Janet Jackson had already proven she could do it alone. Two years earlier, Control had turned the “forgotten Jackson” into a solo superstar, racking up five Top 5 singles and finally stepping out from her famous family’s shadow. The pressure for the follow-up was enormous. What do you do after Control? Janet and her production…
On October 18, 1989, Space Shuttle Atlantis thundered off Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center carrying the Galileo spacecraft, NASA’s first probe designed to orbit Jupiter and drop a descent module into its atmosphere. The $1.4 billion mission had survived a federal lawsuit from anti-nuclear activists trying to block it over the plutonium powering…
The 1989 World Series earthquake struck at 5:04 p.m. on October 17, just 31 minutes before the first pitch of Game 3 at Candlestick Park. The magnitude 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake killed 63 people, injured nearly 3,800 more, and caused over $6 billion in damage, but the lighter-than-normal rush-hour traffic — because everyone was home…
On September 19, 1989, A&M Records released Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814 in North America, a concept album about racism, poverty, and illiteracy that her label had wanted to be a straight sequel to Control. It went on to produce seven top-five Billboard Hot 100 singles, a Guinness World Record no album has matched since,…
On August 20, 1989, brothers Lyle (21) and Erik (18) Menendez shotgunned their parents Jose and Kitty to death in the den of their Beverly Hills mansion. The brothers disposed of the weapons, went to a movie for an alibi, then called 911. Their arrest in 1990, and the televised trial that followed in 1993,…
On June 23, 1989, Tim Burton’s Batman opened with a record-shattering $40.49M weekend, redefining the blockbuster and birthing the modern superhero movie.
On June 5, 1989, an unknown man with shopping bags stopped a column of Type 59 tanks in Beijing. Inside the iconic Tank Man photograph, the four photographers who smuggled it out, and what happened to the man who refused to move.
On June 2, 1989, Dead Poets Society opened in eight theaters and became the year’s highest-grossing drama. The story behind Robin Williams, the cast, and the desk scene.
On April 21, 1989, Nintendo launched the Game Boy in Japan and changed portable gaming forever. Here is why that gray brick still matters.
Just after midnight on March 24, 1989, a 987-foot oil tanker with 53 million gallons of Prudhoe Bay crude in its belly tore open its hull on a reef everyone on board had a chart for. Within six hours, more than 10.8 million gallons of oil were on the move through one of the cleanest…
