September 1, 1985
A joint American-French expedition locates the wreck of the RMS Titanic.

October 1, 1985
Macintosh128K, the original Apple Macintosh discontinued production (introduced 1-24-84)

October 2, 1985
Rock Hudson dies (b. 1925)

October 2, 1985
Orson Welles dies (b. 1915)

November 18, 1985
First Calvin and Hobbes comic strip printed in a handful of newspapers; the strip is not carried in the hometown newspaper of its creator, Bill Watterson.

November 19, 1985
In Geneva, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet for the first time.

November 20, 1985
Microsoft Corporation releases the first version of Windows, Windows 1.0.

November 24, 1985
Big Joe Turner dies (b. 1911)

January 19,1986
The first PC virus, Brain, starts to spread.

January 20,1986
The first federal Martin Luther King Day, honoring Martin Luther King Jr.

January 28,1986
Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrates 73 seconds after launch, killing its crew of six astronauts and a schoolteacher.

February 9,1986
Comet Halley reaches its perihelion, the closest point to the Earth, during its second visit to the solar system in the 20th century.

February 19,1986
The Soviet Union launches the Mir space station

February 25,1986
President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines goes into exile to USA after 20 years of rule; Corazon Aquino becomes the first Filipino woman president, first as in interim president.

March 6,1986
Georgia O'Keeffe dies (b. 1887)

March 9,1986
United States Navy divers find the largely intact but heavily-damaged crew compartment of the Space Shuttle Challenger. The bodies of all seven astronauts were still inside.

April 26,1986
In Ukraine, one of the reactors at the Chornobyl (Chernobyl) nuclear plant explodes creating the world's worst nuclear disaster. 31 are killed directly by the incident, many thousands more were exposed to significant amounts of radioactive material, vast territories in Ukraine and Belarus rendered uninhabitable.

May 25,1986
Hands Across America;benefit in which millions of people held hands for fifteen minutes along a path across the continental United States. Participants paid ten dollars to reserve their place in line; the profits were donated to local homeless charities.

June 13, 1986
Benny Goodman dies (b. 1909)

June 13, 1986
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen were born.

President: Ronald W. Reagan
Vice President: George Bush
Population: 240,132,887
Life expectancy: 74.7 years
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000): 54.8
Property Crime Rate (per 1,000): 48.6

US GDP (1998 dollars):   $4,422.20 billion
Federal spending:   $990.34 billion
Federal debt:   $2120.6 billion
Median Household Income (current dollars):  $24,897
Consumer Price Index:   109.6
Unemployment:   7.0%
Cost of a first-class stamp:   $0.22

top

Barry Diller, head of News Corp., creates Fox, the fourth television network. Fox offers 10 hours of prime-time programming a week.

The Television Bureau of Advertising announces that the average
American household watches television for more than seven hours a day.

The Oprah Winfrey Show hits national television.

The Academic American Encyclopedia is available on CD-ROM.
It is the first reference work published in this medium.

Nintendo video games introduced in U.S.

Top Gun
176,781,720

Crocodile Dundee
174,803,506

Platoon
137,963,328

The Karate Kid: Part II
115,103,979

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
109,713,132

Back to School
91,258,000

Aliens
85,160,248

The Golden Child
79,817,937

Ruthless People
71,624,879

Ferris Bueller's Day Off
70,136,369

Pat Levins

John Miller

Peter Sullivan

Patrick Pryor

Brian Keogh

Julie-Annabel Schaaf

Karen Bache (class of '87 photographer w/ images of '86ers)

Aaron Adilman

Jeffrey Veltman