1986
Chernobyl meltdown
During a safety test gone wrong, Reactor Four at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Soviet Ukraine blew its roof. A radioactive plume drifted across Europe. Firefighters who walked into the reactor hall were dead within weeks. The surrounding area was permanently evacuated. For Gorbachev it was a wound that would not heal, a system that could not tell the truth.
Challenger explodes
Seventy-three seconds after lifting off from Cape Canaveral on a cold January morning, the space shuttle Challenger disintegrated in a clear Florida sky. Seven astronauts died, including a New Hampshire schoolteacher named Christa McAuliffe. Millions of American schoolchildren had been watching live in their classrooms. An O-ring had failed in the cold. NASA lost its innocence.
Marcos flees Manila
After a rigged election and four days of People Power demonstrations in the streets of Manila, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos boarded an American helicopter and fled to Hawaii. Her closet held three thousand pairs of shoes. Corazon Aquino, the widow of the opposition leader Marcos had probably murdered, became president of the Philippines.
People Power topples Marcos
Four days of nonviolent demonstrations by nuns, soldiers, and civilians in the streets of Manila finally convinced Ferdinand Marcos to flee to American exile in Hawaii. Corazon Aquino, widow of the opposition leader Marcos had murdered, took the presidency. A new template for peaceful revolution against authoritarian regimes had been demonstrated.
Olof Palme shot in Stockholm
Walking home from a movie with his wife, the Swedish prime minister was shot in the back on a central Stockholm street. He died on the pavement. His killing shocked a country that had thought it had escaped political violence. The murder was never definitively solved, though a suspect was finally named posthumously in 2020.
MLK Day first observed
The United States observed the first federal Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a holiday signed into law by Ronald Reagan after a fifteen-year congressional fight. Not every state initially recognized it; Arizona held out until 1992. A Black preacher assassinated in Memphis eighteen years earlier had finally entered the American civic calendar.
Duvalier flees Haiti
After months of protests, Baby Doc Duvalier boarded an American cargo plane with his family and millions of dollars and flew into French exile, ending nearly thirty years of Duvalier family rule in Haiti. Haitians flooded the streets of Port-au-Prince in celebration. Haiti's chronic political crisis would continue, but the Duvaliers, finally, were done.