1981
AIDS first reported
The CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report described five unusual pneumonia cases in Los Angeles, all in young gay men. The disease did not yet have a name. Within a decade it would kill tens of thousands of Americans a year and become a global pandemic. A new and terrifying word entered medicine.
Sadat assassinated
During a military parade in Cairo, Islamist soldiers jumped down from a truck and shot Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who had made peace with Israel three years earlier. He died within the hour. Three million Egyptians lined the streets for his funeral. His successor, Hosni Mubarak, would rule for the next thirty years.
Pope shot in St. Peter's Square
A Turkish gunman fired four shots at Pope John Paul II as he rode through St. Peter's Square in an open car, hitting him in the abdomen. The pope survived after six hours of surgery and later visited his would-be assassin in prison and forgave him. The motive remained obscure. The pope credited the Virgin of Fatima with saving his life.
IBM PC launches
IBM introduced its Personal Computer running Microsoft's DOS, and business discovered it could put a computer on every desk. Big Blue had legitimized the hobbyist industry. Clones would soon undercut IBM itself; Microsoft would quietly get rich from its operating system. Within a decade the PC was as common as the telephone.
Reagan shot
Seventy days into his presidency, Ronald Reagan was shot outside a Washington hotel by a young man trying to impress the actress Jodie Foster. The bullet lodged inches from his heart. Reagan joked with doctors that he hoped they were Republicans. He survived and was back in the Oval Office within weeks.
Iran hostages released
After four hundred forty-four days in captivity, the fifty-two American hostages in Tehran were flown to freedom in the hour after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated, a final humiliation for Jimmy Carter. The hostages, blinking in the sunlight, were welcomed home as heroes. Carter flew to meet them as a private citizen, graciously.
Charles and Diana wed
At St. Paul's Cathedral, the thirty-two-year-old Prince of Wales married the twenty-year-old Lady Diana Spencer before a global television audience of seven hundred fifty million. The wedding gown had a twenty-five-foot train. It looked like a fairy tale, and it would end in divorce, tabloid siege, and a Paris tunnel crash sixteen years later.