• Ronald Reagan takes office as President, replacing Jimmy Carter. Immediately after, as had been previously negotiated, the Iranian Hostage Crisis ends when the 52 Americans who had been held for 444 days were released.


• Walter Cronkite does his last evening news broadcast for CBS, after a run of 19 years.


• Bill Haley dies.


• Paris Hilton is born.


• Reagan is shot by John Hinckley, Jr.


• The first launch of the space shuttle Columbia takes place.


• Maya Ying Lin's design is selected for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC.


• Bob Marley dies.


• Pope John Paul II survives an assassination attempt.


• The Centers for Disease Control reports five cases of a rare form of pneumonia in Los Angeles, the first recognized cases of AIDS.


• Natalie Portman is born.


• A strike shuts down Major League Baseball, cancelling 713 games.


• The Hyatt Regency walkway collapses in Kansas City, killing 114.


• Israel bombs PLO headquarters in Beirut.


• MTV is launched.


• Reagan fires over eleven thousand striking air traffic controllers, breaking their union.


• Roger Federer is born.


• The IBM-PC computer is introduced.


• Reagan appoints the first female to the US Supreme Court, Sandra Day O'Connor.


• Anwar Sadat is assassinated. He is replaced by Hosni Mubarak.


• William Holden dies.


• The Iran-Contra scandal is initiated: Reagan's National Security Council staff coordinates shifting profits from the secret sales of armaments to Iran to fund rebel forces fighting a leftist government in Nicaragua, against the specific order of Congress.


• Natalie Wood dies.


• Britney Spears is born.


• The first modern suicide car-bombing takes place against the Iraqi Embassy in Beirut

Obviously, I've left out a lot of stuff: births, deaths, political and natural events all over the world, but, still it's interesting to see the ways that things are the same, and the way they're different. The Middle East is a powder-keg both then and now, but the U.S. isn't involved in a major war anywhere in the world in 1981. Personal computers are just starting their intrusion into our everyday lives, and AIDS is only barely on the radar. A Republican administration sees no problem in disregarding laws passed by Congress when it decides it wants to, and takes the first modern steps toward breaking organized labor.

I'm not particularly nostalgic for that time, I don't think, but I also don't recall it being quite as fraught as is our current time. That surely could be selective memory on my part, I guess, but I can't imagine that in 26 years, if I'm still alive (and can still remember anything) I'll look back on the Bush Era without a great deal of pain about what we were forced to go through. (I'm hopeful that, at that future time, the Bush Damages will have finally been repaired.)