Timeline 1980-2001

  • Ronald Reagan speaks to Detroit autoworkers

  • Unemployment reaches 7.8 percent

  • Republicans win the Senate

  • Iraq invades Iran

  • Congress approved a $675 billion tax cut

  • United States experiences a severe economic recession

  • Intermediate-range Nuclear Force (INF) Talks

  • John Hinckley attempted to assasinate President Reagan

  • Michael Jackson releases Thriller

  • Reagan speaks to the British Parliament

  • Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START)

  • Boland Amendment

  • Philadelphia and Chicago elected Wilson Goode and Harold Washington- first black mayors

  • Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)

  • Suicide bomber kills 241 Marines stationed in Beirut

  • Unemployment dropped to 7.5 percent

  • Bernard Goetz shoots four black teenagers on a New York City subway car

  • Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) formed

  • Oprah Winfrey begins her talk show

  • Neil Young and Willie Nelson organize Farm Aid

  • Mikhail Gorbachev becomes the Soviet leader

  • Democrats regain control of the Senate

  • Tax Reform Act

  • Immigration Reform and Control Act

  • Reagan nominates Robert Bork to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court

  • Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty

  • President Reagan speaks at the Berlin Wall

  • Stock market crashes

  • Randall Terry founded Operation Rescue

  • The Gulf War concludes

  • The Soviet Union ceases to exist

  • Clinton becomes President

  • The House votes to impeach Clinton

  • Bush elected president

  • North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City attacked