1984 Events

• AT&T broken up in to 22 Bell systems
   

• Gandhi is assassinated
   

• Scientists in US and France identify the AIDS virus
   

• The first megabit chip is produced at Bell Labs
   

• The Supreme Court rules that taping television shows at home on VCRs does not violate copyright law
   
• Apple introduces the user-friendly Macintosh personal computer
   

• Nobel Peace Prize - Desmond Tutu
   

• James Oliver Huberty riddles a McDonald's restaurant in California with bullets killing 21 people before being shot dead himself by police
   

• Vanessa Williams becomes a household name when she becomes the first Miss America to resign after old nude photos of her appeared in Penthouse
   

• Geraldine Ferraro is first woman Vice President running mate
   

• President Reagan re-elected in landslide with 59% of vote
   

• Michael Jackson's hair catches fire during a Pepsi commercial shoot
   

• Marvin Gaye is shot dead by his father after an argument
   
• 260 people are killed after a gas plane in Mexico City explodes
   
• Warning: "Greenhouse Effect"
   
• Syria frees captured US Navy pilot, Lt. Robert C. Goodman, Jr.
   
• US and Vatican exchange diplomats after 116-year hiatus
   
• Reagan orders US Marines withdrawn from Beirut international peacekeeping force
   
• Yuri V. Andropov dies at 69; Konstantin U. Chernenko, 72, named Soviet leader
   
• Italy and Vatican agree to end Roman Catholicism as state religion
   
• Toxic gas leaks from Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, killing 2,000 and injuring 150,000
   
• U.S. Population: 235,824,902
   
• Life expectancy: 74.7 years
   
• US GDP (1998 dollars): $3,902.40 billion, Federal spending: $851.85 billion Federal debt: $1564.7 billion
   
• Median Household Income:  (current dollars): $22,415
   
• Unemployment: 7.5%
   
• Cost of a first-class stamp: $0.20
   
• The Islamic Jihad kidnapped and murdered CIA station chief William Buckley in Beirut, Lebanon
   
• Eighteen US servicemen were killed and 83 people were injured in a bomb attack on a restaurant near a US Air Force Base in Spain
   
• Carmaker John DeLorean is acquitted of a $24 million dollar cocaine conspiracy
   
• Inventions: twist-top beer bottles, cup holders in cars, flip-top toothpaste
   
• Velma Barfield - a serial murderer becomes the first woman executed in the US since 1962 and the last until 1998
   
• Deaths: Indira Gandhi, Francois Truffaut, Truman Capote, Count Basie