Quick Answer: On August 12, 1981, IBM unveiled the Model 5150 personal computer at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, priced at $1,565. Built by a renegade twelve-person team in Boca Raton, Florida under Don Estridge, the IBM PC used open architecture and off-the-shelf components — a decision that made it the global standard and simultaneously…
It started before dawn. On August 3, 1981, roughly 13,000 members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization — PATCO — walked off the job. Across the country, 7,000 flights were canceled. The nation’s air traffic system, already straining from chronic understaffing and aging equipment, suddenly had a massive hole in the middle of it….
Quick Answer: MTV (Music Television) launched at 12:01 a.m. on August 1, 1981, opening with footage of the Apollo 11 moon landing and the words “Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll.” The first music video played was “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles — a deliberate choice that was equal parts ironic and…
Quick Answer: On July 29, 1981, Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer married at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London before an estimated 750 million television viewers across 74 countries — one of the largest simultaneous TV audiences in history. The 20-year-old nursery school assistant wore an ivory silk and taffeta gown with a 25-foot train…
On June 12, 1981, Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark hit 1,078 theaters, made Harrison Ford a franchise lead, and launched the action-adventure template every blockbuster since has copied.
On May 13, 1981, a Turkish gunman shot Pope John Paul II in St. Peter’s Square. The bullet missed his heart by millimeters. Here are 7 shocking facts about that day.
Forty-five years ago today, on March 30, 1981, the United States came terrifyingly close to losing its 40th president. At 2:27 p.m. on a gray Washington afternoon, six shots rang out on a sidewalk outside the Washington Hilton Hotel — and within seconds, the most powerful man on earth was bleeding in the back of…
