6/29/96, p.D1)(WSJ, 2/15/05, p.D10)
1985 Stanley J. Olsen,
anthropologist, wrote the “Origins of the Domestic Dog.”
(Nat. Hist. 3/96, p.36)
1985 Rosemarie Rogers (d.1996 at
61) wrote “Guests Come to Stay: The Effects of European Labor Migration
on Sending and Receiving Countries.”
(SFC,12/15/97, p.A20)
1985 Don DeLillo won the National
Book Award for his novel “White Noise.”
(SFC,10/16/97, p.E3)
1985 Ned Gilette (d.1998 at 53)
and Jan Reynolds published “Everest Grand Circle: A Climbing and Skiing
Adventure Through Nepal and Tibet.”
(SFC, 8/15/98, p.A24)
1985 John Irving wrote his novel
“The Cider House Rules.” It was dramatized in 2 parts in 1996 and 1997
at the Seattle Repertory Co.
(WSJ, 8/11/98, p.A16)
1985 Suzanne Lipsett (1944-1996)
published “Coming Back Up.” Her 2nd novel was “Out of Danger” (1987).
Her final work included “Remember Me” (1991) and “Surviving a Writer’s
Life” (1993).
(SFC, 9/11/96, p.C2)
1985 Larry McMurtry published his
novel “Lonesome Dove.”
(SFEC, 11/10/96, zone 1 p.2)
1985 James Michener wrote his
novel “Texas.”
(SFC, 10/13/97, p.A7)
1985 Anne Rice published her
gothic tale: “The Vampire Lestat.”
(WSJ, 4/24/98, p.W1)
1985 Kim Stanely published her
novel “A Green Mars.” It described the “terraforming” of Mars into an
Earthlike environment.
(SFC, 11/29/96, p.A17)
1985 Kurt Waldheim (1918-2007),
former sec-gen. of the UN, authored his autobiography: “In the Eye of
the Storm,” as he prepared to run for the presidency of Austria.
(Econ, 6/23/07, p.97)
1985 Bernard Williams (1930-2003),
English moral philosopher, authored "Ethics and the Limits of
Philosophy" (1985).
(SSFC, 6/15/03, p.A27)
1985 Michael S. Malone authored
“The Big Score: The Billion-Dollar Story of Silicon Valley.” The PBS
documentary “Silicon Valley Boomtown” was based his book.
(http://malone-grove.com/html/malone.htm)
1985 The Broadway show Tango
Argentino introduced the music of Astor Piazzolla to North American
audiences.
(WSJ, 2/18/97, p.A18)
1985 The Broadway show "Big River:
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" was adopted by William Hauptman
from the Mark Twain novel.
(SFC, 3/17/99, p.E4)
1985 Mark Morris choreographed the
dance piece “One Charming Night,” based on music by Purcell.
(SFEC,10/26/97, DB p.11)
1985 Edison Denisov (1929-1996),
Russian composer, had the premiere of his opera “L’Ecume des Jours” in
Paris.
(SFC, 11/27/96, p.B2)
1985 Flip Wilson (d.1998) and
Gladys Knight co-starred in the TV sitcom “Charlie & Company.
(SFC, 11/26/98, p.B9)
1985 Leon Kirchner composed his
“Music for Twelve” with 12-tone leaps and oddball chords.
(WSJ, 6/16/98, p.A17)
1985 Ann Phillips wrote: “Bending
Towards the Light: A Jazz Nativity.”
(WSJ, 12/3/96, p.A20)
1985 The group “X,” an advocate of
the rockabilly hybrid sometimes called “cowpunk,” forged on following
the departure of guitarist Billy Zoom. The band reunited in 1998. The
group included D.J. Bonebrake, Exene Cervenka and John Doe.
(SFC, 2/4/98, p.E1)
1985 “Rockin” Sidney Simien
(d.1998 at 59) had a Zydeco hit with his song “My Toot Toot.”
(SFC, 2/27/98, p.D8)
1985 David Lee Roth left the Van
Halen rock-n-roll band. In 1997 he published: “Crazy From the Heat,” a
history of the band.
(SFEC,11/2/97, DB p.50)
1985 Cleveland’s 45-story BP
Building was completed. In 1996 it sold for $145 million, 45% below
what it cost to build.
(WSJ, 10/11/96, p.B1)
1985 In Dallas the three 18-story
building complex named the Crescent was completed. The architects were
Philip Johnson and John Burgee.
(WSJ, 1/3/97, p.B10)
1985 In Dallas developer Trammel
Crow built the massive Infomart, modeled after the London’s famous
Crystal Palace that burned down in 1936.
(WSJ, 12/2/97, p.B12)
1985 In Colorado Monte Kim Miller
(b.1954) founded his Concerned Christians sect. He preached against the
evils of cults and New Age movements. The sect disappeared from their
homes and jobs in October 1998 and had been the subject of a search. On
January 3rd, 1999 they gained notoriety for being arrested and deported
from Israel. The deportation was part of an Israeli effort to protect
the Al-Aqsa mosque from extremist Christian groups.
(http://tinyurl.com/3aola5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concerned_Christians)(SFC,
10/16/98, p.A9)
1985 Frances Lear (1923-1996)
divorced Norman Lear and received a $25 million settlement. She used
the money to start Lear’s Magazine aimed at “the woman who wasn’t born
yesterday.”
(SFC, 10/1/96, p.A24)
1985 Anthony Corallo (d.2000 at
87), aka Tony Ducks, Luchese family member of the Mafia politburo, was
arrested and later convicted for racketeering.
(SFC, 9/2/00, p.A23)
1985 Howard Stern started his
radio show on WXRK in NYC. His later became known as a shock jock for
his "street-talk" style. Stearn was fired from Clear Channel in 2004.
(WSJ, 3/8/04, p.B1)(SFC, 4/9/04, p.A3)
1985 Crack cocaine was first
discovered in use in New York City.
(SFC, 6/24/96, p.A5)
1985 The 26-foot high "Skygate" by
Roger Barr (d.2000 at 79) was the San Francisco’s first piece of public
art financed by a corporation. The arch-shaped structure was erected
near Pier 35 and was dedicated to longshoreman-philosopher Eric Hoffer.
(SFC, 1/14/00, p.D4)
1985 Rodrigo Betancur of SF made
his clay and copper sculpture "Movement," a part of his Movimento
series.
(SFEC, 1/25/98, DB p.18)
1985 Frances Jaffer (d.1999 at
78), SF poet, published her book of poems "Alternate Feelings."
(SFC, 1/30/99, p.A19)
1985 The Magic Theater in SF
produced "Scar" by Murray Mednick.
(SFEC, 10/5/97, DB p.43)
1985 Harre Demoro, a SF Chronicle
transportation reporter, wrote a 2-volume history of the Key Route
train system.
(SFC, 9/4/98, p.A25)
1985 Mary Mahoney (d.1997 at 82),
SF nurse, wrote "Reflections on Mary’s Help Hospital and Seton Medical
Center." Mary’s Help Hospital on Guerrero St. moved to what is now
Seton Medical Center in Daly City in the 1960s.
(SFC, 6/14/97, p.C2)
1985 Robert J. Senkewicz published
"Vigilantes in Gold Rush San Francisco."
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W19)
1985 Helgi Tomasson succeeded Lew
Christensen as artistic director of the SF Ballet. The season opened
with a full-length "Nutcracker."
(SFEC, 8/10/97, p.B9)(SFEC, 8/17/97, DB p.47)
1985 Bill Griffith began a daily
strip of "Zippy the Pinhead" for the SF Chronicle. He created the
cartoon character "Zippy" in 1970 as an underground cartoon.
(SFC, 10/12/97, p.B7)
1985 Randy Hayes founded the
Rainforest Action Network, a non-profit group in SF.
(SSFC, 8/8/04, p.B1)
1985 Ruth Brinker founded Project
Open Hand, a SF program to provide meals for people with AIDS. By 1988
the project was serving 500 meals a day. In 2005 she was honored with a
Jefferson Award for community service.
(SFC, 7/23/05, p.B6)
1985 In SF Cleve Jones and Mike
Smith formed the Names Project to remember those who died of AIDS. The
project went on to develop the AIDS Memorial Quilt.
(SFC, 9/15/96, C8)
1985 Willie Walker (1949-2004)
helped found the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society
in San Francisco.
(SFC, 10/22/04, p.B7)
1985 In SF Larry Harvey and
friends began the Burning Man festival with a torching of an 8-foot
wooden figure on Baker Beach. It was to celebrate the summer solstice
and exorcize the sadness of a lost love affair.
(SFC, 7/19/96, p.D1,12)
1985 In SF the California College
of Arts and Crafts opened a small campus on 17th St. It closed in May
1996 prior to the opening of a new site at 8th and Irwin.
(SFC, 8/29/96, p.C3)
1985 In SF the Renaissance
Entrepreneurship Center, an incubator for startup businesses, was
conceived. It opened in 1990 on Bryant St. with backing by PG&E. A
new location was acquired in 1998 at 275 Fifth St.
(SFC, 1/24/98, p.D1,2)
1985 In SF the first annual A La
Carte A La Park festival in Golden Gate Park was held over Labor Day
weekend.
(SFC, 9/1/96, p.D1)
1985 In SF Howard Junker founded
ZYZZYVA, a journal of West Coast Writers and artists.
(SFC, 9/5/96, p.A21)
1985 The SF Board of Supervisors
declared SF a "city of refuge" for immigrants seeking asylum from El
Salvador and Guatemala, whose right-wing governments were backed by the
Reagan administration. It prohibited police from helping federal
authorities deport undocumented workers. Mayor Diane Feinstein signed
the legislation. In 1989 the (1984) resolution was made into an
ordnance. In 1992 and 1993 the legislation was altered to allow law
enforcement to report felony arrests of suspected undocumented
immigrants to federal authorities.
(SFEC, 8/15/99, p.A18)(SFC, 3/23/02, p.A27)(SSFC,
8/31/08, p.A14)
1985 In SF Proposition M limited
downtown growth.
(SFC, 3/25/99, p.A27)
1985 In SF the Planning Commission
and Board of Supervisors approved the nomination of the Beach Chalet as
an official city landmark.
(SFEC, 12/15/96, p.C4)
1985 The US Army transferred much
of San Francisco’s Fort Baker’s open space to the National Park
Service. The base would be formally decommissioned in 1998-99 and
become part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
(SFC, 6/24/97, p.A15)
1985 The SF Chronicle created an
electronic news archive.
(SFC, 10/19/05, p.B7)
1985 The square-rigged Balclutha,
located at the SF Maritime National Historic Park, was declared a
National Historic Landmark. The 3-masted ship was built in Glasgow,
Scotland, in the 1880s and appeared in the 1935 film classic “Mutiny on
the Bounty.”
(SFEC,11/23/97, p.D3)
1985 The SF Zoo opened a $7
million Primate Discovery Center. The atrium half was demolished in
1999 and a new structure was planned.
(SFC, 11/8/99, p.A19)
1985 Elsie St. in Bernal Heights
was widened after property owners petitioned SF Mayor Diane Feinstein.
(SFEM, 7/21/96, p.9)
1985 In SF the South Park Cafe, a
French bistro, opened under Bob Voorhees.
(SFC, 7/21/00, p.WBb3)
1985 SF General opened the
nation’s first full AIDS ward.
(SFC, 4/13/98, p.A8)
1985 In SF the BofA building at
Kearny and California was sold to Walter Shorenstein for $660 million.
(SFC, 10/3/00, p.A11)
1985 In SF the former site of St.
Ignatius College Prep. on Stanyon St. was torn down. The gym was left
and incorporated into the USF Koret Center.
(SFCM, 1/18/04, p.12)
1985 In SF Bill Graham’s offices
were fire bombed after he took out adds protesting Pres. Reagan’s visit
to Bitburg cemetery, where Nazis were buried.
(SFC,12/13/97, p.A15)
1985 The Levi Strauss Co. was
taken private in a $1.7 billion leveraged buyout. Pres. Thomas Tusher
was granted options in 1987 to buy 404,750 shares of stock at $3.50 per
share. He sold them back to the company in 1996 at $265 per share.
(SFC,11/12/97, p.A10)
1985 The Swiss Nestle S.A.
corporation bought the SF based Hills Bros. Coffee and MJB. The
Bransten family of SF sold MJB coffee to Nestle.
(SFC, 6/28/97, p.D2)(SFC, 1/20/01, p.A23)
1985 Antonio Sotomayor, SF
muralist, died.
(SFC, 11/8/01, p.A25)
1985 Phil Sokolof founded the
National Heart Savers Association. He went on to spend some $15 million
to change American eating habits, encourage cholesterol testing and
getting nutritional labels placed on everything edible.
(SFC, 11/28/03, p.C6)
1985 The Barbara and Robert K.
Strauss (1906-1997) Thinking and Learning Center was founded at the
Manhattan campus of Pace Univ. His father was Isador Straus, founder of
R.H. Macy & Co., who died on the Titanic in 1912.
(SFC, 2/28/97, p.A24)
1985 Howard Junker founded
ZYZZYVA, a journal of West Coast Writers and artists.
(SFC, 9/5/96, p.A21)
1985 Ronald Hoeflin founded the
Mega Society, an organization whose members purport to have an IQ of at
least 176. The organization was in violation of a California code,
section 2903 of the state Business and Professions Code, that requires
a psychology license to construct, administer and interpret tests of
mental abilities.
(WSJ, 5/14/97, p.B1)
1985 Actor Paul Newman founded the
Hole in the Wall Gang Camp in Connecticut for children afflicted with
cancer and other serious diseases.
(Hem., 10/97, p.24)
1985 Dr. William F. Gibson
(d.2002) was elected head of the NAACP. He had led the South Carolina
chapter for 18 years. His tenure ended in 1995 under accusations of
abusing his expense account.
(SFC, 5/4/02, p.A21)
1985 The Mrs. Giles Whiting
Foundation created the Whiting Writers’ Award. Annual awards of $40,000
were made to emerging writers of exceptional talent and promise.
(SFC, 10/28/05, p.E4)
1985 The US Council on Foundations
established its Robert W. Scrivner Award for Creative Grantmaking. The
award was created as a memorial to the late Robert Winston Scrivner,
former staff associate of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and first
executive director of the Rockefeller Family Fund, by a number of his
friends and colleagues.
(http://classic.cof.org/council/content.cfm?ItemNumber=791&navItemNumber=2189)
1985 National Geographic Research,
a scientific Journal, began publication.
(NG, May 1985, Pres. Letter)
1985 Betsey Cushing Roosevelt
Whitney (d.1998 at 89) donated $8 million to Yale Medical School for
the Harvey Cushing-John Hay Whitney Medical Library.
(SFC, 3/26/98, p.B4)
1985 In Pensacola, Florida, Jimmy
Louis Howard began the Mullet Toss competition. The winning throw in
1996 was 177 ft. and the event drew 50,000 people.
(WSJ, 8/21/96, p.A12)
1985 Robert Erickson (d.1997 at
80), composer, won the Friedham award for chamber music for his string
quartet “Solstice.” He wrote “The Structure of Music: A Listener’s
Guide” in 1957 and “Sound Pictures in Music” in 1975. In 1996 there
were 2 biographies published by John McKay and Charles Shere.
(SFC, 4/29/97, p.A20)
1985 J. Anthony Lukas (d.1997 at
64) won a 2nd Pulitzer Prize for his book “Common Ground.” It was an
examination of the furor over court-ordered school bussing in Boston
during the 1970s. He also won an American Book Award, a National Book
Critics Circle Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for the work.
(SFC, 6/7/97, p.A19)
1985 The EU instituted the
Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought as a tribute to the Soviet
dissident Andrei Sakharov.
(SFC, 10/25/96, p.A17)
1985 Dorothy Chandler (1901-1997),
wife of Norman Chandler (the 3rd publisher of the Los Angeles Times),
was one of 11 of the first recipients of the new National Medal of Arts
called for by Pres. Reagan for her work in establishing the Los Angeles
County Music Center in 1964.
(SFC, 7/7/97, p.A16)
1985 Franco Modigliani (d.2003 at
85), Italian economist at MIT, won the Nobel Prize in economics for his
research on savings habits of people and the market value of businesses.
(WSJ, 9/26/03, p.A1)(Econ, 11/14/09, p.88)
1985 The Nobel Peace Prize was
awarded to the International Physicians for the prevention of Nuclear
War. Dr. Bernard Lown, a Harvard cardiologist, accepted the prize on
behalf of the physicians.
(SFC, 10/12/96, p.A13)(SFEC, 12/8/96, zone 1
p.3)(SFC, 12/3/97, p.D3)
1985 Claude Simon (1913-2005,
French novelist, won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
(AP,
10/8/09)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Simon)
1985 Pres. Reagan signed into law
the Gold Bullion Coin Act that authorized the government to mint gold
coins.
(SFC, 7/14/04, p.C1)
1985 A US-China Agreement on
Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation was reached.
(WSJ, 10/29/97, p.A22)
1985 The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings
act, officially the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act
of 1985, provided for automatic spending cuts to take effect if the
president and Congress failed to reach established targets.
(www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-GrammRudm.html)
1985 US ambassador Winston Lord
and his wife Bette Bao were posted to Beijing. They served there
through mid-April 1989.
(CJ, Legacies, 1991)
1985 Sen. John Kerry of Mass. went
to Nicaragua to meet with the Sandinista leadership. Kerry worked hard
against Pres. Reagan’s efforts to fund CIA aid for the contras.
(WSJ, 7/30/04, p.A11)
1985 The US Postal Service
announced a 22 cent rate for first-class postage.
(SFEC, 11/10/96, zone 1 p.2)
1985 The US Navy and John Hopkins
Applied Physics Laboratory launched Geosat, a satellite carrying a
radar altimeter designed to make precise measurements of sea surface
“topography,” which roughly reflects major features on the ocean bottom.
(Nat. Hist. 3/96, p.28)
1985 Treasury Sec. James Baker
encouraged a steep decline in the value of the US dollar and US
manufacturers cheered.
(WSJ, 10/16/98, p.A1)
1985 The US FCC decided to open
several bands of wireless spectrum for communications use without a
government license. Bands at 900MHz, 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz were made
available.
(Econ, 6/12/04, Tech p.26)
1985 The US B-1 bomber made by
Rockwell entered military service. It did not get used in combat until
1998 in a mission over Iraq.
(SFC, 12/19/98, p.A4)
1985 The US defense budget was
$343 billion.
(SFC, 6/23/96, zone 1 p.6)
1985 Peter H. Lee (45), a
scientist at Los Alamos, visited China and turned over information
about US national security laser programs. He confessed in Dec 1997 and
was sentenced in Mar 1998 to one year in a halfway house, $20,000 in
fines, and 3,000 hours of community work.
(SFC, 3/9/99, p.A13)(SFC, 5/10/99, p.A3)
1985 The US Army transferred much
of San Francisco Fort Baker’s open space to the National Park Service.
The base would be formally decommissioned in 1998-99 and become part of
the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
(SFC, 6/24/97, p.A15)
1985 American CIA clerk in Ghana
Sharon Scranage pleaded guilty to disclosing the names of US agents to
her Ghanaian boyfriend. She was prosecuted under a 1982 federal law
called the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.
(SFC, 11/19/96, p.A17)(LAT, 7/15/05)
1985 The United States leased
buildings in Moscow for a US embassy under a twenty-year contract
valued at 72,500 rubles a year, about $60,000 at the time. In 1999 the
United States proposed writing off the WW II “lend-lease debt” in
exchange for buildings used by the U.S. embassy, including an elegant
residence for the ambassador. An unnamed official said the United
States should pay $870,000 a year for the buildings.
(www.russiajournal.com/start/news/article.cgi?ind=1637)
1985 The American CIA rewrote its
1983 training manual for security forces after public uproar over
another manual that taught Nicaraguan contra rebels about neutralizing
enemies and holding demonstrations that could provoke violence.
(SFC, 1/28/97, p.A3)
1985 The Kemp-Kasten amendment
authorized the US Sec. of State to determine whether certain int’l.
programs receiving US funds are involved in programs that entail
coercive abortions or involuntary sterilizations.
(SFC, 7/23/02, p.A3)
1985 US national guidelines for
prenuptial agreements were set. Each spouse was instructed to have
separate legal council.
(SFC, 4/13/99, p.A13)
1985 The Tennessee Valley
Authority (TVA) shut down its entire nuclear program over safety
concerns.
(SFC, 5/5/07, p.A6)
1985 Abraham Mondrowitz (38) fled
to Israel as NYC police investigated charges against him. In December
1984, New York police had charged that on two occasions in June of that
year, Mondrowitz abused a 10-year-old boy at his home. The US requested
Mondrowitz's extradition and Israel ordered his expulsion in 1987, but
it was unable to carry out the order as its extradition treaty with the
US did not cover sodomy.
(AP, 11/19/07)
1985 In SF Bill Graham’s offices
were fire bombed after he took out adds protesting Pres. Reagan’s visit
to Bitburg cemetery, where Nazis were buried.
(SFC,12/13/97, p.A15)
1985 An arson fire at Westmoor
High School in Daly City, Ca., caused $1 million in damage.
(SSFC, 2/10/08, p.B3)
1985 Jerry Abramson became mayor
of Louisville, Ky.
(Econ, 3/8/08, p.38)
1985 In Seattle 10 members of a
white supremacist group called the Order were convicted of racketeering
and other charges. They were linked to the ideas of William Pierce in
West Virginia and his book “The Turner Diaries.”
(SFC, 7/26/02, p.A26)
1985 In Ohio Dr. Michael Swango
was convicted of the non-lethal poisoning by arsenic of co-workers. He
was later accused of murdering as many as 35 patients. In 2000 James B.
Stewart authored “Blind Eye: The Terrifying Story of a Doctor Who got
Away With Murder.” In 2000 Swango was sentenced to life in prison.
(WSJ, 7/19/00, p.A22)(SFC, 9/6/00, p.A5)
1985 Norman Harry Hollow
(1920-1996), Sioux tribal chairman from 1973-1985, helped negotiate a
water rights agreement between the tribes of the Fort Peck reservation
and the state of Montana.
(SFC, 4/9/96, p.A17)
1985 A Dallas-area woman was raped
and her apartment was burglarized. Thomas Clifford McGowan (26) was
convicted of both crimes in separate trials in 1985 and 1986 and
sentenced to life each time. In 2008 McGowan won his freedom after a
DNA testing proved him innocent.
(AP, 4/16/08)
1985 Absolut Vodka commissioned
Andy Warhol to create a painting of its bottle.
(SFC, 12/10/04, p.D2)
1985 Bernard Arnault bought Dior
and took the company out of bankruptcy court.
(WSJ, 1/20/03, p.B1)
1985 Ford Motor Co. premiered the
Taurus. Production of the car was terminated in 2006.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)(SFC, 10/20/06, p.D3)
1985 GM started its Saturn
Division. GM also bought Hughes Aircraft Co. from Howard Hughes Medical
Institute.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)(WSJ, 6/4/01, p.A22)
1985 Honda passed AMC as the 4th
largest US auto manufacturer.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1985 Montgomery Ward catalog
operations shut down along with 300 stores.
(SFC, 12/29/00, p.A12)
1985 Uniroyal Inc. spent $950
million to fight a takeover bid.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, R45)
1985 Dick Rutan and Jenna Yeager
made a nonstop circumnavigation of the globe in their specially
designed, twin-engined Voyager. Since they took off and landed at the
same airfield it was technically a local flight.
(Hem. 7/96, p.13)
1985 Texas-based Enron Corp. was
formed when Houston Natural Gas combined with InterNorth Inc., a
gas-pipeline company. Kenneth Lay (1942-2006) was named chairman and
CEO in 1986. Enron filed for bankruptcy in 2001.
(NW, 12/10/01, p.50)(SFC, 1/24/02, p.A1)(SSFC,
2/3/02, p.A19)
1985 Intel Corp. introduced the
386 microprocessor. It had a 32-bit design platform that allowed a
graphical operating environment. It increased memory access to 4
million bytes.
(TAR, 1996, p.26)(WSJ, 11/16/98, p.R10)
1985 Ted Waitt co-founded Gateway
Computer in an Iowa farmhouse.
(WSJ, 3/1/00, p.A1)
1985 Microsoft released its first
version on the Windows computer operating system.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R55)
1985 Navigation Technologies
(NavTech) was started by Russell Shields. It grew to become one of the
premier suppliers of digital-map databases in the world. By 2007
Chicago-based Navtech had around 3,000 employees in 168 offices in 30
countries. Finland’s Nokia Corp. purchased Navteq in 2007.
(Wired, Dec., '95, p.96)(AP, 10/1/07)
1985 The New Yorker Magazine,
edited since 1952 by Ben Shawn (b.1927) was sold to the Newhouse
publishing empire. The magazine was founded by Harold Ross and edited
by Mr. Ross until Shawn assumed his duties.
(SFEM, 4/12/98, p.10)
1985 Nintendo Co. of Japan
launched its first home video game console: the Nintendo Entertainment
System.
(Hem, 4/96, p.29)
1985 Parametric Technology, an
industrial design software firm, was founded by Samuel Geisberg, a
former mathematics professor at Leningrad State Univ.
(WSJ, 5/27/97, pB6)
1985 Steve Case founded Quantum
Computer Services, the predecessor to America ON Line (AOL).
(WSJ, 1/11/00, p.B1)
1985 Berry Prevor and Steven Shore
of Long Island, NY, opened their first Steve and Barry’s store
Philadelphia, selling discount Univ. of Pennsylvania apparel. In 2008
the 276-store chain faced Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
(WSJ, 7/9/08, p.B1)(WSJ, 7/14/08, p.A1)
1985 Pleasant Rowland, a textbook
publishing executive, founded The American Girl company in Madison,
Wis. The company started with 3 dolls, each one set in a specific
moment in American history. Mattel bought the company for $700 million
in 1998.
(WSJ, 12/30/06, p.A1)
1985 Chuck Watson, former Conoco
executive, led Natural Gas Clearinghouse in a joint venture that grew
to become Dynegy Corp. In 1995 the company began trading electricity
and acquired a listing on the NY stock exchange. Watson stepped down in
2002 in the wake of the Enron scandal.
(WSJ, 5/29/02, p.A1)
1985 Victor Posner (d.2002 at 83)
was named the top-paid chief executive by Business Week. Posner pleaded
no contest to tax evasion charges in 1987 and was found guilty with his
son in 1994 of violating federal securities law by failing to disclose
a scheme with Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky.
(SFC, 2/12/02, p.A24)
1985 Spin Magazine was founded by
publisher Bob Guccione, Jr. It began publishing news on popular music
and became the main competitor to industry stalwart Rolling Stone.
(http://tinyurl.com/yzs8bz)
1985 Genentech received FDA
approval for its growth hormone Protropin, the first recombinant drug
marketed by a biotechnology company.
(SFC, 3/13/09, p.A10)
1985 AIDS made the cover of Time
Mag.
(TMC, 1994, p.1985)
1985 SF General opened the
nation’s first full AIDS ward.
(SFC, 4/13/98, p.A8)
1985 A drug to treat leprosy was
invented.
(SFC, 2/12/99, p.A18)
1985 At the Mayo Clinic a liver
transplant program was begun.
(SFC, 7/5/96, PM, p.5)
1985 Gary Litman’s team at All
Children’s Hosp. in St. Petersburg, Fla., reported that they had cloned
an antibody gene from a horned shark.
(NH, 9/96, p.42)
1985 The Nurses Health Study
showed that hormone use lowers heart-attack risk by 50%. In 1991
Women’s Health Initiative was launched to see if hormones protected
women’s hearts. In 1998 a trial of women with heart disease showed a
50% higher heart risk among hormone users. In 2007 a WHI study showed
that hormones do not raise heart risk for recently menopausal women.
(WSJ, 4/4/07, p.A12)
1985 Carol Greider and Elizabeth
Blackburn, researchers at UC Berkeley, discovered telomerase, a protein
that repaired telomeres.
(WSJ, 2/16/00, p.B1)
1985 Dr. Richard F. Marsh (d.1997
at 58) observed that the disease mink spongiform encephalopathy was
very similar to bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease), and
that food supplement made from cattle and fed to the minks was probably
the route of disease transmission.
(SFC, 3/28/97, p.D2)
1985 Dr. Alec Jeffries, geneticist
at Leicester Univ., used DNA fingerprinting for the 1st time to prove a
maternity and paternity case.
(Econ, 3/13/04, TQ p.33)
1985 Fred Mattson, a chemist with
Proctor & Gamble, produced data that showed that substituting
monounsaturated fats like olive oil for saturated fats in the diet will
reduced the concentration of bad cholesterol in the blood without
reducing the amount of good cholesterol, which protects the blood
vessels.
(SFEC, 6/8/97, p.D1)
1985 Hollow molecules of carbon
called “buckyballs” after Buckminster Fuller were first proposed by
Richard Smalley. It took 5 years to confirm their existence. He shared
the 1996 Nobel Prize in chemistry for the discovery.
(SFC, 4/12/96, p.A-12)(SFC, 10/10/96, p.A15)(WSJ,
12/6/96, p.B18)
1985 Corn-burning stoves came onto
the US market. Mike Haefner designed a hopper that slowly fed kernels
of dry corn into a combustion chamber. About this same time Dane Harmon
adopted a wood pellet stove to handle corn. In 2005 operating costs for
a corn-burning furnace were significantly lower than for heating oil or
propane.
(WSJ, 12/12/05, p.B4)
1985 The thinning of the ozone
layer over Antarctica was first reported.
(NOHY, Weiner, 3/90, p.5)
1985 Louis A. Frank, Univ. of Iowa
physicist, proposed that small, comet-like objects rain steadily on
Earth at a rate of up to 20 per minute and that altogether each might
weigh as much as 20 to 40 tons. His statement was based on data from
the Dynamic Explorer satellite. In 1997 more data from the 1996 NASA
Polar satellite agreed with Frank’s proposal.
(SFC, 5/29/97, p.A15)
1985 CFC-11 was measured 220 ppt.
and CFC-12 was measured 380 ppt. in the atmosphere. These molecules
trap 17,500 and 20,000 times more heat than does a molecule of carbon
dioxide.
(NOHY, Weiner, 3/90, p.47)
1985 The Asian cockroach
(Blattella asahinai) first reached central Florida. In 2 years they
extended their range 500 miles north.
(PacDis, Spring/'94, p. 46)
1985 California’s oil production
peaked at 423.9 million barrels.
(SSFC, 4/13/08, p.C5)
1985 Brenda O’Connor (20), her
husband Lonnie Bond and their baby son disappeared. A video made by
Leonard Lake and Charles Ng later showed her bound to a chair at his
hideaway near Wilseyville in Calaveras Ct., Ca. Charles Ng was arrested
in Canada for killing a dozen people in a hideaway in the Sierra Nevada
foothills in 1984-1985. He fought extradition for 6 years but was
finally returned to California by a Canadian Supreme Court order.
(SFC, 10/28/98, p.A1)(SFC, 8/31/96, p.A23)
1985 Coleman Dowell (b.1925),
fiction writer, died. His work included “Island People” and “Jabez.”
(WSJ, 2/11/03, p.D8)
1985 Wayne Dumond, while waiting
trial for rape, was castrated with fishing line by 2 men in stocking
masks. He had been sentenced to a prison term for the rape and kidnap
of a 17-year old girl. While in prison St. Francis County Sheriff,
Coolidge Conlee, removed Dumond's testicles from his home and preserved
them in formaldehyde and displayed them on his desk. Later DNA evidence
showed that Dumond’s semen did not match that found on the victim’s
pants and Governor Huckabee of Arkansas said he should be freed.
(SFC, 9/21/96, p.A4)
1985 In Baltimore Flint Gregory
Hunt murdered policeman Vincent Adolfo after he was stopped in a stolen
car. He first chose the gas chamber for his execution, but as it
approached in 1997 he changed his mind to lethal injection.
(SFC, 6/28/97, p.A2)
1985 In Florida Daniel Remeta
killed an Ocala convenience store clerk and went on a four state crime
and murder spree in which 5 people were killed. He was electrocuted in
1998. Remeta had the mental age of a child and ordered snow cones for
his final meal.
(SFC, 4/1/98, p.A3)
1985 In Texas John Kilheffer was
killed by two hitchhikers. In 1997 Irineo Tristan Montoya was executed
for holding Kilheffer down while Juan Villavicencio stabbed him 22
times. Villavicencio testified against Montoya and avoided the death
sentence.
(SFC, 6/19/97, p.A3)
1985 In Virginia Helen Schartner
was murdered. Joseph O'Dell III was tried and convicted for the murder
and was executed in 1997. He pleaded innocence right to the moment of
death and married Lori Urs just before his execution.
(SFC, 7/24/97, p.A3)
1985 A US airbase in Frankfurt,
Germany, was bombed and Airman 1st Class Frank Scarton and Becky Jo
Bristol were killed. Edward Pimentel was killed before the bombing in
order to get his ID card. In 1996 Birgit Hogefeld, a member of the
far-left RAF, was convicted of involvement and jailed for life.
(SFC, 11/6/96, p.A25)
1985 Argentine army
commander Jorge Rafael Videla (b.1925), former president (1976-1981)
was sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the death squads
during a 7-year dictatorship. He was pardoned by Pres. Menem in 1990.
He was arrested and indicted again in 1998 for covering up the
identities of abducted children. In 2006 a federal court judge ruled
that the presidential pardon was unconstitutional.
(SFC, 6/10/98, p.A10)(SFC, 7/15/98, p.C12)(AP,
9/6/06)
1985 In Bolivia hyperinflation and
a hostile Congress cut short the term of Pres. Hernan Siles Zuazo and
early elections were called. The price of tin crashed and 23,000 miners
lost their jobs.
(SFC, 8/8/96, p.A22)(NH, 11/96, p.38)
1985 In Bolivia Roberto Suarez,
drug dealer, was sentenced to a 15-year prison term.
(WSJ, 12/6/96, p.A12)
1985 In Bolivia drug traffickers
gunned down naturalist Noel Kempf Mercado and a colleague while the
pair visited a remote area to record bird calls.
(WSJ, 12/6/96, p.A12)
1985 In Brazil those who could not
read and write were not allowed to vote until this year.
(Econ, 4/14/07, SR p.14)
1985 In Brazil the 535 mile
Carajas train was inaugurated as part of a massive federal development
program.
(WSJ, 4/29/99, p.A1)
1985 Marcelo Carvalho de Andrade
(26) of Brazil, mountain climber, former model and surgeon, came up
with a plan to help protect the rain forest while waiting out a storm
on the north face of Argentina’s Aconcagua mountain, the highest peak
in South America.
(SFC, 7/7/99, p.A8)(http://tinyurl.com/22ekjj)
1985 In Brazil Joao Canuto de
Oliveira, trade union leader, was shot to death. In 2003 Brazil
convicted ranchers Adilson Laranjeiras and Vantuir Goncalves de Paula
in the shooting.
(AP, 5/24/03)
1985 John Drewe, a British con
man, persuaded painter John Myatt, to copy modern paintings, which were
then marketed with forged provenance papers to respected museums.
In 2009 Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo authored “Provenance: How a
Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art.”
(SSFC, 7/26/09, Books p.F4)
1985 BAE Systems, Britain’s
largest defense contractor, went private.
(Econ, 10/28/06, p.66)
1985 London’s Dorchester Hotel was
purchased by the Sultan of Brunei.
(http://tinyurl.com/zf7fo)
1985 Canada: UNESCO declared Old
Quebec a World Heritage Site. It was the first city in North America to
attain the status.
(SFEC, 1/10/99, p.T4)
1985 Canadian Auto Workers broke
away from the US-based United Auto Workers to form their own union.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R27)
1985 China gave in to free market
prices.
(TMC, 1994, p.1985)
1985 China began to enact laws to
protect patents, but did not enforce them much until 2001.
(Econ, 4/12/08, p.74)
1985 Ma Jian, Chinese Buddhist
poet and dissident, fled Tibet. In 1987 he published “Stick Out Your
Tongue,” an account of his travels in Tibet. The book was denounced and
banned n China. In 2006 it was translated to English.
(SSFC, 6/4/06, p.M3)
1985 China began a commercial
satellite program marketing its rockets as vehicles to send Western
satellites into orbit.
(SFC, 6/15/98, p.A5)(WSJ, 10/23/07, p.B4)
1985 The Huadong Winery opened
northeast of Qingdao on Mount Leoshan under British interests.
(SFEC, 2/6/00, p.T13)
1985 ZTE, a Chinese networking
gear maker, was founded. By 2008 it was among the top ten world wide
makers of mobile phones.
(Econ, 10/18/08, p.74)
1985 In Cuba Castro gave a series
of interviews to Frei Betto, a Brazilian friar, that were later
published as “Fidel and Religion.”
(SFC, 1/22/98, p.B3)
1985 In Egypt Boutros
Boutros-Ghali was the minister of state for foreign affairs and warned
that the next war in the Middle East would be fought over water.
(NG, 5/93, p.53)
1985 Ethiopia’s Marxist dictator
Mengistu Haile Mariam gave some 570,000 people the choice of moving or
being shot. It was part of a program to counter the Tigrayan People's
Liberation Front (TPLF).
(Econ, 7/17/04, p.50)(www.uscis.gov)
1985 The EU began its "Culture
Capital" program to promote European integration.
(SFC, 8/3/99, p.A8)
1985 Georges Vigarello (b.1941),
French historian and sociologist, authored “Le Propre et le Sale” (The
Clean and the Dirty).
(www.iiac.cnrs.fr/cetsah/spip.php?article35)(Econ,
12/19/09, p.139)
1985 A French law prohibited the
demolition of the classy Parisian facades along the boulevard
Champs-Elysees.
(SSFC, 2/11/07, p.G3)
1985 In France Magdalena Kopp, the
wife of Carlos the Jackal, aka Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, was freed after a
series of bloody attacks against France.
(SFC,12/11/97, p.C2)
1985 Pernod Ricard SA acquired the
Italian bitters group Ramazzotti.
(WSJ, 9/7/05, p.B2)
1985 In Greece the Anti-State
Struggle, a left wing terrorist group, killed a public prosecutor. In
another attack 3 police officers and 2 security guards were killed.
Avraam Lesperoglou, a suspected member of the group, was arrested in
1999.
(SFC, 12/25/99, p.A14)
1985 Students in Gonaives, Haiti,
began a popular uprising that led to the fall of the Duvalier family
dictatorship.
(Econ, 2/14/04, p.33)
1985 India built up its nuclear
capabilities and refused Pakistan’s offers of mutual inspections and
nonproliferation pledges.
(SFEC, 5/17/98, p.A15)
1985 Pres. Suharto of Indonesia
vowed to crackdown on political extremists following an outbreak of
bombings and arson in Jakarta.
(WSJ, 3/11/04, p.D7)
1985 In Indonesia bombs exploded
at Borobudur, a Buddhist temple complex on Java. Pres. Suharto had
promised 3 weeks earlier to crackdown on political extremists.
(WSJ, 3/11/04, p.A1)
1985 Iran began research in a
secret uranium enrichment program. From 1985 to 1997 China was Iran’s
most important nuclear partner.
(SFC, 11/28/03, p.A3)(SFC, 9/18/06, p.A1)
1985 Iraq placed its biological
weapons program under the president's authority and based it primarily
at Salman Pak, a research facility south of Baghdad.
(SFEC, 3/7/99, p.A18)
1985 Mary Robinson resigned from
the Labor Party of Ireland after her party supported the Anglo-Irish
Agreement of this year. She opposed it on the grounds that it was
unfair to Ulster Unionists.
(SFC, 5/12/96, p.A-12)
1985 Ryanair was founded by Cathal
and Declan Ryan (after whom the company is named), Liam Lonergan (owner
of an Irish tour operator named Club Travel), and noted Irish
businessman Tony Ryan (1936-2007), founder of Guinness Peat Aviation
and father of Cathal and Declan. The small airline, flying a short hop
from Waterford to London, grew to become one of Europe's largest
carriers.
(WSJ, 10/6/07,
p.A17)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanair)
1985 In Italy journalist Giancarlo
Siani was killed after he ran investigative reports on the Mafia in the
Naples daily Il Mattino. In 1997 6 Naples gangsters were sentenced to
life terms for the murder.
(SFC, 4/15/97, p.A9)
1985 Israel established a 440 sq.
mile security zone in southern Lebanon. The 9-mile wide zone was
abandoned by some 400,000 inhabitants and by 2000 only 100,000
remained.
(SFC, 4/18/96, p.a-14)(SFC, 3/10/00, p.A12)
1985 Charles Taylor escaped from a
Plymouth County jail in Massachusetts while awaiting extradition to
Liberia, where he was accused of embezzling money as an official in the
dictatorship of Samuel Doe. He went to Libya received military training
as a guest of Col. Moammar Khadafy. Taylor met Foday Sankoh, a corporal
from Sierra Leone while training in Libya.
(SFC, 7/3/99, p.A10)(SFC, 12/13/00, p.B5)(AP,
12/16/02)
1985 In Liberia national elections
were held and Samuel Doe was elected president.
(SFC, 7/19/97, p.A9)(AP, 7/1/03)
1985 Malaysia’s PM Mahathir
Mohamed and government colleagues conceived the idea of a national
highway about this time.
(Hem., 1/96, p.97)
1985 The Mali town of Sanankoroba
established a sister-town relationship with Sainte-Elizabeth, Quebec.
(SFC, 2/27/98, p.D2)
1985 Mexico’s military opened its
Museum of Drugs.
(SFC, 1/15/10, p.A5)
1985 In Mexico Samuel Joaquin
Flores succeeded in getting his Light of the World evangelical church
affiliated with the National Confederation of Popular Organizations, an
umbrella body for PRI-linked political groups.
(SFC, 2/19/98, p.A10)
1985 The Mexican environmental
organization Group of 100 was founded.
(SFC, 3/13/99, p.A14)
1985 In Mexico Albert Radelat (32)
and John Walker (36), US tourists, were tortured and killed by drug
traffickers in Guadalajara. In 2001 Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo was
sentenced to 30 years in prison for the torture slayings.
(SFC, 5/5/01, p.D2)
1985 Pope John Paul II visited
Morocco and issued his first major plea for Christian-Islamic
solidarity against secular materialism.
(SFC, 4/15/96,A-8)
1985 Cloudy Bay, a New Zealand
wine maker, began exporting Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc to the US.
(SFC, 4/11/08, p.F1)
1985 Some 450 pilot whales beached
on New Zealand’s Great Barrier Island. Rescuers successfully refloated
324 of the mammals.
(AP, 11/10/06)
1985 In Nicaragua the Contras
fought for power against the established Sandinistas.
(TMC, 1994, p.1985)
1985 In Nicaragua a photographer
captured the execution of a peasant ordered by Contra Commandante Mack,
who in 1996 accompanied Daniel Ortega on a campaign for the presidency.
(WSJ, 10/9/96, p.A15)
1985 In Nicaragua the 3,000 acre
cotton ranch of Enrique Bolanos was expropriated by the Sandinistas.
(SFC, 10/15/96, p.A12)
1985 In Pakistan Nawaz Sharif (31)
became chief minister of Punjab state during a period of martial law.
(WSJ, 9/5/07, p.A4)
1985 In Panama Manuel Antonio
Noriega overthrew Pres. Barletta.
(SFEC, 6/8/97, Z1 p.3)
1985 In Panama Hugo Spadafora, a
dissident leader, was decapitated. Manuel Noriega was later sentenced
to 20 years for the murder.
(SFC, 1/25/07, p.A14)
1985 Paias Wingti (b.1951)
succeeded Michael Somare as prime minister of Papua New Guinea and
served to 1988.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paias_Wingti)
1985 Auguste Ricord, French heroin
kingpin, died in Paraguay.
(SFC, 8/17/06, p.A10)
1985 In Peru the military was
involved in the massacre of 72 peasants in Accomarca, a village in the
Ayacucho region, where the Shining Path was founded. In 2005 a judge
issued arrest warrants for 29 current and former military officials for
the massacre. In 2008 a US federal judge in Miami ordered former
Peruvian Major Telmo Hurtado to pay $37 million for his role in the
massacre in which 69 civilians were slain.
(AP, 7/6/05)(SFC, 3/6/08, p.A2)
1985 The Ministry of Fisheries
estimated that 9,700 dolphins were killed and sold as “chancho marino”
i.e. sea pig.
(PacDis, Winter/’96, p.36)
1985 Russia’s Communist Party Sec.
Gen. Mikhail Gorbachev told Communist leaders in Eastern Europe that
Moscow would not interfere in their domestic affairs.
(Econ, 11/7/09, p.25)
1985 Vladimir Putin, Soviet KGB
officer, was assigned to recruit spies in Dresden, East Germany.
(WSJ, 2/23/05, p.A14)
1985 In Russia in the military
town of Bolshoy Kamen near Vladivostok a nuclear explosion at the
Zvesda nuclear submarine factory occurred and was hushed up. Waste from
the area has tainted an old landfill and the Primorye state government
forced the military to close the area in 1988.
(SFC, 4/28/97, p.A12)
1985 In South Africa 2 ANC
activists and 8 others were killed in a raid into Lesotho. A government
assassin told a court in 1996 that plans for the raid were approved by
the highest levels of Pres. Botha’s apartheid regime.
(WSJ, 9/17/96, p.A1)
1985 In South Africa three Port
Elizabeth activists, the Pepco 3, were beaten and strangled at an
unused police station.
(SFEC, 10/13/96, p.A19)
1985 In South Africa Eugene de
Kock took over the Vlaakplaas counter-insurgency unit and ran it until
1993. The existence of the unit was only made public in 1989 and the
full extent of its activities were not revealed until the Truth
Commission in 1994.
(SFEC, 10/13/96, p.A18)(SFEC, 5/23/99, p.A19)
1985 South Africa repealed laws
that prohibited interracial sex and marriage.
(http://www2.hu-berlin.de/sexology/IES/southafrica.html)
1985 The South Asian Association
for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) was founded in Dhaka, Bangladesh, with
the aim of promoting economic cooperation and alleviating poverty in
South Asia. Members included Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives,
Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
(AP, 11/13/05)
1985 In Spain the Socialist
government approved pensions for 60,000 soldiers or their dependents
who supported the losing Republican side in the Civil War.
(SFEC,12/28/97, p.A18)
1985 In the Sudan Christian Col.
John Garang and Muslim leader Sadiq el-Mahdi helped to restore
democracy, but soon grew at odds.
(WSJ, 3/4/97, p.A14)
1985 Syria began manufacturing
chemical warheads for missiles.
(SSFC, 5/4/03, p.A11)
1985 In Tanzania Mr. Nyerere
retired and left his chosen successor, Hassan Mwinyi, winner of a one
party election, to open the economy. Mwinyi ruled to 1995.
(WSJ, 12/10/96, p.A6)(Econ, 9/1/07, p.44)
1985 In Zaire Mahele Lieko
Bokoungo fought back Laurent Kabila, who had set up a rebel republic on
the shores of Lake Tanganyika near Moba. The rebels under Kabila were
mainly Tutsis and used militaristic and autocratic methods.
(SFC, 12/20/96, p.B5)(SFC, 5/2/97, p.A14)
1985 In Zimbabwe the Communal
Areas Management Program for Indigenous Resources was begun. It was a
community based conservation program to give villagers a stake in
wildlife conservation and its costs.
(WSJ, 6/5/97, p.A22)
1985-1986 The Christian Broadcasting Network gave the
Freedom Council, a group orchestrating the presidential campaign of Pat
Robertson, $250,000 a month. In 1998 the IRS imposed a tax penalty on
the CBN and retroactive loss of tax-exempt status for 1986-1987.
(SFC, 3/21/98, p.A3)
1985-1986 In Afghanistan Soviet soldiers
failed to subdue the rebels. An alliance of 7 factions received US
arms. Moscow installed a new leader, Dr. Najibullah.
(SFC, 9/28/96, p.A8)
1985-1986 Celerino Castillo III, a US agent for the
DEA, reported Contra drug flights from Nicaragua to the US to US
Embassy officials. His testimony in 1996 followed reports that the CIA
was involved in smuggling drugs to southern California with the
proceeds going to support Contra forces at war with the Sandinista
government.
(SFC, 9/24/96, p.A7)
1985-1986 Jeffrey Sachs, UN special advisor, helped
stop the hyperinflation in Bolivia.
(Econ, 7/7/07, p.27)
1985-1988 The Bill Cosby Show is the top ranking
network show on television for three seasons with rankings of 33.8,
34.9, and 27.8%.
(WSJ, 4/24/95, p.R-5)
1985-1989 Jack Scanlon served as the US ambassador in
Belgrade, Serbia.
(SFC, 4/2/99, p.A14)
1985-1992 In Sierra Leone Pres. Joseph Saidu Momoh
presided over a one-party state. In 1998 he was convicted of a 1997
conspiracy to commit treason.
(SFC, 11/7/98, p.A14)
1985-1994 Aldrich H. Ames, a CIA counterintelligence
official, passed information over this time to the Soviet Union that
included the names of US agents. The deaths of at least 9 agents were
blamed on his disclosures. In 1994 Ames and his wife, Rosario, pleaded
guilty to spying for the Soviet Union.
(SFC, 11/19/96, p.A17)
1985-1994 Premier Robert Bourassa led the province of
Quebec for his 2nd term.
(SFC, 10/3/96, p.C6)
1985-1995 Frenchman Jacques Delors served as
president of the European Commission.
(Econ, 2/14/04, p.50)
1985-1997 In Niger some 60 million trees were planted
over this period to stave off the encroaching Sahara Desert that
expands by 500,000 acres each year. About half the trees have survived.
(SFC, 8/9/97, p.A12)
1985-1999 Swiss glaciers lost at least 18% of their
surface area during this period.
(NH, 2/05, p.17)
1985-2000 The number of Swiss working in agriculture
declined by 32% to 200,000. The number of farms dropped by 29% to
70,000.
(Econ, 2/14/04, Survey p.11)
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