Timeline 1987
Return to home
1987 Jan 1,
Nicaragua’s Sandinista Constitution was promulgated. It provided the
final step in the institutionalization of the Sandinista regime and
the framework under which the Chamorro government would take office.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Nicaragua)
1987 Jan 3, At the top of the
record charts included: Walk Like an Egyptian by the Bangles;
Everybody Have Fun Tonight by Wang Chung; Notorious by Duran Duran;
Mind Your Own Business by Hank Williams, Jr.
(www.440.com/twtd/archives/jan03.html)
1987 Jan 3, The first
woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was ‘Lady Soul’:
Aretha Franklin (b.1942). Bill Haley was among the 14 others
inducted.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aretha_Franklin)(http://tinyurl.com/mn5j6)
1987 Jan 4, An Amtrak train
bound from Washington to Boston collided with Conrail engines
approaching from a side track in Chase, Md., and 16 people were
killed.
(AP, 1/4/98)
1987 Jan 6, The US Senate voted
88-4 to establish an 11-member panel to hold public hearings on the
Iran-Contra affair.
(AP, 1/6/07)
1987 Jan 6, Astronomers
reported sighting a new galaxy 12 billion light years away.
(HN, 1/6/99)
1987 Jan 7, The US House of
Representatives, by House Resolution 12, established the Select
Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran. The US
Senate passed a similar resolution a day earlier. The two Chambers
instructed their respective Committees to work together and charged
them with investigating, among other things, any activity of any
officer or entity of the United States Government relating to the
Iran initiative.
(www.pinknoiz.com/covert/weinberger.html)
1987 Jan 8, For the first time,
the Dow Jones industrial average closed above 2,000, ending the day
at 2002.25.
(AP, 1/8/98)
1987 Jan 9, The White House
released a memorandum prepared for President Reagan in January 1986
that showed a definite link between US arms sales to Iran and the
release of American hostages in Lebanon.
(AP, 1/9/07)
1987 Jan 12, Neil Goldschmidt
(b.1940), former mayor of Portland, began serving a 4-year term as
governor of Oregon. He later served under Pres. Carter as Sec. of
Transportation. It was later reported that Goldschmidt had engaged
in a 3-year relationship, while mayor of Portland, with a girl (14)
who babysat his children.
(http://tinyurl.com/5l7rj)(SFC, 4/5/05, p.A11)
1987 Jan 12, Anglican Church
envoy Terry Waite arrived in Lebanon on his latest mission to win
the release of Western hostages; however, Waite ended up being taken
captive himself.
(AP, 1/12/07)
1987 Jan 13, West German police
arrested Mohammed Ali Hamadi at the Frankfurt airport, when customs
officials discovered liquid explosives in his luggage. The Lebanese
man was convicted and served a life sentence in Germany for the 1985
hijacking of a TWA jetliner and killing of a U.S. Navy diver.
Although convicted and sentenced to life, Hamadi was paroled by
Germany in December 2005.
(AP, 12/20/05)(AP, 1/13/07)
1987 Jan 14, Sam Wagstaff,
photo collector, died. His collection of 7,500 prints was sold to
the Getty Museum in 1984 for a reported $5 million.
(WSJ, 1/30/97, p.A14)(http://tinyurl.com/e9t5m)
1987 Jan 15, Ray Bolger
(b.1904), actor and dancer, died in Los Angeles. He played the
Scarecrow in the 1939 production of the “Wizard of Oz.”
(www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=1528)
1987 Jan 16, Lita McClinton
Sullivan was shot to death at her home in Atlanta by a man with
roses posing as a delivery person. Florida millionaire James Vincent
Sullivan paid a man $25,000 to kill Lita McClinton Sullivan to avoid
losing property in a divorce. In 2003 a Thai court ruled to
extradite Sullivan (61). In 2004 James Vincent Sullivan arrived in
Atlanta, Ga., for prosecution. In 2006 he was convicted of murder
and sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 2/15/03)(WSJ, 4/13/04, p.A1)(SFC, 3/15/06,
p.A3)
1987 Jan 16, China’s Communist
Party chief Hu Yaobang became the scapegoat for student protests and
was forced to resign. He was succeeded by Zhao Ziyang.
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A4)
1987 Jan 16, In Spain Jose
Ignacio De Juana Chaos (b.1955), a former police officer who joined
one of ETA's most active commando units, was arrested. In 1989 he
was convicted of killing 25 people in a string of attacks, including
the Madrid car bombing that killed 12 Civil Guard policemen on July
14, 1986. In 2008 De Juana Chaos (52) was released from prison after
serving 21 years.
(AP,
8/2/08)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%C3%B1aki_de_Juana_Chaos)
1987 Jan 17, A Reagan
Administration official who initiated the arms shipments to Iran,
acknowledged that the US had virtually no independent intelligence
to support its policy.
(http://tinyurl.com/py89w)
1987 Jan 17, Hans Fricke on an
undersea expedition off the east coast of Africa at a 180 meters
from Grande Comore’s west coast found and filmed a coelacanth fish
at a depth of 198 meters.
(NG, 6/1988, p.827)
1987 Jan 20, Anglican Church
envoy Terry Waite disappeared in Beirut, Lebanon, while attempting
to negotiate the release of Western hostages. He was freed in
November 1991.
(AP, 1/20/98)
1987 Jan 21, In South Africa a
paramilitary force killed 13 civilians in their sleep in the
KwaMakutha Zulu township (KwaZulu-Natal black homeland). In 1996
former defense minister Magnus Malan and 20 others were charged with
authorizing the killing. The first six defendants of the Inkatha
Freedom party were acquitted by Judge Jan Hugo. Former intelligence
officer Johan Opperman admitted to planning the attack.
(SFC,7/18/96, p.E3)(SFC,10/11/96,
p.A16)(WSJ,10/11/96, p.A1)(SFC,10/12/96, p.A10)
1987 Jan 22, R. Budd Dwyer,
Penn. State Treasurer, facing prison for conspiracy & perjury,
shot himself to death at a televised news conference.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Budd_Dwyer)
1987 Jan 22, France named
Manuel Noriega, head of Panama, a Commander of the Legion of Honor
(Legion d’Honneur).
(http://watchingamerica.com/europe1000001.shtml)
1987 Jan 24, Gunmen in Lebanon
kidnapped educators Alann Steen, Jesse Turner, Robert Polhill and
Mitheleshwar Singh. All were later released.
(AP, 1/24/98)
1987 Jan 24, About 20,000 civil
rights demonstrators marched through predominantly white Forsyth
County, Ga., a week after a smaller march was disrupted by Ku Klux
Klan members and supporters.
(AP, 1/24/98)
1987 Jan 31, Discount airline
pioneer People Express flew its last flights before merging into
Continental Airlines.
(AP, 1/31/00)
1987 Jan, The S&P 500 Index
rose a record 13% this January.
(SSFC, 1/5/03, p.G5)
1987 Jan, San Francisco station
KRON-TV became the first major market TV station in the US to air a
condom commercial.
(www.tvacres.com/sex_contraceptives_firsts.htm)
1987 Jan, In China Deng
Xiaoping expelled leading dissident intellectuals from the party.
(WSJ, 2/20/97, p.A20)(http://tinyurl.com/k8cgn)
1987 Feb 1, Terry Williams of
Los Gatos, CA, won the largest slot machine payoff to that time. He
put $4.9 million in his pockets after getting four lucky "7s" on a
machine in Reno, NV.
(www.igt.com/Content/base.asp?pid=8.17.37.19)
1987 Feb 1, Sala Burton
(b.1925), US Representative from California (1983-1987), died of
colon cancer in Washington, DC. She served as president of the San
Francisco Democratic Women's Forum from 1957 to 1959. Burton was
succeeded by Nancy Pelosi.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sala_Burton)
1987 Feb 2, The White House
announced the resignation of CIA director William Casey, who was
hospitalized and had undergone brain surgery.
(AP, 2/2/06)
1987 Feb 2, Largest steel
strike in American history, in progress since August, ended.
(HN, 2/2/99)
1987 Feb 3, The San Diego Yacht
Club celebrated the victory of skipper Dennis Conner and the Stars
and Stripes over Australia to sweep the America's Cup series.
(AP, 2/3/97)
1987 Feb 4, Congress overrode
Pres Reagan's veto of Clean Water Act. Changes in the 1972 Act
phased out the construction grants program, replacing it with the
State Water Pollution Control Revolving Fund, more commonly known as
the Clean Water State Revolving Fund.
{ReaganR, USA, Environment}
(www.epa.gov/r5water/cwa.htm)(www.agiweb.org/legis105/cwupdate.html)
1987 Feb 4, Pianist Liberace
(67) died of AIDS at his home in Palm Springs, Calif.
(AP, 2/4/97)
1987 Feb 6, No-smoking rules
took effect in US federal buildings.
(http://tinyurl.com/kjge6)
1987 Feb 6, Wall Street Journal
reporter Gerald Seib was released after being detained six days by
Iran, accused of being a spy for Israel; Iran said the detention was
a result of misunderstandings.
(AP, 2/6/07)
1987 Feb 9, Robert McFarlane
(1919-2006), former US national security adviser, attempted suicide.
(www.tarpley.net/bush18.htm)
1987 Feb 9, Antanas
Sabaniauskas (b.1903), Lithuania's leading pop tenor, died.
(http://lt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antanas_%C5%A0abaniauskas)
1987 Feb 11, Peggy Hettrick
(37) in Fort Collins, Colorado, was murdered. Timothy Masters (15)
was convicted and sentenced to life in 1999 for the crime. He served
nine and a half years of a life sentence for the murder until DNA
evidence from the body in 2008 was found to match the victim's
ex-boyfriend and not the Masters.
(Reuters, 1/22/08)
1987 Feb 12, White youths in
Queens County, NYC, connected to the Howard Beach racial attacks of
December, 1986, were indicted on charges ranging from second-degree
murder to inciting to riot and criminal facilitation.
(www.queenstribune.com/anniversary2003/1987.htm)
1987 Feb 12, In Alabama
surviving relatives of a black man murdered by KKK members were
awarded $7 million in damages.
{Alabama, USA, KKK, Black History}
(http://tinyurl.com/g86jq)
1987 Feb 12, A Court in Texas
upheld an $8.5 billion fine imposed on Texaco for the illegal
takeover of Getty Oil.
(HN, 2/12/98)
1987 Feb 12, Friends of the
poet Boris Pasternak and of Russian culture agreed that the 1958
resolution expelling Pasternak from the Writers' Union had to be
rescinded. People met and voted in the same ornate conference room
where, thirty years earlier, the great poet had been cast out of the
union.
(www.thenation.com/archive/search.mhtml)
1987 Feb 14, Dmitry Borisovich
Kabalevsky (b.1904), Russian composer, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Borisovich_Kabalevsky)
1987 Feb 15, ABC-TV began
broadcasting "Amerika" mini-series.
(www.museum.tv/archives/etv/A/htmlA/amerika/amerika.htm)
1987 Feb 16, John Demjanjuk
(66), a retired auto worker from Ohio, went on trial in Jerusalem,
accused of being "Ivan the Terrible," a guard at the Treblinka
concentration camp. He was convicted, but the Israeli Supreme Court
overturned the ruling.
(AP,
2/16/98)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Demjanjuk)
1987 Feb 19, An anti-smoking ad
aired for the 1st time on TV and featured Yul Brynner (1920-1985),
who had died of lung cancer.
(www.terramedia.co.uk/Chronomedia/years/1987.htm)
1987 Feb 19, US Pres. Reagan
lifted remaining economic sanctions against Poland.
(www.eco.utexas.edu/~hmcleave/rieprop.html)
1987 Feb 19, New York Governor
Mario Cuomo declared that he would not run for president in the next
election.
(HN, 2/19/98)
1987 Feb 20, The Unabomber
placed a bomb in a parking lot behind CAAMS computer store in Salt
Lake City. CAAMS vice president, Gary Wright was seriously injured.
(WP, 6/29/96, p.A3)(AP, 2/20/98)
1987 Feb 20, Soviet authorities
released Jewish activist Josef Begun.
(AP, 2/20/98)
1987 Feb 22, Pop artist Andy
Warhol (b.1928) died at a New York City hospital at age 58. His
parents belonged to the Carpatho-Rusyns ethnic group. David Bourdon
wrote a study of Warhol in 1989. In 1994 the Andy Warhol Museum
opened in Pittsburgh, where he was born.
(WSJ, 4/26/96, p.A-1)(SFC, 4/4/98, p.A24)(AP,
2/22/99)(SFEC, 8/13/00, p.T11)
1987 Feb 22, David Susskind
(66), talk-show host, was found dead in his Manhattan hotel suite.
(AP, 2/22/07)
1987 Feb 22, The Finance
Ministers and Central Bank Governors of six major industrial
countries (Canada, France, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom, United
States, G6) met in Paris and agreed in the Louvre Accord to bring
down the value of the dollar.
(Econ, 4/29/06,
p.82)(www.g7.utoronto.ca/finance/fm870408.htm)
1987 Feb 23, The IMB
(Irvine-Michigan-Brookhaven) radiation detector near Cleveland
recorded neutrinos from the supernova. Neutrinos were also detected
in Japan on a similar machine, Kamiokande II.
(NG, 5/88, p.636)
1987 Feb 24, Fawn Hall, former
personal secretary to fired National Security Council aide Oliver L.
North, posed for news photographers outside her attorney's office,
calling the attention "a little overwhelming."
(AP, 2/24/07)
1987 Feb 24, Ian Shelton,
astronomer, found a new fierce light in the sky created by the
titanic explosion of a nearby star in the Large Magellanic Cloud,
Supernova 1987A. This was the first time since 1604 that such an
event could be seen with the naked eye. It was the first supernova
of the year. It is located 170,000 light-years away.
(NG, 5/88, p.619-620)(NH, 10/1/04, p.30)
1987 Feb 25, US Supreme Court
upheld affirmative action with a 5-4 vote.
(www.factmonster.com/spot/affirmativetimeline1.html#1987)
1987 Feb 25, The US Supreme
Court ruled that California cannot bar gambling on Indian tribal
land. This win by the Cabazon tribe opened the door to Indian
gambling nationwide.
(SFC, 5/11/04, p.B8)(WSJ, 9/27/05,
p.A1)(http://tinyurl.com/7ub24)
1987 Feb 26, British stores
released the 1st Beatles compact discs.
(www.guardian.co.uk/thebeatles/story/0,,606496,00.html)
1987 Feb 26, NBA's Michael
Jordan's scored 58 points for a Chicago Bull record.
(www.nba.com/jordan/hoop_86-87.html)
1987 Feb 26, The Tower
Commission, which probed the Iran-Contra affair, issued its report,
which rebuked President Reagan for failing to control his national
security staff.
(AP, 2/26/98)
1987 Feb 26, NASA launched
GOES-H (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite). It
carried experimental search and rescue equipment.
(http://goespoes.gsfc.nasa.gov/goes/timeline.html)
1987 Feb 26, USSR resumed
nuclear testing at Semipalitinsk in Eastern Kazakhstan.
(www.nti.org/f_wmd411/1987.html)
1987 Feb 27, "Washington Week
In Review" celebrated its 20th anniversary on PBS.
(http://tinyurl.com/g88rg)(www.pbs.org/weta/washingtonweek/about.html)
1987 Feb 27, Donald Regan
resigned as White House chief of staff.
(www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1987/87feb.htm)
1987 Feb, Britain’s PM Margaret
Thatcher privatized BAA (British Airports Authority). From a
lethargic government bureaucracy it grew to become a major airport
operator.
(http://labhist.tripod.com/b12.htm)(WSJ, 9/24/96,
p.A1)
1987 Mar 2, Two sets of
quintuplets were born on the same day in the USA as Rosalind Helms
delivered a basketball team of bouncing babies in Peoria, IL and
Robin Jenkins became the mother of five in Las Vegas, NV.
(HC, Internet, 2/3/98)
1987 Mar 2, US government
officials reported that the median price for a new home had topped
$100,000 for the first time. The new six-figure price of $110,700
was up from $94,600.
(HC, Internet, 2/3/98)
1987 Mar 2, The Macintosh II
computer was introduced. The 1st color Mac had a CPU speed of 16 MHz
and sold for $3,898.
(SFC, 1/24/04,
p.A12)(www.applematters.com/index.php/section/history/2006/03/02/)
1987 Mar 3, Danny Kaye
(b.1913), actor, singer, dancer, comedian, broadcaster and American
entertainment icon, died in Los Angeles.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Kaye)
1987 Mar 4, President Reagan
addressed the nation on the Iran-Contra affair. He took full
responsibility for the affair acknowledging his overtures to Iran
had "deteriorated" into an arms-for-hostages deal. Michale Ledeen,
Pentagon employee, later authored "Perilous Statecraft: An Insider's
Account of the Iran-Contra Affair."
(AP, 3/4/98)(HN, 3/4/98)(SFC, 5/14/03, p.A19)
1987 Mar 4, Jonathon Pollard
(b.1954), US naval intelligence analyst convicted of conspiracy to
commit espionage, was sentenced to life in prison without parole. He
had sought to share US intelligence on Iraqi weapons with Israel and
did so when after his superiors disagreed.
(WSJ, 1/25/96, p.A-16)(WSJ, 1/28/98,
p.A18)(www.jonathanpollard.org/2000/010900.htm)
1987 Mar 6, The British ferry
Herald of Free Enterprise capsized in the Channel off the coast of
Belgium after water rushed through the open bow doors. 189 people
died when the ferry capsized off the Belgian port of Zeebrugge.
(HN, 3/6/98)(AP, 3/6/98)
1987 Mar 9, Chrysler Corp.
announced it had agreed to buy the financially ailing American
Motors Corp.
(AP, 3/9/07)
1987 Mar 10, Daniel Morgan
(37), a private detective, was murdered with an ax in his head
outside a London pub. At the time of his death, it is believed
Morgan was about to expose a south London drug network, possibly
involving corrupt police officers. In 2008 6 men wee arrested
for involvement in the killing of Morgan.
(AP,
4/22/08)(www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/apr/22/ukcrime)
1987 Mar 10, Charles Haughey
(1925-2006), head of Fianna Fail, was elected Taoiseach of Ireland
for a 3rd term and held the position until 1992. Under his tenure
ministers took cash from property and construction interests.
(Econ, 10/16/04, Survey
p.8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Haughey)
1987 Mar 10, The Vatican
condemned surrogate parenting as well as test-tube and artificial
insemination.
(HN, 3/10/98)
1987 Mar 12, "Les Miserables"
opened on Broadway. It was written by Alain Boublil and
Claude-Michel Schonberg.
(AP,
3/12/98)(www.jimsdeli.com/theater/1997-before/les-miserables.htm)
1987 Mar 13, John Gotti was
acquitted of racketeering.
(HN, 3/13/98)
1987 Mar 13, The president of
Ecuador announced his country had suspended payments on its foreign
debt after earthquakes killed hundreds of people and ruptured the
country's main oil pipeline. The quake destroyed nearly 25 miles of
oil pipeline.
(AP, 3/13/97)(SFC, 5/1/03, A8)
1987 Mar 13, Gerald Moore
(b.1899), pianist, died in England. The book: “Am I Too Loud?,
Memoirs of Gerald Moore” was published in 1962.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Moore)
1987 Mar 14, President Reagan,
in his Saturday radio address, said he should have listened to
Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Defense Secretary Caspar
Weinberger when they advised him not to sell arms to Iran.
(AP, 3/14/97)
1987 Mar 15, "Starlight
Express" by Andrew Lloyd Weber, opened at Gershwin Theater in NYC
for 761 performances. The initial production had opened at the
Apollo Victoria Theatre in London on March 27 1984.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlight_Express)
1987 Mar 15, Peggy Say, the
sister of Terry Anderson, the Associated Press correspondent held
hostage in Lebanon, said President Reagan was being "unjustly
castigated" for his arms-for-hostages deal.
(AP, 3/15/97)
1987 Mar 16, Massachusetts Gov.
Michael Dukakis announced his candidacy for the Democratic
presidential nomination.
(AP, 3/16/97)
1987 Mar 17, A US federal
appeals court cleared the way for the perjury indictment of former
White House aide Michael Deaver (b.1938). He was later convicted of
three of five perjury counts and fined $100,000.
(AP,
3/17/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Deaver)
1987 Mar 18, Susan Butcher won
her second consecutive Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, covering the
distance from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska, in 11 days, 2 hours, 5
minutes and 13 seconds.
(AP, 3/18/97)
1987 Mar 19, Televangelist Jim
Bakker resigned as chairman of his PTL ministry organization amid a
sex and money scandal involving Jessica Hahn, a former church
secretary from Oklahoma. Some $265,000 in ministry funds had been
used to keep Hahn quiet about a one-time sexual encounter in 1980.
(AP, 3/19/97)(SSFC, 7/22/07, p.B7)
1987 Mar 19, President Reagan,
in a news conference, repudiated his policy of selling arms to Iran,
saying, "I would not go down that road again."
(AP, 3/19/97)
1987 Mar 20, The Food and Drug
Administration approved the sale of AZT, a drug shown to prolong the
lives of some AIDS patients. Jerome Horwitz of the Barbara Ann
Karmanos Cancer Institute and Wayne State University School of
Medicine first synthesized AZT in 1964 under a US National
Institutes of Health (NIH) grant. It was developed by
Burroughs-Welcome (later part of GlaxoSmithKline).
(WSJ, 1/30/96, p.A-16)(AP,
3/20/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zidovudine)(Econ, 6/2/12,
p.80)
1987 Mar 21, Dean Paul Martin
(Dino, b.1951), the son of singer Dean Martin, died when his
National Guard F-4 Phantom fighter jet crashed in a mountainous area
of California, killing him and his RIO (Radar Intercept Officer),
Ramon Ortiz. From then on the father became somewhat of a recluse
until his own death in 1995.
(SFEC, 9/8/96, DB
p.40)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Paul_Martin)
1987 Mar 21, Actor Robert
Preston, best-known for his portrayal of conman Professor Harold
Hill in the musical "The Music Man," died in Santa Barbara, Calif.,
at age 68.
(AP, 3/21/97)
1987 Mar 22, A garbage barge,
carrying 3,200 tons of refuse, left Islip, N.Y., on a six-month
journey in search of a place to unload. The barge was turned away by
several states and three countries until space was found back in
Islip.
(AP, 3/22/97)
1987 Mar 23, The American soap
opera "Bold and Beautiful" premiered.
(www.tv.com/the-bold-and-the-beautiful/show/1232/summary.html)
1987 Mar 23, Jerry Collins, a
millionaire greyhound racetrack owner, donated $1.3 million to help
evangelist Oral Roberts reach his goal of raising $8 million for
medical scholarships.
(AP, 3/23/97)
1987 Mar 23, US offered
military protection to Kuwaiti ships in the Persian Gulf.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1987 Mar 24, ACT-UP had its
first demonstration at the New York Stock Exchange over the high
prices of AZT and the long FDA process for approving drugs. Earlier
this month writer Larry Kramer had urged the formation of a
"political action" group to fight AIDS in New York. Kramer helped
found the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, ACT UP.
(SFC, 3/22/97, p.A13)(NW, 6/11/01, p.46)
1987 Mar 24, French Premier
Jacques Chirac signed a contract with Walt Disney Productions for
the creation of a Disneyland amusement park, the first in Europe.
(AP, 3/23/97)
1987 Mar 25, The US Supreme
Court ruled employers may sometimes favor women and members of
minority groups over men and whites in hiring and promoting in order
to achieve better balance in the work force.
(AP, 3/25/97)
1987 Mar 25, The FDA announced
a 2-year reduction in the drug approval process.
(SFC, 3/22/97, p.A13)
1987 Mar 26, "Fences" by August
Wilson (1945-2005) premiered in NYC.
(www.theatredatabase.com/20th_century/august_wilson_timeline.html)
1987 Mar 26, National
Federation of High Schools adopted college 3 point shot (21 feet).
The FIBA instituted the three-point shot at a distance of 20 feet, 6
inches (6.25 meters) in the international game in 1984.
(www.answerbag.com/c_view/222)
1987 Mar 26, Jessica Hahn, the
former church secretary who admitted to a sexual encounter with
former PTL head Jim Bakker, told reporters she had not tried to
blackmail Bakker, and expressed concern about "innocent bystanders
who have been hurt" by the scandal.
(AP, 3/26/97)
1987 Mar 26, NASA launched
Fltsatcom-6, but it failed after 51 seconds due to lightning.
(http://www.astronautix.com/craft/fltatcom.htm)
1987 Mar 27, The Marine Corps
charged that Sgt. Clayton J. Lonetree, a Marine guard, had escorted
Soviet agents through the U.S. Embassy in Moscow -- an accusation
that was later dropped, although Lonetree was convicted of
espionage.
(AP, 3/27/97)
1987 Mar 28, Maria Augusta von
Trapp (b.1905), one of the Trapp Family Singers, died in
Morrisville, Vt. Her 1949 book “The Story of the Trapp Family
Singers” was fictionalized in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical
The Sound of Music (1965).
(AP,
3/28/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_von_Trapp)
1987 Mar 29, The N.C.A.A.
Women's Basketball Rules Committee adopted the 3-point field-goal
shot from the same 19-feet-9-inch distance the men used.
(http://tinyurl.com/mgtog)
1987 Mar 29, Haiti’s
Constitution barred Duvalierists from candidacy for 10 years. The
new Constitution also abolished the death penalty.
(SFC, 9/21/00, p.C6)(AP, 1/17/11)
1987 Mar 29, Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Shamir was re-elected chairman of the right-wing
Herut Party, the largest party in the Likud bloc governing Israel as
part of a coalition.
(AP, 3/28/97)
1987 Mar 30, Vincent Van Gogh's
"Sunflowers" was bought for $39.85 million. The Vincent van Gogh
painting "Sunflowers" was presented by art teacher Claude-Emile
Schuffenecker at a 1901 Paris exhibition. It sold in 1987 for $40.3
million to the Yasuda Fire and Marine Insurance Co. and was reported
in 1997 to be a possible fake. Van Gogh’s letters refer to only 6
paintings of sunflowers, and the Yasuda painting is a seventh.
(SFC,10/27/97, p.D4)(HN,
3/30/98)
1987 Mar 30 The movie "Platoon"
won four Academy Awards, including best picture; Paul Newman was
named best actor for "The Color of Money," Marlee Matlin won best
actress for "Children of a Lesser God."
(AP, 3/30/97)
1987 Mar 31, Indiana Univ. won
the NCAA basketball finals with a last-second, corner shot by Keith
Smart.
(WSJ, 4/4/03, p.B2)(http://tinyurl.com/rcskk)
1987 Mar 31, The judge in the
"Baby M" case in Hackensack, N.J., awarded custody of the girl born
under a surrogate-motherhood contract to her father, William Stern,
instead of the surrogate, Mary Beth Whitehead.
(AP, 3/31/97)
1987 Mar, In San Francisco
Grimes Poznikov, aka the Automatic Human Jukebox, was ticketed by
noise police and lost his street corner near Ghirardelli Square
after 15 years of entertaining tourists. His horn was recorded as 13
decibels too high.
(SSFC, 4/1/12, DB p.38)
1987 Apr 1, In his first major
speech on the AIDS epidemic, President Reagan told doctors in
Philadelphia, "We've declared AIDS public health enemy number one."
(AP, 4/1/98)
1987
Apr 1, Steve Newman became the first man to walk around the
world.
(www.bluffton.edu/about/news/NewsReleases.asp?Show=120105_01)
1987 Apr 2, IBM announced the
upcoming release of the PS/2 and OS/2 computers featuring the
Microsoft MS OS/2 and Windows 2.0 computer operating systems.
(Wired, 12/98,
p.196)(http://pages.prodigy.net/michaln/history/pr/87apr_m3592.html)
1987 Apr 2, Buddy Rich
(b.1917), jazz drummer, died.
(www.drummerworld.com/drummers/Buddy_Rich.html)
1987 Apr 3, Stock prices
rocketed on Wall Street as the Dow Jones industrial average soared
69.89 points, ending the day at a record 2,390.34.
(AP, 4/3/97)
1987 Apr 3, Duchess of
Windsor's jewels were auctioned for 31,380,197 pounds ($50 million).
(http://tinyurl.com/l4o9h)
1987 Apr 4, During a visit to
Chile, Pope John Paul II denounced torture and pleaded for
reconciliation.
(AP, 4/4/97)
1987 Apr 5, Fox Broadcasting
Co. made its prime-time TV debut by airing the premiere episodes of
"Married ... With Children" and "The Tracey Ullman Show" three times
each. In 2004 Daniel M. Kimmel authored “The Fourth Network.” Ron
Leavitt (1947-2008), writer and producer, co-created “Married… With
Children” with Michael Moye.
(AP, 4/5/02)(WSJ, 6/11/04, p.W4)(SFC, 2/13/08,
p.B7)
1987 Apr 5, In New York state
the Schoharie Creek Bridge, a New York State Thruway bridge over the
Schoharie Creek near Fort Hunter, collapsed killing 10 people.
(SFC, 4/11/09,
p.D12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schoharie_Creek_Bridge_collapse)
1987 Apr 6, The Dow Jones
industrial average closed above 2,400 for the first time.
(AP, 4/6/97)
1987 Apr 6, Sugar Ray Leonard
upset Marvelous Marvin Hagler to become middleweight champion.
(AP, 4/6/97)
1987 Apr 6, Los Angeles Dodgers
executive Al Campanis said on ABC's "Nightline" that blacks "may not
have some of the necessities" to hold managerial jobs in
major-league baseball. Campanis ended up being fired over his
remarks.
(AP, 4/6/07)
1987 Apr 7, Chicago Mayor
Harold Washington handily won a second term, quashing a challenge by
archrival Edward Vrdolyak.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1987 Apr 7, Frances Newton (22)
allegedly killed her husband and 2 children in Houston to gain
insurance benefits. According to a reprieve petition, Adrian Newton
was a drug user and drug seller and there was evidence that some
sort of trouble in this regard was brewing before the murder. In
2005 she was executed in Huntsville, Texas, the 1st black woman to
be executed by the state since the Civil War.
(SFC, 9/15/05, p.A3)(http://tinyurl.com/9mw34)
1987 Apr 7, Ali Mecili, a
lawyer active in Algeria's human rights movement, was killed by
three gunshots in the foyer of his Paris apartment. Colleagues
accused the Algerian government of involvement. In 2008 Algerian
diplomat Mohamed Ziane Hasseni was arrested at an airport in the
French port city of Marseille, based on an international arrest
warrant. A Paris judge had signed the orders for the arrest of
Hassani and the suspected killer, Abdelmalek Amellouet, in December
last year. Hasseni was released on Feb 27.
(AP, 10/17/08)(http://tinyurl.com/67pryj)(AP,
2/2809)
1987 Apr 8, Al Campanis, Dodger
executive for more than 40 years, was fired after saying on ABC's
"Nightline" that blacks may lack some of the "necessities" for
becoming baseball managers.
(www.baseballlibrary.com/baseballlibrary/chronology/1987APRIL.stm)(AP,
4/8/97)
1987 Apr 9, Responding to
charges of bugging at the new U.S. Embassy in Moscow, Soviet
officials displayed microphones and other gadgets they said were
found in Soviet missions in the United States.
(AP, 4/9/97)
1987 Apr 10, President Reagan
and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev delivered speeches on nuclear
arms, with the president challenging the Soviets to join the United
States in working harder for arms reductions, and Gorbachev
proposing talks on short-range weapons.
(AP, 4/10/97)
1987 Apr 11, Invoking emergency
powers, the government of South Africa outlawed any action, word or
written document protesting the practice of detention without trials
or calling for the release of detainees.
(AP, 4/11/97)
1987 Apr 11, Erskine Caldwell
(83), Georgia-born novelist (Tobacco Road), died.
(www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-497)
1987 Apr 11, Primo Levi
(b.1920), Italian chemist, Auschwitz survivor and writer, died in
Italy. In 2002 Carole Angier authored: "Primo Levi: A Biography."
His books included the 1947 memoir "If This Is a Man" and "The
Periodic Table." In 2002 Carole Angier authored the biography "The
Double Bond."
(SSFC, 5/26/02, p.M1)(WSJ, 6/14/02,
p.W10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primo_Levi)
1987 Apr 12, Texaco Inc.,
fighting an $11 billion judgment in favor of Pennzoil Co. stemming
from Texaco's acquisition of Getty Oil Co., filed for federal
bankruptcy protection. Texaco, with assets of $33.8 billion, later
settled with Pennzoil for $3 billion.
(AP, 4/12/97)(SFC, 4/7/01, p.A4)
1987 Apr 13, Gary Hart
announced his bid for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination.
(AP, 4/13/97)
1987 Apr 13, Ervin Nyiregyhazi
(b.1903), Hungarian-born pianist, died in Los Angeles. He had been a
child prodigy and arrived in the US in 1920, where he married 10
times and left behind over a 1000 largely unknown works. In 2007
Kevin Bazzana authored: “Lost Genius: The Story of a Forgotten
Musical Maverick.”
(WSJ, 10/24/07,
p.D10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ervin_Ny%C3%ADregyh%C3%A1zi)
1987 Apr 13, Portugal signed an
agreement to return Macau to China in 1999.
(http://tinyurl.com/kq3l5)
1987 Apr 14, Secretary of State
George P. Shultz met at the Kremlin with Soviet leader Mikhail S.
Gorbachev, who proposed the elimination of short-range nuclear
missiles in East Germany and Czechoslovakia as part of an arms
control agreement with the United States.
(AP, 4/14/97)
1987 Apr 14, The Turkish
Government formally applied to join the European Communities.
(http://europa.eu.int/abc/history/1987/index_en.htm)
1987 Apr 15, Alfred Uhry's
"Driving Miss Daisy," premiered in NYC.
(www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-1525)
1987 Apr 15, A jury in
Northampton, Mass., found Amy Carter, Abbie Hoffman and 13 other
protesters innocent of charges stemming from a demonstration against
CIA recruiters at the University of Massachusetts.
(AP, 4/15/97)
1987 Apr 16, Winners of the
1987 Pulitzer Prizes included August Wilson's "Fences" for drama and
Peter Taylor's "A Summons to Memphis" for fiction.
1987 Apr 16, The Federal
Communications Commission put broadcasters on notice it would impose
a broader definition of indecency over the airwaves.
(AP, 4/16/97)
1987 Apr 16, Iraqi forces
attacked the Kurdish villages of Basilan and Sheik Wasan. This is
believed to be the first time Saddam's regime used chemical weapons
on Iraqi citizens.
(AP, 8/22/06)
1987 Apr 16, Swedish Radio
claimed Bofors paid kickbacks to top Indian politicians and key
defense officials to secure a deal.
(http://tinyurl.com/47jy7dp)
1987 Apr 17, President Reagan
slapped $300 million in punitive duties on imported Japanese
computers, television sets and power tools, in retaliation for
Japan's alleged violation of a computer chip trade agreement.
(AP, 4/17/97)
1987 Apr 17, Dick Shawn (57),
comic actor born as Richard Schulefand, died while on stage at UC
San Diego. He starred in the 1968 Mel Brooks film "The Producers."
(SSFC, 8/12/01, Par
p.2)(www.imdb.com/name/nm0790071/)
1987 Apr 17, The Iraqi military
won an important battle for Faw during Iran-Iraq war. This became a
national holiday until 2003.
(AP, 7/13/03)
1987 Apr 17, In Sri Lanka
Tamil extremists shot dead 127, mainly Sinhalese, in Trincomalee.
(http://tinyurl.com/mvxnv)
1987 Apr 18, President Reagan
used his weekly radio address to express hope the superpowers could
reach an agreement to sharply reduce the threat of
intermediate-range nuclear weapons.
(AP, 4/18/97)
1987 Apr 18, In Arizona Gregory
Robertson made a 200-mph free fall to save Debbie Williams, who had
collided with a fellow diver at around 9,000 feet and was knocked
unconscious.
(http://tinyurl.com/qruny)
1987 Apr 19, The last
free-flying condor in California, a 19-pound, 7-year-old male, was
captured. He was released in 2002.
(SFC, 3/3/00, p.A21)(SFC, 5/2/02, p.A6)
1987 Apr 19, Maxwell D. Taylor
(85), US commander 101st airborne (WW II), died.
(www.arlingtoncemetery.net/mdtaylor.htm)
1987 Apr 19, Argentina's
President Raul Alfonsin obtained the surrender of dozens of armed
rebel soldiers who had been holed up at a military base for three
days.
(AP, 4/19/97)
1987 Apr 19, Antony Tudor
(b.1909), dancer, British choreographer (American Ballet Theater)
died.
(SFC, 9/22/96, DB
p.31)(www.cmi.univ-mrs.fr/~esouche/dance/Tudor.html)
1987 Apr 20, The United States
deported Karl Linnas to the Soviet Union, where he had been
convicted in absentia of Nazi war crimes and faced a death sentence.
Linnas, who maintained his innocence, died of heart disease in
Leningrad the following July.
(AP, 4/20/97)
1987 Apr 21, The Senate panel
investigating the Iran-Contra affair voted to grant limited immunity
to President Reagan's former national security adviser, Rear Adm.
John M. Poindexter.
(AP, 4/21/97)
1987 Apr 21, In Sri Lanka Tamil
Tigers exploded a car bomb at the Colombo central bus stand and 113
people were killed.
(SFC, 7/24/96, p.A9)(http://tinyurl.com/mvxnv)
1987 Apr 22, Joe Hunt, leader
of a social and investment group called the "Billionaire Boys Club,"
was convicted by a jury in Santa Monica, Calif., of murdering Ron
Levin in 1984, a con man whose body had not been found. Hunt was
sentenced to life in prison. In 1992 Hunt was also tried for the
1984 killing of Hedayat Eslaminia, but a hung jury forced a
mistrial.
(SFC, 7/13/96, p. A17)(SFC, 3/29/97, p.A20)(AP,
4/22/97)(SSFC, 2/8/04, p.A28)
1987 Apr 23, In Connecticut 28
construction workers were killed when an apartment complex being
built in Bridgeport collapsed.
(AP, 4/23/97)
1987 Apr 24, In Greece 18
people, including 12 US military personnel, were injured when a
roadside bomb exploded in the port of Piraeus; the guerrilla group
November 17 claimed responsibility. In 2003 Dimitris Angelopoulos
testified that he drove a truck in the bus bombing.
(AP, 4/24/97)(AP, 3/26/03)
1987 Apr 25, Thousands of
people gathered in Washington for three days of protests against
U.S. foreign policy, particularly toward Central America and South
Africa.
(AP, 4/25/97)
1987 Apr 25, Larry Singleton
(d.2001), rapist, was paroled from California State Prison near
Chico after serving just over half of his 14 year sentence. A furor
erupted and state officials settled him in a trailer on the grounds
of San Quentin State Prison. In 1997 he stabbed a prostitute to
death in Florida.
(SFC, 1/1/02, p.A13)
1987 Apr 27, The US Justice
Department barred Austrian President Kurt Waldheim from entering the
US, saying he aided in the deportation and execution of thousands of
Jews and others as a German Army officer during World War II.
(AP, 4/27/97)
1987 Apr 28, Contra rebels in
Nicaragua killed Benjamin Ernest Linder (b.1959), an American
engineer working on a hydroelectric project for the Sandinista
government. In 2001 Joan Kruckewitt authored “The Death of Ben
Linder: The Story of a North American in Sandinista Nicaragua.”
(AP,
4/28/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Linder)
1987 Apr 30, President Reagan
welcomed Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone to the White
House.
(AP, 4/30/97)
1987 Apr 30, William Bennett,
US Education Secretary, called for mandatory AIDS testing for
several groups of people, including hospital patients and prison
inmates.
(AP, 4/30/97)
1987 Apr 30, The Christian
Coalition, created by Pat Robertson, was incorporated.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Coalition_of_America)
1987 Apr 30, Pope John Paul II
began a five-day visit to West Germany.
(AP, 4/30/97)
1987 Apr, An internal EPA memo
warned that the gasoline additive MTBE had a tendency to separate
from gasoline and leak into groundwater.
(SSFC, 8/19/01, p.A1)
1987 Apr, In Fiji the largely
Indian National Federation Party won elections.
(Econ, 4/24/04, p.88)
1987 May 1, James Webb (b.1946)
began serving as US Sec. of the Navy under Pres. Ronald Reagan. He
resigned in 1988 after refusing to agree to reduce the size of the
Navy.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_H._Webb)
1987 May 1, During a
visit to West Germany, Pope John Paul II beatified Edith Stein, a
Jewish-born Carmelite nun who was gassed in the Nazi concentration
camp at Auschwitz.
(AP, 5/1/97)
1987 May 2, Alysheba won the
113th running of the Kentucky Derby to earn a record $618,600; Bet
Twice came in second and Avies Copy was third.
(AP, 5/2/97)
1987 May 3,
The Miami Herald, in its Sunday edition, said its reporters had
observed a young woman spending "Friday night and most of Saturday"
at a Washington, D.C., townhouse belonging to Democratic
presidential candidate Gary Hart. The woman was later identified as
Donna Rice; the scandal torpedoed Hart's presidential bid.
(SFEC, 12/19/99, p.C12)(AP, 5/3/07)
1987 May 4, Pope John Paul II
ended his five-day visit to West Germany with a call for religious
freedom in the Soviet bloc and praise for those who had opposed the
"mass hysteria and propaganda" of the Nazi era.
(AP, 5/4/97)
1987 May 5, The congressional
Iran-Contra hearings opened with former Air Force Maj. General
Richard V. Secord as the lead-off witness.
(AP, 5/5/97)
1987 May 5, The US federal
government began a yearlong amnesty program, offering citizenship to
illegal immigrants who met certain conditions.
(AP, 5/5/97)
1987 May 5, In San Francisco
the 21st Street Baths at 3244 21st St. turned off its steam room and
shut down its adult movie theater in response to the AIDS epidemic.
The building was razed in 1996.
(SSFC, 5/13/12, p.42)(http://tinyurl.com/77xoonh)
1987 May 6, Democratic
presidential candidate Gary Hart held a news conference in Hanover,
N.H., in which he denied ever having an affair with Miami model
Donna Rice, but declined to say whether he'd ever committed
adultery. Washington Post reporter Paul Taylor asked him: "Have you
ever committed adultery?"
(AP, 5/6/97)(SFC, 4/14/99, p.A1)
1987 May 6, PTL's Jim Bakker
and Rich Dortch were dismissed from Assemblies of God.
(http://tinyurl.com/mu4cn)
1987 May 6, William J. Casey,
CIA Director (1981-1987), died at age 74.
(AP, 5/6/97)
1987 May 6, A London building
that housed the congress of South African Trade Unions was bombed
under orders of the apartheid government of South Africa.
(SFC, 9/18/96, p.A11)
1987 May 7, Democratic
presidential candidate Gary Hart, dogged by reports about his
relationship with Miami model Donna Rice, put his campaign on hold
and flew home to Denver to be with his family.
(AP, 5/7/97)
1987 May 8, An angry and
defiant Gary Hart, dogged by questions about his personal life and
his relationship with Miami model Donna Rice, withdrew from the race
for the Democratic presidential nomination.
(AP, 5/8/97)
1987 May 9, All 183 people
aboard a Polish jetliner were killed when the plane, bound for New
York, crashed and burned in Warsaw after the pilot attempted an
emergency return.
(AP, 5/9/97)
1987 May 10, President Reagan
visited Tuskegee University, one of the nation's oldest black
educational institutions, where he told graduating seniors his
administration "won't be satisfied until every American who wants a
job has a job and is earning a decent living."
(AP, 5/10/97)
1987 May 11, In a medical
first, doctors in Baltimore transplanted the heart and lungs of an
auto accident victim to Clinton House who gave up his own heart to a
2nd recipient. House, the nation's first living heart donor, died 14
months later.
(AP, 5/11/97)
1987 May 11, Former US National
Security Adviser Robert C. McFarlane began testifying at the
Iran-Contra hearings.
(AP, 5/11/97)
1987 May 11, The trial of
former Gestapo official Klaus Barbie began in Lyons, France.
(AP, 5/11/97)
1987 May 11, Legislative
elections in the Philippines gave pro-Aquino candidates a large
majority.
(www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0107887.html)
1987 May 12, Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Shamir rejected Foreign Minister Shimon Peres'
proposal for an international Middle East peace conference, calling
it "perverse and criminal." Peres angrily accused Shamir of
arrogance.
(AP, 10/12/97)
1987 May 13, President Reagan
said his personal diary confirmed that he'd talked with Saudi
Arabia's King Fahd about Saudi help for the Nicaraguan Contras at a
time when Congress banned military aid, but Reagan said he did not
solicit secret contributions.
(AP, 5/13/97)
1987 May 13, The Fijian army
under Col. Sitiveni Rabuka staged the 1st of two coups this and
overthrew the country’s first Indian-dominated government. A 2nd
coup followed on Sep 28. Sitiveni Rabuka later served as the prime
minister (1992-1999). UN peacekeeping operations had caused a
10-ford increase in military size since independence in 1970.
(SFC, 5/18/99, p.C12)(Econ, 4/24/04,
p.88)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitiveni_Rabuka)(WSJ, 9/29/07,
p.A6)
1987 May 14, The Commerce
Department reported that the U.S. trade deficit had narrowed in
March to $13.6 billion.
(AP, 5/14/97)
1987 May 14, A Colt revolver,
the Peacemaker of 1873, sold at auction for $242,000.
(http://tinyurl.com/ps7vw)
1987 May 14, Actress Rita
Hayworth died in New York at age 68. In 1983 James Hill (d.2001),
producer and former husband (1958-1961), authored "Rita Hayworth: A
Memoir."
(AP, 5/14/97)(SFC, 1/16/01, p.C4)
1987 May 15, President Reagan
told a gathering of out-of-town reporters at the White House he did
not consider himself "mortally wounded" by the Iran-Contra affair.
(AP, 5/15/97)
1987 May 15, The Soviet space
booster Energia took off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan
carrying a black container labeled Polyus with the Skif-DM inside.
The Skif-DM was a model a future weapon. Energia performed
flawlessly, but the Polyus, which was supposed to fire engines to
reach a higher orbit, shot back down to Earth and into the Pacific
Ocean. The Skif project came to a halt and Pres. Gorbachev did not
renew it.
(SSFC, 9/27/09, p.A24)
1987 May 16, Kentucky Derby
winner Alysheba captured the Preakness Stakes in Baltimore. Alysheba
fell short in the Belmont Stakes, failing to become the first Triple
Crown champion since Affirmed.
(AP, 5/16/97)
1987 May 16, "Bobro 400," a
barge carrying 3,200 tons of garbage, set sail from NY, beginning an
unsuccessful 8-week search for a dumping site.
(www.440.com/twtd/archives/may16.html)
1987 May 17, An Iraqi warplane
attacked the US Navy frigate Stark in the Persian Gulf and 37
American sailors were killed. Iraq and the United States called the
attack a mistake.
(NG, 5/88, p.653)(AP, 5/17/97)(HN, 5/17/98)
1987 May 17, Gunnar Myrdal
(b.1898), Swedish economist (Nobel 1974), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunnar_Myrdal)
1987 May 18, Sen. Paul Simon of
Illinois entered the Democratic presidential race.
(AP, 5/18/97)
1987 May 19, President Reagan
defended America's presence in the Persian Gulf, two days after 37
American sailors were killed when an Iraqi warplane attacked the
U.S. frigate Stark.
(AP, 5/19/97)
1987 May 20, Captain Glenn
Brindel, commander of the US frigate Stark, broke his silence
regarding the May 17 loss of 37 sailors in an Iraqi missile attack.
Brindel said he was warned only seconds before missiles struck, and
that he'd had no time to activate the ship's defense system.
(AP, 5/20/97)
1987 May 21, In the wake of the
Iraqi attack on the U.S. frigate Stark that claimed 37 lives, the
Senate approved a proposal requiring President Reagan to send
Congress a report detailing the threat to U.S. ships in the Persian
Gulf.
(AP, 5/21/97)
1987 May 21, The TV series “The
Days and Nights of Molly Dodd” starred Blair Brown as a divorced
woman living in NYC. The show continued to 1991.
(LSA, Spring, 2009,
p.44)(www.imdb.com/title/tt0092336/releaseinfo)
1987 May 22, A deadly tornado
devastated the small West Texas town of Saragosa, killing 30 people
and injuring 162. The storm destroyed 61 houses and leveled the
community center and church.
(AP, 5/22/97)
1987 May 23, Rescue workers and
survivors searched through the rubble of a killer tornado in
Saragosa, Texas, that had claimed 30 lives. Texas Gov. Bill Clements
expressed his sorrow, and pledged all possible help.
(AP, 5/23/97)
1987 May 24, An estimated
quarter-million people crowded onto San Francisco's Golden Gate
Bridge to celebrate the structure's 50th birthday a few days before
the actual anniversary.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A21)(AP, 5/24/97)
1987 May 25, A jury in New York
acquitted former Labor Secretary Raymond J. Donovan and seven other
construction executives of fraud and grand larceny.
(AP, 5/25/97)
1987 May 26, The US Supreme
Court ruled that "dangerous defendants" can be held without bail.
(www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0481_0739_ZD.html)
1987 May 26, Former PTL leader
Jim Bakker told ABC's "Nightline" he had made a "terrible mistake"
in turning control of the ministry over to the Rev. Jerry Falwell.
He accused Falwell of misleading him.
(AP, 5/26/97)
1987 May 26, Dr. Arthur M.
Sackler (b.1913), physician and philanthropist, died. He donated a
large collection of Asian art housed in the National Museum Sackler
Gallery, which adjoins the Freer in Washington DC.
(WSJ, 11/6/98,
p.W10)(www.britannica.com/eb/article-9001219)
1987 May 26, Sri Lanka launched
Operation Liberation, an offensive against the Tamil rebellion in
Jaffra. It ended May 31 with over 1,000 deaths and 2,000 arrests in
Vadamaradchy.
(www.tamilnation.org/indictment/indict043.htm)
1987 May 27, The Rev. Jerry
Falwell, responding to comments by Jim Bakker, denied hoodwinking
Bakker into giving up control of the PTL ministry.
(AP, 5/27/97)
1987 May 28, Mathias Rust, a
19-year-old West German pilot, stunned the world as he landed a
private plane in Moscow's Red Square after evading Soviet air
defenses.
(AP, 5/28/97)
1987 May 28, Charles Ludlum
(b.1943), actor and playwright, died. His work included "The Mystery
of Irma Vep: A Penny Dreadful" (1984).
(WSJ, 10/13/98,
p.A20)(www.imdb.com/name/nm0524893/)
1987 May 29, A jury in Los
Angeles found "Twilight Zone" movie director John Landis and four
associates innocent of involuntary manslaughter in the movie-set
deaths of actor Vic Morrow and two children.
(AP, 5/29/97)
1987 May 30, North American
Philips Company unveiled compact disc video.
(http://tinyurl.com/km755)
1987 May 30, Turk Murphy
(b.1915), San Francisco-based trombone player and jazz singer, died
in San Francisco.
(SSFC, 6/3/12,
p.46)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turk_Murphy)
1987 May 30, A Beastie Boy
concert in Liverpool, England, turned into a riot. Adam Horowitz was
charged with assaulting a fan.
(www.blender.com/guide/articles.aspx?id=847)
1987 May 30, Soviet Defense
Minister Sergei L. Sokolov and the chief of Soviet air defenses were
fired, two days after West German pilot Mathias Rust entered Soviet
airspace in a small plane and flew all the way to Moscow's Red
Square.
(AP, 5/30/97)
1987 May 31, Addressing AIDS
research supporters in Washington, D.C., President Reagan called
"for urgency, not panic," but drew scattered boos when he announced
he would seek expanded testing for the disease.
(AP, 5/31/97)
1987 Jun 1, The 20th
anniversary of the release of "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club
Band" was marked by the release of the CD in the U.K.
(www.jpgr.co.uk/pcs7027.html)
1987 Jun 1, Vice President
George Bush addressed the Third International Conference on AIDS in
Washington, and, like President Reagan before him, drew scattered
boos by calling for more widespread testing for possible carriers of
the AIDS virus.
(AP, 6/1/97)
1987 Jun 1, In Lebanon PM
Rachid Karami was killed by a remote controlled bomb that blew up
his helicopter off the Lebanese coast. In 1996 former Christian
faction leader Samir Geagea was charged for the murder. In 2005
lawmakers approved motions to pardon Geagea.
(SFC, 7/19/05,
p.A9)(www.tripoli-lebanon.com/rachid-karami.html)
1987 Jun 2, President Reagan
announced he was nominating economist Alan Greenspan to succeed Paul
Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.
(AP, 6/2/97)
1987 Jun 2, Georges Doriot
(b.1899), a French-born Harvard professor, died in Boston. In 1946
he took public his American Research & Development (ARD)
company. In 2008 Spencer E. Ante authored “Creative Capital: Georges
Doriot and the Birth of Venture Capital.”
(WSJ, 5/21/08,
p.A17)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Doriot)
1987 Jun 2, Sammy Kaye
(b.1910), orchestra leader (Sammy Kaye Show), died of cancer in New
Jersey.
(www.parabrisas.com/d_kayes.php)
1987 Jun 3, President Reagan
arrived in Italy to prepare for a summit of major industrialized
democracies, the 13th such gathering of world leaders.
(AP, 6/3/97)
1987 Jun 3, Patricia Lopez (9)
disappeared after leaving school in Santa Ana, Ca. Her body was
found 2 days later bludgeoned to death in a feeder tunnel of the
Santa Ana riverbed. In 2007 DNA evidence identified her brother,
Rosendo Lopez (42), as the murderer.
(SFC, 10/16/07, p.D12)
1987 Jun 3, Andres Segovia
(b.1893), Spanish classical guitarist, died in Madrid.
(WSJ, 8/7/00,
p.A6)(www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Andr%E9s_Segovia)
1987 Jun 4, The US
congressional Iran-Contra committees voted to grant limited immunity
to former National Security Council aide Oliver L. North, following
an appeal by independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh to reject
immunity.
(AP, 6/4/97)
1987 Jun 5, President Reagan,
in Venice for an upcoming economic summit, called for an end to
government agriculture subsidies by the year 2000 in a televised
address carried in Europe by the United States Information Agency.
(AP, 6/5/97)
1987 Jun 6, President Reagan
met with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican.
(AP, 6/6/97)
1987 Jun 6, Alysheba, winner of
the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, placed fourth at the Belmont
Stakes, losing to Bet Twice.
(AP, 6/6/97)
1987 Jun 7, "Les Miserables"
dominated Broadway's Tony Awards, taking eight prizes, including
best musical. "Fences," by August Wilson, was named best play.
(AP, 6/7/97)
1987 Jun 8, Fawn Hall began
testifying at the Iran-Contra hearings, describing how, as secretary
to National Security aide Oliver L. North, she helped to shred some
documents and spirit away others.
(AP, 6/8/97)
1987 Jun 9, In a second day of
testimony before the Iran-Contra congressional committees, secretary
Fawn Hall said she had spirited secret documents from the White
House because she feared they would fall into the wrong hands.
(AP, 6/9/97)
1987 Jun 9, Sen. Joseph R.
Biden Jr. of Delaware announced his candidacy for the Democratic
presidential nomination.
(AP, 6/9/97)
1987 Jun 9, Near Denver,
Colorado, lightning struck the so-called Tire Mountain and ignited a
fire that burned some 2 million of the 6 million tires stored there.
(SFC, 6/9/09,
p.D8)(http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/siteindex/1987-6/)
1987 Jun 10, The leaders of
seven major industrial nations ended a three-day summit in Venice,
proposing no new major economic initiatives, but calling for closer
coordination of their economies and a stabilizing of foreign
currency rates.
(AP, 6/10/97)
1987 Jun 10, In California the
Nuremberg Actions protest over US arms shipments to Central America
began at the Concord Naval Weapons Station.
(SFC, 6/10/97, p.A19)
1987 Jun 11, Margaret Thatcher
became the first British prime minister in 160 years to win a third
consecutive term of office as her Conservatives held onto a reduced
majority in Parliament.
(AP, 6/11/97)(HN, 6/11/98)
1987 Jun 12, President Reagan,
during a visit to the divided German city of Berlin, publicly
challenged Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev at the Brandenburg
Gate: "Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this
wall."
(AP, 6/12/97)(WSJ, 10/18/02, p.AW17)
1987 Jun 13, The last regularly
scheduled episode of "A Prairie Home Companion," starring humorist
Garrison Keillor, was broadcast from the old World Theater in St.
Paul, Minn.
(AP, 6/13/97)
1987 Jun 14, The Los Angeles
Lakers won the National Basketball Association title with a 106-93
home-court victory over the defending champion Boston Celtics.
(AP, 6/14/97)
1987 Jun 14, In West Germany
Willy Brandt (1913-1992) made his farewell speech as chairman of the
SPD.
(http://tinyurl.com/mly5m)
1987 Jun 15, The Supreme Court
struck down a Maryland law allowing use of "victim impact
statements" at sentencing hearings of a capital case.
(AP 6/15/97)
1987 Jun 16, NYC subway gunman
Bernhard Goetz was acquitted on all but gun possession charges after
shooting 4 black youths who tried to rob him [see Oct 20]. In 1996,
a civil jury ordered Goetz to pay $43 million to one of the persons
he'd shot.
(http://tinyurl.com/q2px6)(AP, 6/16/07)
1987 Jun 17, Baseball manager
Dick Howser, who'd led the Kansas City Royals to a World Series
championship, died at age 51 after a yearlong struggle with brain
cancer.
(AP 6/17/97)
1987 Jun 17, Charles Glass, a
journalist on leave from ABC News, was kidnapped in Lebanon. Glass
escaped his captors in August 1987.
(AP, 6/17/07)
1987 Jun 19, The US Supreme
Court in Edwards vs. Aguilard (7-2) struck down a Louisiana law
requiring any public school teaching the theory of evolution to also
teach creationism science as well.
(www.positiveatheism.org/writ/berra.htm)(Econ,
7/30/05, p.31)
1987 Jun 19, Vermont’s Ben
& Jerry Ice Cream & Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia announce
new Ice Cream flavor, Cherry Garcia.
(www.foodreference.com/html/html/june19.html)(http://tinyurl.com/ptccd)
1987 Jun 19, In Spain an ETA
car bomb in the parking lot of the Hipercor department store in
Barcelona killed 21 and wounds 45. This was ETA’s bloodiest attack.
In 2003 two top members of the outlawed Basque separatist group ETA
were sentenced to 790 years in prison.
(AP, 3/22/06)(AP, 7/26/03)
1987 Jun 20, Tens of thousands
of riot police in South Korea clashed with demonstrators who
protested against Pres. Chun Doo Hwan.
(AP 6/20/97)(SFC, 7/22/97, p.A8)
1987 Jun 21, Violence continued
in South Korea, where riot police broke up protests in the cities of
Seoul and Pusan for a second day.
(AP 6/21/97)
1987 Jun 22, Fred Astaire
(b.1899), Hollywood dancer, died at a Los Angeles hospital. His
elegance and fancy footwork graced more than 30 films. A 1984
biography by Bob Thomas was titled: "Astaire: The man, The Dancer."
In 2008 Joseph Epstein authored “Fred Astaire.” In 2009 Peter J.
Levinson authored “Puttin’ on the Ritz.”
(AP 6/22/97)(SFC, 8/25/97, p.E3)(Econ, 12/13/08,
p.100)(WSJ, 4/4/09, p.W8)
1987 Jun 23, The Iran-Contra
hearings resumed with testimony from former CIA employee Glenn A.
Robinette, who said he'd installed a $14,000 security system at the
home of Lt. Col. Oliver North, then helped make it appear that North
had paid for the work.
(AP 6/23/97)
1987 Jun 24, Jackie Gleason
(b.1916), comedian-actor (The Hustler) died of cancer at his home in
Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
(AP 6/24/97)(www.imdb.com/name/nm0001276/)
1987 Jun 25, Pope John Paul II
received Austrian President Kurt Waldheim at the Vatican, a meeting
fraught with controversy because of allegations that Waldheim had
hidden a Nazi past.
(AP 6/25/97)
1987 Jun 26, US Supreme Court
Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. announced his retirement, leaving a
vacancy that was filled by Anthony M. Kennedy.
(AP 6/26/97)
1987 Jun 27, The White House
announced that a final analysis of two polyps removed from President
Reagan's colon showed they were benign.
(AP 6/27/97)
1987 Jun 28, US Secretary of
State George P. Shultz said he had found some of the recent
revelations about the Iran-Contra affair "sickening," but defended
the Reagan administration's foreign policy.
(AP 6/28/97)
1987 Jun 29, Vincent Van Gogh's
"Le Pont de Trinquetaille" brought in $20.6 million at an auction in
London, England.
(www.artnet.com/faaddemo/vangogh/)
1987 Jun 29, Elizabeth Cotton
(1895-1987), American blues singer, died in Syracuse, NY. She
composed “Freight Train” in the early 1900s when she saw a train
pass by her house on Lloyd Street in Carrboro, North Carolina. The
song was copyrighted in 1957. The first recording of the song was
made by Mike Seeger in 1957–1958, at Elizabeth’s home in Washington,
D.C.
(www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F6sXL4Jb_s)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Cotten)
1987 Jun 29, In a surprise
move, the chairman of South Korea's ruling party, Roh Tae-woo,
demanded democratic reforms of the man he was groomed to succeed,
President Chun Doo-hwan, following weeks of violent protests that
had racked the country. Chun agreed two days later.
(AP, 6/29/97)
1987 Jun 30, Canada introduced
a one dollar coin that was soon nicknamed the Loonie.
(WSJ, 11/6/97,
p.A22)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loonie)
1987 Jun 30, The prosecutor at
the trial of Klaus Barbie in Lyon, France, denounced the crimes of
the former Nazi Gestapo official and demanded the maximum sentence
of life in prison. Barbie died in 1991 at age 77.
(AP 6/30/97)
1987 Jun, Prominent politicians
in Argentina received a letter with a message that robbers had made
off with the hands of General Juan Peron, deceased since 1974, and
demanded $8 million for their return. No deal was made and numerous
people related to the investigation died in strange circumstances.
(WSJ, 4/6/95, p.A-1, A-5)
1987 Jun, A huge forest fire in
China that began in May destroyed more than 3.7 million hectares of
trees in Manchuria. This forced Chinese officials to open up
commercial logging and consequently caused pressure on the
Manchurian tiger. In the Black Dragon Fire 20 million acres of
forest land along the Heilongjang River, which separates China from
Russia, were burned. In 1989 Harrison E. Salisbury authored “Great
Black Dragon Fire: A Chinese Inferno.”
(NOHY, 3/90, p.287)(http://tinyurl.com/jfvom)
1987 Jun, Pakistan sentenced
Gopal Das, an Indian man, to life in prison for alleged spying. In
2011 PM Zardari remitted Gopal Das' prison sentence on humanitarian
grounds in response to an unusual appeal by the Indian Supreme
Court.
(AP, 3/27/11)
1987 Jul 1, President Reagan
nominated federal appeals court judge Robert H. Bork to the Supreme
Court, setting off a tempestuous confirmation process that ended
with Bork's rejection in October by the Senate.
(AP, 7/1/97)
1987 Jul 2, 18 illegal
immigrants were found dead inside a locked boxcar near Sierra
Blanca, Texas, in what authorities called a botched smuggling
attempt; a 19th man survived.
(AP 7/2/97)
1987 Jul 2, Michael Bennett
(b.1943), Chorus Line director, died of AIDS in Tucson, Az.
(www.ibdb.com/person.asp?ID=7716)
1987 Jul 2, Karl Linnas,
accused Nazi, died of heart failure in Leningrad Russia. In 1962 he
was convicted in Estonia of being a Nazi war criminal and sentenced
to death in absentia.
(http://tinyurl.com/mqvzq)
1987 Jul 3, Two men became the
first hot-air balloon travelers to cross the Atlantic. British
millionaire Richard Branson and Swedish-born Per Lindstrand, the
balloon's designer, were forced to jump into the sea as their craft
went down off the coast of Scotland.
(AP 7/3/97)
1987 Jul 4, Bill Graham took
Santana, the Doobie Brothers and Bonny Rait to Moscow for an
American-Soviet peace concert.
(SFC,12/13/97, p.A15)
1987 Jul 4, Martina Navratilova
won her eighth Wimbledon singles title as she defeated Steffi Graf.
(AP 7/4/97)
1987 Jul 4, Klaus Barbie, the
former Gestapo chief known as the "Butcher of Lyon," was convicted
by a French court of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life
in prison; he died in September 1991.
(AP 7/4/97)
1987 Jul 5, Pat Cash of
Australia defeated Ivan Lendl in straight sets to win the Wimbledon
men's singles final.
(AP 7/5/97)
1987 Jul 6, The first of three
massacres by Sikh extremists over two days took place in India as
gunmen attacked a bus with Hindu passengers. Seventy-two people were
killed in the attacks in Punjab and Haryana.
(AP 7/6/97)
1987 Jul 7, Lt. Col. Oliver
North began his long-awaited public testimony at the Iran-Contra
hearing, telling Congress that he had "never carried out a single
act, not one," without authorization.
(AP 7/7/97)
1987 Jul 8, Lt. Col. Oliver
North became a daytime TV star as the Iran-Contra hearings were
televised throughout the US. Under questioning by committee counsel
John Nields, North said the issue of his security system was first
broached immediately after a threat by Abu Nidal.
(http://www.talkleft.com/new_archives/000742.html)
1987 Jul 8, Kitty Dukakis, wife
of Massachusetts governor and Democratic presidential candidate
Michael S. Dukakis, revealed she'd been addicted to amphetamines for
26 years but had sought help and was drug-free. She later admitted
to dependence on alcohol, and entered a recovery program.
(AP 7/8/97)
1987 Jul 8, Kiwanis Clubs voted
to admit women and ended its men-only tradition.
(www.tcfn.org/kiwanistci/about.html)
1987 Jul 9, In his third day of
testimony on Capitol Hill, Lt. Col. Oliver North said he had
shredded evidence as part of a planned cover-up of his role in the
Iran-Contra affair.
(AP 7/9/97)
1987 Jul 10, Lt. Col. Oliver
North told the Iran-Contra committees that the late CIA director
William J. Casey had embraced a fund created by arms sales to Iran
because it could be used for secret operations other than supplying
the Contras.
(AP 7/10/97)
1987 Jul 11, Australian Prime
Minister Bob Hawke won a third consecutive term, becoming the first
Labor Party leader in the country's history to be elected to three
straight terms in office.
(AP 7/11/97)
1987 Jul 12, For the first time
in 20 years, a delegation of Soviet diplomats arrived in Israel for
what was described as a "technical mission" to document Soviet
citizens and make an inventory of Soviet property.
(AP 7/12/97)
1987 Jul 13, Jury selection
began in Washington for the perjury trial of President Reagan's
former aide and longtime confidant, Michael K. Deaver. Deaver was
later convicted of lying under oath about his lobbying business; he
was fined $100,000 and ordered to perform community service.
(AP 7/13/97)
1987 Jul 14, The National
League took 13 innings to defeat the American League, 2-0, in the
58th All-Star Game in Oakland, Calif.
(AP 7/14/97)
1987 Jul 14, Lt. Col. Oliver
North concluded six days of testimony before the Iran-Contra
committees.
(AP 7/14/97)
1987 Jul 14, Greyhound Bus
bought Trailways Bus for $80 million.
(www.nlrb.gov/nlrb/shared_files/decisions/292/292-1069.txt)
1987 Jul 15, Former National
Security Adviser John Poindexter testified at the Iran-Contra
hearings that he had never told President Reagan about using Iranian
arms sales money for the Contras in order to protect the president
from possible political embarrassment.
(AP 7/15/97)
1987 Jul 15, Izzatullah Wasifi
(29) was arrested at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas for selling 650
grams (23 ounces) of heroin. Prosecutors said the drugs were worth
$2 million on the street. Wasifi served three years and eight months
in prison before winning parole. In 2007 Wasifi, a long time friend
of Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai, was appointed as general-director of
Afghanistan’s General Independent Administration of Anti-Corruption
and Bribery.
(AP, 3/9/07)
1987 Jul 15, In South Africa
Ashley Kriel, an anti-apartheid activist was killed. Police officer
Jeffrey Benzien later confessed to the killing and was absolved by
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1999.
(SFC, 2/19/99,
p.B12)(www.doj.gov.za/trc/decisions/1999/99_benzien.html)
1987 Jul 15, Taiwan ended 37
years of martial law.
(www.gio.gov.tw/taiwan-website/5-gp/rights/politics_01.htm)
1987 Jul 16, Former White House
political director Lyn Nofziger was charged with violating federal
ethics laws in a six-count indictment. His convictions on three
counts of illegally lobbying White House officials were overturned
by a federal appeals court.
(AP 7/16/97)
1987 Jul 17, The 1937 Walt
Disney movie, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", was re-released in
the US.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_White_and_the_Seven_Dwarfs_(1937_film))
1987 Jul 17, 10 teen-agers were
killed when raging floodwaters from the Guadalupe River near
Comfort, Texas, swept away a church bus and van holding 43 people.
(AP 7/17/97)
1987 Jul 18, President Reagan
used his weekly radio address to call on Congress to give more aid
to the Nicaraguan Contras.
(AP 7/18/97)
1987 Jul 18, Molly Yard was
elected the new president of the National Organization for Women,
succeeding Eleanor Smeal.
(AP 7/18/97)
1987 Jul 20, The UN Security
Council voted unanimously to approve a U.S.-sponsored resolution
demanding an end to the Persian Gulf war between Iraq and Iran, a
move supported by Iraq and dismissed by Iran.
(AP 7/20/97)
1987 Jul 21, Defying a
threatened veto by President Reagan, the Senate approved a trade
bill containing a provision requiring companies to give 60 days'
notice to employees of impending plant closings and large-scale
layoffs. Reagan vetoed the bill, but ended up allowing a separate
plant-closing notice measure to become law.
(AP 7/21/97)
1987 Jul 22, The United States
began its policy of escorting re-flagged Kuwaiti tankers up and down
the Persian Gulf to protect them from possible attack by Iran.
(AP 7/22/97)
1987 Jul 23, Hussein Hariri
(21), a Lebanese hijacker, commandeered an Air Afrique DC-10 flying
from Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, to Paris. He was captured
during a refueling stop in Geneva and was sentenced to life in
prison for killing a passenger and seriously wounding a flight
attendant. In 2004 he was released and deported to Lebanon.
(AP, 10/17/04)
1987 Jul 24, The re-flagged
Kuwaiti supertanker Bridgeton was damaged after hitting a mine in
the Persian Gulf.
(AP 7/24/97)
1987 Jul 24,
Hulda Crooks, a 91-year-old mountaineer from California, became the
oldest woman to conquer Mount Fuji, Japan's highest peak.
(AP 7/24/97)
1987 Jul 24, Tamil Tiger leader
Velupillai Prabhakaran arrived in India to sign a peace agreement
with the Sri Lankan government. Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi
brokered the agreement with Sri Lanka delivering autonomy to Tamil
areas in exchange for an end to the war. The peace agreement was
signed by Junius Richard Jayewardene, president of Sri Lanka.
(SFC, 7/24/96, p.A9)(SFE, 9/16/96, p.A9)(SFC,
11/2/96, p.A21)
1987 Jul 25, US Commerce
Secretary Malcolm Baldrige died of internal injuries he sustained
while participating in a rodeo. He was succeeded by C. William
Verity.
(AP 7/25/97)
1987 Jul 25, The USSR launched
Kosmos 1870, a 15-ton Earth-study satellite.
(www.sciencepresse.qc.ca/clafleur/Spacecrafts-1987.html#Kosmos-1870)
1987 Jul 26, US Secretary of
Defense Caspar Weinberger said the Navy's anti-mine capabilities
would be improved in the Persian Gulf in the wake of a mine
explosion that damaged the tanker Bridgeton.
(AP 7/26/97)
1987 Jul 27, Retired Ohio
autoworker John Demjanjuk, accused of being the sadistic Nazi guard
known as "Ivan the Terrible," testified at his trial in Jerusalem
that he was not "the hangman you're after." His subsequent
conviction was overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court.
(AP 7/27/97)
1987 Jul 27, In Warwick, RI,
Craig Price (13) crept across his neighbor's yard, broke into a
little brown house on Inez Avenue and stabbed Rebecca Spencer 58
times. She was a 27-year-old mother of two. On Sep 1, 1989, he
butchered Joan Heaton (39) with kitchen knives she had bought
earlier that day. The bodies of her daughters, Jennifer 10, and
Melissa 8, were found in pools of blood, pieces of knives broken off
in their bones; Jennifer had been stabbed 62 times. Price was
scheduled to be released in 1994 but was sentenced to 15 years,
seven to serve and eight suspended, following contempt charges and
belligerent statements. Fights in prison added more time to his
sentence. As of 2007 Price's scheduled release date was February
2022. He will be 48.
(AP,
12/16/07)(www.projo.com/extra/2004/craigprice/content/timeline.htm)
1987 Jul 28, Attorney General
Edwin Meese told the congressional Iran-Contra committees that
President Reagan was "quite surprised" the previous November when
Meese told him about the diversion of Iran arms-sales profits for
use by the Contra rebels.
(AP 7/28/97)
1987 Jul 28, James Burnham
(b.1905), American author and philosopher, died at his home in
Connecticut. His books included The Managerial Revolution" (1941)
and “The Coming Defeat of Communism” (1949). In 2002 Daniel Kelly
authored "James Burnham and the Struggle for the World: A Life."
(WSJ, 7/16/02, p.D6)(http://tinyurl.com/mca87)
1987 Jul 29, Testifying for a
second day before the Iran-Contra congressional committees, Attorney
General Edwin Meese strongly defended his inquiry into the affair.
(AP 7/29/97)
1987 Jul 30, Former White House
Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan told the Iran-Contra congressional
committees he had repeatedly urged President Reagan to break off
arms sales to Iran.
(AP, 7/30/97)
1987 Jul 30, Microsoft acquired
Forethought, the developer of PowerPoint, for $14 million. Microsoft
created its own version 3 years later. Robert Gaskins had engaged
Dennis Austin to do the initial programming for PowerPoint 1.0 for
Macs.
(Wired, 12/98, p.196)(WSJ, 6/20/07, p.B1)
1987 Jul 30, Some 50,000 Indian
troops arrived in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, to disarm the Tamil Tigers and
enforce a peace pact. After a time they began fighting the Tigers
and in 1990 the government asked them to leave.
(SFC, 7/24/96, p.A9)(SFC, 11/2/96, p.A21)(Econ,
8/5/06, p.40)
1987 Jul 31, Iranian pilgrims
and riot police clashed in the Muslim holy city of Mecca in Saudi
Arabia. The Saudi government blamed Iranians for the resulting 402
deaths.
(AP, 7/31/97)(AP, 2/1/04)
1987 Jul, The South Korean
stock market hit a low.
(SFC,11/26/97, p.C2)
1987 Aug 1, Iranians attacked
the Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti embassies in Tehran as word spread of
rioting in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, a day earlier that claimed some 400
lives, most of them Iranian pilgrims.
(AP, 8/1/97)
1987 Aug 2, More than a million
people gathered in Tehran, calling for the overthrow of the sheiks
of Saudi Arabia, where hundreds of Iranian pilgrims had died in
rioting in the Muslim holy city of Mecca.
(AP, 8/2/97)
1987 Aug 3, The Iran-Contra
congressional hearings ended, with none of the 29 witnesses tying
President Reagan directly to the diversion of arms-sales profits to
Nicaraguan rebels.
(AP, 8/3/97)
1987 Aug 4, The Federal
Communications Commission voted 4-0 to rescind the Fairness
Doctrine, which required radio and television stations to present
balanced coverage of controversial issues. The US Supreme Court had
ruled it constitutional in 1969.
(AP, 8/4/97)(SFC, 5/5/03, p.B4)
1987 Aug 4, Carlina White (19
days) was abducted from a Harlem hospital. In 2011 Ann Pettway of
North Carolina surrendered to authorities days after White (23),
raised as Nejdra Nance, re-united with her biological mother Joy
White.
(www.nytimes.com/2011/01/20/nyregion/20kidnap.html?_r=1)
1987 Aug 4, Jesse Unruh
(b.1922), Democrat and the 54th speaker of the California state
Assembly (1961-1969), died while serving as California state
treasurer (1975-1987). In 2007 Bill Boyarsky authored “Big Daddy:
Jesse Unruh and the Art of Power Politics.”
(SSFC, 11/11/07,
p.M1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Unruh)
1987 Aug 5, President Reagan
announced his administration had reached a "general agreement" with
leaders of Congress on a new Central America peace plan. Nicaraguan
President Daniel Ortega offered to discuss the U.S. proposal.
(AP, 8/5/97)
1987 Aug 5, In Sri Lanka Tamil
Tigers began to surrender their weapons to the Indian army, but
later changed course and began to fight the Indians. Official Indian
government aid to the rebels was cutoff but the southern Tamil Nadu
state and rightist Hindu factions of the Indian army continued
helping the rebels.
(SFC, 7/24/96, p.A9)
1987 Aug 6, President Reagan's
new Central America peace initiative ran into problems as the United
States and Nicaragua openly disagreed on procedures for a negotiated
settlement.
(AP, 8/6/97)
1987 Aug 7, Lynne Cox became
the 1st to swim from US to Russia across the Bering Strait.
(http://tinyurl.com/lal2h)
1987 Aug 7, The presidents of 5
Central American nations, meeting in Guatemala City, signed an
11-point agreement designed to bring peace to their region.
(AP, 8/7/97)
1987 Aug 8, In the Persian
Gulf, a Navy F-14 "Tomcat" fighter fired two missiles at an Iranian
jet approaching an unarmed U.S. scout plane. Both missiles missed
their target and the Iranian plane flew off.
(AP, 8/8/97)
1987 Aug 9, Independent Counsel
Lawrence E. Walsh, vowing to investigate the Iran-Contra affair
"vigorously but fairly," told a meeting of the American Bar
Association in San Francisco that he would not be deterred by the
"popularity of persons involved."
(AP, 8/9/97)
1987 Aug 9, In Worcester,
Mass., Audrey Santo (3) fell into a backyard swimming pool and was
left inert and bedridden. Later Masses were celebrated at her home
and pilgrims began visiting her and claimed to be cured of
illnesses.
(SFEC, 8/28/98,
p.A8)(www.nndb.com/people/159/000026081/)
1987 Aug 10, President Reagan
said he would nominate C. William Verity Jr., a retired steel
company executive, to replace the late Malcolm Baldrige as commerce
secretary.
(AP, 8/10/97)
1987 Aug 10, In San Francisco 4
women began training and took the oath of office as rookie
firefighters. They were the first women in the history of the
department with roots to 1850.
(SSFC, 8/12/12, DB p.42)
1987 Aug 10, Iorwith Wilbur
Abel (b.1908), CEO of the United Steel Workers of America (1965-77),
died. I.W. Abel had also served as vice-president of the AFL-CIO.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iorwith_Wilbur_Abel)
1987 Aug 11, Economist Alan
Greenspan succeeded Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve
Board. Greenspan retired in 2006.
(SSFC, 1/29/06, p.A9)
1987 Aug 11, Britain and
France ordered minesweepers to the Persian Gulf, but said they would
not be used in combined operations with the United States as it
escorted reflagged Kuwaiti ships.
(AP, 8/11/97)
1987 Aug 12, President
Reagan addressed the nation on the Iran-Contra affair, saying his
former national security adviser, John Poindexter, was wrong not to
have told him about the diversion of Iran arms-sale money.
(AP, 8/12/97)
1987 Aug 13, A rented Piper
Cherokee airplane flew close to President Reagan's helicopter in
restricted airspace over Southern California; the pilot and
passenger of the plane were arrested.
(AP, 8/13/97)
1987 Aug 13, On the fifth
anniversary of a bull market, the Dow Jones industrial average
closed at 2,691.49 after briefly surpassing 2,700.
(AP, 8/13/97)
1987 Aug 14, The government
reported that America's merchandise trade deficit had soared to
$15.7 billion in June 1987.
(AP, 8/14/97)
1987 Aug 15, Thousands of
people marched past the grave of Elvis Presley in Memphis, Tenn., as
they began an all-night vigil marking the 10th anniversary of his
death.
(AP, 8/15/97)
1987 Aug 16, Thousands of
people worldwide began a two-day celebration of the "harmonic
convergence," which heralded what believers called the start of a
new, purer age of humankind. Nearly 5,000 people gathered at Mount
Shasta, Ca., for the Harmonic Convergence aimed at bringing about
world peace.
(AP, 8/16/97)(SSFC, 10/12/02, p.C5)
1987 Aug 16, In Michigan 156
people were killed when Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashed while
trying to take off from a Detroit airport; the sole survivor was
4-year-old Cecelia Cichan. The MD-80 plane hit a freeway overpass in
Romulus following takeoff.
(AP, 8/16/97)(SFC, 11/13/01, p.A12)(AP, 5/15/13)
1987 Aug 16, Iraqi warplanes
bombarded the northern Kurdish village of Balisan, dropping bombs
that spread a smoke smelling "like rotten apples.” Helicopters then
came and bombed the mountains to prevent the villagers from taking
refuge anywhere.
(AP, 8/23/06)
1987 Aug 17, The DJIA closed
above 2,700 for 1st time (2,700.57).
(www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/longterm/blackm/fund.htm)
1987 Aug 17, Rudolf Hess, the
last member of Adolf Hitler's inner circle, died at a Berlin
hospital near Spandau Prison at age 93, having apparently committed
suicide by strangling himself with an electrical cord. His family
claims that he was murdered [see May 10, 1941].
(AP, 8/17/97)(SFEC, 8/17/97, p.A4)
1987 Aug 18, American
journalist Charles Glass escaped his kidnappers in Beirut after 62
days in captivity. Glass had been abducted June 17 with two Lebanese
who were released after a week.
(AP, 8/18/97)
1987 Aug 19, A third convoy of
U.S. warships and reflagged Kuwaiti tankers slipped into the Persian
Gulf before dawn and headed up the waterway behind a screen of
mine-seeking helicopters.
(AP, 8/19/97)
1987 Aug 19, In Britain Michael
Ryan (27) shot 16 people dead in Hungerford, Berkshire. He wounded
another 15 before turning the gun on himself.
(Econ, 6/5/10,
p.63)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungerford_massacre)
1987 Aug 20, A federal appeals
court in Washington, D.C., rejected Lt. Col. Oliver North's argument
that the independent counsel investigating the Iran-Contra affair
was operating under an invalid Justice Department regulation.
(AP, 8/20/97)
1987 Aug 21, Sgt. Clayton
Lonetree, the first Marine ever court-martialed for spying, was
convicted in Quantico, Va., of passing secrets to the KGB after
becoming romantically involved with a Soviet woman while serving as
a U.S. Embassy guard in Moscow. Lonetree ended up serving eight
years in a military prison, and was released in February 1996.
(AP, 8/21/97)
1987 Aug 22, The supertanker
Bridgeton and three other reflagged Kuwaiti tankers left Kuwait
under U.S. escort and safely cleared Persian Gulf waters where the
Bridgeton had hit a mine the month before.
(AP, 8/22/97)
1987 Aug 23, Seven Democratic
presidential hopefuls traded gentle barbs at a debate in Des Moines,
Iowa, with Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis repeatedly called
upon to defend his claims of economic revival in his state.
(AP, 8/23/97)
1987 Aug 23, Two teenagers in
Alexander, Arkansas, Kevin Ives and Don Henry were run over by a
train. Fahmy Malak, the medical examiner of Gov. Clinton, ruled the
Aug 23 deaths of the teenagers as accidental. Malak was investigated
and cleared of improprieties. Later investigations indicated that
they were murdered prior to being run over.
(WSJ, 4/15/97, p.A18)(WSJ, 4/18/96, p.A-18)
1987 Aug 24, A military jury in
Quantico, Va., sentenced Marine Sgt. Clayton Lonetree to 30 years in
prison for disclosing U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union. The sentence
was later reduced; with additional time off for good behavior,
Lonetree ended up serving eight years in a military prison.
(AP, 8/24/97)
1987 Aug 24, Bayard Rustin
(b.1912), gay civil rights activist, died of cardiac arrest. In 2003
a documentary of his life by Nancy Kates: "Brother Outsider: The
Life of Bayard Rustin," was aired on PBS TV. He was the chief
architect of the 1963 march on Washington. In 2003 John D'Emilio
authored "Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin."
(SFC, 1/16/03, p.E1)(SSFC, 8/31/03, p.M3)
1987 Aug 25, Dow Jones
industrial stock avg. reached a record 2722.42.
(http://tinyurl.com/sxcm9)
1987 Aug 25, Saudi Arabia
denounced Iran's government as a "group of terrorists," and said its
forces would deal firmly with any Iranian attempts to attack the
Saudis' Muslim holy places or vast oil fields.
(AP, 8/25/97)
1987 Aug 26, The US stock
market began a 2 month decline of 41%.
{DJIA, USA}
(SFC,10/17/97,
p.B2)(www.financialsense.com/Market/wood/2003/0905.htm)
1987 Aug 26, In an attempt to
eliminate a superpower stumbling block, West German Chancellor
Helmut Kohl said his country would destroy its 72 Pershing 1A
rockets if Washington and Moscow scrapped all their
intermediate-range nuclear weapons.
(AP, 8/26/97)
1987 Aug 28, A fire damaged the
Arcadia, Fla., home of Ricky, Robert and Randy Ray, three
hemophiliac brothers infected with the AIDS virus whose
court-ordered school attendance sparked a local uproar. The Ray
family soon moved to Sarasota, Fla.
(AP, 8/28/97)
1987 Aug 28, John Huston, U.S.
actor and film director, died at age 81 in Middletown, R.I. Among
his best known films are "The Maltese Falcon,'' "The Treasure of the
Sierra Madre'' and "The African Queen.''
(AP, 8/28/97)(RTH, 8/28/99)
1987 Aug 29, Academy
Award-winning actor Lee Marvin died in Tucson, Ariz., at age 63.
(AP, 8/29/97)
1987 Aug 30, A redesigned space
shuttle booster, created in the wake of the Challenger disaster,
roared into life in its first full-scale test-firing near Brigham
City, Utah.
(AP, 8/30/97)
1987 Aug 31, The US Justice
Department challenged the constitutionality of the 1978 Ethics in
Government Act, which provided for the appointment of independent
counsels. The Supreme Court upheld the law.
(AP, 8/31/97)
1987 Aug, Howard Shultz and a
group of investors bought Starbucks from Jerry Baldwin and merged it
with Il Giornale coffee bars. The was the beginning of a rapid
expansion. Baldwin kept Peet's Coffee and a proviso that Starbucks
stay out of the Bay Area until 1992. In 2007 Taylor Clark authored
“Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture.”
(SFEM, 8/1/99, p.8)(SSFC, 11/4/07, p.M1)
1987 Aug, Mehdi Hashemi,
Iranian aid of Ayatollah Khomeini, was tried for being “at enmity
with God” and “corrupt on earth.” Hashemi was sentenced to death and
executed in September.
(http://tinyurl.com/hra7a)
1987 Aug, Magomedali Magomedov
(b.1930) became chairman of Dagestan’s State Council. Under his rule
(1987-2006) the government was run as a family business and police
served clan interests.
(Econ, 7/25/05,
p.44)(http://rulers.org/russdiv.html)
2007 Aug, The Swiss government
extended a freeze on Duvalier's funds for a year. Many in Haiti
considered the money to have been stolen from public funds before
Duvalier was ousted.
(AP, 1/17/11)
1987 Sep 1, In California S.
Brian Wilson (46), Vietnam veteran, had his legs sliced off when a
munitions train at the Concord Naval Weapons Station ran him over
during the Nuremberg Actions protest against weapons shipments to
Central America.
(SFC, 6/10/97, p.A19)(AP, 9/1/97)
1987 Sep 1, After Jewish
leaders met with the Pope at Castel Gandolfo it was announced that a
document would be produced on the Holocaust. The document was made
public Mar 16, 1998.
(SFEC, 3/15/98, p.A24)
1987 Sep 2, West German pilot
Mathias Rust, who flew a private plane from Helsinki, Finland, to
Moscow's Red Square, went on trial in the Soviet capital. Rust, who
was convicted and given a four-year sentence, was released Aug. 3,
1988.
(AP, 9/2/97)
1987 Sep 3, Morton Feldman,
composer, died in Buffalo, NY. His work included a six hour String
Quartet, "Why Patterns," "Triadic Memories," "Three Voices" and
"Structures."
(WSJ, 8/13/96,
p.A9)(www.newalbion.com/artists/feldmanm/)
1987 Sep 3, A Soviet prosecutor
accused West German pilot Mathias Rust of seeking "cheap popularity"
by landing a private plane in Moscow's Red Square, and demanded that
Rust be sentenced to eight years at hard labor. Rust was convicted,
but freed the following August.
(AP, 9/3/97)
1987 Sep 4, A Soviet court
convicted West German pilot Mathias Rust of charges stemming from
his daring flight to Moscow's Red Square, and sentenced him to four
years in a labor camp. He was released the following August.
(AP, 9/4/97)
1987 Sep 5, In his weekly radio
address, President Reagan urged American workers to shun
protectionist legislation and "meet the competition head-on."
(AP, 9/5/97)
1987 Sep 5, Some four-dozen
people were killed in an Israeli air raid on targets near the
southern Lebanese port town of Sidon.
(AP, 9/5/97)
1987 Sep 6, Doctors at Johns
Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore succeeded in separating 7-month-old
Benjamin and Patrick Binder, twin brothers from Ulm, West Germany,
who were joined at the head, after 22 hours of surgery.
(AP, 9/6/97)
1987 Sep 7, The Rev. Jesse
Jackson declared his candidacy for the Democratic presidential
nomination.
(AP, 9/7/97)
1987 Sep 7, Erich Honecker
became the first East German head of state to visit West Germany as
he arrived for a five-day visit.
(AP, 9/7/97)
1987 Sep 8, Former Democratic
presidential candidate Gary Hart admitted during an interview on
ABC's "Nightline" that he had committed adultery and said he had no
plans to resume his White House bid.
(AP, 9/8/97)
1987 Sep 8, Microsoft shipped
its first CD ROM application, MS Bookshelf.
(Wired, 12/98, p.196)
1987 Sep 9, Appearing before
President Reagan's special commission on AIDS, Surgeon General C.
Everett Koop denounced doctors and other health workers who refused
to treat AIDS patients, calling them a "fearful and irrational
minority."
(AP, 9/9/97)
1987 Sep 9, A parked tank car
containing butadiene ignited in the New Orleans area. A jury in 1997
awarded $3.4 billion in punitive damages to some 8,000 people who
claimed to have suffered mental and physical injuries. Five
companies were charged with CSX Transportation owing 2.5 bil.
(SFC, 9/9/97, p.A10)
1987 Sep 10, Pope John
Paul II arrived in Miami, where he was welcomed by President and
Mrs. Reagan, to begin a 10-day tour of the United States.
(AP, 9/10/97)
1987 Sep 11, The CBS TV network
went black for six minutes after anchorman Dan Rather walked off the
set of "The CBS Evening News" because a tennis tournament being
carried by the network ran overtime. The tennis coverage had ended
abruptly, catching Rather off guard.
(AP, 9/11/97)
1987 Sep 11, Lorne Greene
(b.1915), actor (Bonanza, Battlestar Galactica), died at 72.
(www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=417)
1987 Sep 12, Reports surfaced
that Democratic presidential candidate Joseph Biden had borrowed,
without attribution, passages of a speech by British Labor Party
leader Neil Kinnock for one of his own campaign speeches. The
Kinnock report, along with other damaging revelations, prompted
Biden to drop his White House bid.
(AP, 9/12/97)
1987 Sep 13, Soviet Foreign
Minister Eduard Shevardnadze arrived in Washington for talks aimed
at a possible superpower summit; Shevardnadze carried with him a
letter from Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to President Reagan.
(AP, 9/13/97)
1987 Sep 14, Cal Ripken
(b.1960), baseball star for the Baltimore Orioles, ended his streak
of 8,243 consecutive innings (908 games).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cal_Ripken,_Jr.)
1987 Sep 14, Transportation
Secretary Elizabeth Dole resigned to devote herself to the
presidential campaign of her husband, Senate Minority Leader Bob
Dole.
(AP, 9/14/97)
1987 Sep 14, The first e-mail
from China was sent to an int’l. network and proclaimed: “Across the
Great Wall we can reach every corner in the world.”
(Econ, 4/6/13, SR p.3)
1987 Sep 15, On the opening day
of his confirmation hearing, US Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork
told the Senate Judiciary Committee his philosophy was "neither
liberal nor conservative."
(AP, 9/15/97)
1987 Sep 16, Pope John Paul II
visited San Francisco and drew the largest protests of his US tour
as homosexuals, feminists and Jews protested outside Mission Dolores
Basilica.
(SSFC, 9/16/12, DB p.46)
1987 Sep 16, In Canada an
international convention met in Montreal and negotiators from 23 of
the world’s major industrial nations signed a treaty to slow down
global chlorofluorocarbon (CFCs) production in order to restore
atmospheric ozone. The Montreal Protocol, a treaty designed to save
the Earth's ozone layer by calling on nations to reduce emissions of
harmful chemicals by the year 2000, was amended in 1990 and 1992. By
1997 156 nations had signed the Montreal Protocol.
(NOHY, W3/90, p.47)(SFC, 5/31/96, A1,17)(SFEC,
6/15/97, BR p.4)(AP, 9/16/97)
1987 Sep 17, The city of
Philadelphia, birthplace of the U.S. Constitution, threw a big party
to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the historic document.
(AP, 9/17/97)
1987 Sep 18, US President
Reagan announced that he and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev
would meet later in the year to sign a treaty banning medium and
shorter-range nuclear missiles.
(AP, 9/18/97)
1987 Sep 18, The movie "Fatal
Attraction," starring Michael Douglas and Glenn Close, opened in US
theaters.
(AP, 9/18/07)
1987 Sep 19, Supreme Court
nominee Robert H. Bork concluded 5 days of testimony before the US
Senate Judiciary Committee, vowing that he would "interpret the law
and not make it."
(AP, 9/19/97)
1987 Sep 19, Philippine leftist
opposition leader Leandro Alejandro (b.1960) was murdered.
(SFEC, 7/12/98, Z1 p.5)
1987 Sep 20, "Big River: The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" closed at the Eugene O’Neill Theater
in NYC after 1005 performances.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_River_(musical))
1987 Sep 20, The 39th Emmy
Awards winners included: LA Law, Bruce Willis & Sharon Gless.
(www.popculturemadness.com/Trivia/Emmies/Top-1987-E.html)
1987 Sep 20, Pope John Paul II
concluded an 11-day visit to North America as he celebrated Mass for
thousands of Indians at Fort Simpson in Canada's Northwest
Territories.
(AP, 9/20/97)
1987 Sep 21, NFL players went
on strike at midnight mainly over the issue of free agency.
(AP,
9/21/97)(http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/almanac/video/1987/)
1987 Sep 21, A U.S. helicopter
gunship disabled an Iranian vessel, the "Iran Ajr," that was caught
laying mines in the Persian Gulf; four Iranian crewmen were killed,
26 wounded and detained.
(AP, 9/21/97)
1987 Sep 22, On Wall Street,
the stock market surged higher. The Dow Jones industrial average
rose 75.23 points (the largest one-day gain recorded to that time),
closing at 2,568.05.
(AP, 9/22/97)
1987 Sep 22, Dan Rowan, actor
(Rowan & Martin's Laugh-in), died at 65.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Rowan)
1987 Sep 23, Delaware Sen.
Joseph Biden withdrew from the Democratic presidential race
following questions about his use of borrowed quotations and the
portrayal of his academic record.
(AP, 9/23/97)
1987 Sep 23, Bob Fosse
(b.1927), choreographer (All the Jazz), died at age 62.
(www.ibdb.com/person.asp?ID=4563)
1987 Sep 24, President Reagan
rebuffed congressional calls to limit U.S. forces in the Persian
Gulf, and defended the recent U.S. attack on an Iranian mine-laying
vessel.
(AP, 9/24/97)
1987 Sep 25, The US Senate
unanimously approved the nomination of Judge William S. Sessions to
be the new director of the FBI.
(AP, 9/25/97)
1987 Sep 25, Mary Astor
(b.1906), film star, died. She appeared in over 100 films, most of
them in the silent movie era. In 1959 she authored her memoir “My
Story.”
(WSJ, 2/21/09,
p.W8)(www.imdb.com/name/nm0000802/)
1987 Sep 26, In his Saturday
radio address, President Reagan said he was reluctantly signing
legislation restoring the automatic deficit-reducing provisions of
the Gramm-Rudman Act.
(AP, 9/26/97)
1987 Sep 26, "Star Trek: The
Next Generation," debuted on TV.
(www.imdb.com/title/tt0094030/)
1987 Sep 27, Football fans
suffered through their first Sunday without football since players
went on strike. NFL owners soon organized games with replacement and
nonstriking players.
(AP, 9/27/97)
1987 Sep 28, US Rep. Patricia
Schroeder, D-Colo., announced in Denver that she would not run for
the Democratic presidential nomination.
(AP, 9/28/97)
1987 Sep 28, Mehdi Hashemi,
Iranian aid of Ayatollah Khomeini, was shot for treason.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1987-9/1987-09-28-CBS-9.html)
1987 Sep 29, Henry Ford II
(b.1917) longtime chairman of Ford Motor Company, died in Detroit.
He was the grandson of Ford founder Henry Ford and was named
president of the car company in 1945. He introduced contemporary
styling in 1949.
(AP,
9/29/97)(www.thehenryford.org/exhibits/fmc/chrono.asp)
1987 Sep 30, Two top campaign
aides to Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis resigned after one of
them, campaign manager John Sasso, admitted leaking an attack
videotape that helped bring down the presidential candidacy of
Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden. Sasso returned to the campaign a year
later.
(AP, 9/30/97)
1987 Sep, In China Wang Ruoshui
(1926-2002), a writer for the People’s Daily, was thrown out of the
Communist Party. He went to Boston for an appointment at Harvard.
(SFC, 1/11/02,
p.A19)(www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&se=gglsc&d=98569754)
1987 Oct 1, Eight people were
killed when an earthquake measuring 5.9 on the Richter scale and an
aftershock measuring 5.3 struck the Los Angeles area. In 1999
researchers reported that data revealed a new active fault system,
christened the Punete Hills fault, under Los Angeles that probably
caused the 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake.
(AP, 10/1/97)(SFC, 3/5/99, p.A7)
1987 Oct 2, On Capitol Hill,
more Democratic senators lined up against Supreme Court nominee
Robert H. Bork as President Reagan continued to lobby undecided
lawmakers on behalf of his candidate for the high court.
(AP, 10/2/97)
1987 Oct 2, Peter Brian
Medawar, Brazilian-born English medical scientist, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Medawar)
1987 Oct 3, Negotiators for the
United States and Canada reached agreement in Washington D.C., on a
framework to eliminate all tariffs between the world's two largest
trading partners.
(AP, 10/3/97)
1987 Oct 3, Jean Anouilh (77),
French playwright (Ball of the Voleurs), died.
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/anouilh.htm)
1987 Oct 4, National Football
League owners staged their first games since the players union went
on strike, with nonstriking and replacement personnel on the
gridiron at sparsely attended stadiums.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1987 Oct 5, Supreme Court
nominee Robert H. Bork suffered new setbacks as Senate Democratic
Leader Robert Byrd and Republican Sens. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. of
Connecticut and John H. Chafee of Rhode Island declared they were
opposed to his confirmation.
(AP, 10/5/97)
1987 Oct 6, The Senate
Judiciary Committee voted 9 to 5 against the nomination of Robert H.
Bork to the Supreme Court, and both supporters and opponents
predicted rejection by the full Senate.
(AP, 10/6/97)
1987 Oct 6, Microsoft announced
its first Windows application, Excel.
(Wired, 12/98, p.196)
1987 Oct 6, In Oklahoma Michael
Houghton (27) and Laura Lee Sanders (22) were kidnapped from behind
a Tulsa bar, stuffed into a car trunk and taken to a rural area
where the car was set afire. Scott Allen Hain was executed for the
murders on Apr 3, 2003. Hain was 17 in 1987 and claimed to be under
the influence of Robert Lambert.
(SFC, 4/4/03, p.A6)
1987 Oct 7, President Reagan's
advisory commission on AIDS was left seemingly in disarray as its
chairman, Dr. W. Eugene Mayberry, and its vice chairman, Dr. Woodrow
A. Myers Jr., resigned.
(AP, 10/7/97)
1987 Oct 7, In San Francisco
eleven 49ers, including Joe Montana and Dwight Clark, went back to
work in the biggest breach of the 17-day-old NFL strike. Of nearly
1,600 players on strike, only 145 have gone back to work.
(SSFC, 10/7/12, DB p.46)
1987 Oct 8, US helicopter
gunships in the Persian Gulf sank three Iranian patrol boats after
an American observation helicopter was fired on. Two of six Iranian
crewmen taken from the water later died.
(AP, 10/8/97)
1987 Oct 9, Supreme Court
nominee Robert H. Bork, his rejection by the Senate a virtual
certainty, angrily told reporters he would not ask that his
nomination be withdrawn.
(AP, 10/9/97)
1987 Oct 9, Clare Boothe Luce
(b.1903), former journalist, playwright and congresswoman, died in
Washington DC. Her biography by Sylvia Jukes Morris, "Rage for Fame:
The Ascent of Clare Boothe Luce," was published in 1997.
(SFEC, 6/1/97, BR
p.4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clare_Boothe_Luce)
1987 Oct 10, The Rev. Jesse
Jackson formally launched his bid for the Democratic presidential
nomination in Raleigh, N.C.
(AP, 10/10/97)
1987 Oct 11, Some 200,000
homosexual rights activists marched through Washington DC to demand
protection from discrimination and more federal money for AIDS
research and treatment. The AIDS Memorial Quilt had its inaugural
presentation. In 2000 Cleve Jones and Jeff Dawson authored
"Stitching a Revolution, The making of an AIDS Activist."
(AP, 10/11/97)(SFEC, 6/18/00, BR p.5)
1987 Oct 12, In Houston, Vice
President George Bush formally launched his quest for the Republican
presidential nomination.
(AP, 10/12/97)
1987 Oct 12, Former Kansas Gov.
Alfred "Alf" M. Landon, who ran for president against Franklin
Roosevelt, died at his Topeka home at age 100.
(AP, 10/12/97)
1987 Oct 13, Costa Rican
President Oscar Arias was named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for
his efforts on behalf of a Central American peace plan to end the
war in Nicaragua.
(AP, 10/13/97)(WSJ, 12/12/97, p.A19)
1987 Oct 14, A real-life drama
began in Midland, Texas, as 18-month-old Jessica McClure slid 22
feet down an abandoned well at a private day care center. Hundreds
of rescuers worked 58 hours to free her.
(AP, 10/14/97)(SFC, 5/14/99, p.A3)
1987 Oct 15, Lanford Wilson's
"Burn This," premiered in NYC.
(http://allstarz.hollywood.com/~malkovich/nyburnthis.html)
1987 Oct 15, Frantic efforts
continued in Midland, Texas, to save 18-month-old Jessica McClure,
who had fallen 22 feet down an abandoned well the day before.
Jessica was freed the following evening.
(AP, 10/15/97)
1987 Oct 15, In Burkina Faso
Blaise Compaore (b.1951), trained in Gadhafi's guerrilla camps,
seized power in a bloody takeover. Libya and Burkina Faso later
denied repeated accusations of gunrunning to West Africa hot spots.
(SFC, 2/19/00, p.A10)(AP,
12/16/02)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Compaor%C3%A9)
1987 Oct 16, A 58 1/2-hour
drama in Midland, Texas, ended happily as rescuers freed Jessica
McClure, an 18-month-old girl trapped in an abandoned well.
(AP, 10/16/97)
1987 Oct 16, 175-kph winds
caused a blackout in London and much of southern England. At least
13 people died.
(http://tinyurl.com/h29j)
1987 Oct 16, In the Persian
Gulf, an Iranian missile hit a re-flagged Kuwaiti ship in the first
direct attack on the tanker fleet guarded by the U.S.
(AP, 10/16/97)
1987 Oct 17, The 1st indoor
World Series game took place at the Minnesota Metrodome.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1987_World_Series)
1987 Oct 17, First lady Nancy
Reagan underwent a modified radical mastectomy at Bethesda Naval
Hospital in Maryland.
(AP, 10/17/97)
1987 Oct 18, President Reagan
summoned congressional leaders to the White House to announce he had
decided on what action to take in response to an Iranian missile
attack on a US-flagged tanker off Kuwait two days earlier. The next
day, US destroyers bombarded an Iranian offshore oil rig.
(AP, 10/18/97)
1987 Oct 19, US Navy warships
disabled the 1st of 3 Iranian oil platforms in the Persian Gulf in
retaliation for an Iranian missile attack on a U.S.-flagged tanker
off Kuwait. [see Apr 18, 1988]
(AP, 10/19/97)(HN, 10/19/02)
1987 Oct 19, Black Monday, the
stock market crashed as the Dow Jones Industrial Average, amid
frenzied selling, plunged 508 points, 22.6%,-- its biggest-ever
one-day decline. The crash was preceded by legislation to block tax
deductions for debt incurred in corporate takeovers which were
fueling the market. It was also preceded by plunges in other
international markets. Hong Kong suffered a 46% decline in October.
(V.D.-H.K.p.253)(TMC, 1994, p.1987)(AP,
10/19/97)(SFC,10/27/97, p.B2)
1987 Oct 19, Jacqueline du Pre
(42), British cellist, died of multiple sclerosis.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqueline_du_Pr%C3%A9)
1987 Oct 20, NYC subway gunman
Bernhard Goetz was sentenced to 6 months in jail. [see Jan 13, 1989]
(http://tinyurl.com/zbf5m)
1987 Oct 20, Ten people were
killed when an Air Force jet crashed into a Ramada Inn hotel near
Indianapolis International Airport after the pilot, who was trying
to make an emergency landing, ejected safely.
(AP, 10/20/97)
1987 Oct 21,
Sometimes-acrimonious debate began in the Senate on the nomination
of Judge Robert H. Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court. (Two days later,
the Senate voted 58-42 to reject the nomination.)
(AP, 10/21/97)
1987 Oct 22, Nobel prize for
literature was awarded to Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996). At an
interview in the Stockholm airport, to a question: "You are an
American citizen who is receiving the Prize for Russian-language
poetry. Who are you, an American or a Russian?", he responded: "I am
Jewish".
(http://tinyurl.com/zx2yz)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Brodsky)
1987 Oct 22, In a bid to calm
the recent frenzy in the world's financial markets, President Reagan
said he would be meeting with congressional leaders to negotiate
ways of reducing the budget deficit.
(AP, 10/22/97)
1987 Oct 22, The US Navy
acknowledged that it had deployed 5 dolphins to the Persian Gulf to
search for Iranian mines.
(http://tinyurl.com/g9o9d)
1987 Oct 23, The U.S. Senate
rejected, 58-42, the Supreme Court nomination of Robert H. Bork.
(AP, 10/23/97)
1987 Oct 24, The Teamsters
union was welcomed back into the AFL-CIO by a vote of the labor
federation's executive council in Miami Beach, Fla. The union had
been expelled from the AFL-CIO in December, 1957, because of
racketeering by its executives, including union president Dave Beck
and vice president James R. Hoffa. However, the Teamsters
disaffiliated themselves from the AFL-CIO in 2005.
(AP, 10/24/97)(HNQ, 1/8/99)(AP, 10/24/07)
1987 Oct 24, NBC technicians
accepted a pact and ended a 118 day strike.
(http://tinyurl.com/eq22r)
1987 Oct 25, The Minnesota
Twins won their first World Series championship, beating the St.
Louis Cardinals 4-2 in game seven.
(AP, 10/25/97)
1987 Oct 25, In China Deng
Xiaoping stepped down from all but the top military post.
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A4)
1987 Oct 26, The DJIA dropped
8%. In Miami, an investor who had suffered heavy stock market losses
shot and killed a brokerage manager and wounded his personal broker,
then turned the gun on himself.
(SFC,10/17/97, p.B2)(AP, 10/26/97)
1987 Oct 26, Herbert Anaya
Sanabria, the head of Salvadoran Human Rights Commission, was
assassinated by death squads.
(www.cidh.org/annualrep/87.88eng/chap4a.htm)
1987 Oct 27, South Korean
voters overwhelmingly approved a new constitution, establishing
direct presidential elections and other democratic reforms.
(AP, 10/27/97)
1987 Oct 27, Associated Press
correspondent Terry Anderson, a hostage in Lebanon, spent his 40th
birthday in captivity.
(AP, 10/27/97)
1987 Oct 28, During a debate in
Houston that included the six Republican presidential contenders,
Vice President George Bush argued that as President Reagan's
"co-pilot," he knew how to "land the plane in a storm."
(AP, 10/28/97)
1987 Oct 29, Following the
confirmation defeat of Robert H. Bork to serve on the U.S. Supreme
Court, President Reagan announced his choice of Douglas H. Ginsburg,
a nomination that fell apart over revelations of Ginsburg's past
marijuana use.
(AP, 10/29/97)
1987 Oct 29, Woody Herman
(b.1913), US jazz clarinetist and composer, died in Los Angeles at
age 74. The government had just seized his home for back taxes. His
manager Abe Turchen had not paid taxes on musician salaries for 3
years. Gene Lees later authored "Leader of the Band: Woody Herman."
(AP, 10/29/97)(WSJ, 8/22/01, p.A14)
1987 Oct 30, President Reagan
announced that Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev would visit
Washington the following December for a summit, during which the two
leaders would sign a treaty banning intermediate-range nuclear
missiles.
(AP, 10/30/97)
1987 Oct 31, Noburo Takeshita,
leader of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party, was elected party
president in his first official step toward replacing Prime Minister
Yasuhiro Nakasone.
(AP, 10/31/97)
1987 Oct 31, Joseph Campbell
(b.1904), American writer and professor of mythology, died in Hawaii
at age 83.
(SFEC, 6/1/97,
p.A17)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell)
1987 Oct, The US FDA approved
Cipro, marketed by Bayer, as an antibiotic.
(www.prescriptionaccess.org/press/pressreleases?id=0014)(SSFC,
1/20/08, p.A10)
1987 Oct, The iceberg B9 calved
from the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctic.
(http://tinyurl.com/ldeng)
1987 Oct, In Turkey a ban on
former political leaders was lifted. Erbakan took over Welfare
leadership.
(AP, 11/4/02)
1987 Nov 1, Ibrahim Hussein of
Kenya won the New York City Marathon in two hours, 11 minutes and
one second; Priscilla Welch of Britain led the women in two hours,
30 minutes and 16 seconds.
(AP, 11/1/97)
1987 Nov 1, Chinese leader Deng
Xiaoping retired from the Communist Party's Central Committee.
(AP, 11/1/97)
1987 Nov 1, Rene Levesque
(b.1922), Quebec premier (1976-85), died at age 65.
(www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=4258)
1987 Nov 2, Reagan
administration officials said Defense Sec. Caspar Weinberger (70)
has decided to resign as his wife suffered from cancer. Under
Weinberger defense spending jumped from $180.7 billion in 1982 to
$274 billion in fiscal 1987.
(SSFC, 10/28/12, p.46)
1987 Nov 2, Zhao Ziyang was
appointed head of China's Communist Party, succeeding his mentor,
Deng Xiaoping.
(AP, 11/2/97)
1987 Nov 2, In Peru during the
All Souls holiday a 20 person raiding party of the Maoist Shining
path attacked the mountain community of Lucanas. They burned down
the municipal hall and several stores and then dragged a local
political leader and 7 merchants from their homes and stoned them to
death.
(WSJ, 6/12/97, p.A12)
1987 Nov 3, On Wall Street,
after five consecutive gains, the Dow Jones industrial average
closed down 50.56 points, ending the day at 1,963.53.
(AP, 11/3/97)
1987 Nov 4, Lisa Steinberg (6)
was pronounced dead at a New York City hospital in a child-abuse
case that sparked national outrage; Joel Steinberg, a lawyer who
adopted her illegally, served 17 years in prison for manslaughter.
(AP, 11/4/07)
1987 Nov 5, Stephen Sondheim's
and James Lapine's musical "Into the Woods," premiered on Broadway.
It had debuted in San Diego at the Old Globe Theatre in 1986.
(www.sondheimguide.com/woods.html)
1987 Nov 5, US Supreme Court
nominee Douglas H. Ginsburg admitted using marijuana several times
in the 1960s and 70s, calling it a mistake. Ginsburg ended up
withdrawing his nomination.
(AP, 11/5/08)
1987 Nov 5, President Reagan
named Frank Carlucci as secretary of defense to succeed retiring
Caspar W. Weinberger.
(AP, 11/5/97)
1987 Nov 5, Govan Mbeki, an
early leader of the African National Congress, was released from
Robben Island prison after 24 years.
(www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/pr/1980s/pr871105.html)(SFC, 8/31/01, p.A24)
1987 Nov 6, Education Secretary
William Bennett, acting with President Reagan's approval, asked
Douglas H. Ginsburg to withdraw as a Supreme Court nominee because
of revelations that Ginsburg had used marijuana.
(AP, 11/6/97)
1987 Nov 7, Judge Douglas H.
Ginsburg asked President Reagan to withdraw his nomination to the
U.S. Supreme Court, citing the clamor that arose over Ginsburg's
admission that he had smoked marijuana on occasion.
(AP, 11/7/97)
1987 Nov 7, Zine El Abidine Ben
Ali became president of Tunisia after doctors declared Habib
Bourguiba (84) medically unfit to govern. Mr. Ben Ali led a peaceful
coup that ended the 30 year rule of Habib Bourguiba. "The Tunisians
are Sunni Muslims and deny polygamy, admit abortion, and abjure the
veil."
(SFC, 5/6/96, p.A-4)(WSJ, 6/22/95, p.A-5)(SFC,
10/28/99, p.A13)
1987 Nov 7, Italian
citizens began voting in a 2-day referendum to close down 3 nuclear
power plants.
(AP, 11/13/03)(Econ, 6/6/09,
p.66)(www.radicalparty.org/ambiente/dilascia_ing.htm)
1987 Nov 8, Eleven people were
killed when a bomb planted by the Irish Republican Army exploded as
crowds gathered in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, for a ceremony
honoring Britain's war dead.
(AP, 11/8/97)
1987 Nov 9, Senate Minority
Leader Bob Dole formally announced a bid for the Republican
presidential nomination during a visit to his hometown of Russell,
Kan.
(AP, 11/9/97)
1987 Nov 10, President Reagan,
seeking to shore up the embattled U.S. dollar, declared the currency
had fallen far enough and that his administration was "not doing
anything to bring it down."
(AP, 11/10/97)
1987 Nov 11, Following the
failure of two Supreme Court nominations, President Reagan announced
his choice of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who went on to win
confirmation.
(AP, 11/11/97)
1987 Nov 11, Vincent Van Gogh’s
painting "Irises" was bought from the estate of Joan Whitney Payson
by Alan Bond, an Australian businessman, for $53.9 million at
Sotheby’s in New York.
(HN, 11/11/98)(Econ, 11/18/06, p.79)
1987 Nov 11, Boris Yeltsin
(1931-2007), who had criticized the slow pace of Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms, was dismissed as Moscow Communist Party
chief for criticizing the slow pace of reform.
(AP, 11/11/07)(http://tinyurl.com/38s7ew)(Econ,
4/28/07, p.98)
1987 Nov 12, The American
Medical Association issued a policy statement saying it was
unethical for a doctor to refuse to treat someone solely because
that person had AIDS or was HIV-positive.
(AP, 11/12/97)
1987 Nov 12, Heavy snow closed
schools from DC to Maine.
(http://weather.intellicast.com/Almanac/Northeast/November/)
1987 Nov 13, Nicaraguan
President Daniel Ortega unveiled an 11-point proposal in Washington
for a cease-fire that called for the Contra rebels to lay down their
weapons and accept an amnesty.
(AP, 11/13/97)
1987 Nov 14, A bomb hidden in a
box of chocolates exploded in the lobby of Beirut's American
University Hospital, killing seven people, including the woman who
was carrying it.
(AP, 11/14/97)
1987
Nov 14, Pieter Menten (b.1899), Dutch war criminal, died at an old
people's home in Loosbroek, southern Netherlands.
(www.jbwan.com/roblog/archives/000615.html)
1987 Nov 14, Ali Saibou
(1940-2011) began serving as the 3rd president of Niger succeeding
the deceased Seyni Kountche. He continued to 1993 and brought
multi-party politics to the west African country.
(AFP,
11/1/11)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Saibou)
1987 Nov 15, "La Cage aux
Folles" closed at Palace Theater in NYC after 1761 performances.
(www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=4231)
1987 Nov 15, Twenty-eight of 82
people aboard a Continental Airlines DC-9, including the pilot and
co-pilot, were killed when the jetliner crashed seconds after taking
off from Denver's Stapleton International Airport.
(AP, 11/15/97)
1987 Nov 16, The US Supreme
Court, by an 8-0 vote, upheld the federal mail and wire fraud
convictions of former Wall Street Journal reporter R. Foster Winans
and two co-defendants in connection with an insider-trading scheme.
(AP, 11/1697)
1987 Nov 17, Retiring Secretary
of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger received an elaborate send-off on
the grounds of the Pentagon.
(AP, 11/17/97)
1987 Nov 17, A federal jury in
Denver convicted two neo-Nazis and acquitted two others of civil
rights violations in the 1984 slaying of radio talk show host Alan
Berg.
(AP, 11/17/97)
1987 Nov 17, Richard McNair
(28) killed Jerome Theis, of Circle Pines, Minn., during a burglary
at a Minot, North Dakota, grain elevator. Richard Kitzman, an
elevator employee, was shot three times but survived. McNair was
convicted and sentenced to life in prison, but escaped a number of
times. In 2007 he was again captured in New Brunswick, Canada.
(AP, 10/26/07)
1987 Nov 18, The congressional
Iran-Contra committees issued their final report, saying President
Reagan bore "ultimate responsibility" for wrongdoing by his aides.
(AP,
11/18/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Contra_Affair)
1987 Nov 18, CBS Inc. announced
it had agreed to sell its records division to Sony Corp. for about
$2 billion.
(AP, 11/18/97)
1987 Nov 18, Thirty-one people
died in a fire at King's Cross, London's busiest subway station.
(AP, 11/18/97)
1987 Nov 19, US Congressional
budget negotiators finished all but the final details of a two-year,
$75 billion deficit reduction pact, but not in time to avert
spending cuts mandated by the Gramm-Rudman Act.
(AP, 11/19/97)
1987 Nov 19, Christopher
Wilmarth (b.1943), minimalist sculptor, died of suicide in Brooklyn.
His work used glass, steel and bronze to explore translucency and
the textural effects of the materials.
(WSJ, 10/23/01,
p.A24)(www.bettycuninghamgallery.com/CWexhibition.html)
1987 Nov 20, The film "Nuts"
starring Barbra Streisand premiered.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuts_%28film%29)
1987 Nov 20, President Reagan
and congressional leaders announced agreement on a two-year, $76
billion deficit-reduction plan designed to reassure jittery
financial markets.
(AP, 11/20/97)
1987 Nov 21, An eight-day siege
began at a detention center in Oakdale, La., as Cuban detainees,
alarmed over the possibility of being returned to Cuba, seized the
facility and took hostages.
(AP, 11/21/97)
1987 Nov 21, James E. Folsom
(79), former 2-term governor of Alabama (1947-1951 and 1955-59),
died.
(http://politicalgraveyard.com/bio/folsom.html)
1987 Nov 21, In South Korea
riot police stood guard to prevent violence by rival supporters as
presidential candidates traded charges of corruption and cruelty.
(AP, 11/21/02)
1987 Nov 22, The government of
Nicaragua released 985 political prisoners in a show of compliance
with a Central American peace plan.
(AP, 11/22/97)
1987 Nov 23, Two days after a
riot by Cuban inmates erupted at a detention center in Oakdale, La.,
Cuban detainees at a federal prison in Atlanta also rioted, seizing
hostages in a drama that was not resolved until Dec 4.
(AP, 11/23/97)
1987 Nov 24, The United States
and the Soviet Union agreed to scrap shorter- and medium-range
missiles in the first superpower treaty to eliminate an entire class
of nuclear weapons.
(AP, 11/24/97)
1987 Nov 25, Harold Washington,
the first black mayor of Chicago, died at age 65 after suffering a
heart attack in his City Hall office.
(AP, 11/25/97)
1987 Nov 26, Cuban detainees
concerned about the possibility of being sent back to Cuba continued
to hold hostages at a prison in Atlanta and a detention center in
Oakdale, La.
(AP, 11/26/97)
1987 Nov 26, Peter Hujar
(b.1934), photographer, died in NYC from complications of AIDS. He
had captured images of New York’s gay underground.
(SFEM, 10/13/96,
p.6)(www.villagevoice.com/art/9906,saltz,3915,13.html)
1987 Nov 26, Powerful typhoon
whipped across Philippines, killing 270 people and damaging or
destroying 14,000 homes.
(AP, 11/26/02)
1987 Nov 27, French hostages
Jean-Louis Normandin and Roger Auque were freed by their pro-Iranian
captors in west Beirut, Lebanon.
(AP, 11/27/97)
1987 Nov 28, A South African
Airways Boeing 747 crashed into the Indian Ocean with the loss of
all 159 people aboard.
(AP, 11/28/97)
1987 Nov 29, Joe Montana of
49ers completed an NFL record 22 consecutive passes.
(www.sportingnews.com/archives/nfl/hof00/montana-stats.html)
1987 Nov 29, Cuban detainees
released 26 hostages that they'd been holding for more than a week
at the Federal Detention Center in Oakdale, La.
(AP, 11/29/97)
1987 Nov 29, A Korean Air
jetliner, Flight 858, disappeared off Burma over the Indian Ocean,
with the loss of all 115 people aboard. North Korean spies had
planted a time-bomb on the South Korean Air jet a day earlier and
got off in Abu Dhabi. Kim Hyon-hui and her accomplice were arrested
two days later in Bahrain, where they tried to kill themselves by
taking cyanide. The man died, but Kim recovered and was extradited
to Seoul. She was convicted of the bombing and was sentenced to
death. Even while on trial, she won admirers for her classic good
looks. She was eventually pardoned and became a best-selling author,
writing books about her time as a spy.
(WSJ, 9/9/96, p.A18)(AP, 11/29/97)(AP, 7/20/10)
1987 Nov 30, Author James
Baldwin died in St. Paul de Vence, France, at age 63. His work
included: "If Beale Street Could Talk," "Blues for Mister Charlie,"
"Notes of a Native Son," "Nobody Knows My Name," and "The Fire Next
Time," and "Go Tell It on the Mountain." In 1991 James Campbell
published the biography: "Talking at the Gates: A Life of James
Baldwin."
(AP 11/30/97)(SFC, 12/30/98, p.A2)
1987 Nov 30, In an interview
broadcast by NBC, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev acknowledged that
his country was engaged in "Star Wars"-related research, but said
there were no plans to build a space-based system against nuclear
attack.
(AP 11/30/97)
1987 Nov, The US-headquartered
KFC launched its first China outlet in the Qianmen area of Beijing,
neighboring Tiananmen Square.
(www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2008-09/08/content_7007412.htm)
1987 Nov, In Mexico the peso
was devalued and caused the 3rd financial crises since 1976.
(WSJ, 12/20/96,
p.A17)(www.dallasfed.org/research/eclett/2006/el0606.html)
1987 Dec 1, NASA announced that
four companies -- Boeing Aerospace, McDonnell Douglas Astronautics,
General Electric's Astro-Space Division and Rocketdyne Division of
Rockwell International -- had been awarded contracts to help build a
space station.
(AP 12/1/97)
1987 Dec 1, Digging of the
Eurotunnel began on the English side to link England and France,
under co-chairman Alastair Morton (d.2004).
(www.scripophily.net/eurotunnel.html)(Econ,
9/11/04, p.82)
1987 Dec 2, After a chaotic
meeting that had begun the night before, the Chicago City Council
elected Eugene Sawyer acting mayor, succeeding the late Harold
Washington.
(AP 12/2/97)
1987 Dec 2, Robert Filliou
(b.1926), French-born artist and poet, died in France. He was a
member of the Fluxus prankster network, where jokes and social
critique merged in the conceptual art of the members.
(SFC, 6/24/00, p.B4)(http://tinyurl.com/kppgp)
1987 Dec 3, Four days before
his summit with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to sign a treaty
banning intermediate-range nuclear missiles, President Reagan said
in an interview with television network anchormen that there was a
reasonably good chance of progress toward a treaty on long-range
weapons.
(AP 12/3/97)
1987 Dec 4, Cuban inmates at a
federal prison in Atlanta freed their 89 hostages, peacefully ending
an 11-day uprising. The agreement provided for a nationwide
moratorium on deportations of Mariel detainees.
(AP 12/4/97)
1987 Dec 5, FBI agents searched
a federal prison where Cuban inmates had peacefully ended an 11-day
hostage siege the day before. The agents reported finding bottle
bombs and homemade machetes, but no booby-traps or bodies.
(AP 12/5/97)
1987 Dec 6, One day before the
arrival of Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, hundreds of thousands
of demonstrators pressing for free emigration of Soviet Jews marched
in Washington.
(AP 12/6/97)
1987 Dec 6, In Missouri 3
Satanist teenagers bludgeoned Steven Newberry (19), a
learning-disabled youth, to death and blamed the incident on heavy
metal inspired satanism.
(http://tinyurl.com/k36su)(www.creationism.org/csshs/v15n1p03.htm)
1987 Dec 6, In Moscow security
agents roughed up Jewish activists and journalists during
demonstrations over Kremlin policy one day before the arrival of
Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to the US, where hundreds of
thousands of demonstrators pressing for free emigration of Soviet
Jews marched in Washington.
(AP 12/6/97)
1987 Dec 7, Soviet leader
Mikhail S. Gorbachev set foot on American soil for the first time,
arriving for a Washington summit with President Reagan.
(AP 12/7/97)
1987 Dec 7, A Pacific Southwest
Airlines jetliner crashed in California after a gunman apparently
opened fire on a fellow passenger and the two pilots. Flight 1771,
bound for San Francisco, crashed and killed all 43 people onboard.
The FBI later said David Burke, a fired USAir worker, shot his
former supervisor and the pilots in cockpit.
(AP, 12/7/97)(SSFC, 12/23/12, DB p.42)
1987 Dec 8, President Reagan
and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev signed the INF Treaty,
Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, under which the
superpowers agreed to destroy their arsenals of intermediate-range
nuclear missiles.
(TMC, 1994, p.1987)(AP 12/8/97)(SFEC, 12/19/99,
p.C12)
1987 Dec 8, Kurt Schmoke became
the first African-American mayor of Maryland when he was elected the
mayor of Baltimore. He was a Rhodes scholar and Harvard Law School
graduate. He served 3 terms and decided to run for the Senate.
(SFC, 12/4/98, p.A12)(HN, 12/8/98)
1987 Dec 8-1987 Dec 9, The
first Palestinian intefadeh (Arabic for uprising) began as riots
broke out in Gaza and spread to the West Bank, triggering a strong
Israeli counter-response.
(AP 12/8/97)(SFC, 4/24/98, p.A17)(AP, 12/9/07)
1987 Dec 9, On the second day
of their White House summit, President Reagan and Soviet leader
Mikhail S. Gorbachev grappled with differences over Afghanistan and
cutbacks in long-range nuclear arms.
(AP 12/9/97)
1987 Dec 10, President Reagan
and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev concluded three days of
summit talks in Washington.
(AP 12/10/97)
1987 Dec 10, Jascha Heifetz
(b.1901), Lithuania-born Jewish violinist, died in Los Angeles.
(http://www.thirteen.org/publicarts/violin/heifetz.html)(AP
12/10/97)
1987 Dec 11, NATO allies urged
the U.S. Senate to ratify the intermediate-range missile treaty
quickly and underscored their support by pledging to let the Soviet
Union inspect missile bases in five European countries.
(AP 12/11/97)
1987 Dec 12, Secretary of State
George P. Shultz, during a visit to Denmark, urged U.S. allies to
increase spending on conventional forces, following the signing of a
superpower intermediate-range missile ban treaty.
(AP 12/12/97)
1987 Dec 12, Clifton Chenier,
Zydeco accordionist, died. In 1998 Michael Tisserand published "The
Kingdom of Zydeco" and Rick Olivier and Ben Sandmel published the
photo documentary "Zydeco!"
(WSJ, 4/19/99,
p.A20)(http://experts.about.com/e/c/cl/Clifton_Chenier.htm)
1987 Dec 13, Secretary of State
George P. Shultz said the Reagan administration would begin making
funding requests for the proposed "Star Wars" defense system.
(AP 12/13/97)
1987 Dec 14, US Supreme Court
nominee Anthony M. Kennedy told his confirmation hearing he had no
hidden agenda for abortion and privacy cases.
(AP 12/14/97)
1987 Dec 14, Chrysler pleaded
no contest to federal charges of selling several thousand vehicles
as new even though they'd been driven by employees with the odometer
disconnected.
(AP 12/14/97)
1987 Dec 15, Gary Hart, who had
dropped out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination
amid questions about his relationship with Miami model Donna Rice,
made a surprise return to the campaign, saying, "Let's let the
people decide."
(AP 12/15/97)
1987 Dec 16, Former White House
aide Michael K. Deaver was convicted of lying to a House
subcommittee and a grand jury investigating whether he had violated
federal ethics laws. He was later fined and ordered to perform
community service.
(AP 12/16/97)
1987 Dec 16, South Korea held
its first direct presidential election in 16 years, choosing the
government's handpicked candidate, Roh Tae-woo.
(AP 12/16/97)
1987 Dec 17, With election
results showing him the winner, South Korea's president-elect, Roh
Tae-woo, appealed for "national harmony" while his opponents claimed
he had won through fraud.
(AP, 12/17/97)
1987 Dec 18, Ivan F. Boesky was
sentenced to three years in prison for plotting Wall Street's
biggest insider-trading scandal. Boesky served about two years of
his sentence.
(AP, 12/18/97)
1987 Dec 18, Pakistani
opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was married in a traditional
Islamic ceremony to businessman Asif Ali Zardari.
(AP, 12/18/97)
1987 Dec 19, The Palestinian
uprising in Israel's occupied territories spread to Arab east
Jerusalem.
(AP, 12/19/97)
1987 Dec 20, Some 4,340 people
were killed when the Dona Paz, a Philippine passenger ship, collided
with the tanker Vector off Mindoro island, setting off a double
explosion.
(AP, 2/3/06)
1987 Dec 21, In New York City
three white teen-agers from the Howard Beach section of Queens were
convicted of manslaughter in the death of a black man who was chased
onto a highway, where he was struck by a car. A fourth defendant was
acquitted.
(AP, 12/21/97)
1987 Dec 22, The Reagan
administration criticized Israel's handling of the Palestinian
uprising in the occupied territories, particularly the military's
use of live ammunition against civilians.
(AP, 12/22/97)
1987 Dec 22, In Zimbabwe ZANU
leader Robert Mugabe and ZAPU leader Joshua Nkomo signed a unity
agreement that merged the two parties to form one party known as
ZANU PF. This effectively dissolved ZAPU into ZANU, renamed ZANU-PF.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gukurahundi)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Nkomo)
1987 Dec 23, Lynette "Squeaky"
Fromme, serving a life sentence for the attempted assassination of
President Ford in 1975, escaped from the Alderson Federal Prison for
Women in West Virginia. She was recaptured two days later.
(AP, 12/23/97)
1987 Dec 24, M.G. Ramachandran
(b.1917), leading Tamil film actor and Chief Minister of the Tamil
Nadu state from 1977, died. He was the first film actor to be a
Chief Minister in India.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._G._Ramachandran)
1987 Dec 24, In Lebanon, the
kidnappers of Terry Anderson released a videotape in which The
Associated Press correspondent told his family he was in good
health, and said to President Reagan, "Surely by now you know what
must be done and how you can do it." Anderson was freed nearly four
years later.
(AP, 12/24/97)
1987 Dec 25, Authorities
recaptured Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, who had escaped two days
earlier from the federal prison in Alderson, W.Va., where she was
serving a life sentence for her attempt on the life of President
Ford.
(AP, 12/25/97)
1987 Dec 25, Antoni Imiela
pounced on Sheila Jankowitz near her home in Forest Hill, southeast
London. The attack preceded a series of rapes across south-east
England in 2001 and 2002 for which the ex-railway worker was given
seven life sentences in 2004. In 2012 the 'M25 Rapist' was sentenced
12 years more for raping Jankowitz.
(AFP, 3/22/12)
1987 Dec 26, A bomb exploded at
a USO bar in Barcelona, Spain, killing one U.S. sailor and injuring
nine others; a little-known group called the Red Army of Catalonian
Liberation claimed responsibility.
(AP, 12/26/97)
1987 Dec 27, Scores of
Palestinian prisoners appeared before Israeli military courts in the
first trials of several hundred protesters arrested in the
"intefadeh," or uprising, in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
(AP, 12/27/97)
1987 Dec 28, The bodies of 14
relatives of R. Gene Simmons were found at his home near Dover,
Ark., following a shooting spree by Simmons in Russellville that
claimed two other lives. Simmons was later executed.
(AP, 12/28/97)
1987 Dec 29, The antidepressant
drug Prozac was allowed to go on the market. It was based on
fluoxetine, which increases serotonin levels in the brain by
preventing the cells that that produce serotonin from reabsorbing it
too quickly. It was discovered by Dr. Ray W. Fuller (1936-1996), Dr.
David Wong and Dr. Bryan Molloy of Eli Lilly.
(SFC, 8/15/96,
p.C4)(www.prozactruth.com/fdalilly.htm)
1987 Dec 29, NASA delayed the
planned June launch of the space shuttle -- the first since the
Challenger disaster -- because a motor component failed during a
test-firing of the shuttle's redesigned booster rocket.
(AP, 12/29/97)
1987 Dec 30, Manufacturers of
all-terrain vehicles agreed to withdraw the three-wheel model from
dealers' inventories, but stopped short of a recall, as demanded by
groups who felt the ATV's were dangerous.
(AP, 12/30/97)
1987 Dec 31, One second was
added to the year to compensate for precession of earth's axis.
(HN, 12/31/98)
1987 Dec 31, Robert Mugabe was
sworn in as Zimbabwe's first executive president. Joshua Nkomo
rejoined the Zimbabwe government as vice president.
(AP,
12/31/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Nkomo)
1987 Dec, SF activists formed
the SF Coalition on Homelessness.
(SFC, 12/15/12, p.A1)
1987 Dec, Sheik Ahmed Yassin
founded Hamas, a Palestinian social welfare and military
organization. He urged the killing of Palestinians who collaborated
with Israeli authorities. Its military wing, called the Izzeddine
al-Qassam, used armed operations against Israel. In 2006 Matthew
Levitt authored “Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the
Service of Jihad.”
(SFC, 5/25/96, p.A12)(SFC,12/27/97, p.A12)(WSJ,
5/2/06, p.D8)
1987 Dec, Work began on the
Chunnel between Britain and France.
(SFEC, 9/8/96, zone 1 p.4)
1987 Dec, Slobodan Milosevic,
head of a nationalist faction, staged a palace coup and purged Pres.
Ivan Stambolic over his moderate treatment of ethnic Albanians.
Milosevic had risen to power as head of Serbia’s Communist Party.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)(SFC, 12/27/96, p.B3)(SFC,
7/24/97, p.C3)
1987 Jasper Johns, American
artist, painted "The Seasons (Fall)."
(SFC, 3/31/97, p.E6)
1987 The "New Star" sculpture
by Mark di Suvero was constructed.
(SFEC, 3/16/97, DB p.33)
1987 Cleveland Amory authored
"The Cat Who Came for Christmas," a national best-seller about his
cat Polar Bear.
(SFC, 10/16/98, p.D4)
1987 Molefi K. Asante wrote
his: "The Afrocentric Idea."
(Civilization, July-Aug, 1995, p. 34)
1987 Ravi Batra authored "The
Great Depression of the 1990s."
(NW, 9/16/02, p.34BB)
1987 Virginia Reade Belmontez
(d.1998 at 68) authored "Mexico Barbarro 1987," a book that exposed
the past of Mexico’s Pres. Salinas and his party’s oppression of the
Mexican people.
(SFC, 11/7/98, p.C2)
1987 Martin Bernal wrote Vol. 1
of his "Black Athena." Vol. 2 came out in 1991.
(Civilization, July-Aug, 1995, p. 34)
1987 Allan Bloom, Prof. of
political philosophy at the Univ. of Chicago, published "The Closing
of the American Mind." In 2000 Saul Bellow authored the novel
"Ravelstein" based on the life of Bloom.
(WSJ, 1/7/98, p.W11)(WSJ, 2/2/00, p.A26)
1987 Stewart Brand wrote "The
Media Lab."
(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A17)
1987 Dorothy Bryant wrote her
historical novel "The Confessions of Madame Psyche."
(SFC, 12/13/96, p.C14)
1987 James Lee Burke published
his 1st Dave Robicheaux detective novel "Neon Rain."
(SFC, 9/11/00, p.B7)
1987 Lincoln Caplan authored
"The Tenth Justice: The Solicitor General and the Rule of Law."
(SFC, 10/13/99, p.C2)
1987 "Southern Food" by John
Egerton was published.
(SFC, 8/14/96, zz-1 p.1)
1987 Neil Folberg published "In
a Desert Land: Photographs of Israel, Egypt, and Jordan." It focused
on the Sinai Desert and was re-issued in 1998.
(SFEC, 4/26/98, BR p.6)
1987 Joseph Greenberg (d.2001),
Stanford linguist, authored "Language in the Americas." He assigned
the 650 native languages of North and South America to 3 groups.
(SFC, 5/15/01, p.C2)
1987 William Greider wrote
"Secrets of the Temple." It was a comprehensive general account of
how the Federal Reserve operates.
(WSJ, 1/17/97, p.A11)
1987 Thich Nhat Hanh,
Vietnamese Zen master, published "Being Peace," the first of his 35
books and tapes.
(SFC, 10/12/97, Z1 p.3)
1987 Robert Higgs authored
“Crises and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American
Government.”
(www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=15)
1987 David Ignatius authored
his novel “Agents of Innocence.” It became a classic in the
espionage genre.
(WSJ, 4/7/07, p.P10)
1987 Kim Jong Il, son of North
Korean leader Kim Il Sung, authored the treatise: “Theory of
Cinematic Art.”
(www.korea-dpr.com/library/209.pdf)
1987 Paul Kennedy, British
historian, authored “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.”
(Econ, 5/24/08, p.108)
1987 "Modern Geology Vol. II"
by Andrew Kitchener was published.
(NH, 8/96, p.58)
1987 Patricia Limerick
published "The Legacy of Conquest." She realigned standard history
to account for minorities and women in the unbroken settlement of
the US West.
(SFEC, 1/2/00, BR p.12)
1987 An English edition of “The
Mind of a Mnemonist” by Russian psychologist Alexander Luria
(1902-1977) was published.
(http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=12247)
1987 Malachi Martin (d.1999 at
78), an Irish-born former Jesuit, published "The Jesuits."
(SFC, 7/30/99, p.D8)
1987 The "Food of Southern
Italy" by chef Carlo Middione won the Tastemaker Award in the
International Cookbook category.
(SFEM, 7/21/96, p.16)
1987 Toni Morrison wrote her
novel "Song of Solomon."
(SFEC, 12/15/96, DB p.61)
1987 In Japan Haruki Murakami
authored "Norwegian Wood." The novel experimented with reality. An
English translation was made in 1997. By 2010 the love story sold
more than 10 million copies in Japan and 2.6 million abroad in 36
languages. The film "Norwegian Wood," by Vietnamese-French director
Tran Anh Hung, opened in Japan in December, 2010.
(SFC, 1/1/01, p.B7)(AP, 11/26/10)
1987 V.S, Naipaul (b.1932),
Trinidad-born English novelist, authored "The Enigma of Arrival."
(SFC, 10/12/01, p.C1)
1987 M.I.T. Press published "A
Few Good Men from Univac." It was a history of the computer.
(WSJ, 11/22/96, p.A12)
1987 Caryl Phillips wrote "The
European Tribe," his "impressionistic tour of a continent with a
long history of persecuting Jews and ignoring blacks."
(WSJ, 5/21/97, p.A12)
1987 T. Boone Pickens, head of
Mesa Petroleum, published his autobiography “Boone.” In 2000 it was
updated under the title “The Luckiest Guy in the World.”
(WSJ, 9/10/08, p.A13)
1987 Richard Preston wrote
"First Light," a book on the romantic era of astronomy. A new
edition was published in 1996.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, BR p.7)
1987 Barbara Raskin (d.1999 at
63) published her novel "Hot Flashes."
(SFC, 7/27/99, p.A17)
1987 Richester Register,
student of Paolo Soleri, published his "Ecocity Berkeley: Building
Cities for a Healthy Future."
(PacDis, Spring/'94, p. 29)
1987 Leni Riefenstahl
(1902-2003), German director, published her autobiography: "Leni
Riefenstahl: A Memoir."
(SFC, 1/19/99, p.B5)
1987 George Seldes, former
Berlin correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, wrote his
autobiography: "Witness to a Century."
(SFEC, 7/27/97, p.T5)
1987 Randy Shilts authored "The
Band Played On," in which he chronicled the early days of AIDS.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_the_Band_Played_On)
1987 George Soros, businessman,
published "The Alchemy of Finance." It offered his ideas on a wide
range of subjects including his own success. The Quantum Fund is one
of Mr. Soros’ investment vehicles.
(WSJ, 2/27/95, p.A-10)
1987 Larry R. Squire authored
“Memory and Brain.” It became a classic in the biology of memory.
(WSJ, 4/7/07, p.P10)
1987 Elizabeth Taylor
(1932-2011) and writer Jane Scovell authored “Elizabeth Takes Off.”
The book covered Taylor’s recent weight loss.
(SFC, 3/24/11, p.A8)
1987 Choreographer Paul Taylor
published his autobiography "Public Domain."
(WSJ, 4/12/99, p.A21)
1987 Walter Weintz (1915-1996)
wrote his memoir "The Solid Gold Mailbox." He had been a pioneer of
direct mail advertising and used a Persian poet’s lines to sell the
Reader’s Digest: "If thou hast two pennies, spend one for bread."
Weintz sent out 100 million pennies in pairs and advertised that the
1st be kept for luck and the 2nd be used as a down payment to
Reader’s Digest.
(SFC, 12/25/96, p.A22)
1987 Chancellor Williams
published his work: "The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great
Issues of Race from 4500 BC to 2000 AD." He also wrote "The Re-Birth
of African Civilization," an account of his 1953-1957 research
project on the nature of education in Europe and Africa.
(Civilization, July-Aug, 1995, p. 34)
1987 "The Truly Disadvantaged"
by William Julius Wilson first discussed the "mismatch thesis,"
which points to the problem of unskilled inner-city workers trapped
in poverty and unqualified and unable to reach jobs in the hi-tech
urban environment. The problem continued to be discussed in his 1996
book: "When Work Disappears."
(WSJ, 9/3/96, p.A12)
1987 William Wilson (d.1999 at
51) authored "An Incomplete Education," designed to fill in
knowledge lacked by college graduates.
(SFC, 11/3/99, p.C6)
1987 Tom Wolfe published his
first novel "Bonfire of the Vanities" in book form, a complete
re-write after it was serialized in Rolling Stone Magazine. The
title referred to an event on Feb 7, 1497, when followers of the
priest Girolamo Savonarola collected and publicly burned thousands
of objects in Florence, Italy. Wolfe’s book was a story of
Reagan-era avarice.
(WSJ, 10/30/98,
p.W1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonfire_of_the_Vanities)
1987 Arthur Miller wrote his
play "I Can’t Remember Anything." He also authored in this year his
autobiography "Timebends."
(WSJ, 1/14/98, p.A17)(Econ, 11/1/03, p.82)
1987 August Wilson won a
Pulitzer prize for his play "Fences." Mr. Wilson’s work chronicles
20th century life among American blacks.
(WSJ, 2/17/95, p.A-10)
1987 The book "White Mischief"
(1982) by James Fox was made into a film starring Charles Dance and
Greta Scacchi. The book highlighted the free-spending, and often
alcoholic ways of much of the early colonial set in Kenya.
(AP, 5/24/06)
1987 Dom DeLuise started in
“The Dom DeLuise Show,” a syndicated sitcom (1987-1988) in which he
played a Hollywood barber and widowed single father of a 10-year-old
girl.
(SFC, 5/6/09, p.A9)
1987 Henry Hampton (d.1998 at
58) produced his 6-hour PBS TV special "Eyes on the Prize," a look
at the civil rights movement.
(SFC, 11/24/98, p.A26)
1987 Morton Downey Jr. (d.2001)
pioneered the "Trash TV" talk show with his NYC "The Morton
Downey Show."
(SFC, 3/14/01, p.A20)
1987 The TV show "The ‘Slap’
Maxwell Story" began a one year run. It was a drama comedy about a
sports columnist in New Mexico.
(SFC, 12/3/98, p.E5)
1987 The Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles TV cartoon show began. The turtles were named after famous
Italian artists.
(NW, 11/11/02, p.56)
1987 NBC began its “Unsolved
Mysteries” series. The show continued to 2002.
(AH, 4/07, p.58)
1987 The TV show "A Year in the
Life" was a drama about a Seattle widower and businessman and his 4
grown children.
(SFC, 12/3/98, p.E5)
1987 English singer Rick Astley
sang "Never Gonna Give You Up," written and produced by Stock,
Aitken & Waterman. The song was released as the first single
from Astley's multi-million selling debut album, Whenever You Need
Somebody. The song was a worldwide number-one hit, initially in the
singer's native United Kingdom in 1987, where it stayed at number
one for five weeks and was the best-selling single of that year. In
2008, Rick Astley won the MTV EMA awards for "Best Act Ever" with
the song "Never Gonna Give You Up", as a result of collective voting
from thousands of people on the internet, due to the popular
phenomenon of rickrolling.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_Gonna_Give_You_Up)
1987 M.C. Hammer (aka Stanley
Kirk Burrell) released his first "rap music" single, "Ring
‘Em"/"Stupid Def Yal" on Bustin’ Records.
(SFEC, 7/13/97, DB p.34)
1987 Carl Perkins (d.1998),
rockabilly king, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
(SFC, 1/20/98, p.A1,8)
1987 John Santos formed the
Machete Ensemble. From Afro-Cuban and Afro-Caribbean music the band
moved to Latin jazz and traditional classic jazz.
(SFEC,10/26/97, DB p.49)
1987 Townes Van Zandt
(1944-1997) produced his album "At My Window."
(SFC, 1/4/97, p.E1)
1987 John Whelan, button
accordionist, recorded "Fresh Takes" with violinist Eileen Ivers.
(WSJ, 3/17/97, p.A16)
1987 Philip Glass composed his
Violin Concerto.
(WSJ, 1/27/97, p.A20)
1987 Lou Harrison composed
"Strict Songs." Mark Morris adopted the music to a dance
performance.
(WSJ, 4/25/97, p.A16)
1987 In Boston the 46 floor
Tower One of the International Place was completed. The 35 floor
Tower Two was completed in 1992. The architects were Philip Johnson
and John Burgee.
(WSJ, 1/3/97, p.B10)
1987 The Dia Center for the
Arts opened a 40,000-sq.-foot exhibition space on W. 22nd St. in
Greenwich Village, NYC.
(Hem, 4/96, p.55)
1987 The Evangelical Lutheran
Church of America (ELCA) was formed by the merger of 3 small
Lutheran denominations: the American Lutheran Church, the Lutheran
Church in America and the Association of Evangelical Lutheran
Churches.
(SFC, 7/21/97, p.A11)
1987 The Westin Kauai was
completed by developer Christopher B. Hemmeter (d.2003).
(SSFC, 11/30/03, p.A29)
1987 In Texas George Roden was
driven from the Branch Dravidian religious group after a gun battle
with David Koresh over the leadership. The 77-acre compound near
Waco, known as Mount Carmel, belonged to Roden’s mother, who named
Koresh as the trustee in her will.
(SFC, 12/8/98, p.A3)
1987 John Templeton
(1912-2008), financial wizard, founded the John Templeton Foundation
to explore the relationship between science and religion.
(Wired, 2/98, p.176)(Econ, 7/19/08, p.95)
1987 Mickey Weiss founded the
Los Angeles Food Distribution Project. It distributed 60,000 pounds
of produce free of charge in its first month and by 1991 the program
had grown to 1.5 million pounds per month. It reached 100 million
pounds per year by 1995.
(Hem., Oct. '95, p.17-18)
1987 Milton Feldstein (d.1997
at 78) was chosen as president of the Air and Waste Management
Association, a trade group for air quality professionals.
(SFC, 5/20/97, p.A21)
1987 The Joseph and Edna
Josephson Institute of Ethics was founded by Michael Josephson to
survey the character of youths and adults.
(Hem., 8/96, p.21)
1987 First Friday, an African
American networking organization, began in New Jersey as a happy
hour for people in their 30s.
(SSFC, 8/18/02, p.E1)
1987 The National Museum of
Women in the Arts was founded in Washington DC. It was the idea of
Wilhelmina Holladay. In 1997 a new $1 million wing was added.
(SFEC,11/9/97, p.A12)
1987 Samuel Eilenberg (d.1998
at 84), mathematician and art collector, donated over 400 artifacts
from his collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In return the
museum raised some $1.5 million to create the Samuel Eilenberg
Visiting Professorship of Mathematics at Columbia Univ.
(SFC, 2/3/98, p.A15)
1987 Village Enterprises Fund
was founded to help small businesses in under-developed countries.
In 1997 it began focusing on East Africa.
(SFC, 6/805, p.C1)
1987 The Feminist Majority was
founded by Toni Carabillo, Judith Meuli, Eleanor Smeal, Peg Yorkin
and Katherine Spillar. Their goal was to encourage women’s
empowerment.
(LAT, 9/29/97, p.A18)
1987 Mary Shurz, editor of the
Danville Advocate in Kentucky, unofficially started the Danville
Great American Brass Band Festival.
(WSJ, 7/8/96, p.A8)
1987 Sam Moskowitz (d.1997 at
76) was inducted into the New Jersey Literary Hall of Fame for his
extensive work in science fiction.
(SFC, 4/26/97, p.A22)
1987 Donald J. Cram (d.2001 at
82) won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for synthesizing molecules that
mimicked some chemistry reactions of life. He later created "prison:
molecules that enclosed smaller molecules.
(SFC, 6/22/01, p.D6)
1987 Susumu Tonegawa of Japan
won the Nobel Prize in medicine for the discovery of the process
that enables the body to produce thousands of different antibodies
to fight disease.
(SFEC, 10/8/96, A9)
1987 Robert M. Solow of the
United States won the Nobel Prize in Economics for contributions to
the theory of economic growth.
(AP, 10/11/09)
1987 Kurt Waldheim, Austrian
president and former U.N. secretary general, was barred from
entering the U.S. for his past involvement in Nazi war crimes.
(HNQ, 10/22/99)
1987 A US Congressional
Sentencing Commission, created in 1984, put forth its 1st sentencing
guidelines.
(WSJ, 7/14/04, p.A1)
1987 The Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) set standards for air quality that included
a maximum level of particulate matter in air. The standard applied
to particles smaller than 10 microns (10 millionths of a meter).
(WSJ, 5/21/97, p.A14)
1987 The Federal Abandoned
Shipwreck Act gave states control of historic wrecks that were found
near their coasts.
(SFC, 12/2/97, p.A2)
1987 The Amerasian Homecoming
Act was enacted by Congress and enabled Vietnamese with American
facial features born between 1962 and 1976 to get an American visa.
(WSJ, 2/28/02, p.B1)
1987 The US Congress approved a
$6.4 billion budget for "the Big Dig" in Boston. Its 85% support
later shrank to 55%, as costs in 2002 rose to $14.6 billion.
(SFC, 12/20/02, p.J12)
1987 US Congress added portions
of California’s Merced, Kings, and Kern Rivers (north and south
forks) to the national system for federal protection. The 1968
National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act originally covered 9 rivers
including the Middle Fork Feather River in California.
(SFC, 7/21/06, p.B3)
1987 US Congress amended the
Nuclear Waste Policy Act and directed DOE to study only Yucca
Mountain, Nevada, located within a former nuclear test site.
(www.nei.org/keyissues/nuclearwastedisposal/yuccamountain/)
1987 A wrongful death suit
filed by Michael Donald’s mother gave a $7 million verdict against
the United Klans of America. In 1981 Ku Klux Klansman Henry Hays had
murdered Donald, a 19-year-old black man, in a random abduction.
Donald was beaten, cut, strangled and his body was strung up a tree.
Hays was convicted and sentenced to death. He was executed Jun 6,
1997.
(SFC, 6/6/97, p.A3)
1987 A sex scandal hit TV
evangelist Jimmy Swaggart. [see Feb 21, 1988]
(TMC, 1994, p.1987)
1987 California passed a law
that required unmarried girls under 18 to get written parental
consent or to prove to a judge that they are mature enough to make
an informed decision in order to get an abortion.
(SFC, 4/4/96, p.A-1)
1987 In Pasadena, Ca., a
crematory owner was accused of selling body parts and stuffing up to
18 bodies at a time into a combustion chamber.
(WSJ, 2/28/02, p.B1)
1987 Hubcap Ranch in Pope
Valley, Napa County, Ca., was declared a state historic landmark.
Litto Damonte (d.1985), Italian marble mason, had bought the
360-acre ranch in 1930. He soon began collecting hubcaps from
passing cars on the potholed Pope Valley Road.
(SSFC, 3/15/09, p.B2)
1987 In San Francisco Bill
Weber painted a jazz mural at the North Beach corner of Columbus and
Grant. He began a restoration in 2004.
(SFC, 2/20/04, p.E3)
1987 In SF Kenneth R. Dixon
(1945-1994) became artistic director of Theatre Rhinoceros.
(SFC, 2/12/08, p.E1)
1987 In San Francisco ground
was broken at the former site of the Gartland Apartments at Valencia
and 16th for low-income housing.
(SFC, 9/14/02, p.A16)
1987 In San Francisco "Food of
Southern Italy" by chef Carlo Middione won the Tastemaker Award in
the International Cookbook category. His restaurants are Vivande
Porte Via at 2125 Fillmore and Vivande Ristorante at 670 Golden
Gate.
(SFEM, 7/21/96, p.16)
1987 Chendra and Shanti,
one-horned rhinos, were presented as a gift to the SF Zoo from Prine
Gyanendra of Nepal. They came from the Royal Chitwan National park,
one of only 3 places where the species survives in the wild.
(SFC, 9/6.96, p.B1)
1987 In San Francisco the Omega
Boys Club was founded by Joseph Marshall Jr., a public school
teacher, and Jack Jacqua, a guidance counselor.
(SFC, 6/28/97, p.C1)(SFC,12/11/97, p.A25)
1987 The KQED radio program
"Forum" began with Kevin Pursglove as the founding host. He stressed
politics on the program until 1993 when Michael Krasny, a literature
professor at SF State Univ., became moderator and expanded the
subject matter to a broad range of contemporary issues. Pursglove
went on to become the press secretary to San Jose Mayor Susan
Hammer.
(SFC,10/21/97, p.E1,3)
1987 Mary Risley, owner of
Tante Marie’s Cooking School, founded Food Runners, a volunteer
organization to pick up and deliver excess food to homeless shelters
in SF.
(SFEC, 3/8/98, p.W34)
1987 In San Francisco the
Social Venture Network was founded. Members focused on investing in
"socially responsible" companies.
(WSJ, 2/4/00, p.A1)
1987 In San Francisco Art Agnos
was elected mayor over John Molinari by a margin of 70-30.
(SFC, 12/15/99, p.A19)
1987 In San Francisco Judge
Marilyn Hall Patel imposed a consent decree to control
discrimination in the Fire Department.
(SFC,12/9/97, p.A1)
1987 San Francisco banned new
restaurants on Noe Valley’s 24th Street because residents felt they
were losing local shops to eateries that drove up rents and caused
traffic jams. In 2010 the city poised to undo the rule as some 15
storefronts stood empty on the street.
(SFC, 1/14/10, p.D1)
1987 There were demonstrations
at the California Concord Naval Weapons Station against the base’s
alleged role in shipping arms to Central America. Writer Alice
Walker was arrested.
(SFEC, 4/20/97, BR p.6)
1987 The San Francisco real
estate firm Grubb & Ellis was acquired by Fox & Carskadon.
(SFC, 12/1/98, p.B2)
1987 New Jersey adopted
legislation requiring bottled water to carry an expiration date.
Water companies began stamping all bottles.
(WSJ, 2/11/04, p.D11)
1987 In New York Tawana Brawley
(16) charged that 6 white law-enforcement officers abducted and
raped her. Her claims were declared a hoax by a grand jury. 9 years
later a related trial opened in a defamation suit brought by a
former prosecutor against the Rev. Al Sharpton and 2 other advisers
to Brawley. In 1998 Steven Paganes was awarded $345,000 in damages.
Sharpton was fined $65,000, C. Vernon Mason was fined $185,000 and
Alton Maddox was fined $95,000.
(SFC,11/19/97, p.A7)(SFC, 7/30/98, p.A9)
1987 Aaron Rubashkin, a
Lubuvitcher Hasidic Jew from Brooklyn, reopened an abandoned
slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa. In 2000 Stephen G. Bloom authored
"Postville: A Clash of cultures in Heartland American."
(SSFC, 12/24/00, BR p.4)
1987 AdLib launched a PC audio
card that delivered stereo sound.
(WSJ, 3/4/97, p.B1)
1987 A.W. Clausen, head of the
Bank of America, sold the Charles Schwab securities firm and
refocused on the domestic market.
(SFC, 4/14/98, p.B4)
1987 The Carlyle Group was
founded in Washington DC. It had interests with military contractors
and ties to elite DC circles.
(SFC, 3/27/03, p.B1)
1987 Cyberonics Corp. was
founded to design, develop and bring to market medical devices to
treat epilepsy. The company developed an implantable device to
stimulate the vagus nerve to reduce the frequency and extent of
epileptic seizures.
(CYBX, 1997, AR p.19)
1987 Chrysler bought AMC for
$600 million.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1987 Ford purchased a 75% share
of Aston Martin.
(HNQ, 11/26/00)
1987 Greg Wallace opened up
Cadillac Historical Services as a service for the vintage Cadillac
owner and began serving as a historian for the Cadillac company.
(SFC, 12/14/96, p.D1)(http://tinyurl.com/4f9s9cr)
1987 General Electric (GE) sold
its consumer electronics business to Thompson SA.
(WSJ, 11/4/99, p.B6)
1987 LVMH, a fashion and luxury
goods group, was created. Its initials stood for Louis Vuitton
(leather luggage), Moet (champagne) and Hennessy (cognac).
(Econ, 3/6/04, Survey p.6)
1987 The Hearst Corp. acquired
the Houston Chronicle. Hearst also acquired Cowles and North America
Syndicates, which were consolidated into King Features Syndicate.
(SFC, 8/7/99, p.A9)
1987 Martha Stewart joined
Kmart as Entertainment and Lifestyle Spokesperson.
(WSJ, 11/18/04, p.B1)
1987 Mazda opened a new plant
in Flat Rock, Mich.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1987 Craig McCaw took his McCaw
Cellular Communications public and raised $2.39 billion. McCaw’s
story was told in 2000 by O. Casey Cor in "Money From Thin Air."
(WSJ, 6/14/00, p.A24)
1987 Matsushita Electric
invested significant resources to incorporate fuzzy logic technology
into marketable goods.
(Hem, Dec. 94, p.102)
1987 Michael Gilliland and his
wife, Elizabeth Cook, purchased a vegetarian food store in Boulder,
Colo. In 1991 they opened their 1st supermarket-size store in Santa
Fe, NM, and renamed the company Wild Oats Vegetarian Market.
They went public in 1996 and by 2006 had 114 stores in 24 states.
(WSJ, 10/26/06, p.C1)
1987 Shearson Lehman Brothers,
a unit of American Express, acquired E.F. Hutton, which had been
crippled by a 1985 check-kiting scandal and the October 1987 stock
market crash. Shearson and Hutton merged in 1988.
(WSJ, 10/15/05,
p.B3)(www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Lehman_Brothers)
1987 TRW developed the first
seat belt pretensioners.
(F, 10/7/96, p.72)
1987 The International
Organization for Standardization (ISO) originally released the ISO
9000 series of standards. Since then, the standards have become
recognized around the world and are now accepted in more than 100
countries.
(BW, 10/6/98)
1987 GSM, a 2nd generation
wireless technology, was mandated as a Europe-wide standard.
(Econ, 5/28/05, p.66)
1987 Dr. Lameh Fananapazir was
hired by the National Institutes of Health [NIH] and expanded the
agency’s research in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy [HCM], an inherited
condition that thickens the heart and can cause sudden death. In
1993 he received approval to begin putting pacemakers into children
and claimed results that indicated a reversal of the disease. His
work has become very controversial.
(WSJ, 6/12/96, p.A1)
1987 The "Breathe Right" strip
was invented by an allergy sufferer as a device to enhance air flow
in the nose.
(SFEC, 2/9/97, Par p.17)
1987 In Hawaii 2
millimeter/submillimeter radio telescopes were completed on Mauna
Kea: the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory (10.4m) and the James
Clerk Maxwell Telescope (15m).
(Hem., 7/95, p.115)
1987 Scientist using the Very
Large Array (VLA) found an object known as MG1131+0456, that showed
an oval structure. Additional observations of the object later that
year showed more detail and confirmed that it was an example of an
Einstein Ring, a phenomena that resulted from light bending in a
gravitational lens. Optical observers had discovered the first
gravitational lens in 1979.
(Econ, 1/12/08,
p.72)(www.nrao.edu/pr/2000/vla20/background/ering/)
1987 The Tevatron, a circular
particle accelerator at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in
Batavia, Illinois, went into operation as the highest energy
particle collider in the world. In 2009 it was eclipsed by the Large
Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Switzerland.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tevatron)
1987 In South Baltimore the
Cherry Hill Elementary School became the first public school in the
country to adopt a school uniform.
(WSJ, 9/11/98, p.W9)
1987 Oral Lee Brown, an
Oakland, Ca., realtor, adopted the entire first grade class at
Brookfield Elementary School and promised to send the 23 students to
college after they graduated. She put $10,000 a year into their
college fund. In 1999 19 of the students headed for college under
the Oral Lee Brown Foundation. 14 graduated from college and 3 went
on to graduate school.
(SFC, 7/28/99, p.A15)(SFC, 10/14/06, p.B3)
1987 The checkerspot butterfly,
once plentiful in the SF Bay Area, was listed as threatened. In 2009
the government recommended that it be designated as an endangered
species. Its habitat had been reduced to just Santa Clara County.
(SFC, 10/21/09, p.D3)
1987 The year proved to be the
warmest on record based on studies by NASA’s Goddard Inst. for Space
Studies in New York, and by a team at the Univ. of East Anglia in
Britain led by Thomas Wigley.
(NOHY, Weiner, 3/90, p.74)
1987 Hawks Aloft Worldwide was
conceived as a cooperative project by the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary,
in Kempton, Pennsylvania.
(NH, 10/96, p.41)
1987 Dr. Alastair Carruthers of
Vancouver, BC, injected botulinum toxin into the forehead of his
secretary Cathy Bickerton Swann to reduce her frown lines. The FDA
approved Botox for a variety of conditions in 1989.
(NW, 5/13/02, p.50)
1987 Cetus Corp. patented
polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a process that turns small amounts
of DNA into large amounts of DNA. The enzyme Taq, which helped to
automate the process, was patented in 1989. In 1991 Roche purchased
the Cetus patents for PCR and Taq.
(SFC, 1/31/00, p.B1)
1987 Chiron Corp. discovered
Hepatitis C and then used its patents to control the sale of tests
for the bug [virus].
(SFC, 5/31/99, p.E5)
1987 Some 13,000 people fell
ill in Carrollton, Ga., from the cryptosporidium parasite in
contaminated tap water.
(SFC, 6/24/98, Z1 p.5)
1987 The parasitic mite, Varroa
jacobsoni, spread to America. The verroa mite first appeared west of
the Mississippi. The bee parasite was first found in Java about a
hundred years ago. It spread across the upper Midwest and in 1996
California almond growers advertised that they would pay $34 per
colony for beekeepers to bring in honeybees. In 2005 the bee
population fell by 50% in 6 months. The mite deforms honey bees and
shortens their lifespan.
(NH, 5/97, p.34)(Econ, 6/4/05, p.33)(SFC, 5/4/96,
p.A-17)
1987 Geochemist Wallace
Broecker of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory 1st suggested that a
greenhouse induced shutdown of a current in the Atlantic Ocean (the
thermohaline circulation) could trigger abrupt climate change and
plunge much of Europe into a mini-ice age.
(WSJ, 5/14/04, p.B1)
1987 Hundreds of bottlenose
dolphins died from a morbillivirus infection and washed ashore in
New Jersey. The disease spread to Florida in 1988 and more than
1,000 dolphins died. Another epidemic occurred in 1990 among striped
dolphins in the Mediterranean.
(SFEC, 9/30/96, p.A19)
1987 In Afghanistan Najibullah
proposed a cease-fire, but the Mujahideen refused to deal with a
"puppet government". Mujahideen made great gains, and the defeat of
the Soviets was eminent.
(www.afghan, 5/25/98)
1987 Queensland, Australia,
began using a random placement system of cameras to help control
traffic.
(Econ, 6/2/07, p.62)
1987 In Azerbaijan Pres. Aliyev
resigned from the Soviet Politburo government.
(WSJ, 12/18/96, p.A21)
1987 In Canada the Meech Lake
Accord was an attempt to modify the Constitution and give Quebec
some special recognition. Quebec did not ratify it and it did not
take effect.
(SFC, 1/29/99, p.A12)
1987 France ousted Libyan
troops from a disputed area of northern Chad. In the proxy war,
code-named Arid Farmer, France and the US backed government forces
against Libyan troops.
(SFC, 6/22/99, p.A12)(WSJ, 2/11/03, p.D8)
1987 The 4th annual Turner
Prize in art was awarded to Richard Deacon.
(WSJ, 12/1/99, p.A24)
1987 "Moon Tiger," a novel by
Penelope Lively won the Booker Prize.
(WSJ, 9/20/96, p.A12)
1987 Jeffrey Archer, novelist
and politician, won an $800,000 libel judgement from the Daily Star
by arguing that he had made a $3,500 payment to prostitute Monica
Coghlin, but had not slept with her. In 1999 it was reported that
his friend Ted Francis had lied to support his argument.
(SFEC, 11/21/99, p.A28)
1987 Margaret Thatcher
privatized Rolls Royce.
(Econ, 7/16/05, p.63)
1987 Britain’s Range Rover was
introduced in the US. It was designed in the late 1960s by Charles
Spencer King (1925-2010).
(SSFC, 7/4/10, p.C9)
1987 Britain passed legislation
governing animal experiments.
(SFEC, 1/10/99, p.A20)
1987 A group of black and Asian
politicians were the first non-whites elected to the House of
Commons in 65 years.
(SFEC, 4/10/00, p.A27)
1987 Dr. Stephen Wolfram
(b.1959), a British scientist, set up Wolfram Research with funds
from a MacArthur “genius” award that he received in 1981. The
company’s first product was Mathematic, a piece of software that
automates mathematical processes.
(Econ, 6/4/11, p.30)
1987 Standard Chartered PLC
divested its South African holdings.
(www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Standard-Chartered-plc-Company-History.html)
1987 Kuwait’s sovereign
investment fund bought over 20% of British Petroleum, but the
deal was opposed by PM Margaret Thatcher. This forced the Kuwaitis
so sell over half their stake.
(Econ, 1/19/08, p.80)
1987 The Sultan of Brunei,
leader of the independent sultanate on the northern coast of Borneo,
sent $10 million to support the Nicaraguan contras.
(HNQ, 12/14/98)
1987 Marvin Davis (1925-2004),
oil mogul and former owner of 20th Century Fox, sold the Beverly
Hills Hotel to the Sultan of Brunei for a $65 million profit.
(SSFC, 9/26/04, p.B7)
1987 Burma’s military junta
withdrew most banknotes late this year, which sparked massive
protests in 1988.
(Econ, 10/6/07, p.44)
1987 Cecilia Bolocco of Chile
won the Miss Universe crown.
(WSJ, 8/3/01, p.A1)
1987 In Chile a secret police
unit killed 12 members of a pro-communist urban guerrilla gang. In
2007 retired Col. Ivan Quiroz was convicted as a member of the
secret police unit and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Sentenced
along with Quiroz were 10 other agents of Dina, including its
director at the time, retired Gen. Hugo Salas, who received a life
sentence.
(AP, 1/24/08)
1987 By this year China had
stationed nine armies (approximately 400,000 troops) in the
Sino-Vietnamese border region, including one along the coast. It had
also increased its landing craft fleet and was periodically staging
amphibious landing exercises off Hainan Island, across from Vietnam,
thereby demonstrating that a future attack might come from the sea.
(www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/prc-vietnam.htm)
1987 China disbanded the
engineers corp. of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
(Econ, 6/4/11, p.80)
1987 Ren Zhengfei (b.1944)
started Huawei, a Chinese maker of telecoms equipment firm, with
just 21,000 yuan. By 2011 it employed 110,000 people and was the
world’s 2nd largest company in the field, just behind Sweden’s
Ericsson.
(Econ, 6/4/11, p.80)(Econ, 8/4/12, p.20)
1987 In China Dr. Zhang
JianDong produced a study on villages downstream from the JinZhou
Ferroalloy Co. smelter, where large amounts of chromium waste was
being spilled into the groundwater. His 2-decade study showed that
villagers in the area had a higher death rate from all cancers and
especially stomach and lung cancer. A 1997 report by the consulting
firm ChemRisk, hired by PG&E Corp., said the results of Dr.
Zhang’s study reflected lifestyle or environmental factors rather
than exposure to chromium-6.
(WSJ, 12/23/05, p.A1)
1987 Giant pandas in China were
down to about 35 isolated populations in the wild, most of them of
fewer than 20 pandas each. They were confined to the wooded
mountains of Sichuan province, on the edge of the Tibetan plateau.
(NOHY, 3/90, p.52)
1987 Denmark recognized
Copenhagen’s Christiana enclave, founded in 1971, as a social
experiment. In 1991 the government gave residents the right to use
the land. In 2006 the government proposed a plan to regularize
housing in the enclave.
(SSFC, 10/22/06, p.G3)
1987 In Ecuador members of the
Tagaeri tribe killed Spanish Bishop Alejandro Lavaca and Colombian
nun Ines Arango with poison-tipped spears. The 2 had been dropped in
by an oil company helicopter to bring the word of god and discuss
the arrival of oil workers.
(SFC, 9/3/04, p.W2)
1987 In Egypt the opera "Aida"
was staged at the Temple of Luxor by the company Opera on Original
Site Inc.
(WSJ, 9/16/98, p.A20)
1987 A major famine hit
Ethiopia.
(TMC, 1994, p.1987)
1987 In Finland the
conservative party broke 21 years of being in the opposition when it
joined the Social Democrats in government.
(AP, 2/6/12)
1987 Eurotunnel started trading
on the Paris Bourse for $6.35 a share. It peaked in 1989 at $23.04,
but in 2004 was down to 44 cents.
(WSJ, 5/19/04, p.A1)
1987 The French CAC-40 stock
market index began.
(Econ, 11/17/12, SR p.3)
1987 In France the Monde Arabe
(The Arab World Institute) was opened in Paris. The building at 1
Rue des Fosses Saint-Bernard was designed by Jean Nouvel.
(SFEC, 1/4/98, p.T7)
1987 William Koch of Germany
paid some $500,000 for 4 bottles of French wine said to have been
discovered in Paris in 1985 and allegedly once owned by Thomas
Jefferson. By 2006 Koch’s investigations led him to believe they
were fakes, which he attributed to Hardy Rodenstock (born as
Meinhard Goerke), a German collector and dealer.
(WSJ, 9/1/06, p.A1)
1987 An Ikea subsidiary in
Berlin and an East German company contracted for Cuban prison labor
to build 45,000 tables and 40,000 sofa groupings. The deal blossomed
into a scandal in 2012 following reports of the deal by a German
newspaper.
(SFC, 5/11/12, p.A7)
1987 In Haiti Paul Farmer,
American doctor and anthropologist, helped create a community-based
health care system called Zanmi Lasante (Partners in Health).
Partners In Health (PIH) was founded by Farmer, Thomas J. White, and
Todd McCormack to support activities in Cange. In 2003 Tracy Kidder
authored “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” the story of Dr. Farmer. In
2004 Farmer authored “Pathologies of Power.”
(Econ, 1/3/04,
p.61)(www.pih.org/whoweare/history.html)(SFC, 2/8/08, p.E1)
1987 Hong Kong tycoon Adrian
Zecha bought a piece of land in Phuket, Thailand, and started his
Amanresorts for luxurious vacations.
(SFC, 7/2/96, p.D1)
1987 In India Bodo insurgents
began attacking police and soldiers who protected the Muslim
settlers in the tea-growing Assam state.
(SFC, 12/31/96, p.A10)
1987 Pantaloon chain began
operations as India’s 1st formal trouser brand. By 2006 the retail
chain employed 12,000 people in over 100 shops.
(Econ, 4/15/06, p.70)
1987 In Iran the Baha’i
Institute of Higher Education began following the virtual banning of
Bahais from Iranian universities after the Islamic revolution of
1979.
(SFC, 10/30/98, p.A20)
1987 Iran acquired centrifuge
designs for a uranium enrichment program that was similar to
technology used in Pakistan.
(SFC, 11/28/03, p.A3)
1987 Iraq restructured its
security organizations. Hussein Kamel al-Majid, the son-in-law of
Saddam Hussein, was placed in charge of the Special Security
Organization and the research at Salman Pak.
(SFEC, 3/7/99, p.A18)
1987 Iraq reportedly tested a
bomb 3 times designed to cast a radioactive cloud to weaken enemy
units and cause slow death. It did not work and the project was
abandoned.
(SSFC, 4/29/01, p.A14)
1987 In Iraq a census counted
some 1.4 million Christians. By 2007 some 1.25 million had moved out
of Iraq leaving about 250,000 behind.
(Econ, 11/17/07, p.55)
1987 In Ireland the Social
Partnership Agreement was initiated. The 1st agreement, a Program
for National Recovery, included a renewable 3-year pact between
government, employers and unions that tied wage increases to the
rate of growth.
(SFC, 5/26/97,
p.A10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Partnership)
1987 Crotty v. An Taoiseach was
a legal action taken in 1987 by Raymond Crotty, historian and social
scientist, against the Irish Government. The case directly led to
the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland and established
that significant changes to European Union treaties required an
amendment to the Irish constitution (always done by means of a
referendum) before they could be ratified by the state.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crotty_v._An_Taoiseach)
1987 Shabattai Kalmanovitch was
arrested in Tel Aviv and charged with being a KGB spy and sentenced
to nine years in prison for spying for the Soviet Union. He was
released from prison after five years and returned to Russia.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Greenwald#Shabtai_Kalmanovitch)
1987 In Jerusalem, Israel, an
ancient roadway was discovered that skirts the western foundation of
the Temple Mount. A 534-yard tunnel was constructed to follow the
roadway.
(SFC, 9/25/96, p.A1)
1987 An Israeli parliamentary
commission declared the Church of Scientology a cult, but the
practice remained legal. In 2012 a new headquarters was built in
Jaffa with some 200 staff and claims to serve thousands.
(AP, 11/8/12)
1987 The Aum Shinri Kyo
(Supreme Truth) cult was founded by Shoko Asahara. It was a
combination of Christianity and Buddhism.
(SFC, 3/21/00, p.A14)
1987 Japan gave its tentative
consent to co-develop a version of the US F-16 fighter jet.
(WSJ, 3/22/96, p.A-1)
1987 Japan began privatizing
Japan National Railways, the state railroad monopoly.
(WSJ, 1/10/05, p.A10)
1987 Japan privatized Japan
Airlines (JAL). By 2001 it required 3 state bailouts.
(Econ, 10/3/09, p.76)
1987 Toyota introduced All Trac
models, featuring 4-wheel-drive, of Camry and other cars.
(WSJ, 9/16/05, p.W12)
1987 The Lebanese Free Forces,
a right-wing Christian militia, arranged to accept and store 15,800
barrels and 20 large containers of toxic chemicals from the Italian
firm Jelly Wax in exchange for cash. Later German, Canadian and
Belgium firms shipped in toxic chemicals for storage. By 1998 70% of
the country’s drinking water sources was contaminated.
(SFC, 9/30/98, p.A10)(SFC, 9/30/98, p.A10)
1987 The EU inked its first
fishing deal with Mauritania.
(WSJ, 1/18/07, p.A13)
1987 Mauritius opened a stock
exchange.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R42)
1987 In Mexico PRI chairman
Munoz Ledo led a political split from the PRI party and helped form
the PRD.
(SFC, 9/2/97, p.A7)
1987 Julio Baldenegro, a
Mexican-Indian leader who opposed logging in Tarahumara mountains of
northern Mexico, was killed. His unsolved murder marked the
beginning of a wave of killings.
(AP, 8/12/03)
1987 Olga Murray (62), a
retired California Supreme Court research attorney, broke her leg
while traveling in Nepal. Her hospital experience led her to support
another young patient and then to found her Nepalese Youth
Opportunity Foundation. Her efforts grew to fight the use of young
girls as domestic slaves. In 2006 the Nepalese Supreme Court past
token legislation outlawing the “kamlari” system, which indentured
young girls.
(SSFC, 2/8/09, p.A17)
1987 In the Netherlands
the first campaign to alter social norms of condom use focused on a
number of Dutch celebrities who use condoms themselves.
(http://www2.hu-berlin.de/sexology/IES/netherlands.html)
1987 In the Netherlands art
works by David Teniers, Willem van de Velde, Jan Brueghel the
Younger, Eva Gonzales, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro and
Paul Desire Trouillebert were stolen from the Noortman gallery in
Maastricht. In 2009 police recovered eight of the paintings and
arrested 3 suspects.
(AP, 3/8/09)
1987 In the Netherlands heavy
floods inundated the town of Valkenburg as the Geul River
overflowed.
(SFC, 9/19/98, p.A5)
1987 Andy Krieger sold short
more kiwis than the entire money supply of New Zealand. The kiwi
collapsed and Krieger banked his profits.
(Econ, 12/18/04, p.108)
1987 Pakistan claimed a nuclear
bomb-building capability.
(SFEC, 5/17/98, p.A15)
1987 Pres. Alfredo Stroessner
lifted the state of siege in Asuncion, Paraguay.
(SFC, 8/17/06, p.A10)
1987 A new constitution for the
Philippines was drafted with checks and balances to prevent a return
to strongman rule.
(Econ, 7/3/04, p.20)
1987 The Philippines abolished
the death penalty. Capital punishment was reimposed in 1994 in
response to widespread crime.
(SFC, 2/6/99, p.A12)(SFC, 6/26/99, p.A13)
1987 In the Philippines the
government seized some 22 billion pesos from billionaire Lucio Tan
alleging in court Tan conspired with Dictator Marcos to acquire them
illegally. On June 13, 2012, an anti-graft court ruled that the
seizure, about $520 million at current exchange rates, was illegal.
(AFP, 6/14/12)
1987 Ben Chan introduced his
1st Bench clothing store in the Philippines. By 2005 it grew to over
300 stores and opened up its 1st US store in Daly City, Ca.
(SFC, 6/4/05, p.C1)
1987 In South Korea Roh Tae Woo
agreed to hold presidential elections after weeks of student
democracy demonstrations. Democracy started to take root and
suppression of worker unions ended. The year marked the end of 26
years of dictatorship.
(SFC, 1/18/96, p.A10)(SFC, 8/26/96,
p.A11)(SFC,12/15/97, p.B2)
1987 Lim Kook-Jae (33), a South
Korean fisherman, was abducted in the Yellow Sea. In 2008 he died at
one of the North's political camps in the northeastern port of
Chongjin after failed attempts to escape.
(AFP, 10/13/08)
1987 In the Soviet Union
Gorbachev introduced the terms glasnost and perestroika.
(TMC, 1994, p.1987)
1987 The Soviet Oka car was
launched.
(Econ, 7/12/08, p.94)
1987 Russia recorded its first
case of AIDS. By 1997 the number rose to 7,000. By 2008 the number
reached 430,000.
(Econ, 11/29/08, p.14)
1987 South African legislator
Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert (1940-2010) led a delegation of white
South Africans to Senegal to meet the African National Congress
(ANC), which was banned in South Africa.
(AP, 5/14/10)
1987 In Suriname Desi Bouterse
was forced by international pressure to give up power and allow the
return of a democratically elected government.
(AP, 7/16/06)
1987 Syria sent troops into
West Beirut to enforce a cease-fire.
(SFC, 4/27/05, p.A8)
1987 In Taiwan martial law was
lifted by Pres. Chiang Ching-Kuo, son of Chiang Kai-Shek.
(SFC, 6/9/97, p.A8)(SFC, 6/10/97, p.A8)
1987 Rebel leaders of a
Thailand southern insurgency were offered general amnesty.
(SFC, 1/23/04, p.A7)
1987 The Int’l. Istanbul
Biennial was founded. It is organized by the Istanbul Foundation for
Culture and Arts.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istanbul_Biennial)
1987 The NATO sec.-gen’l.
negotiated a Turkish-Greek dispute.
(WSJ, 10/8/01, p.A14)
1987 A UN Convention Against
Torture was established.
(SSFC, 5/19/02, p.A18)
1987-1989 In Sri Lanka thousands of leftists were killed in attempts
to topple the government. In 2000 a retired general and 2 aides went
on trial for the deaths and disappearances.
(WSJ, 7/19/00, p.A1)
1987-1989 In Venezuela inflation rose for 3 years
under price controls established by Pres. Jaime Lusinchi. Inflation
rose from 16% to 40% eventually topping 100% after the controls were
lifted.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Lusinchi)(Econ, 8/13/11, p.38)
1987-1991 Gen. Ramon Guillen Davila headed the
CIA-financed Venezuelan National Guard antinarcotics group. During
his tenure 1-2 tons of cocaine were smuggled into the US. He was
indicted by a federal grand jury in Miami in 1996.
(WSJ, 11/22/96, p.A12)(SFC, 11/23/96, p.A2)
1987-1992 ChevronTexaco used the services of James
Giffen to gain exclusive rights to study the Tengiz oil field.
Kazakstan paid his Mercator corp. some $67 million from 1994-2000
for consulting work. In 2003 Giffen was indicted under the 1977
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
(SFC, 4/7/03, p.A14)
1987-1992 Earl Edwin Pitts, a senior FBI agent,
was arrested on espionage charges in 1996. He was most active as a
Russian spy over this period.
(SFC, 12/19/96, p.A1)
1987-1993 In Burundi Pierre Buyoya, a Tutsi
paratrooper, became the military president.
(SFC, 8/26/96, p.A4)
1987-1993 The Intifada, a stone-throwing revolt
against Israel, began in Gaza’s Jebaliya refugee camp. The Ansar-3
detention camp in the Negev Desert was one of a number established
to hold Palestinian men arrested in the uprising. In 1998 the
documentary film "Diogenes: Ansar 3" was produced by Hans Fels and
Eitan Wetzler of The Netherlands and Israel.
(SFC, 6/10/97, p.A12)(Cinemayyat, 2000)
1987-1998 Chester D. Turner, a pizza delivery man,
raped and strangled at least 10 women in South Los Angeles. In 2004
DNA Turner (39) was charged with 10 murders based on DNA evidence.
Turner was already serving an 8-year sentence for rape when DNA
linked him to the serial killings. In 2007 he was sentenced to
death.
(AP, 10/27/04)(SFC, 7/11/07, p.B10)
1987-2001 In France Michel Fourniret, dubbed the
"Ogre of the Ardennes", admitted in his trial to murdering, raping
and kidnapping seven young girls and women during this period. His
wife, Monique Olivier, was accused of helping him trap the victims.
In 2008 Fourniret (66) and Olivier (59) were convicted and sentenced
to life in prison for the murders.
(AFP, 5/26/08)(AFP, 5/28/08)
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