1986The Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation opened its first
bingo hall in Connecticut. Since the invention of the
internet, however, bingo
online has become the preferred method of play.
(Econ, 5/17/08, p.40)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_bingo) 1986
Jan 1, Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy threatened
to retaliate if attacked as the United States built its strength in
the Mediterranean .
(HN, 1/1/99)
1986 Jan 2, Bill Veeck (71)
former baseball owner, died in Chicago. He is remembered for his
well-publicized stunts and promotional gimmicks, including an
exploding scoreboard and a midget pinch-hitter.
(AP, 1/2/06)
1986 Jan 3, The British
Banker’s Association started publishing the London inter-bank
offered rates (LIBOR), a measure of interest rates banks pay
when they borrow from one another. The rate is subjective by design
and not a statistical measure.
(http://mortgage-x.com/general/indexes/wsj_libor_history.asp?y=1986)(Econ,
3/10/12, p.84)
1986 Jan 4, Christopher
Isherwood, British born author, died of prostate cancer in Santa
Monica, Ca. He was best know for his 1935 semi-autobiographical "The
Berlin Stories," which was the basis for the 1966 musical Cabaret
and made into a 1972 film. His life-partner was painter Don
Bachardy. His "Diaries: Volume II, 1939-1960" were published in
1997. In 2005 Peter Parker authored “Isherwood: A Life Revealed.”
(www.booksfactory.com/writers/isherwood.htm)(SFC,
1/16/97, p.E3)(SFC, 5/11/99, p.B6)
1986 Jan 6, In Johannesburg,
South Africa, Impala Platinum fired 20,000 black mine workers.
(http://tinyurl.com/lnq3m)
1986 Jan 7, US president Reagan
proclaimed economic sanctions against Libya.
(www.iie.com/research/topics/sanctions/libya.cfm)
1986 Jan 7, San Francisco mayor
Diane Feinstein appointed Frank Jordan (50) as the new police chief
to succeed Con Murphy.
(SSFC, 1/2/11, DB p.42)
1986 Jan 12, Space shuttle
Columbia blasted off with a crew that included the first
Hispanic-American in space, Dr. Franklin R. Chang-Diaz.
(AP, 1/12/98)
1986 Jan 13, In Guatemala just
before turning over power to Pres. Cerezo, Gen. Humberto Mejia
Victores issued a blanket self-amnesty for acts committed during the
3-year rule of the military government.
(SFC, 7/5/96,
p.A13)(www.cidh.org/annualrep/85.86eng/chap4.a.htm)
1986 Jan 14, Donna Reed
(b.1921), actress (Donna Reed Show, Dallas), died of cancer in
Beverly Hills, Ca., at age 64.
(www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=1172)
1986 Jan 14, In Guatemala,
Vinicio Cerezo (b.1942) began serving as president.
(SFC, 7/5/96,
p.A13)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinicio_Cerezo)
1986 Jan 17, President Reagan
approved a finding that authorized the sale of weapons to Iran
through third parties.
(www.thedubyareport.com/family.html)
1986 Jan 20, The United States
observed the first federal holiday in honor of slain civil rights
leader Martin Luther King Jr.
(AP, 1/20/98)
1986 Jan 20, Britain and France
announced plans to build the Channel Tunnel.
(AP, 1/20/98)
1986 Jan 22, The body of Yvonne
Coleman (15) was found in a park in Inglewood, California. In 2008
DNA evidence linked Michael Hughes (51), already in jail for 4 other
murders (1992-1993), to her murder and 3 others. In 2011 Hughes, a
former security guard dubbed the “Southside Slayer,” was found
guilty of strangling three more victims in a series of attacks that
stretched over a decade.
(SFC, 7/4/08, p.B6)(SFC, 11/4/11, p.C5)
1986 Jan 23, The US began
maneuvers off the Libyan coast.
(HN, 1/23/99)
1986 Jan 23, Joseph Beuys
(b.1921), German artist, died. In 1997 an English edition of "The
Essential Joseph Beuys" by Alain Borer was published.
(SFEC, 8/31/97, BR
p.8)(http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Beuys)
1986 Jan 24, The Voyager 2
space probe swept past Uranus, coming within 50,679 miles of the
seventh planet of the solar system. Uranus has puzzled scientists
ever since the probe Voyager 2 did the flyby and found that its
magnetic field appeared to break the planetary rulebook. In 2004
scientists noted that Neptune and Uranus have an interior structure
that is different from those of Jupiter and Saturn.
(AP, 1/24/98)(AP, 3/12/04)
1986 Jan 24, LaFayette Ronald
Hubbard (b.1911), science fiction author and founder of Scientology,
died. L. Ron Hubbard’s book “Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental
Health” (1950) laid the foundation for Scientology. By 2007 the Los
Angeles based church claimed 10 million members around the world.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard)(Wired, Dec. '95,
p.177)(SFC, 2/12/01, p.A13)
1986 Jan 26, The Super Bowl was
won by the Chicago Bears led by Coach Mike Ditka. Lineman William
"Refrigerator" Perry scored touchdowns and the team danced to their
video "The Super Bowl Shuffle."
(WSJ, 9/24/97, p.B1)
1986 Jan 26, In India a Sarbat
Khalsa (general congregation of the Sikh people) was convened at the
Akal Takht, the Sikh seat of temporal authority in Amritsar. The
gathering passed a resolution favouring the creation of Khalistan. A
militant Sikh separatist movement had emerged in the 1970s with the
goal of carving out an independent Sikh state out of the Punjab
called Khalistan.
(Econ, 3/19/05,
p.46)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalistan)
1986 Jan 28, Just 73 seconds
into its 10th launch, Americans watched in horror as the space
shuttle Challenger (STS-51L) exploded in midair, killing its crew of
seven: Navy pilot Michael J. Smith, Commander Francis Scobee and
mission specialist Ronald McNair, mission specialist Ellison
Onizuka, first teacher in space Christa McAuliffe, payload
specialist Gregory Jarvis and mission specialist Judith Resnik.
President Ronald Reagan spoke to the nation from the Oval Office
that afternoon, explaining the tragedy to the nation's
schoolchildren: "The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted. It
belongs to the brave.... The crew of the space shuttle Challenger
honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will
never forget them nor the last time we saw them this morning as they
prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and 'slipped the surly
bonds of earth to touch the face of God.'" Space shuttle flights
were suspended until 1988. An independent U.S. commission blamed the
disaster on unusually cold temperatures that morning and the failure
of the O-rings, a set of gaskets in the rocket boosters. Rocco
Petrone (1926-2006), former Apollo program manager and Rockwell
chief shuttle engineer, had cautioned against the launch fearing
that low temperatures might have damaged the shuttle’s thermal
protection tiles.
(SFC, 12/18/96, p.A3)(AP, 1/28/98)(HNPD,
1/28/00)(SFC, 9/1/06, p.B8)
1986 Jan 31, Following weeks of
unrest, White House spokesman Larry Speakes announced the collapse
of the Duvalier government, a report that was later denied by
Haitian and US officials.
(AP, 1/17/11)
1986 Jan, Lawrence Walsh,
independent council, began his probe into whether money from the US
sale of weapons to Iraq was illegally diverted to the Nicaraguan
Contras. He spent $48.5 million without proving that Reagan knew
about the transaction.
(SFEC, 3/7/99, Z1 p.6)
1986 Jan, The first PC virus,
called Brain, was discovered in the wild. Though it achieved fame
because it was the first of its type, the virus was not widespread
as it could only travel by hitching a ride on floppy disks swapped
between users. The first virus to hit computers running a Microsoft
Corp.'s operating system (DOS) came when two brothers in Pakistan
wrote a boot sector program now dubbed "Brain," purportedly to
punish people who spread pirated software.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4630910.stm)(AP, 9/1/07)
1986 Jan, Bob Kaufman, Beat
poet, died in San Francisco at 60. He was born in New Orleans and
had been called the "black American Rimbaud." His work includes
"Cranial Guitar." Much of his work was preserved due to the
diligence of his wife Eileen. Kaufman took a vow of silence after
the assassination of John F. Kennedy and began speaking again after
the Vietnam war ended. His last year was spent under the care of his
friend Lyn Wildey.
(SFC, 7/6/96, p.A15)(SFC, 7/20/96,
p.A13)(I-witness)
1986 Jan, In Haiti Duvalier's
administration closed schools and universities and forbade radio
stations to report on the turmoil engulfing the country. More than
50 people were killed in disturbances, most by Tonton Macoutes.
Duvalier declared 30-day state of siege.
(AP, 1/17/11)
1986 Jan, In Uganda the
National Resistance rebel army of Yoweri Museveni swept into power.
He defeated Obote and Tito Okello's mainly northern Acholi forces.
Many Acholi soldiers fled to the Sudan and some joined the Lord's
Resistance Army (LRA).
(SFC, 3/5/96, p.A9)(SFC, 5/25/98, p.A12)
1986 Feb 1, In Haiti 2 days of
anti-government riots in Port-au-Prince resulted in 14 dead.
(HN, 2/1/99)
1986 Feb 3, Dalai Lama met Pope
John Paul II in India.
(http://tinyurl.com/nek6w)
1986 Feb 4, The U.S. Post
Office issued a commemorative stamp featuring Sojourner Truth.
(HN, 2/4/99)
1986 Feb 7, US female Figure
Skating championship was won by Debi Thomas.
(http://tinyurl.com/nuoe4)
1986 Feb 7, Haitian
President-for-Life Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier was ousted from
power and fled his country, ending 28 years of family rule. He fled
to France with his wife and mother. Henri Namphy became leader of
Haiti. Duvalier and his cronies reportedly embezzled some $500
million during his last decade of rule.
(TMC, 1994, p.1986)(SFC,12/31/97, p.A17)(AP,
2/7/97)(WSJ, 4/16/03, p.A1)
1986 Feb 7, The Philippines
held a presidential election marred by charges of fraud against the
incumbent, Ferdinand E. Marcos. Corazon Aquino defeated incumbent
dictator Ferdinand Marcos but fraudulent returns gave the election
to Marcos.
(AP, 2/7/06)
1986 Feb 8, Brian Boitano won
the US male Figure Skating championship.
(http://tinyurl.com/nuoe4)
1986 Feb 9, Halley's Comet
reached 30th perihelion, its closest approach to Sun. 5 spacecraft
from the USSR, Japan, and the European Community visited Comet
Halley in early 1986.
(http://tinyurl.com/nmhkd)(www.seds.org/nineplanets/nineplanets/halley.html)
1986 Feb 9, The tomb of
Tutankhamen's treasurer, Maya, was found in Egypt.
(http://tinyurl.com/mfsn7)
1986 Feb 10, In Darien, Conn.,
Alex Kelly (18) raped 16-year-old Adrienne Bak Ortolano. Four days
later he raped another girl. While preparing for trial after he was
arrested and out on bail, Kelly fled the country and eluded charges
for 8 years. Kelly stayed in Europe for nearly 10 years, presumably
financed by his parents. In 1995, he was captured in Switzerland and
extradited back to the United States to face trial. He faced two
criminal trials in 1997. The first trial resulted in a mistrial. In
the second trial he was convicted of the first rape and sentenced to
18 years in jail. He pleaded no contest to the second rape charge.
His next parole hearing is scheduled in 2008, conditional on good
behavior.
(SFC,12/22/97,
p.A3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Andrew_Kelly)
1986 Feb 10, The largest
Mafia trial in history, with 474 defendants, opened in Palermo,
Italy. The trial ended on December 16, 1987, almost two years after
it commenced. Of the 474 defendants, both those present and those
tried in absentia, 360 were convicted. 2,665 years of prison
sentences were shared out between the guilty, not including the life
sentences. A total of 114 defendants were acquitted.
(HN, 2/10/97)(www.answers.com/topic/maxi-trial)
1986 Feb 10, In Haiti a
provisional government, headed by Namphy, named a 19-member Cabinet.
It dissolved the Assembly and Tonton Macoutes, reopened schools,
freed political prisoners, and sought to recover Duvaliers' assets.
US aid resumed after being halted because of Duvalier abuses.
(AP, 1/17/11)
1986 Feb 11, Activist Anatoly
Scharansky was released by USSR, and left the country after nine
years of captivity as part of an East-West prisoner exchange.
(AP, 2/11/04)
1986 Feb 11, Frank Patrick
Herbert (b.1920), sci-fi author (Dune, 1965), died of cancer in
Wisconsin.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Herbert)
1986 Feb 13, Britain's Lady
Thatcher and France's Mitterand signed the Chunnel treaty in
Canterbury. It was opened in May, 1994.
(SFEC, 9/8/96, Z1 p.4)(http://tinyurl.com/lvmz3)
1986 Feb 15, The Philippines
National Assembly proclaimed Ferdinand E. Marcos president for
another six years, following an election marked by allegations of
fraud. Marcos was later ousted.
(AP, 2/15/06)
1986 Feb 16, Mario Soares
(b.1924), Socialist, was elected Portugal's 1st civilian president
in the 2nd round of elections.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_presidential_election%2C_1986)
1986 Feb 17, Johnson and
Johnson, maker of Tylenol, announced it would no longer sell
over-the-counter medications in capsule form, following the death of
a woman who had taken a cyanide-laced capsule.
(AP, 2/17/06)
1986 Feb 17, The Single
European Act modifying the Treaty of Rome was signed a 1st time in
Luxembourg. [see Feb 28] The single European Act was passed to end
trade restricting regulations and create a true single European
market by 1992.
(Econ, 9/25/04, Survey
p.9)(http://europa.eu.int/abc/history/1986/index_en.htm)
1986 Feb 19, The U.S. Senate
approved a treaty outlawing genocide, 37 years after the pact had
first been submitted for ratification. Wisconsin Sen. William
Proxmire made over 3,000 speeches over 19 years to support
ratification of the bill.
(AP, 2/19/98)(SFC, 12/16/05, p.A4)
1986 Feb 19, Barry Seal
(b.1939), gunrunner, drug trafficker, and covert CIA operative
extraordinaire, was murdered in a hail of bullets by Medellin cartel
hit men outside a Salvation Army shelter in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
He had testified in federal court in Las Vegas, Fort Lauderdale, and
Miami for the US government against leaders of the Medellin drug
cartel.
(www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/crimesOfMena.html)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Seal)
1986 Feb 19, In the SF Bay Area
water breached a levee on the 8,800 acre Tyler Island wiping out
crops and nearly destroying the Mello family’s farming business.
(SFC, 1/2/09, p.A1)
1986 Feb 19, The Soviet Union
launched the first component of its Mir space station. Mir meant
peace.
(WSJ, 6/27/97, p.A1)(WSJ, 11/5/98, p.W14)(SFC,
8/26/99, p.A12)
1986 Feb 19, Adolfo Celi
(b.1922), Italian film actor and director (Thunderball), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolfo_Celi)
1986 Feb 21, Ryan White
(1971-1990), AIDS patient, returned to classes at Western Middle
School in Indiana.
(www.ryanwhite.com/pages/timeline.html)
1986 Feb 21, Larry Wu-tai Chin,
the first American found guilty of spying for China, killed himself
in his Virginia jail cell.
(AP, 2/21/01)
1986 Feb 22, Jordan King
Hussein delivered a televised address in which he denounced PLO
leader Yasser Arafat and accused him of reneging of previous
promises made to accept resolutions 242 and 338.
(http://tinyurl.com/mlurr)
1986 Feb 22, In the Philippines
a group of military officers mutinied against Pres. Marcos and holed
him up with a small force at a military camp in Manila, leading to
three days of protests by hundreds of thousands of citizens that
finally toppled him. The Catholic Church’s call for civil
disobedience helped to overthrow the dictatorship of Marcos.
(AP, 8/1/09)(Econ, 10/16/10, p.48)
1986 Feb 24, Sherri Rasmussen
(29) was beaten, shot and killed at her condominium in Los Angeles.
In 2009 Police detective Stephanie Lazarus (49) was charged with the
murder following DNA evidence linking her to the murder of her
former boyfriend’s wife. On May 11, 2012, Lazarus (52) was sentenced
to 27 years to life in prison.
(SFC, 6/10/09,
p.B5)(http://celebrity.rightpundits.com/?p=6093)(SFC, 5/12/12, p.A5)
1986 Feb 25, President
Ferdinand E. Marcos fled the Philippines after 20 years of rule in
the wake of a tainted election. Corazon Aquino assumed the
presidency. Pres. Ferdinand Marcos was forced from office after 20
years of rule. He was accused of accumulating billions of dollars
during his rule. The Marcoses fled to Hawaii and Imelda Marcos left
behind her 5,400 shoes.
(TMC, 1994, p.1986)(SFC, 8/23/96, p.A26)(AP,
2/25/98)
1986 Feb 26, Pulitzer
Prize-winning poet and author Robert Penn Warren was named the first
poet laureate of the US by Librarian of Congress Daniel J. Boorstin.
Warren was awarded the post of US poet laureate consultant to the
Library of Congress as the name was changed from consultant in
poetry.
(SSFC, 7/13/03, p.A27)(AP, 2/26/06)
1986 Feb 27, The U.S. Senate
approved telecasts of its debates on a trial basis.
(AP, 2/27/98)
1986 Feb 27 John Demjanjuk
(66), a retired auto worker from Ohio, was extradited to Israel on
charges of being "Ivan the Terrible," a Nazi death camp guard who
had killed tens of thousands of people. He was later convicted, but
the Israeli Supreme Court overturned the ruling.
(AP, 4/25/98)(SFC, 2/22/02,
p.A3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Demjanjuk)
1986 Feb 28, In the Philippines
Pres. Corazon Aquino signed executive order No. 1 creating the
Presidential Commission on Good Governance. It was created to trace
and recover assets stolen under the Marcos regime, estimated at up
to $10 billion. By 2007 only a quarter of that number was retrieved.
(www.lawphil.net/executive/execord/eo1986/eo_1_1986.html)(Econ,
8/11/07, p.33)
1986 Feb 28, Olaf Palme,
Swedish Prime Minister (1969-76, 82-86), was shot to death in
central Stockholm. In 1996 South African former police officer
Eugene de Kock said that Craig Williamson, a South African spy, was
involved in the murder. In 1997 lawyer Pelle Svensson said that his
client, Lars Tingstrom, wrote a statement on his deathbed in prison
in 1993 that he committed the killing. The family was convinced that
Christer Pettersson, a drug addict and alcoholic, was the killer. In
1999 Abdullah Ocalan in Turkey suggested that a rival PKK
organization killed Olaf Palme.
(SFC, 9/27/96, p.A12)(SFC, 3/26/97, p.A12)(AP,
2/28/98)(SFEC, 8/23/98, p.A26)(SFC, 6/2/99, p.C2)
1986 Feb, A huge storm hit
California. A levee break near the Yuba County town of Linda
produced $500 million in damage.
(SFC, 1/10/97, p.A21)(SFEC, 1/12/97, p.C1)
1986 Mar 1, In Sweden Social
Democrat Ingvar Carlsson became prime minister. He served until
October 1991. Under his administration Sweden made the decision to
apply to join the EU.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Minister_of_Sweden)(Econ,
3/3/07, p.57)
1986 Mar 4, Aleta Carol Bunch
(16) was kidnapped, raped and murdered in Augusta, Georgia, by
Alexander E. Williams IV (17). Williams was convicted and sentenced
to death. In 2000 the state Supreme Court stayed the execution to
see if electrocution violated the state constitution. Williams, a
chronic paranoid schizophrenic, was kept synthetically sane with
forced medication. His execution, set for Feb 20, was stayed on Feb
19. Williams was granted clemency Feb 25 and his sentence was
commuted to life in prison.
(SFC, 8/23/00, p.A7)(SFC, 2/19/02, p.A3)(SFC,
2/20/02, p.A7)(SFC, 2/26/02, p.A5)
1986 Mar 5, In Lebanon Islamic
Jihad issued a statement saying it had "executed" Michel Seurat, a
French history researcher, who had been abducted May 22, 1985. His
remains were found in 2006.
(AP, 3/5/00)(AP, 3/7/06)
1986 Mar 6, Ken Ludwig's "Lend
me a Tenor," premiered in London.
(www.thisistheatre.com/shows/gielgud123.html)
1986 Mar 6, USSR's Vega 1 flew
by Halley's Comet at 8,890 km.
(www.iki.rssi.ru/ssp/vega.html)
1986 Mar 6, Georgia O'Keefe
(98), US painter (Flowers), died in Santa Fe, NM.
(SSFC, 6/22/03,
p.C8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_O'Keeffe)
1986 Mar 7, Jacob K. Javits
(b.1904), (Sen-R-NY), died in Palm Beach, Fla.
(http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=j000064)
1986 Mar 7, In France thieves
made off with 1.5 million francs in an armored car robbery. In 2007
Jean Pierre Belkalem, a former Cartier employee, was arrested in San
Francisco on charges of aiding and abetting in the robbery.
(SSFC, 4/1/07, p.D3)
1986 Mar 8, Four French
television crew members were abducted in west Beirut; a caller
claimed the Islamic Jihad was responsible. All four were eventually
released.
(AP, 3/8/98)
1986 Mar 8, The Japanese probe
Suisei passed 151,000 kilometers (95,000 miles) from the nucleus of
Haley’s Comet.
(www.nasm.si.edu/ceps/etp/comets/comet_halley.html)
1986 Mar 9, Navy divers found
the crew compartment of the space shuttle Challenger along with the
remains of the astronauts.
(HN, 3/9/98)
1986 Mar 9, Ned Calmer
(b.1907), TV host (In the First Person), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_Calmer)
1986 Mar 11, The state of
Georgia pardoned Leo Frank, a Jewish businessman who had been
lynched in 1915 for the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan.
(AP, 3/11/06)
1986 Mar 12, Susan Butcher won
the 1,158 mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Alaska.
(www.newmorningtv.tv/dailyalmanac_031204.jsp)
1986 Mar 13, The US submarine
Nathaniel Green was severely damaged when it ran aground in the
Irish Sea. It was deactivated in May, 1986.
(http://navysite.de/ssbn/ssbn636.htm)
1986 Mar 13, Ed Balatti (62), a
San Francisco used car dealer, was arrested and charged with fencing
everything from TVs to vintage wines. This climaxed an 11-month
undercover investigation. Balatti had played as an end on the
original 49-er football team in 1946-48.
(SSFC, 3/13/11, DB p.42)
1986 Mar 13, Microsoft Corp.,
an 11-year-old company, went public and rose from $21 to $28 on
opening day. Revenues for the year were $197 million and it employed
1,153 people. At its debut Microsoft was worth $519 mil. with just
over $85 mil. in revenue for the prior six months.
(Wired, 12/98, p.196)(WSJ, 8/9/95, p.C-1)
1986 Mar 15, The AMA ruled that
euthanasia was ethical on coma patients.
(HN, 3/15/98)
1986 Mar 16, In France the
first direct regional elections for representatives took place. The
French term "région" was officially created by March 2, 1982, Law of
Decentralization.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regions_of_France)
1986 Mar 18, Buckingham Palace
announced the engagement of Prince Andrew to Sarah Ferguson.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1986 Mar 18, Bernard Malamud
(b.1914), writer, died. His work included "Talking Horse: Bernard
Malamud on Life and Work," edited by Alan Cheuse and Nicholas
Delbanco (1997). In 2006 his daughter authored “My Father Is a Book:
A Memoir of Bernard Malamud.” In 2007 Philip Davis authored “Bernard
Malamud: A Writer’s Life.”
(www.nagasaki-gaigo.ac.jp/ishikawa/amlit/m/malamud21.htm)(SSFC,
3/19/06, p.M3)(WSJ, 1/15/08, p.D5)
1986 Mar 22, World financier
Michele Sindona died two days after ingesting cyanide in his Italian
prison cell in what authorities later ruled a suicide.
(AP, 3/22/06)
1986 Mar 23, In the 6th Golden
Raspberry Awards the film “Rambo: First Blood Part II” won.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_Golden_Raspberry_Awards)
1986 Mar 24, A $15 billion
contract between the Indian government and Swedish arms company AB
Bofors was signed for supply of over 400 155mm Howitzer field guns.
(AP, 3/21/11)
1986 Mar 25, President Ronald
Reagan ordered emergency aid for the Honduran army. U.S. helicopters
took Honduran troops to the Nicaraguan border.
(HN, 3/24/98)
1986 Mar 25, US Supreme Court
ruled that the Air Force could ban wearing of yarmulkes.
(www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/goldman.html)
1986 Mar 28, The U.S. Senate
passed a $100 million aid package for the Nicaraguan contras.
(HN, 3/28/98)
1986 Mar 28, Extremist Sikhs
killed 13 Hindus in Ludhiana, India.
(http://tinyurl.com/h5at2)
1986 Mar 29, A court in Rome
acquitted six men in a plot to kill the Pope.
(HN, 3/29/98)
1986 Mar 30, Actor James Cagney
(86) died at his farm in Stanfordville, N.Y.
(AP, 3/30/97)
1986 Mar 31, The state-owned
car company BL P.L.C., formerly British Leyland, said that it was
pursuing two offers for its Land Rover division after negotiations
with the General Motors Corporation collapsed. Range Rover of North
America, Inc. soon established its headquarters in Lanham, Maryland
with Charles R. Hughes as President and CEO. Just before Christmas
1985 Range Rover of North America (later changed to Land Rover North
America), was established to pave the way for a US launch in 1987.
(http://tinyurl.com/j2do5)(http://tinyurl.com/f8xgo)
1986 Mar 31, English Hampton
Court palace was destroyed by fire and 1 person died.
(http://tinyurl.com/l6fxl)
1986 Mar 31, 167 people died
when a Mexicana Airlines Boeing 727 crashed in a remote mountainous
region of Mexico.
(AP, 3/30/97)
1986 Mar, Oracle Corp. sold 1
million shares in its 1st public stock offering. Sales this year
reached $55.4 million.
(SFC, 5/20/02, p.A13)
1986 Mar, Unit two of the
Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant off the coast of San Luis Obispo,
California, began operation.
(www.energy.ca.gov/nuclear/california.html)
1986 Mar, Pakistan acquired
weapons-grade uranium.
(SFEC, 5/17/98, p.A15)
1986 Apr 2, George Corley
Wallace (1919-1998), Governor of Alabama (Dem.), announced his
retirement.
(http://tinyurl.com/fuobf)(http://tinyurl.com/eegg3)
1986 Apr 2, Four American
passengers were killed when a bomb exploded aboard a TWA jetliner en
route from Rome to Athens, Greece.
(AP, 4/2/98)
1986 Apr 3, US national debt
hit $2,000,000,000,000 (2 trillion).
(http://tinyurl.com/ftr8g)
1986 Apr 3, Peter Pears
(b.1910), English tenor (Death in Venice), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Pears)
1986 Apr 4, In San Francisco an
explosion in the Bayview District leveled nearly 3 square block
injuring at least 21 people and leaving up to 30 missing.
(SSFC, 4/3/11, DB p.46)
1986 Apr 5, A Berlin nightclub
was bombed. US Sgt. Kenneth Ford (21) and Nermin Hannay (29) died at
the scene. Sgt. James Goins (25) died later in hospital. 230 people
were injured. Palestinian Yasser Shraydi (Chraidi) was suspected of
playing a lead role in the bombing of the La Belle discotheque. In
1996 he was extradited from Lebanon to face charges in Germany. In
1996 Andrea Hasler was arrested in Greece and extradited to Germany.
Also a woman named Verena Chanaa, suspected of planting the bomb,
and her former husband named Ali Chanaa were arrested in Berlin. In
1997 Musbah Abulghasen Eter was arrested by Italian police in Rome
in connection with the bombing. In 2001 V. Chanaa was sentenced to
14 years, A. Chanaa and Eter were sentenced to 12 years, and Chraidi
was sentenced to 14 years. Libya was implicated and in 2004 agreed
to pay $35 million in compensation.
(SFC, 5/234/96, p.A14)(SFC, 10/12/96, p.A12)(WSJ,
8/28/97, p.A1)(SFC, 8/28/97, p.C3)(SFC, 11/14/01, p.A18)(AP, 9/3/04)
1986 Apr 5, Manly Wade Wellman
(b.1903), sci-fi author (Devil's Planet), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manly_Wade_Wellman)
1986 Apr 7, Dimitris
Angelopoulos (79), a Greek industrialist, was killed by Nov. 17
militants. In 2003 Patroklos Tselentis testified that he drove the
getaway motorcycle.
(AP, 3/26/03)(http://tinyurl.com/yzu4sj)
1986 Apr 8, Clint Eastwood
(b.1930), filmstar and director, was elected mayor of Carmel,
California.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clint_Eastwood)
1986 Apr 10, Benazir Bhutto
(33), daughter of former PM Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, returned to
Pakistan.
(http://tinyurl.com/onqk2)
1986 Apr 11, Dodge Morgan
(1932-2010), American businessman, landed at St. George, Bermuda,
completing a 27,000 solo nonstop sail around the world in 150 days.
This broke a 292-day record set in 1971 by British sailor Chay
Blyth.
(http://outdoors.mainetoday.com/news/050410dodge.shtml)(SFC,
9/20/10, p.C4)
1986 Apr 11, In San Francisco
Jack Spiegelman (47) opened fire on accused killed Daniel David
Morgan in a Hall of Justice courtroom. Morgan (39) was on trial for
the 1983 murder of Spiegelman’s daughter, Sarah (17), who was shot
to death in Golden Gate Park.
(SSFC, 4/10/11, DB p.46)
1986 Apr 11, Halley's Comet
made its closest approach to Earth this trip at 63 M km.
(www.astrosociety.org/education/publications/tnl/01/01.html)
1986 Apr 13, Pope John Paul II
visited a Rome synagogue and met with Chief Rabbi Elio Toaff in the
first recorded papal visit of its kind.
(AP,
4/13/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paul_II)
1986 Apr 13, Phillip Hallford
forced his daughter (15) to lure her boyfriend Eddie Shannon (16) to
an isolated area in Daly County, Alabama, where he shot and killed
the boy and threw his body off a bridge. Melinda Hallford was
pregnant at the time of the killing and had been sexually abused by
her father. In 2010 Hallford (63) was executed.
(http://off2dr.com/modules/extcal/event.php?event=256)(SFC, 11/5/10,
p.A9)
1986 Apr 14, Americans got
first word of the U.S. air raid on Libya (because of the time
difference, it was the early morning of April 15th where the attack
occurred). US aircraft attacked five terrorist locations in Libya in
response to the Apr 5 terrorist attack in Berlin. In 2003 Joseph T.
Stanik authored "El Dorado Canyon," an account of the military
strike.
(AP, 4/14/97)(HN, 4/14/98)(SFC, 12/18/99,
p.C4)(WSJ, 2/11/03, p.D8)
1986 Apr 14, Desmond Tutu was
elected Anglican archbishop of Capetown.
(http://tinyurl.com/lqrlx)
1986 Apr 14, Simone de Beauvoir
(b.1908), French feminist author, died in Paris. Her books included
“The Second Sex” (1949). In 2008 her Wartime Diary was published in
English.
(AP, 4/14/02)(SFC, 12/23/08, p.E3)
1986 Apr 15, The United States
launched an air raid with F-111 warplanes against Libya in response
to the bombing of a discotheque in Berlin on April 5; Libya said 41
people, mostly civilians, were killed in Tripoli and Benghazi. The
step-daughter of Moammar Gadhafi, Hana, was reportedly among those
killed near Tripoli by the US bombing. In 2011 evidence emerged that
Hana was not killed and completed medical school 2010.
(WSJ, 8/30/00, p.A1)(AP, 12/19/08)(AP,
10/31/08)(AP, 8/30/11)
1986 Apr 15, Jean Genet (75),
French playwright (Lesson Negres), was found dead in Paris.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Genet)
1986 Apr 17, Pulitzer prize
awarded to Larry McMurtry for "Lonesome Dove."
(http://tinyurl.com/s7rzf)
1986 Apr 17, The bodies of
American librarian Peter Kilburn and two Britons were found near
Beirut; the three hostages had been slain in apparent retaliation
for the U.S. raid on Libya.
(AP, 4/17/97)
1986 Apr 17, At London's
Heathrow Airport, a bomb was discovered in a bag carried by an Irish
woman about to board an El Al jetliner; she had been tricked into
carrying the bomb by her Jordanian boyfriend.
(AP, 4/17/06)
1986 Apr 20, The Atlas Star, a
double-decker ferry, sank in stormy weather in Bangladesh. 500
passengers were feared drowned.
(http://tinyurl.com/q28gb)
1986 Apr 20, Following an
absence of six decades, Russian-born pianist Vladimir Horowitz
performed in the Soviet Union to a packed audience at the Grand Hall
of the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow.
(AP, 4/20/06)
1986 Apr 21, A vault in
Chicago's Lexington Hotel that was linked to Al Capone was opened
during a live TV special hosted by Geraldo Rivera; aside from a few
bottles and a sign, the vault was empty.
(AP, 4/21/97)
1986 Apr 23, Harold Arlen (81),
[Hyman Arluck], American songwriter, died in NYC. His many song
included "Over the Rainbow." Edward Jablonski (d.2004) authored a
biography of Arlen in 1961: "Harold Arlen: Happy With the Blues."
(WSJ, 6/28/96, p.A7)(SFC, 2/14/04, p.A22)
1986 Apr 23, Otto Preminger
(80), film director (Advise & Consent, Anatomy of Murder), died.
In 2007 Foster Hirsch authored “Otto Preminger.”
(AP, 4/23/06)(WSJ, 10/20/07, p.W8)
1986 Apr 24, Bessie Wallis
Warfield Simpson (b.6/19/1896), the Duchess of Windsor, for whom
King Edward VIII gave up the British throne, died in Paris at age
89. Wallis Simpson was King Edward VIII's wife. In the early 1950s
Simpson engaged in an affair with playboy Jimmy Donahue. In 2000
Christopher Wilson authored "Dancing with the Devil: The Windsors
and Jimmy Donahue."
(AP, 4/24/97)(SFC, 2/28/98, p.A5)(SFC, 1/4/01,
p.D10)
1986 Apr 25, In Swaziland King
Mswati III was crowned. He succeeded his father Sobhuza II as ruler
of the southern African kingdom.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mswati_III_of_Swaziland)
1986 Apr 26, [William]
Broderick Crawford (b.1911), actor (Highway Patrol), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broderick_Crawford)
1986 Apr 26, The world's worst
nuclear accident occurred in Pripyat, Ukraine, north of Kiev, at
1:23 a.m. as the Chernobyl atomic power plant exploded. A
300-hundred-square-mile area was evacuated and 31 people died as
unknown thousands were exposed to radioactive material that spread
in the atmosphere throughout the world. An exploded at Chernobyl,
Ukraine, and burned for 10 days. About 70% of the fallout fell in
Belarus. Damage was estimated to be up to $130 billion. By 1998
10,000 Russian "liquidators" involved in the cleanup had died and
thousands more became invalids. It was later estimated that the
released radioactivity was 200 times the combined bombs dropped on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was later found that Soviet scientists
were authorized to carry out experiments that required the reactor
to be pushed to or beyond its limits, with safety features disabled.
(WSJ, 11/8/95, p.A-1)(SFC, 4/27/98, p.A14)(SFC,
12/18/99, p.C4)(AP, 4/26/05)(Econ, 10/6/07, p.18)
1986 Apr 27, A video pirate
calling himself "Captain Midnight" interrupted a movie on Home Box
Office with a printed message protesting de-scrambling fees. Captain
Midnight turned out to be John R. MacDougall of Florida, who was
fined and placed on probation.
(AP, 4/27/01)
1986 Apr 28, The Soviet Union
informed the world of the Apr 26 nuclear disaster at Chernobyl,
saying the accident damaged a reactor and that aid was being
rendered to "those affected."
(AP, 4/28/02)
1986 Apr 29, Some 350,000 books
were damaged by fire and water in the LA Central Library.
(http://tinyurl.com/y3ssgk)
1986 Apr 29, Raul Prebisch
(b.1901), Argentine policy maker and economic diplomat, died in
Santiago, Chile. In 2009 Edgar J. Dosman authored “The Life and
Times of Raul Prebisch.”
(Econ, 3/7/09, p.90)(http://tinyurl.com/cgd359)
1986 Apr 29, Seamus McElwaine
(25), Irish IRA-terrorist, was killed by undercover members of the
British Army in County Fermanagh.
(http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/sutton/chron/1986.html)
1986 Apr 30, Ranch foreman
James Hazelton (28) and brother-in-law Peter Sparagana (23) were
murdered near Huntsville, Texas, after they interrupted a burglary.
Gary Johnson (59) was later convicted of the murders and was
executed on Jan 12, 2010.
(SFC, 1/13/10,
p.A6)(www.itemonline.com/local/local_story_011092452.html)
1986 May 1, Will Steger
(b.1943) and his dog sled expedition reached the North Pole without
re-supply.
(www.qsl.net/kg0yh/other.htm)
1986 May 1, Tass News Agency
reported the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident.
(HN, 5/1/98)
1986 May 3, Ferdinand, ridden
by Bill Shoemaker (d.2003), won the 112th running of the Kentucky
Derby. In 2002 Ferdinand ended up in a slaughterhouse in Japan.
(WSJ, 9/21/05, p.A1)(http://tinyurl.com/ds454)
1986 May 3, In NASA's first
post-Challenger launch, an unmanned Delta rocket lost power in its
main engine shortly after liftoff, forcing safety officers to
destroy it by remote control.
(AP, 5/3/97)
1986 May 3, In Sri Lanka Tamil
Tigers bombed an Airlanka plane at Colombo airport and killed 16
people.
(SFC, 7/24/96, p.A9)
1986 May 8, In Costa Rica Oscar
Arias (b.1940) began serving as president and continued to 1990. In
2006 he began serving a 2nd term as president.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93scar_Arias)
1986 May 8, In Venezuela 9
people were killed by security forces in the western town of Yumare.
Interior minister Octavio Lepage described it as a clash with
guerrillas — remnants of leftist rebel bands that largely had put
down their weapons by the early 1970s.
(AP, 3/16/08)
1986 May 9, In Norway the
Conservative-led coalition resigned and Gro Harlem Brundtland
(b.1939) returned to power. She immediately appointed 8 women to her
18-member cabinet.
(SFC, 10/24/96,
p.C3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gro_Harlem_Brundtland)
1986 May 9, Tenzing Norgay
(b.1914), Tibetan climber (Mount Everest 1953), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenzing_Norgay)
1986 May 11, Fred Markham (US),
unpaced and unaided by wind, became 1st to pedal 65 mph on a level
course, Big Sand Flat, Calif.
(www.recumbents.com/wisil/records/Fastest_Ever.htm)
1986 May 15, Searchers on
Oregon's Mount Hood found two teenage survivors of a hiking
expedition that became trapped in a whiteout blizzard. Nine other
climbers died.
(AP, 5/15/06)
1986 May 15, Theodore H. White
(b.1915), US journalist, died. His book “Making of the President”
(1960) won a 1962 Pulitzer Prize.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_White)
1986 May 15, In Sudan Francis
Bok was kidnapped when Arabs from a government-armed militia swept
into his village shooting the men and cutting off their heads with
swords.
(WSJ, 5/23/02, p.A1)(http://tinyurl.com/ybn8g5)
1986 May 16, Argentine
ex-president Galtieri (1926-2003) was sentenced to 12 years.
(www.cnn.com/almanac/9805/16/)
1986 May 18, "Singin' in the
Rain" closed at the Gershwin Theater in NYC after 367 performances.
(www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=4376)
1986 May 18, John Bubbles
Sublett (84), tap dancer (Black & Bubbles), died.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1986 May 19, South African
commandos struck alleged ANC "operational centers" in Zimbabwe,
Botswana, Zambia.
(www.iie.com/research/topics/sanctions/southafrica.cfm)
1986 May 20, The Flintstones
25th Anniversary Celebration aired on CBS-TV.
(www.topthat.net/webrock/specials/25thAnniversary.htm)
1986 May 20, In China a tornado
picked up 12 children and deposited them on a sand dune 12 miles
away unharmed.
(SFEC, 7/6/97, Z1 p.6)
1986 May 22, Cher called David
Letterman an asshole on Late Night on NBC.
(www.justplaincher.net/content-23.html)
1986 May 23, Sterling Hayden
(b.1916), actor and author, died in Sausalito, Ca. he appeared in 35
films and wrote two books, including his autobiography: “The
Wanderer.”
(http://movies.aol.com/celebrity/sterling-hayden/31197/biography)(SSFC,
5/22/11, DB p.46)
1986 May 24, The Union Jack was
flown in Israel for the first time in 38 years as Margaret Thatcher
became the first British prime minister to visit the Jewish state.
(AP, 5/24/06)
1986 May 25, An estimated 7
million Americans participated in "Hands Across America," forming a
line across the country to raise money for the nation's hungry and
homeless. The campaign was organized by Martin & Glantz, a
social issues and media strategies firm. Angenette Martin, a
founding partner, died in 1997 at 50.
(AP, 5/25/97)(SFC, 9/2/97, p.A18)
1986 May 25, Some 600 people
died when the ferry Shamia went down in the River Meghna in southern
Barisal district, Bangladesh.
(http://tinyurl.com/yjfo9s)(AP, 2/3/06)
1986 May 25, Virgilio Barco
(1921-1997) was elected President of Colombia. He served from 1986
to 1990.
(http://sshl.ucsd.edu/collections/las/colombia/1985.html)
1986 May 25, Chester Bowles
(b.1901), US senator, ambassador, died in Connecticut. Bowles was
elected to the governorship of Connecticut in 1948 and served one
term, during which time he signed into law an end to segregation in
the state national guard.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_Bowles)
1986 May 30, A tour bus went
out of control on a mountain road and plunged into the Walker River
near the California-Nevada border killing 21 elderly passengers.
(AP,
5/30/06)(www.ntsb.gov/publictn/1987/HAR8704.htm)
1986 May, The SF-based Jack Jr.
fishing trawler was rammed and sunk by a large hit-and-run vessel
off of Point Reyes, Ca. 3 fishermen were killed.
(SSFC, 5/29/11, DB p.46)
1986 May, A Vermeer painting,
"Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid," was among 18 paintings worth
$40 million stolen from Russborough House in Blessington, Ireland.
Some of the paintings are later recovered.
(AP, 2/11/08)
1986 Jun 1, "The Mystery of
Edwin Drood" and "I'm Not Rappaport" won the Tony Awards for best
musical and best play on Broadway.
(www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0153482.html)(http://tinyurl.com/ynyxkb)
1986 Jun 2, For the first time,
the public could watch the proceedings of the U.S. Senate on
television as a six-week experiment of televised sessions began.
(AP, 6/2/02)
1986 Jun 2, NYC transit system
issued a new brass with steel bull's-eye token.
(SC, 6/2/02)
1986 Jun 3, In Beirut, Lebanon,
Shiite Moslem militiamen clashed in separate battles with
Palestinians and a pro-Palestinian Sunni Moslem faction. 53 people
were killed.
(http://tinyurl.com/ygh5ls)
1986 Jun 4, Jonathan Jay
Pollard, a former Navy intelligence analyst, pleaded guilty in
Washington to spying for Israel. He was later sentenced a life
prison term.
(AP, 6/4/97)(WSJ, 1/28/98, p.A18)
1986 Jun 4, The California
Supreme Court approved the "deep pockets law." It limited the
liability of manufacturers and other wealthy defendants.
(SFC, 8/19/97, p.A1)
1986 Jun 5, A federal jury in
Baltimore convicted Ronald W. Pelton of selling secrets to the
Soviet Union. Pelton was sentenced to three life prison terms plus
10 years.
(AP, 6/5/97)
1986 Jun 6, Ronn Teitelbaum
(d.2000 at 61) opened his Johnny Rockets restaurant on Melrose Ave.
in Los Angeles. In 2000 it had grown to 138 outlets in 25 states.
(SFC, 9/15/00, p.D5)
1986 Jun 7, Madonna's "Live to
Tell," single went #1.
(SC, 6/7/02)
1986 Jun 8, Kurt Waldheim, an
alleged Nazi, was elected president of Austria.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Waldheim)
1986 Jun 9, The Rogers
Commission released its report on the "Challenger" disaster,
criticizing NASA and rocket-builder Morton Thiokol for management
problems leading to the explosion that claimed the lives of seven
astronauts. The Space Shuttle Challenger blew up as a result of a
failure in a solid rocket booster joint.
(AP, 6/9/00)(HN, 6/9/99)
1986 Jun 11, A divided Supreme
Court struck down a Pennsylvania abortion law, while reaffirming its
1973 decision establishing a constitutional right to abortion.
(AP, 6/11/97)
1986 Jun 13, Benny Goodman
(77), the clarinet-playing "King of Swing," died in NYC.
(AP, 6/13/97)
1986 Jun 14, Jorge Luis Borges
(b.1899), Argentine author (Book of Sand), died in Geneva. In 1998 a
new English translation by Andrew Hurley of his "Collected Fictions"
was published. In 1999 Alexander Coleman edited "Selected Poems."
Also in 1999 Eliot Weinberger edited "Selected Non-Fictions." In
2004 Edwin Williamson authored “Borges: A Life.”
(SFEC, 12/13/98, BR p.1)(SFEC, 4/18/99, BR
p.3)(WSJ, 8/17/99, p.A18)(WSJ, 8/5/04, p.D8)
1986 Jun 14, Alan Jay Lerner
(67), Broadway librettist, died in NY.
(AP, 6/14/06)
1986 Jun 14, Marlin Perkins
(b.1905), zoologist and TV host (Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom),
died.
(AP, 6/14/06)
1986 Jun 15, Pravda announced
that the high-level Chernobyl staff in Ukraine was fired.
(http://tinyurl.com/ydptos)
1986 Jun 17, President Reagan
announced the retirement of Chief Justice Warren Earl Burger.
President Ronald Reagan named William Rehnquist Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court.
(AP 6/17/97)(HNQ, 1/10/99)
1986 Jun 17, Singer Kate Smith
died in Raleigh, N.C., at age 79.
(AP 6/17/97)
1986 Jun 18, 25 people were
killed when a twin-engine plane and helicopter carrying sightseers
collided over the Grand Canyon.
(AP, 6/18/07)
1986 Jun 19, Artificial heart
recipient Murray P. Haydon (59) died in Louisville, Ky., after 16
months on the man-made pump.
(AP, 6/19/06)
1986 Jun 19, University of
Maryland basketball star Len Bias, the first draft pick of the
Boston Celtics, suffered a fatal cocaine-induced seizure.
(AP, 6/19/06)
1986 Jun 19, Argentina beat
West Germany 3-2 in soccer's 13th World Cup in Mexico.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FIFA_World_Cup)
1986 Jun 23, Tip O'Neill
refused to let Reagan address the House.
(http://www-tech.mit.edu/archives/VOL_106/TECH_V106_S0437_P003.txt)
1986 Jun 25, The US Congress
approved $100 million in aid to the Contras fighting in Nicaragua.
(HN, 6/25/98)
1986 Jun 25, San Francisco
clothier Wilkes Bashford pleaded no contest to a felony charge and
agreed to pay back $750,000 in rent to the city.
(SSFC, 6/26/11, DB p.42)
1986 Jun 26, The U.S. Supreme
Court in Ford v. Wainwright, ruled on the mentally impaired person's
competence to be executed. The Supreme Court ruled that the Eighth
Amendment prohibits the execution of an insane prisoner and that
Ford had the right to a judicial hearing to determine his competence
to be executed.
(www.jaapl.org/cgi/content/full/34/2/253)
1986 Jun 27, US informed New
Zealand it will not defend it against attack.
(SC, 6/27/02)
1986 Jun 27, Don Rogers of the
Cleveland Browns died of cocaine poisoning.
(SC, 6/27/02)
1986 Jun 27, An Irish
referendum upheld a ban on divorce.
(SC, 6/27/02)
1986 Jun 27, World Court ruled
that US aid to Nicaraguan contras was illegal.
(SC, 6/27/02)
1986 Jun 30, The Supreme Court,
in Bowers v. Hardwick, ruled 5-4 that states could outlaw homosexual
acts between consenting adults. This upheld a Georgia law against
sodomy. However, the nation's highest court effectively reversed
this decision in 2003 in Lawrence v. Texas.
(Econ, 4/3/04, p.87)(AP, 6/30/07)
1986 Jun 30, In Ohio a fire at
the Columbus Grove apartment complex killed 2-year-old Cynthia
Collins. Ken Richey (18) acknowledged he was intoxicated that night
and did not remember everything that happened. He agreed to plead no
contest to charges accusing him of leaving the toddler in harm's way
by failing to baby-sit the child after telling her mother that he
would. He was sentenced to the 21 years. In 2008 Richey returned to
Scotland.
(AP,
1/9/08)(http://truthinjustice.org/richey-reversed.htm)
1986 Jun, In Mexico Gustavo
Petricioli Iturbe was named treasury secretary by Pres. Miguel de la
Madrid. The foreign debt was near $100 billion due to the collapse
of oil prices earlier in the decade.
(SFEC, 10/11/98, p.D10)
1986 Jul 2, The US Supreme
Court upheld affirmative action in 2 rulings.
(SC, 7/2/02)
1986 Jul 3, President Reagan
presided over a gala ceremony in New York Harbor that saw the
relighting of the renovated Statue of Liberty.
(AP 7/3/97)
1986 Jul 3, Rudy Vallee
(b.1901), singer (Vagabond Dreams), died.
(www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=4143)
1986 Jul 4, Liberty Weekend was
capped with a spectacular fireworks display that lighted up New York
Harbor.
(AP, 7/4/06)
1986 Jul 4, E F Helin
discovered asteroid #3855 Pasasymphonia.
(http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=3855)
1986 Jul 5, Statue of Liberty
was reopened after being refurbished.
(http://www.nps.gov/archive/stli/prod02.htm)
1986 Jul 7, The US Supreme
Court struck down Gramm-Rudman deficit-reduction law.
(www.answers.com/topic/gramm-rudman-act)
1986 Jul 7, Jordan’s government
shut down all 25 offices of al-Fatah, the mainstream group in the
divided Palestine Liberation Organization.
(http://tinyurl.com/ycprwn)
1986 Jul 8, Kurt Waldheim was
inaugurated as president of Austria despite controversy over his
alleged ties to Nazi war crimes. He was barred from entering the US
in 1987 due to his services as an officer in a German army unit
implicated in war crimes in the Balkans.
(SFC, 2/17/96, p.A14)(AP 7/8/97)
1986 Jul 8, Admiral Hyman G.
Rickover (86), widely regarded as "father of the nuclear navy," died
in Arlington, Va.
(AP, 7/8/06)
1986 Jul 9, The US Attorney
General's Commission on Pornography released the final draft of its
2,000-page report, which linked hard-core porn to sex crimes.
(AP 7/9/97)
1986 Jul 11, President Ronald
Reagan placed the Contras, who were fighting the government of
Nicaragua, under CIA jurisdiction.
(HN, 7/11/98)
1986 Jul 11, Mary Beth
Whitehead christened her surrogate Baby M(b.3/27/86), Sara.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_M)
1986 Jul 14, Richard W. Miller
became the 1st FBI agent convicted of espionage.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Miller_(FBI_agent))
1986 Jul 14, An expedition from
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute filmed the wreck of the Titanic
for the first time.
(SFEC,12/797, DB p.37)
1986 Jul 14, In North Carolina
Harold Gentry’s gunshot-ridden body was found sprawled on the floor
of the home he shared with his wife, Betty Neumar. She collected at
least $20,000 in life insurance, plus other benefits from the
military and sold the couple's house and other items. In 2008 Neumar
(76) was charged with hiring a hit man to gun him down. After
arresting her, authorities realized that five times since the 1950s,
she was married, and each union ended with the death of her husband.
(AP, 6/13/08)
1986 Jul 14, Raymond Loewy
(92), US industrial designer, died. His designs included the 1973
Avanti automobile.
(www.raymondloewy.com/about/bio3.html)
1986 Jul 14, In Spain Jose
Ignacio De Juana Chaos (b.1955), a former police officer who joined
one of ETA's most active commando units, took part in a Madrid car
bombing that killed 12 Civil Guard policemen. 45 people were
wounded.
(AP,
8/2/08)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%C3%B1aki_de_Juana_Chaos)
1986 Jul 17, White House chief
of staff Donald Regan drew criticism for suggesting in an interview
that American women would not be prepared to “give up all their
jewelry” if the U.S. were to impose economic sanctions against South
Africa.
(AP, 7/17/06)
1986 Jul 17, The world got its
first look at the remains of the Titanic as videotapes of the
British luxury liner, which sank in 1912, were released by
researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
(AP, 7/18/06)
1986 Jul 19, Caroline Kennedy,
daughter of President John F. Kennedy, married Edwin A. Schlossberg
in Centerville, Massachusetts.
(AP, 7/19/00)
1986 Jul 21, Gary Lee Davis
(1944-1997) and his wife, Rebecca, abducted, raped and killed
Virginia May (32) in Byers, Colorado. After exhausting all appeals
he was executed by lethal injection on Oct 13, 1997. Rebecca was
convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
(SFC, 10/13/97, p.A7)(SFC, 10/14/97, p.A3)
1986 Jul 22, The US House of
Representatives impeached Judge Harry E. Claiborne. He was later
convicted by the Senate of tax evasion and bringing disrepute on the
federal courts. He was only the fifth person in US history to be
removed from office through impeachment by the US Congress, and the
first since Halsted Ritter in 1936. Claiborne was sentenced to two
years in prison in October, 1986, and was in prison from May 1986 to
October 1987. Claiborne was allowed to begin practicing law again in
Nevada in 1987, and shot himself to death in Las Vegas, Nevada, on
January 19, 2004, apparently due to his health battles with cancer
and Alzheimer’s disease.
(AP,
7/22/06)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_E._Claiborne)
1986 Jul 23, Britain's Prince
Andrew married Sarah Ferguson at Westminster Abbey in London with
the appellation Duke and Duchess of York. The couple divorced in
1996.
(AP, 7/23/98)
1986 Jul 24, Jerry A. Whitworth
(47), retired US Navy warrant officer, was convicted in SF for his
role in a Soviet spy ring. The government called it the most
damaging espionage case since World War II. On August 28 Whitworth
was given a 365-year sentence and ordered to pay $410,000.
(http://tinyurl.com/5r9fq8)(AP, 8/28/06)
1986 Jul 25, Marc Smith, NYC
construction worker turned poet, held the first poetry slam at the
Green Mill jazz club in Chicago. He pitted writers against one
another in a test of writing skills and performance.
(Econ, 8/16/08,
p.83)(www.slampapi.com/new_site/background.htm)
1986 Jul 25, Vincente Minnelli
(76), movie director known for such musicals as "Gigi," "An American
in Paris" and "Meet Me in St. Louis," died in Los Angeles.
(AP, 7/25/06)
1986 Jul 26, Kidnappers in
Lebanon released the Reverend Lawrence Martin Jenco, an American
hostage held for nearly 19 months.
(AP, 7/26/00)
1986 Jul 26, Averell Harriman
(b.1892), statesman and former New York Governor, died at age 94 in
Yorktown Heights, NY. He left his fabulous art collection, fortune,
and influence in the Democratic Party to his wife, Pamela Churchill
Harriman. She was later appointed by Pres. Clinton as ambassador to
France. In 1996 Sally Bedell Smith wrote her biography: "Reflected
Glory: The Life of Pamela Churchill Harriman."
(SFC, 10/23/96, p.E6)(AP, 7/26/06)
1986 Jul 28, NASA released the
transcript from the doomed Challenger. Pilot Michael Smith could be
heard saying, "Uh-oh!" as spacecraft disintegrated.
(SC, 7/28/02)
1986 Jul 29, A federal jury in
New York found that the National Football League had committed an
antitrust violation against the rival United States Football League.
But in a hollow victory for the USFL, the jury ordered the NFL to
pay token damages of only $3.
(AP, 7/29/06)
1986 Aug 2, US attorney Roy M.
Cohn died at Bethesda Naval Hospital of cardiac arrest and
complications from AIDS.
(AP, 8/2/06)
1986 Aug 5, US Senate voted for
the SDI-project, better known as Star Wars.
(http://tinyurl.com/wonw9)
1986 Aug 5, It was revealed
that Andrew Wyeth secretly created 240 drawings and paintings of his
neighbor Helga Testorf, in Chadds Ford, Pa.
(www.rightreading.com/daybook_pages/august.htm)
1986 Aug 6, William J.
Schroeder died after living 620 days with the "Jarvik 7" artificial
heart.
(AP, 8/6/97)
1986 Aug 10, "Me and My Girl"
opened at Marquis Theater in NYC for 1420 performances.
(www.ibdb.com/show.asp?ID=5982)
1986 Aug 13, In Texas Christine
Morton was found beaten and killed in her Williamson County home.
Her husband Michael Morton was convicted and spent 25 years in
prison before being freed in 2011 after DNA evidence showed another
man was responsible. On April 19, 2013, a judge ruled that former DA
Ken Anderson had acted improperly and issued an arrest warrant on
criminal contempt and tampering charges.
(SFC, 10/5/11, p.A7)(SFC, 4/20/13, p.A4)
1986 Aug 14, Pakistani
opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was arrested.
(http://tinyurl.com/yynudk)
1986 Aug 16, Flozelle Woodmore
(18), shot and killed her abusive boyfriend, Clifton Morrow, with a
.357 magnum in the presence of their 2-year-old son in Los Angeles.
In 2007 Gov. Schwarzenegger, said he no longer oppose her parole.
(SFC, 8/3/07, p.B12)(http://tinyurl.com/2mvdzg)
1986 Aug 17, A bronze pig
statue was unveiled at Seattle's Pike Place Market.
(SC, 8/17/02)
1986 Aug 19, A car bomb killed
20 in Tehran, Iran.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_bomb)
1986 Aug 20, Postal employee
Patrick Henry Sherrill (44) went on a deadly rampage at a post
office in Edmond, Okla., shooting 14 fellow workers to death before
killing himself. This incident is credited with inspiring the
American phrase "going postal".
(WSJ, 8/7/97, p.A12)(AP,
8/20/06)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Sherrill)
1986 Aug 21, In Cameroon 1,746
people died when toxic gas, an invisible bubble of CO2, erupted
[seeped out] from a volcano under Lake Nyos. Venting of the lake
began in 2001.
(AP, 8/21/97)(WSJ, 11/17/97, p.B1)(SFC, 8/14/99,
p.A6)(SC, 8/21/02)(AP, 2/15/03)
1986 Aug 22, Kerr-McGee Corp.
agreed to pay the estate of the late Karen Silkwood (1946-1974)
$1.38 million, settling a 10-year-old nuclear contamination lawsuit.
(AP, 8/22/97)
1986 Aug 23, Gennadiy Zakharov,
a Soviet physicist employed at the UN Secretariat, was arrested In
NYC as he handed classified documents to a US defense contractor.
(www.dss.mil/training/espionage/1986-87.htm)
1986 Aug 26, In the so-called
"preppie murder" case, 18-year-old Jennifer Levin was found
strangled in New York's Central Park; Robert Chambers later pleaded
guilty to manslaughter for strangling Jennifer Levin during a tryst
in Central Park. Chambers was released from prison in 2003 after
serving a 15-year sentence. He owed the Levin family $25 million
from a wrongful death suit [see Mar 25, 1988]. In 2007 Chambers was
arrested for dealing cocaine. He pleaded guilty and faced another
long term in prison.
(SFC, 2/15/03, p.A4)(AP, 8/26/04)(SFC, 8/12/08,
p.A6)
1986 Aug 26, Ted Knight
(b.1923), [Tadeus Konopka], actor (Mary Tyler Moore), died.
(www.infoplease.com/biography/var/tedknight.html)
1986 Aug 28, Jerry A.
Whitworth, retired US Navy warrant officer, convicted for his role
in a Soviet spy ring, was sentenced by a federal judge in San
Francisco to 365 years in prison.
(AP, 8/28/06)
1986 Aug 29, The Beatles
performed their last public concert. The San Francisco event at
Candlestick Park drew some 24,000 people.
(SSFC, 8/28/11, DB p.42)
1986 Aug 30, Soviet authorities
arrested Nicholas Daniloff, the Moscow correspondent for U.S. News
and World Report, after he was handed a package by a Russian
acquaintance. He was later released.
(AP, 8/30/97)
1986 Aug 31, Aeromexico flight
498 with 64 passengers collided with a light plane as it approached
Los Angeles and crashed to the ground where an additional 15 people
were killed. The National Transportation Safety Board blamed flaws
in the overloaded traffic control system. 82 people were killed when
an Aeromexico jetliner and a small private plane collided over
Cerritos, Calif.
(SFC, 8/31/96, p.A20)(AP, 8/31/97)
1986 Aug 31, The Soviet
passenger ship Admiral Nakhimov collided with a merchant vessel in
the Black Sea, causing both vessels to sink; up to 448 people
reportedly died.
(AP, 8/31/97)
1986 Aug 31, Henry Moore
(b.1898), English sculptor and cartoonist, died. In 1998 John
Hedgecoe published "A Monumental Vision: The Sculpture of Henry
Moore."
(SFEC, 7/19/98, BR
p.9)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Moore)
1986 Aug, Dr. Clifford Stoll,
the computer systems manager at Lawrence Berkeley, discovered
computer break-ins. He monitored them for approximately 12 months
and realized that the had confused Lawrence Berkeley with
Lawrence Livermore.'' A West German citizen used global
communications networks to secretly gain access to more than 30
computers belonging to the US military and military contractors.
(http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/6.68.html)(Econ,
5/26/07, p.64)
1986 Aug, In Uganda the Holy
Spirit Mobile Forces (HSMF), a Christian fundamentalist revolt,
began under the leadership of Alice Lakwena (1956-2007). The
movement was crushed by the army and Lakwena fled to Kenya where she
was imprisoned in 1987.
(SFC, 3/5/96, p.A9)(Econ, 1/27/07, p.87)
1986 Sep 1, Paul McCartney
released his "Press to Play" album.
(SC, 9/1/02)
1986 Sep 1, Murray Hamilton
(b.1923), film, theater and TV actor, died in North Carolina.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0358069/)
1986 Sep 2, A judge in Los
Angeles sentenced Cathy Evelyn Smith to three years in prison for
involuntary manslaughter in connection with the 1982 drug overdose
death of comedian John Belushi. She served 18 months.
(AP, 9/2/06)
1986 Sep 3, In Connecticut
Barbara Pelkey (30) of Wallingford, a New Haven suburb, was raped
and murdered. Kenneth Ireland (20) was convicted in 1989 and
sentenced to 50 years in prison. In 2009 Ireland was released from
prison and granted a new trial after DNA testing showed he could not
have committed the crime.
(http://issuu.com/recordjournal/docs/ireland_pelkey)(http://tinyurl.com/ldh9kt)
1986 Sep 5, The Pakistan army
stormed a hijacked US B-747 in Karachi and 22 people were killed. In
2001 Zayd Hassan Abd Al-latif Masud Al Safarini, jailed in Pakistan
for 15 years, arrived in Alaska and was expected to face a 1991
indictment for the 1986 hijacking of a Pan Am jet. In 2003 Safarini
pleaded guilty and agreed to 3 life sentences plus 25 years. On Jan
3, 2008, Pakistani authorities freed and deported four Palestinians
convicted in the hijacking.
(SFC, 10/2/01, p.A3)(SFC, 12/17/03, p.A4)(AP,
9/5/06)(AP, 1/3/08)
1986 Sep 6, Some 300 invitees
paid $5,000 to hear Barbra Streisand's benefit concert. Streisand
launched her concert One Voice, in part, as a protest against
Reagan-era nuclear arms proliferation in the late Cold War.
(http://tinyurl.com/y6urea)
1986 Sep 6, An attack on the
Neve Shalom synagogue in Istanbul killed 22 people. The Palestinian
Abu Nidal group was blamed.
(NYT, 10/8/04, p.A12)
1986 Sep 7, In Chile Gen'l.
Pinochet narrowly survived an assassination attempt involving 70
terrorists. 5 of his escorts were murdered.
(WSJ, 10/30/98, p.A19)(SFC, 3/25/99, p.A3)
1986 Sep 7, Desmond Tutu was
installed as the Anglican archbishop of Capetown, the first black to
lead the Anglican Church in southern Africa.
(AP, 9/7/97)
1986 Sep 8, Oprah Winfrey began
her syndicated TV talk show.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oprah_Winfrey_Show)(SSFC, 2/11/01,
BR p.1)
1986 Sep 8, Westinghouse sold
Muzak.
(http://tinyurl.com/y3thhl)
1986 Sep 9, Frank Reed,
director of a private school in Lebanon, was taken hostage; he was
released 44 months later.
(AP, 9/9/97)
1986 Sep 11, The Dow Jones
Industrial Average (DJIA) suffered its biggest 1-day decline to
date, plummeting 86.61 points to 1,792.89. 237.57 million shares
were traded [see Oct 19, 1987]. It is believed that the drop was
accelerated, though not initiated, by computer-assisted
arbitrage.
(www.ccsr.cse.dmu.ac.uk/resources/general/ethicol/Ecv6no3.html)
1986 Sep 11, Davey Rosenberg,
SF publicist, died. In 1964 he made the SF Condor Club famous after
persuading waitress Carol Doda to dance wearing a topless bathing
suit.
(SSFC, 9/11/11, DB p.46)
1986 Sep 11, Egypt's Pres
Mubarak received Israeli premier Peres.
(http://tinyurl.com/spu4y)
1986 Sep 12, The United States
released Soviet physicist Gennady Zakharov. On Sep 29 the Soviet
Union released journalist Nicholas Daniloff. Both had been accused
of espionage.
(http://www.russianlife.net/article.cfm?Number=407)(AP, 9/29/01)
1986 Sep 12, Joseph Cicippio,
the acting comptroller at the American University in Beirut, was
kidnapped; he was released in December 1991.
(AP, 9/12/97)
1986 Sep 12, Frank Nelson
(b.1911), actor (Jack Benny Show), died in Hollywood, Ca.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Nelson)
1986 Sep 13, In Texas Jonathan
Nobles stabbed to death Mitzi Johnson-Nalley (21) and Kelly Farquhar
(24). Nobles was high on drugs at the time and during imprisonment
offered to donate his organs, but the Texas system did not allow
organs from death row inmates to be harvested. He was executed Oct
7, 1998.
(SFC, 10/8/98, p.A3)
1986 Sep 14, President Reagan
and his wife, Nancy, appeared together on radio and television to
appeal for a "national crusade" against drug abuse.
(AP, 9/14/01)
1986 Sep 15, The 1st pilot of
"LA Law" was broadcast NBC-TV.
(http://epguides.com/LALaw/)
1986 Sep 15-1986 Sep 20, In
Punta del Este, Uruguay, the Ministers of ninety-two nations agreed
to a new round of multilateral trade negotiations (Uruguay Round).
(http://europa.eu.int/abc/history/1986/index_en.htm)
1986 Sep 17, The Senate
confirmed the nomination of William H. Rehnquist to become the 16th
chief justice of the United States.
(AP, 9/17/97)
1986 Sep 17, A bomb attack in
Paris killed 5 people. This began a 10 month series of bomb attacks
in France attributed to Lebanese and Armenian terrorists.
(http://tinyurl.com/y4fl69)
1986 Sep 19, Harken Energy
agreed to acquire Spectrum 7 Energy Corp., where George W. Bush was
chairman. Bush became a Harken board member and a $100,000-a-year
consultant.
(WSJ, 10/9/02, p.A4)
1986 Sep 21, In the 38th Emmy
Awards the winners included Golden Girls, Cagney & Lacey and
Michael J. Fox.
(http://tinyurl.com/yxktmg)
1986 Sep 23, The US Congress
selected the rose as the US national flower.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1986-9/1986-09-23-ABC-25.html)
1986 Sep 26, William Hubbs
Rehnquist was sworn in as the 16th chief justice of the United
States, while Antonin Scalia joined the Supreme Court as its 103rd
member. Rehnquist would serve as Chief Justice until September 3,
2005 when he died from thyroid cancer.
(AP,
9/26/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rehnquist#Declining_health_and_death)
1986 Sep 27, The US Senate
joined House of Reps voting for "sweeping tax reforms."
(http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3SUR/is_v67/ai_5012957)
1986 Sep 29, The TV series
"Designing Women" began with Dixie Carter (1939-2010) and continued
to 1993.
(AP, 4/11/10)(www.imdb.com/title/tt0090418/)
1986 Sep 29, The Soviet Union
released Nicholas Daniloff, an American journalist confined in
Moscow on spying charges.
(AP, 9/29/01)
1986 Sep 30, The US released
accused Soviet spy Gennady Zakharov, one day after the Soviets
released Nicholas Daniloff.
(AP, 9/30/97)
1986 Sep 30, Israeli Mossad
agents snatched Mordechai Vanunu in Rome. The Israeli nuclear
technician had recently divulged Israel's nuclear secrets to the
London Sunday Times.
(SFC, 4/22/04, p.A3)
1986 Sep, A US federal appeals
court ruled that Wicca was a religion protected by the Constitution.
(SFEC, 10/31/99, p.A6)
1986 Sep, In Ohio University of
Akron students Dawn McCreery (20) and Wendy Offredo (21) were
sexually assaulted and killed. Richard Cooey (19) and a co-defendant
(17) were convicted for the sexual assaults and slayings. The
co-defendant was sentenced to life in prison because of his age.
Cooey was executed in 2008.
(AP, 10/14/08)
1986 Sep, China's first stock
market opened in Shanghai.
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A4)
1986 Oct 1, Former President
Jimmy Carter's presidential library and museum were dedicated in
Atlanta with help from President Reagan.
(AP, 10/1/97)
1986 Oct 2, In India Sikhs
attempted to assassinate Indian PM Rajiv Gandhi (1944-1991).
(http://tinyurl.com/yjyxzh)
1986 Oct 3, The Soviet nuclear
submarine K-219 suffered an explosion and fire in a missile tube
northeast of Bermuda; the vessel sank three days later.
(AP, 10/4/06)
1986 Oct 4, In the Netherlands
Queen Beatrix officially opened the Oosterscheldekering for use by
saying the well-known words: De stormvloedkering is gesloten. De
Deltawerken zijn voltooid. Zeeland is veilig. (The flood barrier is
closed. The Delta Works are completed. Zealand is safe.) It was the
world's largest movable flood barrier.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oosterscheldekering)
1986 Oct 4, The Soviet
submarine, K-219, began experiencing problems while on routine
patrol in the Atlantic. The submarine had collided with an American
submarine just days before a US-Soviet summit between Gorbachev and
Reagan in Reykjavik, Iceland.
(SFEC, 11/24/96, p.A14)(WSJ, 7/24/97, p.A16)
1986 Oct 5, American Eugene
Hasenfus was captured by Sandinista soldiers after the weapons plane
he was flying in was shot down over southern Nicaragua. An airplane
named Fat Lady was shot down over Nicaragua with a load of arms
destined for the Contras. Documents found on board the aircraft and
seized by the Sandinistas included logs linking the plane with Area
51, the nation's top-secret nuclear-weapons facility at the Nevada
Test Site. The doomed aircraft was co-piloted by Wallace Blaine
"Buzz" Sawyer, a native of western Arkansas, who died in the crash.
The admissions of the surviving crew member, Eugene Hasenfus, began
a public unraveling of the Iran-Contra episode.
(AP,
10/5/97)(www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/crimesOfMena.html)
1986 Oct 6, The Soviet
submarine, K-219, with 16 ballistic missiles each carrying 2
warheads, sank about 600 miles east of Bermuda. One of its nuclear
reactors had overheated and seaman Sergey Preminin manually shut it
down, but sealed his death in the process. It was later revealed
that highly radioactive plutonium 239 was released in the mishap.
(SFEC, 11/24/96, p.A1,5)
1986 Oct 9, The musical
"Phantom of the Opera" premiered in London.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom_of_the_Opera_(1986_musical))
1986 Oct 9, The US Senate
convicted US District Judge Harry E. Claiborne (1917-2004) making
him 5th federal official to be removed from office through
impeachment. He had been indicted by a federal grand jury for
bribery, fraud, and tax evasion in December of 1983.
(www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Harry_E._Claiborne)
1986 Oct 11, President Reagan
and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev opened two days of talks
concerning arms control and human rights in Reykjavik, Iceland.
(AP, 10/11/97)
1986 Oct 12, The superpower
meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland, ended in stalemate, with President
Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev unable to agree on
arms control or a date for a full-fledged summit in the United
States. Reagan's plans for Star Wars caused his summit meeting with
Gorbachev in Iceland to fail.
(TMC, 1994, p.1986)(AP, 10/12/97)
1986 Oct 14, Holocaust survivor
and human rights advocate Elie Wiesel in the US was named winner of
the Nobel Peace Prize.
(SFC, 10/12/96, p.A13)(AP, 10/14/97)
1986 Oct 14, California
Lottery’s first online computer game, Lotto 6/49, began to run.
(SSFC, 10/9/11, DB p.42)
1986 Oct 15, Harvard Univ.
agreed to buy 1.35 million shares of Harken Energy for $2 million
and to invest $20 million in Harken projects. George W. Bush served
as a Harken board member and paid consultant.
(WSJ, 10/9/02, p.A4)
1986 Oct 16, The US government
closed down due to budget problems.
(www.ssa.gov/legislation/history/99.htm)
1986 Oct 16, Arthur Grumiaux
(b.1921), Belgian violinist, died at 65.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Grumiaux)
1986 Oct 16, Ron Arad, an
Israeli airman, was the navigator in a plane that was shot down
while bombing a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon. He was
reportedly handed over to a Lebanese Shiite group led by Mustafa
Dirani. In 2004 it was reported that Arad died in 1996 , sometime
after he was handed by Lebanese fighters to their Iranian sponsors.
In 2008 a Hezbollah report said Arad had escaped from a holding cell
in 1988 and probably died while trying to make his way home through
difficult terrain.
(SFEC, 11/17/96, p.A14)(AP,
10/25/04)(http://tinyurl.com/yz3zza)(AP, 10/8/08)
1986 Oct 17, The US Senate
approved immigration bill prohibiting hiring of illegal aliens and
offered amnesty to illegals who entered prior to 1982.
(http://tinyurl.com/yet49v)
1986 Oct 19, Mozambique Pres.
Samora Machel was killed in a plane crash as he returned from a
conference in Zambia. He had aided Nelson Mandela’s ANC party in
fighting apartheid. 34 others also died in the crash.
(SFC, 8/20/96,
p.A14)(www.cidob.org/bios/castellano/lideres/c-016.htm)(AP,
10/19/06)
1986 Oct 21, The US, Micronesia
and the Marshall Islands formed a Compact of Free Association (CFA).
Tens of millions in economic benefits along with security and
defense of the islands was exchanged for the right to deny access to
third countries. The US paid $270 million in compensation to nuclear
victims under the 1st phase of the CFA (1986-2001), insisting that
was a full and final arrangement.
(SFC, 3/8/99, p.A16)(SFC, 1/4/00, p.A12)(Econ,
1/12/08, p.38)
1986 Oct 21, The Electronic
Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) was enacted by the United States
Congress to extend government restrictions on wire taps from
telephone calls to include transmissions of electronic data by
computer.
(Econ, 7/21/12,
p.23)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Communications_Privacy_Act)
1986 Oct 21, Pro-Iranian
kidnappers in Lebanon claimed to have abducted American Edward
Tracy. He was released in August 1991.
(AP, 10/21/97)
1986 Oct 22, President Reagan
signed into law sweeping tax-overhaul legislation.
(AP, 10/22/06)
1986 Oct 22, In NYC Jane
Dornacker (40), comedian, musician and traffic reporter, died after
her helicopter crashed into the Hudson River. She had moved to NYC
in 1985 after established a reputation in the SF Bay Area where her
activities included performing with her band “Leila and the Snakes.”
(SSFC, 10/23/11, DB p.42)
1986 Oct 22, Albert
Szent-Gyorgyi (b.1893), Hungarian-born bio-chemist, died. He
received the Nobel Prize in 1937 for discovering vitamin-C and the
biochemical steps of catalysis of the fumaric acid in the
tricarboxylic acid cycle.
(www.britannica.com/eb/article-9070804/Albert-Szent-Gyorgyi)
1986 Oct 25, Michael Sergio
parachuted into Shea Stadium during game 6 of the World Series. In
December he was fined $500 and sentenced to 100 hours of community
service. In game 6 a slowly hit ball trickled through the legs of
Bill Buckner and cost the Red Sox the game. They lost game 7 and the
NY Mets won the series.
(WSJ, 7/23/98, p.A1)(http://tinyurl.com/yea27m)
1986 Oct 27, The US Congress
gave new life to the 1863 False Claims Act when it promised big
payouts for citizens who blew the whistle on firms that defrauded
the government.
(Econ, 7/7/12,
p.61)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_Claims_Act)
1986 Oct 27, The New York Mets
won the World Series, coming from behind to defeat the Boston Red
Sox, 8-5, in Game 7 played at Shea Stadium.
(AP, 10/27/05)
1986 Oct 27, Reforms
transformed the closed shop London stock exchange. New ways of
trading shares came into effect and the day became remembered as the
“Big Bang.”
(Econ, 10/21/06, p.83)
1986 Oct 28, The Statue of
Liberty turned 100 years old. The true centennial of the Statue of
Liberty was celebrated in New York with ceremonies that were modest
compared with the hoopla of "Liberty Weekend" the previous July.
(TMC, 1994, p.1986)(AP, 10/28/06)
1986 Oct 30, US Treasury Sec.
James Baker struck the first American Eagle silver coin at the US
Mint’s San Francisco Assay office. The coins went on sale on Nov 24.
Silver at this time was selling for $5.58 an ounce.
(SSFC, 10/30/11, DB p.42)
1986 Oct, A drug raid was made
in Los Angeles, Ca. The LA County Sheriff's Dept. had documented
that Nicaraguan drug trafficker Daniel Blandon was shipping hundreds
of kilos of cocaine in the Southern California area. In 1998 Gary
Webb published "Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack
Cocaine Explosion."
(SFEC, 6/28/98, BR p.3)
1986 Nov 1, In Japan seven
charred bodies of women of the cult Friends of Truth were found on a
beach. Their leader had recently died in a hospital.
(SFC, 3/27/97, p.A19)
1986 Nov 1, A fire in a Sandoz
factory in Basel left 30 tons of chemicals in the Rhine.
(http://tinyurl.com/yhsjad)
1986 Nov 2, Mike Tyson (20)
knocked out Trevor Berbick and won the WBC title to become the
youngest heavyweight champion in history.
(SFC, 2/6/99, p.A13)
1986 Nov 2, Kidnappers in
Lebanon released American hospital administrator David Jacobsen
after holding him for 17 months.
(AP, 11/2/06)
1986 Nov 3, "Ash-Shiraa," a
pro-Syrian Lebanese magazine, broke the story of U.S. arms sales to
Iran, a revelation that escalated into the Iran-Contra affair.
(AP, 11/3/97)
1986 Nov 6, Pres. Reagan signed
a landmark immigration reform bill. The Simpson-Rodino Immigration
Reform and Control Act led to legal residency for 2.7 million
illegal immigrants. Harold Ezell served as the western chief of the
immigration service under Ronald Reagan and implemented the act.
(www.cis.org/articles/1987/paper4.html)(SFC,
8/27/98, p.C4)(WSJ, 9/18/06, p.A1)
1986 Nov 6, The Iran
arms-for-hostages deal was revealed and damaged the Reagan
administration.
(HN, 11/6/99)
1986 Nov 6, Former Navy
radioman John A. Walker Jr., the admitted head of a family spy ring,
was sentenced in Baltimore to life imprisonment.
(AP, 11/6/06)
1986 Nov 6, FRELIMO designated
Joaquim Chissano as president of Mozambique.
(www.cidob.org/bios/castellano/lideres/c-016.htm)
1986 Nov 8, Former Soviet
official Vyacheslav M. Molotov (96), whose name became attached to
the incendiary bottle bomb known as a "Molotov Cocktail," died.
(AP, 11/8/06)
1986 Nov 9, Israel said it was
holding Mordechai Vanunu, a former nuclear technician who had
vanished after providing information to a British newspaper about
Israel's nuclear weapons program. Vanunu was convicted of treason
and sentenced to 18 years in prison. Mordechai Vanunu was later
convicted of giving data on Israel's nuclear program to a newspaper
and put into solitary confinement until Mar 12, 1988.
(WSJ, 3/13/98, p.A1)(AP, 11/9/99)
1986 Nov 10, President Ronald
Reagan refused to reveal details of the Iran arms sale.
(HN, 11/10/98)
1986 Nov 10, Camille Sontag and
Marcel Coudari, two Frenchmen who had been held hostage in Lebanon,
were released.
(AP, 11/10/06)
1986 Nov 13, President Reagan
publicly acknowledged that the US had sent "defensive weapons and
spare parts" to Iran in an attempt to improve relations, but denied
the shipments were part of a deal aimed at freeing hostages in
Lebanon.
(AP, 11/13/06)
1986 Nov 13, Rudolf Schock
(b.1915), German opera and operetta singer, died.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0774301/)
1986 Nov 13, In the Philippines
the body of opposition trade leader union Rolando Olalia was found
in a Manila suburb.
(SFEC, 7/12/98, Z1 p.5)(www.mahk.com/sc1613.htm)
1986 Nov 14, The Securities and
Exchange Commission imposed a record $100 million penalty against
inside-trader Ivan F. Boesky and barred him from working again in
the securities industry.
(AP, 11/14/06)
1986 Nov 15, A government
tribunal in Nicaragua convicted American Eugene Hasenfus of charges
related to his role in delivering arms to Contra rebels, and
sentenced him to 30 years in prison. He was pardoned a month later.
(AP, 11/15/97)
1986 Nov 15, In the Philippines
Japanese executive Noboyuki Wakaoji was kidnapped. He was released
after over four months in captivity allegedly after the payment of a
huge ransom. Two gang members wee later convicted sentenced to life
terms. In 2010 Rolando Fajardo, leader of the kidnapping gang, was
arrested.
(www.pctc.gov.ph/papers/InternationalTerrorism.htm)(AFP, 11/1/10)
1986 Nov 17, Pres. Reagan
signed the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Act. It
designated over 292,000 acres in Oregon and Washington states as
federally regulated land. Much of the work in getting the act passed
was done by Nancy Russell (d.2008).
(www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1986/111786a.htm)(http://tinyurl.com/nphxt8)
1986 Nov 17, Renault President
Georges Besse was shot to death by leftists of the Direct Action
Group in Paris.
(HN, 11/17/98)
1986 Nov 20, The US Federal
Reserve Board approved a $500 million equity investment by Japan’s
Sumitomo Bank in Goldman Sachs.
(Econ, 5/19/07, SR
p.20)(http://tinyurl.com/3xdm2q)
1986 Nov 20, UN's WHO announced
1st global effort to combat AIDS.
(http://tinyurl.com/ycyxmk)
1986 Nov 21, The US Justice
Department began the inquiry into the National Security Council in
what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal; Lt. Col. Oliver North
shredded important documents. Albert Hakim (d.2003) was the
financial person behind the arms-for-hostages deal.
(HN, 11/21/01)(SFC, 4/29/03, A21)
1986 Nov 22, Justice Department
found a memo in Lt. Col. Oliver North's office on the transfer of
$12 million to contras from Iran arms sale.
(HN, 11/22/98)
1986 Nov 22, Scatman Crothers
(b.1910), singer and actor (Shining, Chico & The Man), died.
{USA, Pop&Rock, TV}
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scatman_Crothers)
1986 Nov 22, Elzire Dionne, who
gave birth to quintuplets in 1934, died at a hospital in North Bay,
Ontario, Canada, at age 77.
(AP, 11/22/06)
1986 Nov 23, Philippine
President Corazon Aquino dismissed defense chief Juan Ponce Enrile
after reported coup attempt.
(AP, 11/23/02)
1986 Nov 25, Secret arms sales
to Iran were uncovered with Lt. Col. Oliver North directing the
proceeds to the contras in Nicaragua. The Iran-Contra affair erupted
as President Reagan and Attorney General Edwin Meese revealed that
profits from secret arms sales to Iran had been diverted to
Nicaraguan rebels. Fawn Hall smuggled important documents out of Lt.
Col. Oliver North's office.
(TMC, 1994, p.1986)(AP, 11/25/97)(HN, 11/25/98)
1986 Nov 26, President Reagan
appointed a commission headed by former Sen. John Tower to
investigate his National Security Council staff in the wake of the
Iran-Contra affair. The 3-person Tower Commission exposed an
elaborate network of official deception, private profiteering and
White House cover-up in Reagan’s administration. The Tower
Commission investigated the Iran-Contra scandal in which weapons
were secretly sold to Iran for the release of American hostages with
the proceeds then illegally funneled to the Nicaraguan contras. It
was sharply critical of the president for failing to control the
activities of the National Security Council staff. Fawn Hall was the
dedicated secretary of Oliver North, who shredded incriminating
documents.
(AP, 11/26/97)(HNQ, 12/30/98)(SFC, 2/1/99, p.A3)
1986 Nov 26, An Iranian missile
slammed into crowded residential district of Baghdad, Iraq, killing
48 civilians and wounding 52.
(AP, 11/26/02)
1986 Nov 28, The United States
under the Reagan administration violated ceilings in the unratified
SALT II nuclear arms treaty for the first time as another Air Force
B-52 bomber capable of carrying atomic-tipped cruise missiles became
operational.
(www.csd.uwo.ca/~pettypi/elevon/baugher_us/b052-22.html)
1986 Nov 29, Actor Cary Grant
died in Davenport, Iowa, at age 82.
(AP, 11/29/97)
1986 Nov 29, In Suriname 39
people were massacred in the village of Moiwana by the military
dictatorship. Desi Bouterse was fighting an armed opposition force
called the Jungle Commandos. Many of the rebels were Maroons, as was
the group's leader, Ronnie Brunswijk. In 2006 the government
officially apologized and compensated relatives and victims of the
massacre.
(AP, 7/16/06)
1986 Nov, The European
Commission decided on GSM as the first digital standard. Vodophone
soon looked outside Britain for partners.
(Econ, 2/3/07, SR p.8)
1986 Dec 1, Lt. Col. Oliver
North pleaded the fifth amendment before a Senate panel
investigating the Iran Contra arms sale.
(HN, 12/1/98)
1986 Dec 1, Musee d'Orsay
opened in Paris.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mus%C3%A9e_d'Orsay)
1986 Dec 1, In South Africa
National Congress supporter Dr. Fabian Ribeiro (b.1933) and his
wife, Florence, were assassinated.
(SFEC, 10/13/96,
p.A19)(http://sahistory.org.za/pages/people/ribiero-f.htm)
1986 Dec 2, Desi Arnaz
(b.1917), Cuban-born musician and actor (played Ricky Ricardo in “I
Love Lucy”), died from lung cancer in Del Mar, California. In 1949,
Arnaz turned his efforts to developing the hit television series "I
Love Lucy," which ran for six years on CBS and became the most
successful television program in history.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0000789/)
1986 Dec 4, Neil Simon's
"Broadway Bound" premiered in NYC.
(www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=4434)
1986 Dec 4, Both houses of US
Congress moved to establish special committees to conduct their own
investigations of the Iran-Contra affair.
(AP, 12/4/06)
1986 Dec 8, House Democrats
selected majority leader Jim Wright to be the chamber's 48th
speaker, succeeding Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill.
(AP 12/8/97)
1986 Dec 8, Sydney J. Harris
(b.1917), London-born American journalist and author, died. “Most
people are mirrors, reflecting the moods and emotions of the times;
few are windows, bringing light to bear on the dark corners where
troubles fester. The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors
into windows.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_J._Harris)(http://burbankmartialarts.net/?p=706)
1986 Dec 10, Human rights
advocate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel accepted the Nobel Peace
Prize.
(AP, 12/10/06)
1986 Dec 10-1986 Dec 30, In
China thousands of students began protesting for democracy in
Shanghai and the demonstrations spread to Beijing.
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A4)
1986 Dec 12, Russian
Tupolev-134 crashed in East Berlin and 70 of 82 people were killed.
(www.emergency-management.net/avi_acc_1979_1989.htm)
1986 Dec 14, The experimental
aircraft Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, took off
from Edwards Air Force Base in California on the first non-stop,
non-refueled flight around the world. The trip took nine days.
(AP 12/14/97)
1986 Dec 15, Army cook Ronald
A. Gray raped and killed Army Pvt. Laura Lee Vickery-Clay of
Fayetteville. She was shot four times with a .22-caliber pistol that
Gray confessed to stealing. She suffered blunt force trauma over
much of her body. Gray (42) was convicted in connection with a spree
of four murders and eight rapes in the Fayetteville, NC, area
between April 1986 and January 1987 while he was stationed at Fort
Bragg. He was convicted at Fort Bragg in April 1988 and unanimously
sentenced to death.
(AP, 7/29/08)
1986 Dec 16, Ronald W. Pelton,
former National Security Agency employee convicted of selling
defense secrets to the Soviet Union, was sentenced by a judge in
Baltimore to life in prison.
(AP, 12/16/04)
1986 Dec 17, A federal jury in
Detroit cleared automaker John DeLorean of all 15 charges in his
fraud and racketeering trial.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1986-12/1986-12-17-ABC-11.html)
1986 Dec 17, Eugene Hasenfus,
the American convicted by Nicaragua for his part in running guns to
the Contras, was pardoned, then released.
(AP, 12/17/97)
1986 Dec 17, Richard Kuklinsky,
a Mafia hitman known as the Iceman, was arrested in New Jersey. He
was found guilty of all charges May 25, 1988. Anthony Bruno later
authored "The Iceman."
(www.crimelibrary.com)
1986 Dec 17, In Colombia
Guillermo Cano (b.1925), publisher of the Bogota newspaper El
Espectador, was assassinated by drug cartel hitmen hired by Pablo
Escobar.
(SFC, 3/22/97,
p.A11)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillermo_Cano_Isaza)
1986 Dec 19, Lawrence E. Walsh
was appointed independent counsel to investigate the Iran-Contra
affair.
(AP, 12/19/07)
1986 Dec 19, The Soviet Union
announced it had freed dissident Andrei Sakharov from internal
exile, and pardoned his wife, Yelena Bonner.
(AP, 12/19/97)
1986 Dec 20, White teenagers
beat blacks in Howard Beach, NYC. One of the victims, Michael
Griffith, was killed when a passing motorist's car ran over him on
the Belt Parkway as he was attempting to flee from the pursuers.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Beach)
1986 Dec 21, 500,000 Chinese
students gathered in Shanghai's People's Square calling for
democratic reforms, including freedom of the press.
(HN, 12/21/98)
1986 Dec 23, The experimental
airplane Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, completed
the first non-stop, round-the-world flight without refueling as it
landed safely at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
(AP, 12/23/97)
1986 Dec 27, In San Diego Cara
Evelynn Knott was strangled to death by an on-duty highway patrol
officer. Officer Craig Alan Peyer was convicted of the murder, the
first ever homicide conviction of an on duty CHP.
(WSJ, 12/15/97, p.A20)
1986 Dec 29, Former PM Harold
Macmillan of Britain (1957-1963), died at his home in Sussex,
England, at age 92.
(AP, 12/29/97)
1986 Dec 29, Andrei Tarkovsky
(b.1932), Russian film maker, died and was buried in Paris.
(DVD, Criterion, 1998)
1986 Dec 31, A fire at the
Dupont Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, killed 97 and injured
140 people. Three hotel workers later pleaded guilty to charges in
connection with the blaze.
(AP, 12/31/97)
1986 Dec, Sergeant Clayton
Lonetree informed his CIA station chief in Austria that he had been
spying for the Soviets. he was later sentenced to 30 years, but the
sentence was reduced and he was released in 2/96. "Dancing With The
Devil, Sex, Espionage and the US Marines: The Clayton Lonetree
Story" (1996) by Rodney Barker tells the tale.
(SFC, 8/29/96, p.B4)
1986 Francis Bacon (1909-1992),
Anglo-Irish painter, made his painting "Portrait of George Dyer
Talking."
(SFC, 6/11/99, p.C3)
1986 A monument to boxer Joe
Lewis, "The Fist," was installed in downtown Detroit. It consisted
of an 8,000-pound, 24-foot-long disembodied black forearm and
clenched hand.
(WSJ, 3/4/04, p.A1)
1986 Sculptor Fred Fierstein
dumped a statue called "The Guardian" at the Berkeley Marina. In a
city vote fans supported the statue and the term "plop art" was
coined.
(SFC, 1/15/98, p.A24)
1986 In Detroit, Mich., Tyree
Guyton (30) began an art project covering a 2-block area on
Heidelberg Street. His own house was decorated and became known as
the Dotty Wotty House. In 1991 the city ordered the demolition of 4
houses that he had decorated. In 1997 45% of his work fell to a city
demolition effort. His work continued and attracted visitors from
around the world.
(SFC, 9/1/06, p.E8)(Econ, 12/19/09, p.56)
1986 Artist Norm Hines of Texas
made his cluster of granite megaliths for Caelum Moor in Arlington,
Texas. The planned office complex surrounding the site failed and in
1997 it was decided to put the megaliths into storage to allow the
development of a shopping center on the land.
(SFC, 2/8/97, p.A9)
1986 Jasper Johns, painter,
completed his work "Winter," one of four of The Seasons series begun
in 1985 that fetched $3 mil in a Sotheby's auction in 1995.
(WSJ, 11/16/95, p.Aa-5)(WSJ, 10/17/96, p.A20)
1986 Sol LeWitt made his
color woodcut "Arcs From Four Corners" at Crown Point Press.
(SFEC, 9/28/97, DB p.37)
1986 Andy Warhol created his
work "The Last Supper." In 1999 it sold for $772,500.
(WSJ, 11/19/99, p.W16)
1986 August Wilson, playwright,
wrote "Joe Turner's Come and Gone."
(SFEC, 5/30/99, DB p.37)
1986 Kingsley Amis won the
Booker Prize with his novel "The Old Devils."
(SFEC, 7/19/98, BR p.7)
1986 The biography "Picasso:
Creator and Destroyer" by Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington was
published.
(SFC, 10/5/96, p.E1)
1986 Lucien Le Cam (d.2000 at
75), one of the founding fathers of modern statistics, authored
"Asymptotic Methods in statistical Decision Theory."
(SFC, 5/23/00, p.A21)
1986 Stephen Coonts authored
“Flight of the Intruder,” the story of a Navy pilot in
Vietnam. The military thriller became a classic in its genre.
(WSJ, 10/24/06, p.D6)
1986 Bram Dijkstra, Prof. of
comparative literature, published "Idols of Perversity." The book
described the archetypal good girl. In 1996 he published "Evil
Sisters: The Threat of Female Sexuality and the Cult of Manhood." It
was an exploration of the archetypal bad girl.
(SFEC, 10/20/96, BR, p.10)
1986 Eric Drexler published
"Engine of Creation" in which he championed the future of
nanotechnology.
(SFC, 7/19/99, p.A8)(Econ, 3/13/04, p.41)
1986 Jane Goodall published
"The Chimpanzees of Gombe."
(SFEC, 12/15/96, Z1 p.3)
1986 Winston Groom published
his novel "Forrest Gump."
(WSJ, 4/24/98, p.W14)
1986 "Grizzly" by wildlife
biologist Michio Hoshino was published.
(NH, 7/96, p.4)
1986 Edith Thatcher Hurd
(d.1997 at 86) and Clement Hurd (d. 1988) wrote and illustrated a
children's companion volume to a book by Gertrude Stein. The Hurds
had collaborated on 55 children's books.
(SFC, 1/28/97, p.A14)
1986 William Loren Katz
authored "Black Indians," an account of the relations between Black
and Native Americans.
(WSJ, 12/20/99, p.A1)
1986 J.N.D. Kelly authored “The
Oxford Dictionary of Popes.”
(WSJ, 4/12/08, p.W8)
1986 Alexander Keyssar authored
"Out of Work," an overview of unemployment.
(WSJ, 12/3/03, p.B1)
1986 Karleen Koen authored her
best-selling historical romance “Through a Glass Darkly.” It was set
in England during the time of King Charles II. In 2006 she published
a prequel titled “Dark Angels.”
(WSJ, 9/23/06, p.P8)
1986 "Lenape: Archeology,
History, Ethnography" by Herbert C. Kraft was published.
(NH, 10/96, p.6)
1986 Daniel B. Luten (d.2003)
published "Progress Against Growth: Essays on the American
Landscape."
(SFEC, 4/27/97, Z1 p.3)(SFC, 1/24/03, p.A25)
1986 Peter Mass authored
“Manhunt,” the story of Edwin Wilson (1928-2012). Wilson had worked
for the CIA but was arrested in 1982 for selling 20 tons of
explosives to Libya. He was sentenced to 52 years in prison for
smuggling arms and plotting to murder his wife.
(SSFC, 9/23/12, p.C10)
1986 Mark Mathabane authored
"Kaffir Boy," an account of the poverty, violence and racism under
apartheid. In 2000 his sister, Miriam Mathabane authored "Miriam’s
Song: A Memoir." The award-winning book was later frequently banned
in US schools due to two paragraphs describing child prostitution.
(SFEC, 7/9/00, BR p.7)(SFC, 4/12/07, p.A1)
1986 James Michener wrote his
novel "Legacy."
(SFC,10/17/97, p.A17)
1986 Susan Minot published her
first novel "Monkeys," a compilation of stories of family life.
(WSJ, 10/7/98, p.A20)
1986 Ralph Nader co-authored
"The Big Boys: Styles of Corporate Power."
(SFEC, 10/13/96, zone 1 p.3)
1986 Prof. Abraham Pais (d.2000
at 81) authored "Inward Bound: Of Matter and Forces in the Physical
World."
(SFC, 8/1/00, p.B2)
1986 Douglas Eugene Pike
(d.2002 at 77), former US State Dept. officer, authored "PAVN:
People's Army of Vietnam" a study of the North Vietnamese Army. In
1966 he authored "Viet Cong."
(SFC, 5/18/02, p.A22)
1986 Richard Plant (d.1998)
wrote "The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals."
(www.holocaust-trc.org/homosx.htm)
1986 Reynolds Price published
his novel "Kate Vaiden," that told the story of a woman blessed and
cursed with willful determination.
(SFEC, 4/26/98, BR p.5)
1986 Philip Pugh authored “The
Cost of Sea Power,” a study of shipbuilding costs since the end of
the Napoleonic wars.
(Econ, 8/28/10, p.21)
1986 Marc Resiner (d.2000 at
51) authored "Cadillac Desert," an angry indictment of water
depletion in the American West.
(SFC, 7/24/00, p.A21)
1986 Naomi Sims (1948-2009)
authored “All About Health and Beauty for the Black Woman.” Her 1968
cover shot on the Ladies’ Home Journal was a breakthrough for black
fashion models.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Sims)(SFC,
8/7/09, p.D5)
1986 Art Spiegelman published
the 1st volume of “Maus,” a collection of black and white drawings
with text that told the story of his father’s survival in the
holocaust. Vol 2 came out in 1991.
(Econ, 10/30/04, p.86)
1986 Frank Stella wrote
"Working Space," a book on Italian Renaissance artists. In the book
he speculated about what it would take to guarantee abstract
painting a viable future.
(MT, Win. '96, p.12)(SFC, 3/5/97, p.E5)
1986 Tad Szulc (d.2001)
authored "Fidel: A Critical Portrait."
(SFC, 1/18/00, p.A9)(SFC, 5/24/01, p.C4)
1986 Paul Theroux authored
science fiction his novel "O-Zone," about wealthy people who live in
tall buildings as opposed to lowly workers of the streets and
countryside following a nuclear war.
(WSJ, 1/1/00, p.R8)
1986 Tang Tsou, Univ. of
Chicago Prof., authored "The Cultural Revolution and Post-Mao
Reforms: A Historical Perspective."
(SFC, 8/17/99, p.C2)
1986 John Waters, film
director, authored "Crackpot." He published an update in 2003.
(SSFC, 11/9/03, p.M2)
1986 Carolyn Webber and Aaron
Wildavsky authored "History of Taxation and Expenditure in the
Western World.”
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R47)
1986 Sherley Anne Williams
(d.1999 at 54) published her historical novel "Dessa Rose."
(SFC, 7/15/99, p.A25)
1986 Walter Wriston, former CEO
of Citibank, wrote "Risk & Other Four-Letter Words."
(Wired, 10/96, p.142)
1986 The musical play "Berlin
to Broadway With Kurt Weill premiered at the Coconut Grove in Miami
under the direction of Jack Allison.
(WSJ, 1/13/98, p.A20)
1986 Twyla Tharp created her
dance piece In the "Upper Room."
(WSJ, 10/17/96, p.A20)
1986 The 10-hour TV miniseries
"Shaka Zulu" ran for the first time with Henry Cele as Shaka.
(SFC, 3/20/97, p.E1,3)
1986 The TV Detective show
"Hunter" began and lasted to 1991. It starred Charles Hallahan
(d.1997 at 54).
(SFC,12/5/97, p.A22)
1986 Artist Lowell Darling ("If
you don't like the news, make the news." 1968) made his video
"Hollywood Architecture." It was later dubbed "Hollywood Blank
Verse" by Larry Hagman who did part of the narration.
(SFEM, 1/19/97, p.11)
1986 David Barrett, East
Lansing musician, wrote the words and music to the song "One Shining
Moment." It premiered in the 1987 NCAA basketball finals.
(WSJ, 4/4/03, p.B1)
1986 The Beastie Boys, a
punk/funk band, burst on the scene with their song: "Fight for Your
Right to Party."
(WSJ, 12/18/98, p.A1)
1986 The Argentine band Los
Fabulosos Cadillacs began with bassist Flavio Oscar Cianciarulo and
keyboardist Gabriel Fernandez Capello (Vincentico). They did their
first gig of Latino Rock as Los Cadillacs at a pub called the Blues
in Buenos Aires.
(SFEC, 4/26/98, DB p.52)
1986 The Paul Simon "Graceland"
album popularized South African music in the West.
(SFC, 7/31/99, p.A17)
1986 Frankie Yankovic won the
first Grammy ever awarded for polka.
(SFC, 10/15/98, p.C6)
1986 Astor Piazzolla (d.1992),
bandoneon player, recorded his album "Tango Zero Hour."
(BAAC, 1/96, p.4,5)(Esq., 5/91, p.60,61)
1986 Wang Xilin, Chinese
composer, composed "Calling the Spirit," a musical reflection on the
poems of Qu Yuan, a 3rd century BC poet and official.
(WSJ, 9/24/97, p.A20)
1986 The ballet "Ma Pavlova"
was created by Roland Petit.
(SFC, 12/31/99, p.C6)
1986 Udo Zimmermann, German
composer, created his opera “Die Weise Rose” (The White Rose). The
named was taken from a 1940s anti-Nazi movement.
(SFC, 1/12/05, p.E1)
1986 Muzak expanded to five
channels with the advent of direct broadcast satellite technology.
By the end of 1996 they expanded to 60 channels.
(WSJ, 6/5/96, p.B1)
1986 Room one of the Waste
Isolation Power Plant (WIPP), near Carlsbad, New Mexico, was
completed. It is located 2,150 feet below the desert surface in an
ancient salt bed deposited several hundred million years ago.
(Smith., 5/95, p.45)
1986 Rev. Sri Swami
Satchidananda (1914-2002) founded the Yogaville ashram in Virginia.
(SFC, 8/20/02, p.A22)
1986 Stephen Spurrier, English
owner of a wine shop and wine school in Paris, held another
competition tasting of French and American wines following his 1976
event in New York City. This time only red wines were tasted and the
same reds were used except for the Freemark Abbey wine. The American
wines placed first and second: Clos du Val (1972) came in first and
Ridge Vineyards (1971) came in second.
(SFC, 5/29/96, ZZ1 p.4)
1986 Beny Alagem, a former
Israeli tank driver, founded Packard Bell Electronics, a small
computer manufacturer. He bought the old Packard Bell name and
marketed his computers under the old name.
(WSJ, 3/26/96, p.A-1)
1986 Ron Teitelbaum started the
Johnny Rockets restaurant on Melrose Ave. in Beverly Hills. It soon
grew to a franchise of 82 units.
(SFC, 9/6.96, p.E1)
1986 Stephen Worfram, physics
and math whiz, founded Wolfram Research Inc., and developed the
Mathematica software for solving complex problems.
(WSJ, 9/25/96, p.B1)
1986 Dollywood, a theme park
owned by country singer Dolly Parton, opened in Pigeon Forge,
Tennessee.
(SFC, 6/9/97, p.A3)
1986 Wichita Falls, Texas
completed a 540-foot waterfall to replace the original which washed
away over a century ago.
(WSJ, 4/3/96, p.B-1)
1986 The US Volcano Disaster
Assistance Program (VDAP) was created by the USGS and the USAID
Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance after a mudflow killed more
than 23,000 people in Armero, Colombia in 1985.
(PacDisc. Spring/'96, p.27)
1986 Graydon Carter co-founded
Spy, an irreverent monthly magazine. He left spy in 1991 and in 1995
began working with Vanity Fair where he became editor-in-chief.
(WSJ, 5/18/04, p.D10)
1986 Jane Goodall founded the
Committee for the Conservation and Care of Chimpanzees.
(SFEC, 12/15/96, zone 1 p.3)
1986 The SF Chronicle started
the Season of Sharing Fund, an extension of the Emergency Family
Needs/Housing Assistance Fund administered by Northern California
Grantmakers in 1983 and 1984. Walter A. Haas, a descendant of Levi
Strauss, conceived of the SF Season of Sharing Fund in 1985. He
presented the idea to Dick Thierot, publisher of the SF Chronicle
and the fund began.
(SFEC,11/30/97, Z1 p.7)(SFC,12/11/97, p.A23)
1986 Rambling Rudy Phillips
(1911-2004) was crowned King of the Hobos at the National Hobo
Convention in Britt, Iowa.
(SFC, 1/26/04, p.B4)
1986 The Hot August Nights
festival was begun in Reno, Nev., to earn money for the Easter Seal
Society. It became an annual festival touted as the world's largest
nostalgia fest.
(SFEC, 6/14/98, p.T10)
1986 The frog, Rosie the
Ribeter, set a new leaping record at Angels Camp in California with
a jump of 21 ft 5.75 inches.
(SFC, 4/28/96, p.T-3)
1986 In St. Helena, Calif., the
Meadowood Croquet Classic began.
(SFEM, 7/21/96, p.4)
1986 Jose Luis de Jesus
Miranda, a Puerto Rican-born former evangelical priest, founded the
Growing in Grace church in Florida. By 2007 he called himself the
Antichrist and was preaching to followers in some 35 nations, mostly
in Latin America.
(AP, 4/21/07)
1986 In Morton, Ill., the first
pumpkin-tossing contest was held. The winning throw was 50 feet. By
1996 a compressed air cannon projected a pumpkin a record 2,710 feet
at a velocity of more than 600 mph.
(WSJ, 10/23/97, p.A1)
1986 The fledgling US Football
League won an antitrust settlement against the NFL and was awarded
$1 in damages.
(SFC, 4/28/00, p.D7)
1986 Willie McCovey (b.1938) of
the San Francisco giants was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
His 521 home runs put him in a tie with Ted Williams.
(SSFC, 1/9/11, DB
p.42)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_McCovey)
1986 Yuan T. Lee of UC Berkeley
won the Nobel Prize in chemistry.
(SFC, 10/8/01, p.A17)
1986 Gerd Binning and Heinrich
Rohrer at IBM's Almaden Research Center won the Nobel Prize in
Physics for inventing the scanning-tunneling microscope used to see
and manipulate atoms.
(SJBJ, Jan., '96, p.40)
1986 James M. Buchanan Jr.
(1919-2013) of the United States won the Nobel Prize in Economics
for research in the theory of economic and political
decision-making.
(WSJ, 4/25/96, p.A-18)(AP, 10/11/09)(Econ,
1/19/12, p.76)
1986 The Nobel Prize in
literature was awarded to Wole Soyinka of Nigeria.
(WSJ, 10/15/96, p.A16)
1986 Rita Levi Montalcini
(1909-2012), Italian scientist, shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine
with American Stanley Cohen for discovering mechanisms that regulate
the growth of cells and organs.
(AP, 4/19/09)(Econ, 1/5/12, p.74)
1986 Reagan's plans for Star
Wars caused his summit meeting with Gorbachev in Iceland to fail.
(TMC, 1994, p.1986)
1986 Pres. Reagan signed a law
creating a medical malpractice data base. It began operations in
1990.
(WSJ, 8/27/04, p.A6)
1986 Frank Carlucci and Colin
Powell introduced changes to reduce bureaucratic rivalries in the
National Security Council (NSC). In 2005 David J. Rothkopf authored
“Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security
Council and the Architects of American Power.”
(Econ, 7/16/05, p.80)
1986 US Congress passed a law
that required the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to
balance power generation and environmental protection issues when it
licenses hydroelectric dams.
(SFC,11/26/97, p.A7)
1986 The US passed a law that
said the president must prepare a list of major drug producing or
drug-transit countries and withhold half of most government aid to
them until he certifies that they have fully cooperated with US
efforts to stem narcotics trafficking.
(WSJ, 2/16/96, p.A-6)
1986 US Congress set up a
triumvirate in Washington to approve new memorial projects: the
Commission on Fine Arts, the national Capital Planning Commission,
and the Secretary of the Interior.
(SFC, 5/26/96, p.A-12)
1986 The US Congress passed the
Pressler Amendment. It was used to impose sanctions against Pakistan
in 1990 when Pres. Bush was unable to certify that Pakistan did not
have a nuclear bomb. This stopped the sale of 28 F-16 airplanes to
Pakistan for which $650 million was already paid to General
Dynamics.
(SFC, 5/9/97, p.E2)
1986 The US Congress enacted
the alternative minimum tax (AMT), to ensure that all companies pay
taxes, regardless of their net income. It set a portion of the value
of new equipment to be added to a company's taxable income base.
(WSJ, 7/18/97, p.A14)
1986 Mandatory retirement was
abolished in the US. Stepwise amendments of the federal Age
Discrimination in Employment Act had begun in 1978. The 1978
amendments, which with a few exceptions became effective in January
1979, broadened coverage considerably. They eliminated the upper age
limit for coverage of federal employees and raised it from 65 to 70
for all other employees.
(www.lib.niu.edu/1979/ii790907.html)
1986 The US Computer Fraud and
Abuse Act was created. Under the act the release of a computer virus
was illegal, but the construction of such viruses was not.
(WSJ, 3/31/05, p.B1)
1986 The Chamorros and
Carolinians of the Northern Marianas were given US citizenship.
(SFEC, 3/7/99,Z1 p.4)
1986 Larry Wu-Tai Chin, a
retired CIA translator was convicted of spying for China since 1952.
Within days of the conviction he killed himself.
(SFC, 11/19/96, p.A17)
1986 The US Postal Service
issued a stamp that recognized Robert Peary and Matthew Henson as
co-discoverers of the North Pole.
(SFC, 8/18/96, p.B8)
1986 The US government raised
the capital gains tax to 28%..
(WSJ, 9/29/95, p.A-14)
1986 The US Tax Reform Act
flattened rates, simplified rules and removed countless loopholes.
It closed a loophole which had helped wealthy families shield assets
by designating inheritance past a generation. The top marginal rate
was cut from 50% to 28%. The tax law made it possible to slice up
mortgage-backed securities. In the five years following the Tax
Reform Act of 1986, 5,400 changes were made in the tax law.
(Econ, 6/19/04, p.15)(Econ, 8/4/07, p.61)(Econ,
1/8/11, p.84)(Econ, 9/24/11, p.84)
1986 In the US the top 1% of
taxpayers were responsible for 25.4% of all income taxes paid this
year. In 2005 their share rose to 38.4%.
(Econ, 4/4/09, SR p.14)
1986 Terry Sanford (d.1998 at
80) of North Carolina was elected to the US Senate.
(SFEC, 4/19/98, p.C6)
1986 Mike Bowers,
Attorney-General of Georgia, successfully defended the state's
anti-sodomy law before the US Supreme Court.
(SFC, 6/6/97, p.A14)
1986 Ivan Boesky was arrested
on Wall Street for insider trading.
(TMC, 1994, p.1986)
1986 The birthday of Martin
Luther King (Jan 19) was made a national holiday.
(SDUT, 6/6/97, p.A26)
1986 A US federal law began
allowing the limited collaboration of federal with private
companies.
(WSJ, 6/12/96, p.A10)
1986 US gun-rights groups
successfully lobbied for law allowing firearms to be transported
across state lines.
(WSJ, 12/16/03, p.A4)
1986 The US Supreme Court in
the Bethel School District vs. Fraser case ruled in favor of a
principal who suspended a student for making an obscene speech.
(WSJ, 5/4/99, p.A22)
1986 The US Supreme Court ruled
that sexual harassment constituted a violation of women's civil
rights.
(SSFC, 7/14/02, p.M6)
1986 Harry Denton, banker from
Arkansas, warned Mrs. Clinton in a telephone conversation that there
could be a problem with a $370,000 loan from the Madison S&L
destined for the Castle Grande real estate deal.
(SFC, 6/20/96, p.A23)
1986 A consent decree in
Philadelphia limited the number of prisoners who could be held in
city jails. Over the next 18 months police rearrested 9,732
defendants. In 2002 Ross Sandler and David Schoenbrod authored
"Democracy by Decree," a critique of "institutional reform
litigation."
(WSJ, 12/30/02, p.A1)
1986 Gov. Clinton lobbied
Little Rock judge and small-business financier David Hale to make a
$300,000 loan to Susan McDougal. The Clinton-McDougal relationship
was later described by Jim McDougal in the 1998 book "Arkansas
Mischief" written with the assistance of Curtis Wilkie, published
after McDougal's death in federal prison.
(WSJ, 6/4/98, p.A16)
1986 Don Lasater, a Little
Rock, Arkansas, bond dealer and supporter of then Gov. Clinton, was
arrested for cocaine distribution after a probe that also netted
Roger Clinton, the brother of Bill Clinton.
(WSJ, 4/18/96, p.A-18)
1986 In California the Greater
Avenues for Independence (GAIN) program mandated education or job
training for AFDC recipients.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, zone 1 p.5)
1986 The UC Board of Regents
agreed to drop all stocks in companies doing business with South
Africa.
(SFC, 12/4/97, p.C8)
1986 In Connecticut the John
Day Jackson Trust sold the New Haven Register and Journal-Courier
newspapers to Ingersoll Publications for an estimated $185 million.
The Journal Register Co. later bought the papers.
(SFC, 9/4/99, p.A25)
1986 Paul Newman’s 1st Hole in
the Wall camp for critically ill children opened in Connecticut. In
1993 the Double H Camp (health and happiness) opened in the woods of
the southern Adirondacks for campers whose diagnoses ranged from
cancer to muscular dystrophy. Double H opened after the late
amusement park developer Charles Wood proposed to Paul Newman that
they convert an old dude ranch into a second Hole in the Wall camp.
New camps followed and a 9th was set to open in Israel in 2007.
(http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14189319/)
1986 In Florida Robert Rozier,
a former NFL football player, changed his name to Neariah Israel and
murdered 8 people to prove himself to a sect of Yahweh Ben Yahweh.
He testified against the sect, which blamed for at least 23 killings
and a series of firebombings, and was freed after 10 years in
prison. In 1999 he was arrested for bounding check in California and
subject to the "three strikes" sentencing law.
(SFEC, 3/7/99, p.D4)
1986 Bob Cox, mayor of Fort
Lauderdale, began a campaign to end the city's reign as the spring
break capital of America. Students moved on to Daytona Beach and
later Florida's Panama City.
(WSJ, 3/19/98, p.A16)
1986 In Florida Manuel Pardo, a
former policeman, murdered 9 people, most of whom were involved with
drugs, during a crime spree. Pardo was executed on Dec 11, 2012.
(SFC, 12/12/12, p.A5)
1986 Lawrence Wollersheim was
awarded $5 million in damages for mental abuse plus $25 million in
punitive damages from the Church of Scientology. The total was later
reduced to $2.5 million. In 2002 he received a check for over $8.6
million, which included interest.
(SFC, 5/10/02, p.A24)
1986 KKR (Kohlberg Kravis
Roberts & Co.), an investment (leveraged buyout) firm, was
founded.
(WSJ, 12/31/96, p.1)
1986 Uniroyal Inc. chose to
liquidate and sold more than $1 billion of subsidiaries. The tire
division merged with B.F. Goodrich Co.'s tire division and became
Uniroyal Goodrich Tire Co. The chemical division became Uniroyal
Chemical Inc. purchased by Avery Inc.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, R45)
1986 The US auto industry made
record sales with 16.3 million cars and trucks sold.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1986 GM paid Ross Perot $700
million to surrender his stock and leave GM's board.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1986 The Hearst Corp. acquired
Esquire Magazine and WCVB-TV in Boston.
(SFC, 8/7/99, p.A9)
1986 Industry experts in 1996
picked the 1986 Ford Taurus as the number 2 favorite car.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1986 Voyager II flew by Uranus.
(V.D.-H.K.p.388)
1986 Railway miles in the US
totaled 140,000, about half that of 1916.
(NG, 5/1988, pres. intro)
1986 The A&P company
acquired the 140-Waldbaum grocery store chain in New York, Conn. and
Mass.
(SFC, 10/3/96, p.C6)
1986 Craig McCaw sold his cable
business to Jack Kent Cooke, owner of the Washington Redskins for
$755 million, in order to concentrate on his cellular telephone
business. McCaw's story was told in 2000 by O. Casey Cor in "Money
From Thin Air."
(WSJ, 6/14/00, p.A24)
1986 Kenneth Lay, founder of
Enron Corp. (1985), served as chairman and CEO until he stepped down
in 2001.
(Econ, 1/28/06, p.61)
1986 General Electric Corp.
acquired RCA Corp. The consumer electronics business was sold to
Thomson and the Sarnoff research labs was donated to SRI of Menlo
Park.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, p. R-45)(SFC, 8/2/99, p.B3)
1986 Kmart passed Sears as the
nations largest retailer.
(WSJ, 11/18/04, p.B1)
1986 Levi Strauss & Co.
introduced Dockers, a line of roomy khakis aimed at baby boomers.
(WSJ, 5/28/02, p.B1)(SFEC, 5/31/98, DB p.48)
1986 Macy’s chairman Edward
Finkelstein took the publicly traded institution private. In 1992
the Manhattan based retail chain filed for bankruptcy.
(Econ, 4/22/06, p.72)(http://tinyurl.com/k6664)
1986 Motorola opened shop in
Singapore.
(WSJ, 6/13/96, p.A1)
1986 Microsoft, and Novell
Corporations went public. At its debut Microsoft was worth $519 mil.
with just over $85 mil. in revenue for the prior six months.
(WSJ, 8/9/95, p.C-1)
1986 Maxxam Corp. took over
Pacific Lumber Co. for $900 million. The purchase included the
acquisition of 3,800 acres of the Headwaters, a stand of old-growth
redwood in northern California.
(WSJ, 5/13/96, p.A-9A)
1986 Thrifty Drugs under
Leonard H. Straus (d.1998) merged with Pacific Lighting. The Thrifty
Corp. had 555 drugstores and the Big Five sports equipment chain.
(SFC, 5/9/98, p.A21)
1986 Wells Fargo merged with
Crocker National Corp. and Crocker National Bank.
(SFC, 6/9/98, p.A10)
1986 Dr. Federico Faggin,
co-inventor of the microprocessor, founded Synaptics Inc., which
specialized in building neural-net devices.
(WSJ, 12/10/96, p.A22)
1986 Steve Jobs founded NeXT
Inc. and purchased the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm for
$10 million and started his own company called Pixar.
(SFC, 1/25/06, p.C1)(SFC, 8/25/11, p.A10)
1986 Dr. Nathan Myhrvold,
founder and president of Dynamical Systems, sold his software firm
to Microsoft and joined Microsoft, where he spent the next 14 years.
(Econ, 10/22/05, Survey p.9)
1986 Motorola developed Six
Sigma, a process management technique, which it licensed off to US
manufacturing companies facing challenges from higher quality
Japanese products.
(WSJ, 1/4/07, p.C3)
1986 Dick Kress (1928-2006),
18-year president of Norelco, retired. During his tenure Norelco
sold over 55 million electric razors.
(WSJ, 11/25/06, p.A6)
1986 The Pittsburgh
Supercomputing Center opened.
(SFC, 3/9/98, p.A7)
1986 South Carolina-based 3D
Systems introduced the first commercially available 3-D printer,
pioneering the development of stereolithography.
(Econ, 9/5/09, TQ p.28)
1986 Abhay Ashtekar, a
physicist at Pennsylvania State Univ., proposed an explanation
called “loop quantum gravity” to relate quantum mechanics with
general relativity. This rivaled a popular alternative model called
string theory.
(Econ, 9/30/06, p.89)
1986 PepsiCo acquired the
Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) fast food chain.
(WSJ, 1/24/97, p.B1)
1986 US Steel acquired Texas
Oil & Gas and changed its name to USX Corp.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, p. R46)
1986 Honda began a robot
program at a fundamental research center outside Tokyo.
(WSJ, 9/4/01, p.A1)
1986 Danny Hillis (b.1956), an
American inventor, entrepreneur and author, began thinking and
working on a 10,000 Year Clock. After some years Jeff Bezos, founder
of Amazon.com provided assistance and the clock began taking shape
inside a mountain in West Texas. The first prototype of the clock
began working on December 31, 1999.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_of_the_Long_Now)
1986 Asteroid 3753 was
discovered. It was later learned that the 6-mile diameter rock
maintains an annual orbit around the sun of one year, like Earth and
with some assistance from Earth's gravity.
(SFC, 6/12/97, p.A6)
1986 K. Alex Muller and J.
George Bednorz working at the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory
discovered that some new ceramics when cooled in liquid nitrogen
become superconductors.
(I&I, Penzias, p.203)
1986 Dr. David Baltimore, a
Nobel-winning biologist, published a paper with Thereza
Imanishi-Kari in the journal Cell. A lab partner accused Ms.
Imanishi-Kari of falsifying data and took her complaints to Congress
where Congressman John Dingell made a big case. Internal review
cleared the scientists. In 1998 Daniel J. Kevles published an
account of the story: "The Baltimore Case."
(WSJ, 9/9/98, p.A20)
1986 Chuck Hull coined the term
“stereolithography” to describe a system he patented for making
three-dimensional objects. Hull founded 3D Systems to commercialize
the procedure.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereolithography)(Econ, 4/21/12, SR
p.14)
1986 Dr. Mark Bogart at UC San
Diego discovered that a fetus with Down's syndrome would exhibit
extremely high levels of the hormone HCG, human chorionic
gonadotropin. He later tried to obtain royalties from all tests in
prenatal screening that used his discovery.
(SFC, 5/24/97, p.A8)
1986 Scientists isolated the
protease enzyme and realized that it could be used to combat HIV due
to its crucial role in virus reproduction. Its 3-d structure was
announced by Merck in 1989.
(WSJ, 6/14/96, p.A4)
1986 Dr. Jay Levy at UCSF
discovered that the CD-8 lymphocytes secrete an antiviral factor
that prevents HIV from replicating.
(SFEC, 3/8/98, p.W27)
1986 Researchers for muscular
dystrophy identified the gene that caused Duchene muscular
dystrophy, the most common and fatal childhood form of the disease.
(SSFC, 9/2/01, Par p.5)
1986 Davina Thompson (d.1998)
became the world's first known triple transplant patient when she
received a new heart, lungs and liver.
(SFC, 8/18/98, p.A19)
1986 Mad Cow Disease, bovine
spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), was first confirmed in Britain.
(WSJ, 11/25/98, p.A1)
1986 The term “non-alcoholic
fatty-liver disease” was coined to described the buildup of fat and
scarring in the liver. Some estimates in 2012 said the condition
affected up to one-third of America’s population.
(Econ, 12/15/12, SR p.7)
1986 Robert Slavin of John
Hopkins Univ. began his nonprofit Success For All Foundation. It
advocated a fixed methodology, invented by Slavin, for teaching
reading in troubled schools.
(WSJ, 7/19/99, p.A1)
1986 Fred Bookstein of the
Univ. of Michigan established the use of shape variables in the new
field of morphometrics, a technique of measuring biological shape
and change.
(MT, 10/94, p.9)
1986 Over 60,000 US farms were
sold or foreclosed in the rural West and Midwest.
(SFEC, 1/23/00, Z1 p.2)
1986 Great pieces of ice broke
from the coast of Antarctica in a process known as calving. The
Larsen Ice shelf calved an 8,000 km iceberg, icebergs from the
Filchner Ice Shelf combined to 11,500 km.
(NOHY, Weiner, 3/90, p.77)
1986 Richard Vollenweider
(1922-2007), Swiss scientist, was awarded the Tyler Prize for
Environmental Achievement for helping save Lake Erie. Procter &
Gamble, the USA’s biggest detergent manufacturer, had nominated him
for the prize. Vollenweider had developed methods for quantifying
the eutrophication of freshwater. His methods also helped form the
basis of the 1972 Great Lakes Water Quality Act.
(http://tinyurl.com/ygrc3p)(WSJ, 2/3/07, p.A8)
1986 In Arcata, Ca., the first
constructed sewage treatment marshes went into operation.
(Hem., 12/96, p.130)
1986 The Potamocorbula clam, or
Asian clam, was introduced to the SF Bay. It was highly prolific and
proceeded to devour all the plankton in the northern part of the
Bay, causing the shrimp population to drop and the striped bass to
decline. The clams accumulate selenium more than other shellfish
causing increases in selenium levels in sturgeon, striped bass and
ducks.
(SFC,12/11/97, p.A24)
1986 E.O. Wilson held a
national forum on biodiversity and produced the subsequent volume
"Biodiversity."
(PacDis, Winter '97, p.52)
1986 An oil spill from the Apex
Houston barge killed 9,000 sea birds from San Francisco to Big Sur
including 6,000 murres.
(SFC, 7/21/96, p.B3)
1986 The US EPA reported that
35% of all underground gas tanks were leaking an average of 2,800
gallons of gasoline annually.
(SSFC, 8/19/01, p.A13)
1986 Lechugilla Cave, a few
miles from Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, was discovered. It was
the 5th largest cave in the world and the deepest in the continental
US.
(CW, Fall, 02, p.23)
1986 The European Ruffe fish
was first noticed in the Duluth harbor on Lake Michigan.
(SFEC, 8/3/97, p.A3)
1986 Nevada’s 77,000-acre Great
Basin National Park was dedicated.
(SSFC, 7/18/04, p.D7)
1986 In California 5 women were
murdered in the Central Valley along I-5. In 2008 Roger Reese Kibbe
(68) was charged with the 5 murders along with a 1977 murder of a
woman from Walnut Creek. He was already serving a life sentence for
the murder of a West Sacramento prostitute, whose body was found in
1987.
(SSFC, 3/9/08, p.B3)
1986 Michele Lee Dorr (6)
vanished. Her body was found in a park outside of Washington DC in
2000. Hadden Clark (47) was convicted for her murder in Oct 1999 and
sentenced to 30 years in prison.
(SFC, 1/8/00, p.A5)
1986 The bodies of Tony (48)
and Michael (41) Spilotro were found buried in an Indiana cornfield.
Tony “The Ant” Spilotro was a top mob figure in Las Vegas. In 2005
prosecutors indicted 11 Chicago mob figures for at least 18 murders,
including the Spilotros.
(SFC, 4/26/05, p.A5)
1986 In this year 600 people
died in 30 crashes involving all sizes off commercial passenger and
cargo planes. By 1995 the figures doubled.
(WSJ, 5/13/96, p.A-1)
1986 Herbert W. Armstrong (93),
doomsday evangelist, died. In 1933 he began his radio broadcasts in
Salem, Ore., and published his 1st Plain Truth magazine in 1934. In
1947 he moved to Pasadena where his "Worldwide Church of God," a
radio and TV ministry featured "The World Tomorrow" programs. He
excommunicated his son Garner Armstrong (d.2003 at 73) in 1978 for
doctrinal disagreements and sexual misconduct. Armstrong rejected
the Trinity, regarded Christmas and Easter as pagan holidays and
held that Anglo-Saxons are lineal descendants of the lost tribes of
Israel.
(SFC, 9/18/03, p.A21)
1986 Edwin Binney III (b.1925),
scholar of French literature and heir to the Crayola fortune, died.
Binney had collected over 1,450 Indian paintings from the Mughal
era, which he donated to the San Diego Museum of Art.
(WSJ, 11/21/06,
p.D8)(www.sdmart.org/pr_domains_wonder.html)
1986 Cheikh Anta Diop,
Senegalese humanist and scientist, died. [see 1946]
(Civilization, July-Aug, 1995, p. 34)
1986 Frank Herbert, sci-fi
author of "Dune," died. In 1999 Brian Herbert, his son, and Kevin J.
Anderson authored "Dune: House Atreides," a prequel to the original.
(WSJ, 10/8/99, p.W10)
1986 Lazar Khidekel (b.1904),
Russian artist and architect, died. He sustained a radical utopian
vision and avant-garde aesthetic during decades of Soviet control of
cultural production.
(SFC, 2/22/05, p.E1)
1986 Jacques Henri Lartigue
(b.1894), French photographer, died. In 2004 Kevin Moore authored
“Jacques Henri Lartigue: The Invention of an Artist.”
(Econ, 7/24/04, p.77)
1986 Georgia O'Keefe, artist (b
11/15/1887), died. She is one of 3 artists covered by Anne Middleton
Wagner in "Three Artists (Three Women): Modernism in the Art of
Hesse, Krasner and O'Keefe." On 1999 Bram Dijkstra published
""Georgia O'Keefe and the Eros of Place."
(HFA, '96, p.42)(SFC, 5/12/96, p.T-7)(SFEC,
2/21/99, BR p.12)
1986 Afghanistan’s 3rd
president Babrak Karmal (1929-1996) was replaced by Dr.
Najibullah.
(www.afghan, 5/25/98)
1986 Osama bin Laden began
building a tunnel complex under mountains in Afghanistan near
Pakistan as part of a CIA-funded project.
(SSFC, 5/9/04, p.M6)
1986 In Australia the
left-of-center Labor government began to implement an innovative
retirement system. It was based primarily on mandatory private
savings in plans called "superannuation funds."
(WSJ, 12/31/97,
p.A10)(www.heritage.org/Research/SocialSecurity/BG1149.cfm)
1986 The Bahamas banned fishing
on its coral reefs.
(Econ, 1/7/06, p.72)
1986 Bhutan's first newspaper,
the government weekly Kuensel, began publishing. It recorded its
first crime in 1989, the same year that the first satellite dish
arrived.
(WSJ, 3/6/97, p.A8)
1986 The film "The Mission" was
directed by Roland Joffe. It was about Indian and Jesuit relations
in colonial Brazil.
(SFEM, 10/8/00, p.17)
1986 In Brazil Marcelo Carvalho
de Andrade formed Pro-Natura, non-governmental organization
dedicated to saving the rain forests through sustainable
development. The first program was set up in Desengano State Park to
prevent clandestine logging.
(SFC, 7/7/99, p.A8)
1986 Hernandes Filho, a former
Xerox marketing executive, and his wife, Sonia Haddad Moraes
Hernandes, founded the Reborn in Christ Church and rode the wave of
popularity of evangelical churches in Brazil, the world's largest
Roman Catholic country. The couple were arrested in 2007 for taking
a large amount of undeclared cash into the US. Both pleaded guilty
to evading US currency requirements and conspiracy.
(AP, 1/23/07)(SFC, 6/9/07, p.A5)
1986 Brazil chopped 3 zeroes
off its currency in the Cruzado Plan as part of an attempt to reduce
inflation. The official name was the Economic Stabilization Plan but
it was popularly known as the Cruzado Plan because it involved a
change in the name of the currency from Cruciero to the Cruzado,
with 1000 crucieros being equal to one cruzado. Its main
measures were a general price freeze, a wage readjustment and
freeze, readjustment and freeze on rents and mortgage payments, a
ban on indexation, and a freeze on the exchange rate.
(Econ, 11/14/09, SR
p.5)(www.applet-magic.com/cruzado.htm)
1986 In Brazil a financial
scandal led the Bolsa de Valores do Rio de Janeiro (BVRJ) to
bankruptcy.
(WSJ, 4/10/00, p.Spe.Adv.)
1986 The Commodities &
Futures Exchange (BM&F) of Brazil began trading.
(WSJ, 4/10/00, p.Spe.Adv.)
1986 Brazil began construction
of a rocket base at Alcantara, forcing some 300 local families to
resettle elsewhere.
(WSJ, 10/9/08, p.A13)
1986 In Britain the DV8
Physical Theater, a dance-theater ensemble led by Lloyd Newson of
Australia, was founded.
(SFEC,11/2/97, DB p.38)
1986 In Britain the
Conservative government enacted a personal pension program that was
put into effect in 1988. Higher income workers were allowed to opt
out of a government pension plan and manage their own contributions.
(WSJ, 8/10/98, p.A1)
1986 In Britain Parliament
outlawed corporal punishment in public schools. The practice was
banned in private schools in 1998.
(SFC, 1/19/00, p.A12)
1986 The economics editor of
Britain’s Economist Magazine invented the Big Mac index as a
light-hearted introduction to exchange-rate theory.
(Econ, 5/27/06, p.74)
1986 In Canada there was a
World Exposition in Vancouver.
(SFC, 8/26/97, p.A1)
1986 The Quebec Iron and
Titanium (QIT) subsidiary of Rio Tinto, an int’l. mining concern,
began pursuing rights in Madagascar to extract high-grade ilmenite,
a form of titanium dioxide used to whiten toothpaste, paint and
cleansing powders. A 15,000 acre site at Fort Dauphin was expected
to yield 750,000 tons a year over 60 years for an investment of $400
million. The Malagasy government would receive about $40 million per
year plus $10 million in taxes and fees. A decision was expected in
2005.
(SFC, 1/15/98, p.A10)(WSJ, 11/17/04, p.A1)
1986 In the Central African
Republic women gained the right to vote.
(Reuters, 12/03/05)
1986 Jean-Bedel Bokassa
returned to the Central African Republic from exile. In 1988 he was
jailed for embezzlement and murder after a trial in which he was
accused of cannibalism and infanticide.
(SFC, 5/22/96, p.A9)(SFC, 10/11/03, p.A2)(AFP,
12/1/10)
1986 In Chile the military
discovered a clandestine arms shipment that was traced to Cuba.
There were enough arms to support 5,000 men.
(WSJ, 10/30/98, p.A19)
1986 In China Hua Wenyi, opera
soprano, received the Plum Blossom Award, the nation's highest
artistic honor. In 1989 she traveled to the US and did not return.
(SFC, 9/24/97, p.A17)
1986 China applied to join the
GATT world trade association.
(WSJ, 11/16/99, p.A19)
1986 China introduced a
compulsory education law that required local governments to ensure
that all children receive 9 years of free education.
(Econ, 8/12/06, p.33)
1986 China passed a law for
state-owned companies allowing only their government supervisor to
put them into bankruptcy. First claim to any assets belonged to the
workers.
(Econ, 6/2/07, p.82)
1986 Wong Kwong Yu (16) and his
older brother, natives of Shantou in southern China, opened up Gome,
a clothing store in Beijing. A year later they switched to home
appliances and consumer electronics. In 1992 Wong split the business
with his brother, keeping the stores while his brother kept the real
estate. By 2006 Mr. Wong was one of China’s richest men.
(Econ, 2/4/06, p.60)
1986 In China an earthquake
destroyed the old Jihong Bridge over the Lancang River.
(SFEC, 10/6/96, T5)
1986 Colombian cartels shipped
75 metric tons of cocaine into the US.
(SFEC, 1/23/00, Z1 p.2)
1986 Cuba defaulted on a $12
billion debt owed mainly to European and Latin American governments.
(Econ, 4/16/05, p.34)
1986 In the Dominican Republic
former Pres. Joaquin Balaguer won elections and served for 10 years.
(SFC, 7/15/02, p.B6)
1986 In the Dominican Republic
the site of the 1493 town of La Isabela was named a national park,
Solar de las Americas.
(AM, 7/97, p.54)
1986 A large earthquake hit El
Salvador. The US provided $60 million in emergency aid and $98
million in reconstruction funds.
(SFC, 3/2/01, p.D4)
1986 The single European Act
was passed to end trade restricting regulations and create a true
single European market by 1992.
(Econ, 9/25/04, Survey p.9)
1986 In France Michel Lescanne,
in response to the crises in Ethiopia, founded Nutriset to develop a
product for feeding malnourished children. An initial product met
WHO standards F-75 and F-100 for therapeutic milk products that
needed to be mixed with water. In 1997 he hit upon a peanut-based
spread and called the new product Plumpy’nut.
(WSJ, 4/12/05, p.A14)
1986 In Jakarta, Indonesia,
there were bomb attacks on the US, Japanese and Canadian embassies
in Jakarta. Tsutomo Shirosaki, a Japanese Red Army terrorist, was
arrested 10 years later.
(WSJ, 7/2/03, p.A1)
1986 Billy McComiskey of
Baltimore, Maryland, won the all-Ireland, senior category,
championship of the button accordion. He soon teamed with Liz
Carroll, the 1991 All-Ireland senior fiddle champion and
singer-guitarist Daithi Sproule to produce the self-titled album
“Trian” in 1992 and “Trian II” in 1995. In 1985 McComiskey and his
Baltimore band, Irish Tradition, recorded the album “The Times We’ve
Had.”
(WSJ, 3/13/07, p.D5)
1986 Iraq’s Saddam Hussein
allowed the People's Mujahedeen, known as the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, to
establish a base, Camp Ashraf , to launch raids into Iran. The US
military protected the group followed its invasion in 2003. In 2009
the US began handing control of the group to Iraqi security forces,
which planned to separate members and leaders and eventually
repatriate the members.
(AP, 1/23/09)(SFC, 3/28/09, p.A3)
1986 In Italy 62 founding
members met to inaugurate Arcigola, the forerunner of Slow Food.
(www.slowfood.com/about_us/eng/history.lasso)
1986 In Italy the first
McDonald's Hamburger restaurant opened in Rome.
(SFEC, 1/23/00, Z1 p.2)
1986 Italian media mogul Silvio
Berlusconi bought the AC Milan soccer team. He had to quit the
club’s presidency for two years in 2004 when a law preventing
conflicts of interest for politicians was passed.
(Econ, 6/27/09, p.70)(http://tinyurl.com/klwzhl)
1986 Japan passed
equal-employment-opportunity legislation removing most legal
barriers to women in the workplace. Discrimination remained rampant.
(Econ, 11/20/10, SR p.8)
1986 Takako Doi was elected the
head of the Socialist Party in Japan and became the first woman to
lead a political party there.
(Jap. Enc., BLDM, p. 216)
1986 Japan began its H-2 rocket
program. The H-2 was terminated in 1999.
(SFC, 12/10/99, p.D8)
1986 On the Channel Island of
Jersey the Haut de la Garenne children's home closed down.
(Econ, 3/1/08, p.58)
1986 In Latvia a citizen's
forum was organized by Mikhail Gorbachev in Jurmala. 2,000
handpicked Communists faced 220 Americans on televised debates shown
to the Soviet public.
(SFEC, 9/15/96, Par p.22)
1986 Algirdas Kauspedas and his
Lithuanian band Antis, meaning duck or false political sensation,
burst onto the scene. He later created a respected architecture
company and had a brief stint in politics after the band broke up
for the first time in 1990. In 2008 they got back together and had
another tour.
(www.baltictimes.com/news/articles/20605/)
1986 Ghadames, Libya, was
designated a World Heritage site.
(SSFC, 6/27/04, p.D12)
1986 In Malaysia a law was
enacted that prohibited publications of "malicious
allegations" against the government.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A15)
1986 A US military base on the
Mauritius island of Diego Garcia became fully operational and was
intensely involved in 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait. In the 1960s
and 1970s Britain destroyed houses, slaughtered animals, and turfed
out some 2,000 inhabitants from the Chagos islands to Mauritius and
the Seychelles.
(Reuters, 4/16/07)
1986 In Nigeria a new
government came to power and singer Fela Anikulapo-Kuti was released
from prison.
(WSJ, 2/24/99, p.A10)
1986 Nigeria’s State Security
Service was created by military ruler Gen. Ibrahim Babangida to
monitor domestic dissent.
(AP, 8/30/12)
1986 North Korea started a
5-megawatt nuclear reactor at Yongbyon after seven years of
construction with Soviet help.
(SFC, 6/28/08, p.A3)
1986 Oman’s first university,
the Sultan Qaboos University, opened.
(SFC, 5/9/96, p.A-14)(SSFC, 3/30/08, p.E4)
1986 Pakistan introduced its
anti-blasphemy law. It made defaming Islam punishable by death. The
law was adopted by Pakistani-administered Kashmir in 1993.
(AP, 3/15/12)
1986 Hernando de Soto, Peruvian
economist, authored “The Other Path,” in which he called the rise of
a popular capitalism as opposed to the corporate state.
(Econ, 8/26/06, p.11)
1986 In Lima, Peru, 150
imprisoned Shining Path rebels were killed following riots in 3
jails.
(SFC, 8/23/01, p.A8)
1986 In the Philippines the
Communist New People's Army staged Operation Zombie, a bloody purge
of suspected informers. In 2001 some 75 bodies were discovered in 8
mass graves at Cagayan de Oro.
(SFC, 3/30/01, p.D4)
1986 In the Philippines the
People Power Uprising took place on Manila’s main thoroughfare,
later renamed EDSA, Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, after one of the
revolution’s heroes.
(SFEC, 7/12/98, Z1 p.4)
1986 The Reunion island volcano
Piton de la Fournaise erupted. The lava cooled into bizarre
formations that became a tourist attraction.
(SFC, 3/14/98, p.C1)
1986 Vladimir Voynovich
(b.1932), Russian dissident writer, wrote his satirical dystopian
novel "Moscow 2042."
(WSJ, 7/15/97,
p.A18)(http://wapedia.mobi/en/Moscow_2042)
1986 Soviet dissident Anatoly
B. Sharansky was released from a Soviet prison as part of a prisoner
exchange between the East and West and soon moved to Israel. He
changed his name to Natan Sharansky and became head of the
new-immigrants party, Yisrael Ba-Aliya. He later became a deputy
PM.
(AP, 7/14/98)(SFC, 5/4/02, p.A21)
1986 In South Africa 10 youths
were drugged and then blown to pieces with explosives. In 1999
Abraham Joubert, former special forces commander, testified that he
authorized a plan for the slayings submitted by provincial special
forces commander Charl Naude.
(SFC, 4/7/99, p.C12)
1986 Adriaan Vlok was appointed
as South Africa’s minister of law and order and still headed the
ministry when allegations surfaced in 1989 that police hit squads
may have been involved in the murder of more than 100 political
activists.
(AP, 8/28/06)
1986 The Belhar Confession, a
Christian statement of belief originally, was written in Afrikaans
and adopted by the synod of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church in
South Africa. It stressed racial and social inclusiveness.
(Econ, 10/18/08,
p.70)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belhar_Confession)
1986 Hyundai, a South Korean
auto maker, entered the US market with low cost cars.
(Econ, 6/23/07, p.72)
1986 Portugal and Spain entered
the European Union expanding the membership to 12.
(WSJ, 5/23/96, p.A-1)(SFC, 7/18/03, p.D5)(Econ,
6/13/09, SR p.3)
1986 Spain’s Socialist
government paid $30 million and returned 100 properties to the
Socialist-leaning General Workers Union. In 1997 the union sought an
additional $155 million for hundreds of other properties.
(SFEC,12/28/97, p.A18)
1986 Ahmed Al-Mirghani (d.2008
at 67) headed the last democratically elected government of Sudan
until 1989 before a military coup led by current President Omar
al-Bashir unseated him.
(AP, 11/3/08)
1986 In Sudan Sadiq al-Mahdi
became the country’s last democratically elected prime minister.
(Econ, 12/13/08, p.68)
1986 Sudan became subject to
American sanctions. The IMF ended financial assistance to Sudan.
(Econ, 8/5/06, p.42)
1986 Taiwan’s Pres. Chiang
Ching-kuo, the son of Chiang Kai-shek, decided to open up the
political life with Democratic reforms.
(SFEC, 3/19/00, p.A22)(Econ, 12/9/06, p.47)
1986 In Taiwan the Democratic
Progressive Party was established in opposition to the Nationalist
Party and advocated formal independence from China.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.A12)
1986 The constitution of the
Turks and Caicos Islands was suspended following an inquiry into
arson and alleged corruption.
(Econ, 8/22/09, p.34)
1986 In Uganda Yoweri Museveni
was shown in photographs as a victorious guerrilla leader. Over the
next ten years he brought peace and fast economic growth to most of
Uganda. He ruled by cooperating on regional issues, pursuing
economic reforms, and stifling the opposition with restrictions on
political parties.
(SFC, 5/4/96, p.A-8)
1986 Vietnam introduced doi moi
(renovation), a policy of economic renovation, that sparked massive
economic change. It gradually shifted the centrally planned economy
to a market economy.
(SFEM, 6/9/96, p.9)(NG, May, 04, p.96)(SFC,
5/30/06, p.C1)
1986 Yemen discovered oil.
(AP, 6/24/06)
1986-1988 Jacques Chirac served his 2nd term as
prime minister of France.
(Econ, 3/17/07, p.28)
1986-1988 In Japan Kiichi Miyazawa served as
finance minister. He presided over a "bubble economy" period of
inflated land and stock prices.
(SFC, 7/31/98, p.A16)
1986-1989 Arms were channeled into Darfur by
Sudan’s central government under Sadiq al-Mahdi, which armed the
southern Baggara Arabs as a militia to fight against the SPLA (at
that time threatening insurgency in the region), and also armed the
northern Arab tribes, who were loyal to the Ansar of the Prime
Minister's Umma Party.
(www.sudanupdate.org/REPORTS/PEOPLES/Darf.htm)
1986-1991 Michael Bruno (1932-1996) was governor
of the Bank of Israel.
(SFC, 12/27/96, p.A24)
1986-1991 In Vietnam Nguyen Van Linh (d.1998)
served as the Communist party general-secretary. He urged
free-market policies and wrote a newspaper column titled "Things
That Must Be Done Immediately." He ended collective farming and
loosened government controls over state factories. He ended the
decade long occupation of Cambodia and normalized relations with
China.
(SFC, 4/28/98, p.A16)
1986-1995 About half of the US 3,234 savings and
loans closed up shop, following a failed expansion into consumer
real-estate lending. Congress responded by creating the Resolution
Trust Corp. (1989) to make depositors whole and clean up the
industry at a cost of at least $124 billion.
(WSJ, 9/20/08, p.A3)
1986-1996 The 7th Betty Crocker [General Mills
advertising icon] made her appearance with a floppy bow tie.
(WSJ, 7/5/96, p.A6)
1986-1996 The US provided $1.2 billion in aid to
Bolivia.
(WSJ, 12/6/96, p.A12)
1986-2006 In Chile the poverty rate during this
period fell from 45% to just 13.7% of the population.
(Econ, 9/19/09, p.47)