The decade of the 80s.

I originally thought of compiling the events that happened in the 70s . Events like Woodstock, the Vietnam War, the Hippies and so on.

Then I found this interesting site and got so engrossed going through it.

So with reference to the site I have chosen  only the highlights that are of interests. Most if not all the events happened before the birth of all the members here , or you were still in the cradle when  it happened. BUT, the repercussion of some of these events are still felt . The very existance of some technology which you might have taken from granted , actually has a 'birthday' --- evn the tools of your future profession....

Timeline of the 80s, 1980
Post-It Notes are introduced by 3-M
John Lennon is assassinated by Mark David Chapman
RU-486, the abortion pill is released in France.
Small pox is considered eradicated by the World Health Orginization. 
Japan passes the US as the largest automaker
Bill Gates licenses MS-DOS to IBM, makes next to nothing on the deal. The pair buys the rights to a simple operating system manufactured by Seattle Computer Products and use it as a template. The money is made later from licensing it to third party clone makers.

Timeline of the 80s, 1981
The 1st launch of a space shuttle (Columbia)
The first IBM-PC's begin to roll of the lines.
The first DeLorean sports cars roll off the assembly line.
August 1, The birth of MTV, the 24 hour-a-day music television station
Pac-Man is introduced in the US and sparks a huge craze.
The first reports of homosexual men dying due to a mysterious breakdown of the bodies' immuminzation system. Later it becomes known as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, aka AIDS and researches realize it can strike anyone.

Timeline of the 80s, 1982
Michael Jackson's "Thriller" sells 20 million albums to become the largest selling record ever.
Ozzy bites the head off a live bat thrown at him at a January 20 performance.
Argentina invades the Falklands (UK); Argentina has to withdraw its troops after two months.
Italy wins the Soccer World Cup in Spain
Liposuction is introduced.
The first artificial heart transplant takes place, the receipent lives 112 days.
Delorean Motor Company goes bankrupt

Timeline of the 80s, 1983
Cabbage Patch kids are released.
Ronnie introduces 'Star Wars'
"Just Say No" is the new tool to combat growing drug use in the US. (familiar ?)
USSR shoots and destroys South Korean flight 007.
Camcorders are introduced. 
Compact discs are first released.
Hackers invade sensitive military computers such as Los Alamos National Labratory.
Last DeLoreans produced
French scientist Dr. Luc Montagnier discovered HIV.

Timeline of the 80s, 1984
The Cosby show premiers.
Sikhs occupy Golden Temple in Amritsar, India
Indira Gandhi is assassinated.
Chemical disaster in Bhopal, India, December 3rd.
Stonewashed jeans are introduced.
The first megabit chip is made at Bell Labs
The AIDS virus is discovered
The term cyberspace is coined by William Gibson in his novel "Neuromancer"
In 1984 Reagan makes famous joke: "My fellow Americans, I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes." He supposedly didn't know the mic was on.
Apple Computer releases the Macintosh personal comp

Timeline of the 80s, 1985
LIVE AID in London and Philadelphi, beamed around the world
Crack coccaine starts to appear.
Brussels, Belgium: 39 dead, 250 wounded during a soccer match between Liverpool and Juventus
Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior is bombed by the French goverment during protests of it's nuclear testing in the Pacific
Earthquake in Mexico / Volcano erupts in Colombia; 1000s killed
Gorbachev becomes (the last) president of the Soviet Union
Titanic wreckage found and filmed by robotic camera in July
Hole in the ozone layer, first detected in 1977, is now indisputable.
Nintendo home entertainment system introduced.
Extra second added to the calender year.
Rock Hudson, the first major public figure to die to AIDS, dies on October 2.
Karen Ann Quinlan, coma patient, dies of pneumonia. She was the first person to die in the "right-to-die" controversy debate.

Timeline of the 80s, 1986
January 28, the Challenger explodes.
Worst nuclear disaster ever in Chernobyl, USSR, April.
In Nyos, Cameroon, a cloud of carbon dioxide rumbled out of the nearby lake Nyos on August 21 and killed approximently 1,700 people.
Argentina wins Soccer World Cup in Mexico
Return of Haley's Comet
America celebrates national holiday Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. day for the first time.
Supermodel Gia, after years of heroin addiction, dies of AIDS. She is the first woman to sucumb to the AIDS virus in the US.
Election of Corazon Aquino ends corrupt Marcos regime

Timeline of the 80s, 1987
Black Monday - Stock market drops 22% on October 19th.
Condom commericals begin to appear on TV for the first time.
Klaus Barbie is convicted of Nazi war crimes and sentenced to life in prision. On a similar note, Rudolf Hess strangled himself at age 93 after having been in prision since 1941. He was the sole prisioner at the facility.
Porn star Cicciolina wins a seat in the Italian parliment
World Population reaches 5 billion
The largest stock-market drop in Wall Street history occurred on "Black Monday" -- October 19, 1987 -- when the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 508.32 points, losing 22.6% of its total value. That fall far surpassed the one-day loss of 12.9% that began the great stock market crash of 1929 and foreshadowed the Great Depression

Timeline of the 80s, 1988
CDs outsell vinyl for the first time ever.
Soviets leave Afghanistan
Pan Am Flight 103 explodes over Lockerbie, Scotland; Lybian terrorists are suspected of planting the bomb
Earthquake in the USSR
Bobby McFerrin tells everyone "Don't worry, be happy"
Prozac is introduced as an anti-depresent.
World's longest undersea tunnel is completed. Work begins on the Chunnel which will then become the world's longest undersea tunnel.
Benazir Bhutto becomes the first woman to head an Islamic nation
Iran-Iraqi war ends in August.
Soviets withdraw from Afghanastan.

Timeline of the 80s, 1989
The fall of the Berlin wall on November 9th.
The "beginning of the end" for the communist rulers in Eastern Europe; the Cold War comes to an end
Salmon Rushdie wanted dead by Iranian leader Khomeini
Students protest on Tienanmen Square, Beijing, China - the army intervenes; 3000-7000 killed, June 3rd.
Worldwide ban of ivory
The stealth bomber is finished.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles become an over night sensation
Milli Vanilli gets Best New Artist Grammy which is later stripped when it's learned they were lip synching for another (much uglier) duo.
Vietnam withdraws from Cambodia, September 26, after almost 11 years of occupation.
Burma changes it's name to Myanmar
Soviet Union fully withdraws from Afghanistan after 10 years of fighting with Afghan mujihadeen forces.