Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The 1980s Lifestyles and Social Trends: OverviewIn the 1980s, American culture was defined by a proud political and social conservatism. The election of Republican Ronald Reagan to the presidency in 1980 was the high-water mark of late twentieth-century American conservatism.
The 1980s Business and the Economy: Overview. When the 1980s began, many Americans hoped it would be decade of peace and prosperity, quite unlike the decade that had just ended. The 1970s had been filled with tumultuous events, such as oil shortages, the Watergate affair, and the Iran hostage crisis. American businesses also suffered during ...
The 1980s Medicine and Health: Chronology1980: The World Health Organization formally announces the worldwide elimination of smallpox.1980: June 6 A U.S. Senate subcommittee is told of a baffling, recently discovered disease called toxic shock syndrome that frequently strikes young women and can cause death within a few days.
In the 1980s, however, the number of homeless Americans grew dramatically, and their plight came to be recognized as one of the leading social problems of the decade. Homeless people, often called street people, became an increasingly frequent sight in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and many other major cities.
The 1980s Government, Politics, and Law: Overview. In American politics, the 1980s was the decade of Ronald Reagan. His vision of the nation and his conservative agenda shaped the economic and political fortunes of the United States throughout the decade and even into the next. Reagan and his administration had a profound influence on the way ...
1980s: The Way We LivedThe stereotypical American in the 1980s was the "yuppie," a nickname for the "young urban professional," a person between twenty-five and thirty-nine years old whose job in management or a profession gave them an income of more than $40,000 a year.
By the 1980s, however, as computer equipment and the programs to make it useful became affordable, even small business offices relied on computers for word processing, accounting, record keeping, and a variety of specialized uses limited only by the imagination of programmers. Computers changed the way telephone systems operated and were managed.
The 1980s Science and Technology: Chronology1980: January 1 Physicist Luis Alvarez proposes that the extinction of the dinosaurs occurred because of a collision of an asteroid with Earth.1980: February 26 The nuclear containment building at Crystal River, Florida, suffers the spillage of thousands of gallons of radioactive water.
Theater enjoyed a boom during the 1980s as well, thanks in large part to big productions that were launched on Broadway and then toured around the world. Big budget shows like Cats (which opened in New York in 1982), Les Miserables (1987), and The Phantom of the Opera (1988) ran for years and were promoted with original cast albums and merchandise.
The 1980s Education: OverviewThe course education in America took in the 1980s was through a battlefield. Student scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT; the measure by which most colleges evaluated applicants) had been on a downward spiral since 1962. That trend continued at the beginning of the decade.