Seeing World History with New Eyes – 1984 to 1986

I am giving an overview of modern history with an eye towards uncovering the patterns that give insight into the world we live in today.

In this series, I have looked at the events in our historical narrative in the years between 1945 and 1983.

I am going to look at what took place between 1984 and 1986 in this post.

So far, there are patterns showing events and people being manipulated for particular outcomes, seeing things like the partition of Korea into North and South in 1945 and Viet Nam into North and South in 1954; setting up two different political and economic systems between them; and then provoking them into war…

…and more recently, looking at the years between 1981 and 1983, the historical narrative shows a litany of assassination attempts and assassinations of prominent figures; AIDS; explosions in mines; frequent plane crashes and planes blown out of the air by bombs; many massacres and atrocities against innocent civilian populations; regular people traumatically dying at theaters and night clubs, and fires of all kinds; suicide bombings; and on and on and on.

What was going on in 1984, the year identified in George Orwell’s dystopian futuristic novel “1984?”

Apple placed the Macintosh personal computer for sale in the United States on January 24th, after introducing it in the “1984” commercial during the Super Bowl 18 on January 22nd.

In President Reagan’s State of the Union address the next day, on January 25th, he announced the United States was beginning the development of a permanently-crewed space station called Space Station Freedom.

While Space Station Freedom never came fruition, the International Space Station was said to have developed out of it and launched in 1998.

Teachers at the McMartin Pre-school in Manhattan Beach, California, were charged with Satanic Ritual Abuse on March 22nd, and the charges were later dropped as unfounded.

On April 12th, four armed Palestinians took the Egged Bus Number 300 hostage, ending when Israeli Special Forces stormed the bus and freed the hostages.

One hostage and all four hijackers were killed by the time it was over.

India launched Operation Meghdoot on April 13th, bringing most of the disputed Siachen glacier region of Kashmir under Indian control, triggering conflict with Pakistan in the region until 2003.

American researchers announced their discovery of the AIDS virus on April 23rd.

On May 8th, Denis Lortie, a former Canadian forces corporal, stormed the National Assembly of Quebec, with several firearms, and opened fire, killing three government employees and wounding 13 others.

After a 1985 conviction of first-degree murder was overturned by the Quebec Court of Appeal, Lortie pleaded guilty to reduced charges of second-degree murder in 1987, for which he was sentenced to life in prison.

He was granted day-parole in 1995, and full parole in 1996, and the one-time mass shooter worked as a convenience store clerk after his release.

The Severomorsk Disaster took place on May 13th at the Soviet Severomorsk Naval Base.

It was an explosion that destroyed two-thirds of all this missiles stockpiled for the Soviet Northern Fleet, as well as workshops for the missles, and missile technicians.

On May 17th, Michael Silka killed 9 people near Manley Hot Springs, Alaska.

The killing spree culminated in a shoot-out with Alaska State Troopers in the Alaskan Wilderness in which Silka was shot and killed.

The Indian Government began Operation Blue Star on June 5th, the planned attack on the Golden Temple in Amritsar to capture the Sikh leader Jamail Singh Bhindranwale and his followers who were hiding there.

At the end of the attack ten days later, the official casualty count was listed as 554 Sikh militants and civilians dead, and for the government forces, 83 killed and 236 wounded.

Independent casualty estimates were much higher at 18,000 to 20,000 civilians.

The Indian military actions in the temple complex was criticized by Sikhs worldwide, who saw it as an assault on the Sikh religion.

The Indian Prime Minister at the time, Indira Gandhi was assassinated five months later by her two Sikh bodyguards.

On July 18th in San Ysidro, California, 41-year-old James Oliver Huberty sprayed a McDonald’s with gunfire, killing 21 people before he was shot and killed.

In Sydney, Australia on September 2nd, seven people were killed and 12 wounded in the Milperra Massacre in a shoot-out between two rival motorcycle gangs.

A suicide-bomber under the direction of Hezbollah car-bombed the U. S. Embassy in Beirut on September 20th, killing 24 people.

The attacker sped his van laden with 3,000 lbs, or 1,360 kg, of explosives towards the six-story embassy.

He was shot before he reached the entrance of the embassy, and lost control of the vehicle, which detonated when it hit a parked van.

The explosion ripped off the front of the embassy.

On October 12th, the Provisional Irish Republican Army attempted to assassinate Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet during the Conservative Conference in the Brighton Hotel Bombing.

Although Margaret Thatcher narrowly escaped, five people connected with the Conservative Party were killed, including a sitting MP.

The world first learned of the famine in Ethiopia, where thousands had already died of starvation and millions more were at risk, in a BBC report from Michael Buerk on October 23rd.

Between November 1st and November 4th, the Anti-Sikh mass murder took place in Delhi, India, following the assassination of Indira Gandhi.

It was a series of organized pogroms where government estimates projected that 2,800 Sikhs were killed in Delhi, and 3,350 nationwide, and independent sources projected the number of deaths to range somewhere between 8,000 and 17,000.

Bhopal in India was the location the Union Carbide pesticide plant that leaked highly toxic methyl isocyanate gas on December 3rd, which made its way into the surrounding areas, one of the world’s worst industrial disasters.

The official death toll at the time was 2,259, and this major gas leak caused over half-a-million injuries, with on-going effects over time.

Cisco Systems was founded in California on December 10th, an American multinational conglomerate that develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, software, telecommunications equipment, and other high-tech services and products.

The Sino-British Joint Declaration on Hong Kong was signed on December 9th, a treaty in which Hong Kong would revert to Chinese sovereignty from Britain after July 1st of 1997…

…and Crack cocaine, a smokable form of the drug, was introduced in Los Angeles in 1984.

Now let’s look and see what happened in 1985.

The internet Domain Name System was created on January 1st, and the first mobile phone network was launched in the UK by Vodaphone.

Nine bombs exploded on January 21st at the sacred site of Borobudur on the island of Java in Indonesia.

While there were no human casualties, nine of the stupas were badly damaged.

A UNESCO World Heritage Site, it is the largest Buddhist Temple in the world.

The ideology of Hezbollah, which was originally founded in 1982, declared in a program issued in Beirut on February 16th. Hezbollah was summarized as “Shiite radicalism,” formed with the aid of Ayatollah Khomeini’s followers in the 1980s to spread the Islamic Revolution.

On February 28th, the Provisional Irish Republican Army carried out a heavy mortar attack on a police station in Newry in Northern Ireland, killing 9 officers.

A car bomb exploded outside of an apartment building in Beirut on March 8th, killing 80 people and injuring 200. It was an assassination attempt said to be linked to the CIA on the life of an Islamic cleric. It involved 440 lbs, or 200 kg, of dynamite.

Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and de facto leader of the Soviet Union on March 11th.

On April 12th, terrorists bombed the El Decanso Restaurant in Madrid, Spain, causing the three-story building to collapse on top of 200 diners, killing 18, and injuring 82.

Four different terrorist groups were said to have claimed responsibility for the bombing.

The Bradford City Stadium Fire occurred during an English League Third Division Match between the Bradford City and Lincoln City football teams at the Wooden Valley Parade Stadium on May 11th. At 3:40 pm, the TV commenter noted a small fire in the main span, and in less than 5 minutes with the windy conditions, the fire had engulfed the whole stand, trapping some people in their seats. In the panic that ensued, people escaped onto the pitch, and those at the back of the stand had were forced to break-down locked exit doors to escape, and those that tried to escape through the turnstiles found those locked too, where many were burned to death. The death count as a result of the fire was 56, and the injured numbered 265.

TWA Flight 847 carrying 153 passengers from Athens to Rome was hijacked shortly after take-off in Athens by a Hezbollah fringe group on June 14th, resulting in the death of a one passenger.

My husband was on the same flight the week before this took place on his way home to the States following his retirement from the U. S. Army.

Air India Flight 182, a Boeing 747, was blown-up by a bomb at 31,000-feet, or 9,500-meters, above the Atlantic Ocean, south of Ireland, on June 23rd, killing all 329 on-board.

The bomb was said to have been planted by Canadian Sikh extremists, and resulted in the largest mass killing in Canadian history; the deadliest aviation incident in the history of Air India; and the deadliest act of aviation terrorism until the 9/11 attacks.

On July 3rd, “Back to the Future” opened in American movie theaters. The highest-grossing film of 1985, it was known known later for its predictive programming about 9-11 in 2001.

In August of 1985, there were four airplane incidents:

Delta Airlines flight 191 crashed near Dallas after it encountered a microburst on August 2nd, killing 137 people.

Japan Airlines Flight 123 crashed on August 12th in Japan, killing 520, and the worst single aircraft disaster in history. The given cause of the crash was a wrongly repaired pressure bulkhead…

…but I found a reference saying that repair at fault had been made seven years previously…So…everything was fine for seven-years, and then all of a sudden the repair failed? Okay….

The aircraft engine of British Airtours Flight 123 caught on fire before take-off at Manchester Airport in England on August 22nd, and 55 people were killed while trying to evacuate…

…and on August 25th, the Bar Harbor Airlines flight 1808 crashed, killing all 8 on-board.

Then on September 6th, Midwest Express Airlines Flight 105 crashed after take-off in Milwaukee, killing all 31 on-board. Eyewitnesses reported the plane was on-fire shortly after take-off. The fire was ultimately attributed to pilot error for loss of control of the aircraft.

The cruise ship “Achille Lauro” was hijacked in the Mediterranean by four heavily armed Palestinian terrorists on October 7th, and one Jewish-American passenger in a wheelchair was killed. The motive of the terrorists was said to be publicity of Palestinian issues and the release of Palestinian prisoners.

The first Nintendo home video game console in the U. S. was released on October 18h as the Nintendo Entertainment System.

On November 20th, Microsoft Corporation released the first version of the Windows operating software, which was Windows 1.0.

EgyptAir flight 648 was hijacked by the Abu Nidal group and flown to Malta on November 23rd, where Egyptian commandoes stormed the plane, and 60 people were killed by gunfire and explosions.

On December 12th, Arrow Air flight 1285 crashed after take-off from Gander Newfoundland, killing 256 people. It was a U. S. Army personnel chartered flight carrying all members of the 101st Airborne Division back to their base at Fort Campbell in Kentucky. Cause was attributed to icing conditions and pilot error.

Twin attacks were carried out at airports in Rome and Vienna by the Abu Nidal group on December 27th, in which terrorists first attacked the shared El Al & TWA ticket counters at an airport outside of Rome with assault rifles and hand-grenades, killing 16 and injuring 99…

…and then in Vienna, hand-grenades were thrown into crowds of passengers lining-up for checking-in to a flight to Tel Aviv, killing three and injuring 39.

Now we are coming into the year 1986.

In January of 1986, the first PC virus, called “Brain,” starts to quickly spread globally. It was developed by two brothers in Pakistan, allegedly to protect their medical software from illegal copying, and was supposed to only target copyright infringement.

The Space Shuttle Challenger exploded immediately after lift-off on January 28th. The spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral in Florida. after a joint in its right solid rocket booster was believed to have failed after take-off. The disaster resulted in a 32-month hiatus in the space shuttle program, and the forming of the Rogers Commission to investigate the accident.

On February 8th, the Hinton Train Collision occurred in Hinton, Alberta, killing 23 and injuring 71, in a collision between a Canadian National Railway freight train, and a Via Rail passenger train. After 56 days of testimony at a public inquiry, a commission found that the cause of the accident was because the freight train crew failed to stop their train because of incapacitation or other unknown factors.

The Single European Act was signed on February 17th, the first major revision of the 1957 Treaty of Rome, which established the European Community, and setting the object of the European Community to create a single market by 1992.

On February 25th, Ferdinand Marcos went into exile in Hawaii, and Corazon Aquino, the widow of the assassinated opposition leader Benigno Aquino, became President of the Philippines.

The Hotel New World in Singapore collapsed in less than a minute on March 15th, trapping 50 people in the rubble, of which 17 were rescued and 33 died. Authorities ruled out a bomb, and attributed it to a gas explosion instead.

On April 2nd, a bomb exploded on TWA flight 840 from Rome to Athens. While the pilots were successfully able to land the plane after the explosion caused a hole on the right-side of the plane, four passengers were killed, including an infant, and 7 injured.

A West Berlin Discotheque known as the Roxy Palast was bombed on April 5th, killing 3 and injuring 230, in a venue frequented by U. S. soldiers.

Libya was accused by the U. S. government of responsibility for the bombing, and ten-days later, on April 15th in Operation El Dorado Canyon, U. S. planes bombed targets in Libya in Tripoli and Benghazi.

The Chernobyl Disaster took place in Pripyat, Ukraine on April 26th, called one of the worst nuclear accidents in history in terms of costs and casualties. It forced the relocation of at least 350,000, and radioactive fall-out was concentrated in the Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, and traces of radioactive deposits from Chernobyl in almost every country in the northern hemisphere.

The Beginning of the Somali Civil War was on May 23rd after President Siad Barre was injured in a car accident in Mogadishu and taken to Saudi Arabia for treatment, and opposition groups there see this as an opportunity to remove Barre.

The Somali Civil War is on-going.  It is estimated that at least 500,000 people have been killed as a result of it.

This is a historic photo of Mogadishu.  When the Somali Republic became independent from Italy in 1960, it was known as the “White Pearl of the Indian Ocean.”

This is an historic picture of Mogadishu Cathedral.

This is what remains of Mogadishu Cathedral today.

On June 23rd, LISTSERV was released, the first email list management software developed by Eric Thomas

The bulk carrier ship Pyotr Vasev rammed the Soviet Passenger Liner SS Admiral Nakhimov at a 110-degree-angle in the Black Sea on August 31st, and the passenger liner was completely submerged 8 minutes later. minutes. and sinks almost immediately, killing somewhere around 400 people.

On the same day, the cargo ship Khian Sea departed from Philadelphia, carrying 14,000 tons of incinerator ash waste and wandered the sea for 16 months looking for a place to dump it but was never allowed.

The toxic waste was finally dumped surreptitiously in Haitian waters in 1988.

Four Abu Nidal group terrorists hijacked Pan Am Flight 73 with 360 people on board at the airport in Karachi, Pakistan, on September 5th. Over the course of the hijacking incident somewhere around 50 people were killed or injured, and the hijackers were arrested and sentenced to death in Pakistan, though their sentences were later commuted to life in prison.

The following day, on September 6th, two Abu Nidal terrorists killed 22 and wounded 6 in Istanbul’s Neve Shalom Synagogue during Shabbat services.

The Sandoz Chemical Spill occurred on November 1st, a major environmental disaster caused by a fire near Basel, Switzerland, polluting the Rhine River, and causing a massive mortality of wildlife downstream.

On December 31st, the Dupont Plaza Hotel caught fire in San Juan, Puerto Rico, as a result of arson said to be caused by three disgruntled employees who were involved in a labor dispute with the owners. It claimed the lives of 98 people and injured 140. The three men were subsequently convicted of murder with two sentenced to 99-years in prison, and one to 75-years in prison.

Does history repeat itself for randomly occurring reasons?

Or does history repeat itself because it is being planned to bring in specific outcomes?

Like, for example, plans to bring in 15-minute cities, an urban planning concept in cities where necessities and services can be reached in a 15-minute walk or bike ride, ostensibly to reduce car dependency and promote healthy and sustainable living. Sounds good, but what is the real reason behind this concept?

Is it about the betterment of Humanity…or control over Humanity?

We tend to imagine that times in the past were somehow better than in the present.

While our current present is certainly very different, and backward, from what older generations remember, the past wasn’t necessarily better.

It was just easier to live what would have been considered a normal life back then.

And yes, some things seem to be repeating occurrences from the past in current events, like toxic chemical releases.

Today’s present seems a lot like George Orwell’s novel “1984,” doesn’t it?