• more than 50 members of the Japanese Diet were involved in the Recruit Scandal of the 1980s?
• The Happy Mutant Handbook might be the only book to chronicle a large number of underground subcultures of the 1980s and 1990s?
• the 1980s CBS sitcom Frank's Place was set in New Orleans, Louisiana?
• two widely-used maps of China's historical placenames independently published in Taiwan and China during the 1980s are both called Historical Atlas of China?
• until the late 1980s, the most accurate tropical cyclone prediction model was purely statistical?
• South African rebel tours was the name given to a series of cricket tours to South Africa during its isolation from international cricket in the 1980s due to apartheid?
• Sergio Blass was the only singer to be a member of both Los Chicos and Menudo, Puerto Rican rival boy bands during the early 1980s?
• Anne Gregg, best known as former presenter of the BBC's travel programme Holiday through the 1980s, was one of the first people from Northern Ireland to become a national British television personality?
• 1980s video game publisher BudgeCo was formed to distribute just two games?
• BASICODE programs were broadcast by radio for recording onto compact audio cassettes, and could run on nearly all 8-bit home computers of the 1980s?
• Nova Studios developed the "West Coast Look", a stylized and highly planned filmmaking style of gay pornography which dominated the genre through the 1980s?
• Russian humor thrived even during the Soviet stagnation period of the 1970s and 1980s?
• 1980s horror movie actress Ellie Cornell nearly broke out of her typecasting by appearing in the 1992 film A League of Their Own, but had to drop out because she became pregnant?

Facts on topics related to 1980s

1990s

• Tajikistan was one of the deadliest countries for journalists in the 1990s, with dozens of journalists killed, including Belarusian documentary filmmaker Arcady Ruderman and Bukharan Jewish journalist Meirkhaim Gavrielov?
• Central Asian Gypsies, often seen around Russian markets and railway stations in the 1990s were previously mistaken as Tajikistani refugees?
• The Happy Mutant Handbook might be the only book to chronicle a large number of underground subcultures of the 1980s and 1990s?
• Bill Barker's alien-infested Schwa artwork became such a hit in the 1990s that he eventually teamed with AOL to make an online game based on it?
• in the 1990s many users gained Internet access by using Slirp to emulate a TCP/IP connection via a dial-up shell account?
• until the 1990s, the Heckler & Koch MP5 and the Uzi were the only weapons designed outside of the United States that were as widespread in Hollywood productions as the U.S.-produced Colt M1911 pistols, M16 assault rifles, Tommy Guns and revolvers?

Ronald Reagan

• 40th U.S. President Ronald Reagan was born in an apartment above a 19th century commercial building (pictured) in downtown Tampico, Illinois?
• U.S. President Ronald Reagan timed his first proclamation of National Sanctity of Human Life Day to coincide with the anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in the Roe v. Wade abortion case?
• Ronald Reagan announced his engagement to his first wife, Jane Wyman, at the Chicago Theatre (pictured)?
• Ronald Reagan is the only American President to have his diaries published into a best selling book?
• Ronald Reagan was propelled to stardom playing a double amputee in the 1942 film Kings Row?
• Ronald Reagan's autobiography, An American Life, reached number eight on The New York Times' bestsellers list?
• labor leader Victor Kamber created playing cards with public figures in 1968 and the "Rappin' Ronnie" music video depicting a rapping Ronald Reagan in 1984?
• U.S. President Ronald Reagan lived in an apartment on the second floor of the H.C. Pitney Variety Store from 1919 to 1920?
• Brad Johnson, the deputy Lofty Craig on the western TV series Annie Oakley, portrayed one of six unnamed students in Ronald Reagan's 1951 film Bedtime for Bonzo?
• Grits Gresham, the former host of ABC's The American Sportsman, revealed that Ronald Reagan used a gun to rescue a nurse from a mugging?

1970s

• Museum Wharf in Boston has a 40' (12 m) tall milk bottle (pictured) that was built during the Great Depression and transported to the wharf by barge in the 1970s?
• Russian humor thrived even during the Soviet stagnation period of the 1970s and 1980s?
• Television House on Kingsway in London served as the headquarters of Associated-Rediffusion, Independent Television News, the TV Times magazine, Associated TeleVision and Thames Television between 1955 and the early 1970s?
• William Fawcett, a character actor in B-films and television from 1946 to the early 1970s, held a Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska and was a drama professor at Michigan State University prior to the start of his acting career?
• German rock band Grobschnitt (pictured) have incorporated pyrotechnics and sketch comedy into their extended performances since the mid-1970s?
• a graffiti artist from the Bronx named PHASE 2 invented the famous "bubble letter" style of graffiti writing when tagging trains on the New York City Subway system in the early 1970s?
• between studying maths at Cambridge University and becoming a highly cited neuroscientist, Stephen Dunnett was a social worker in the London Borough of Southwark in the mid-1970s?
• during the 1970s the New York Philharmonic's Young People's Concerts were broadcast live on CBS during primetime and was syndicated in over 40 countries?
• the Canadian Parliament Buildings have housed several dozen stray cats since the 1970s?
• the historical painting called the Black Admiral (pictured), long thought to depict an African-American Revolutionary War officer, has now been discovered to be a 1970s fraud?

Mikhail Gorbachev

• Yegor Ligachev is renowned for being Gorbachev's main critic, even though he has repudiated that in many speeches and his memoirs?
• after losing a fight with Mikhail Gorbachev's cat, Dmitry Medvedev's cat Dorofei was castrated?
• the Ghurni clay dolls of West Bengal have been inaugurated by Bill Clinton and Mikhail Gorbachev?
• the Malta Summit was the first face-to-face meeting between George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev?

Pope John Paul II

• Pope Benedict XVI received George W. Bush this month in a medieval tower where Pope John Paul II resided temporarily while his papal apartments were being remodeled?
• Pope John Paul II placed rosary devotions (example pictured) at the very center of Christian spirituality and called them "among the finest and most praiseworthy traditions of Christian contemplation"?
• Pope John Paul II traveled more than all his predecessors combined?
• press agent Lee Solters had Pope John Paul II made an honorary Harlem Globetrotter, represented Frank Sinatra for decades and claimed to have known client Dolly Parton "since she was flat-chested"?
• Jacques-Désiré Laval (pictured), a Spiritan missionary to Mauritius, was the first person beatified by Pope John Paul II?
• one of those killed in the mass murders in Piaśnica, Sister Alicja Kotowska, was beatified together with 107 other victims of Nazi terror in 1999 by Pope John Paul II?
• retired Sacramento bishop Alden John Bell was stabbed in his office while preparing for a trip to see Pope John Paul II?
• the Baroque church of Santi Vincenzo e Anastasio a Trevi (pictured), which houses the hearts of 25 popes, was presented to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church by Pope John Paul II?
• the postage stamps of the Palestinian National Authority have featured many well-known figures, but those with Pope John Paul II might be fake illegal stamps?
• the Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis, a book of Aztec herbal remedies in Latin, was returned to Mexico by Pope John Paul II after more than four centuries of changing hands in Europe?

1989

• 47 people were killed in a gun turret explosion (pictured) onboard USS Iowa on April 19, 1989?
• American feminist magazine Ms. has not carried advertisements since 1989?
• Garry Parker ran the full length of the pitch at Wembley Stadium to score a goal for Nottingham Forest in the final of the Simod Cup against Everton in 1989, which Forest won 4-3?
• Irish pirate radio is a general consequence of the lack of commercial radio until 1989?
• Taiwan professional baseball was started in 1989, and the two leagues merged in 2003?
• Rose is the first new episode of Doctor Who to be shown since 1989?
• a group of rock stars formed a supergroup in 1989 called Rock Aid Armenia and re-recorded Deep Purple's hit song Smoke on the Water to benefit the victims of the 1988 Leninakan Earthquake?
• despite not being the most favored version of the three Mazda AZ-550 concept cars unveiled at the 1989 Tokyo Motor Show, the "Type A" ended up being selected for production?
• over 58,000 Paleo-Indian artifacts were unearthed at Lake Ilo National Wildlife Refuge in North Dakota when lake waters were lowered on the lake in 1989 to reconstruct a dam?
• the 1989 Glasnost Bowl was an attempt to schedule an American college football game in the Soviet Union?

1981

• Chicago mayor Jane Byrne moved into the notoriously miserable Cabrini-Green housing project in 1981?
• Norwegian football commentator Bjørge Lillelien famously taunted Margaret Thatcher after Norway's victory over England in 1981?
• Sarah Brady became an advocate of gun control and led actions to reduce gun violence after her husband White House Press Secretary James Brady sustained a disabling head wound during the Reagan assassination attempt in 1981?
• Torchwood will be the first spin-off from Doctor Who since an unsuccessful pilot for K-9 and Company in 1981?
• before the bobsleigh track in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy was shortened to its current configuration in 1981, it was used as part of the film For Your Eyes Only?
• in a British by-election in 1981, John Desmond Lewis ran for office under the name Tarquin Fin-tim-lim-bim-whin-bim-lim-bus-stop-F'tang-F'tang-Olè-Biscuitbarrel, drawing inspiration from a Monty Python skit about silly elections?
• the Chilean football club Cobreloa reached the finals of South America's principal club competition, the Copa Libertadores, in 1981, only four years after the club's founding?
• the Palau Congressional Library was founded in 1981, and has a staff of two?
• the only international cricket in South Africa between 1971 and 1981 comprised 6 private tours and 1 women's test match, because no test match playing nation was willing to tour the country because of its apartheid policy?
• when the John Bull ran under its own power in 1981 it became the oldest operable steam locomotive in the world?

Cold War

• cosmonauts such as Grigori Nelyubov, dismissed from the Soviet space program, were airbrushed out of official photographs, leading to early Cold War speculation of failed missions even when the actual reasons for dismissal were sometimes mundane?
• Dave Brubeck's The Real Ambassadors was largely based on the goodwill tours of Louis Armstrong and other jazz musicians on behalf of the U.S. State Department during the Cold War?
• Hungarian ballerina Nora Kovach's 1953 defection to the West was the first highly publicized Cold War-era defection of individuals in the field of dance?
• Rear Admiral Ellis M. Zacharias, who had been deputy chief of Navy intelligence in World War II, later narrated the NBC Cold War docudrama Behind Closed Doors, titled after one of his own books?
• Building 470 at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland housed fermentor tanks for producing Bacillus anthracis during the Cold War?
• Igor Britanov captained the Soviet submarine K-219 when it sank northeast of Bermuda during the Cold War?
• at the height of the Cold War, U.S. President Ronald Reagan committed a microphone gaffe when he joked that he had signed legislation to bomb Russia?
• at the height of the Cold War, Lynne Cox became the first person to swim from the USA to the USSR?
• during the Cold War, Soviet leaders used "And you are lynching Negroes..." as an ad hominem attack against the U.S.?
• during the Cold War, Canada permitted the United States to practice photo reconnaissance over Grey Goose Island with the RB-52C Stratofortress?

Margaret Thatcher

• fashion designer Katharine Hamnett once met with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher while wearing her own t-shirt with the slogan "58% Don't Want Pershing"?
• Norwegian football commentator Bjørge Lillelien famously taunted Margaret Thatcher after Norway's victory over England in 1981?
• British free market economist Ralph Harris, considered to be an architect of Thatcherism, became a life peer shortly after Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister, but sat on the cross-benches in the House of Lords to show his political independence?
• Private Eye said the reason Margaret Thatcher dropped Patrick Cosgrave as her advisor was that he had vomited on her?
• despite support from Margaret Thatcher, the 1988 National Health Service Lottery was cancelled for contravening gaming regulations?
• in his 1968 Declaration of Perth, British Conservative leader Edward Heath pledged his party's support for Scottish devolution, a policy later reversed by Margaret Thatcher?
• once economic advisor to Margaret Thatcher, Christopher Story went on to publish independent intelligence magazines that are considered important reading by many international top agencies?

1985

• Rembrandt's painting Danaë (pictured) was severely damaged when a visitor threw sulfuric acid onto it on June 15, 1985?
• the 1985 comedy film Head Office has established stars such as Danny DeVito starring in roles that are little more than bit parts?
• the 1985 Nairobi Agreement called for a ceasefire between the Ugandan government and rebels, the demilitarization of the capital (Kampala) and the absorption of the rebel leadership into the government?