This week, I turn 30. That's a big chunk of life. I looked through the year pages on wikipedia, and here are some of the major events that have happened since I was born. I don't claim that they're the most important, just ones that seemed to mean something to me as I was reading through them.
1977 TRS-80, First Space Shuttle Test Flight, Have Blue.
1978 First BBS, First Unabomber attack, first Test-Tube Baby, Jonestown Incident, Artificial Insulin.
1979 Pluto closer to the sun than Neptune, Snow in the Sahara, Gossamer Albatross, Disco Demolition Night, tragedy at The Who concert, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, birth of Usenet.
1980 Miracle on Ice, DIX for Ethernet, John Lennon shot, U2's Boy released.
1981 First DeLorean, Walter Cronkite retires, Reagan shot, STS-1, Pope John Paul II shot, First recognized AIDS cases, Geoff is born.
1982 AT&T breakup, Vietnam Veterans Memeorial, Falklands War, The Weather Channel debuts, Cal Ripken starts his playing streak, Lawn Chair Larry, Knight Rider, Poisoned Tylenol, Thriller, First permanent Artificial heart, Commodore 64, ET.
1983 M*A*S*H ends, IBM PC XT, Harold Washington Elected, Return of the Jedi, Pioneer 10 leaves the solar system, Sally Ride, Australia wins America's Cup, GNU project announced, Microsoft Word is released, DARE program launced.
1984 First Apple Macintosh on sale, Michael Jackson burned, Bhopal Disaster.
1985 WrestleMania debuts, New Coke, Nintendo comes to US, Widows released.
1986 Bears win Super Bowl XX. Space Shuttle Challenger, Halley's Comet, Al Capone's Vault, Chernobyl, Hands Across America, Greg LeMond wins the Tour de France, Statue of Liberty centennial, Rutan Voyager
1987 The Simpsons on The Tracy Ullman Show, Greg LeMond shot, Mathias Rust lands in Red Square, "Tear down this wall!", 200th anniversary of the US Constitution, Space Station Freedom announced, Chunnel digging begins.
1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Aloha Flight 243, Medical waste in NY, First night game at Wrigley Field, First post-Challenger space shuttle flight, Estonia declares itself "sovereign", Pan Am 103.
1989 Fatwah on Salman Rushdie, USS Iowa explosion, Tiananmen Square protests, Zsa Zsa Gabor arrested, UA 232 crases in Sioux City, Iowa, Hurricane Hugo, First Simpsons Episode, Operation Just Cause.
1990 Marion Barry arrested, Nelson Mandela freed, Exxon Valdez, SR-71 flies cross country in 1h 8m 17s, Ryan White dies, Hubble Space Telescope launced, Iraq invades Kuwait, Germany reunifies, Lech Walesa elected in poland, Chunnel sides meet.
1991 Operation Desert Storm begins, Rodney King beaten, Bulls win first championship, Jeffrey Dahmer arrested, Paul Reubens arrested, Linus Torvalds posts about new kernel, Soviet Union disbands.
1992 George H. W. Bush televised falling violently ill, Rodney King Riots, Amy Fisher shoots Mary Jo Buttafuoco, Hurricane Andrew, Pope John Paul II lifts the edict Galileo. Fire at Windsor Castle
1993 WTC Bombing, Branch Davidian raid in Waco, Texas, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", Michael Jordan's father murdered, River Pheonix dies.
1994 Nancy Kerrigan attacked. Schindler's List, Kurt Cobain suicide, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman murdered, Netscape Navigator 1.0 released, Richard Nixon dies.
1995 Scott O'Grady shot down, killer heat wave, Windows 95, Million Man March, Calvin and Hobbes retires.
1996 Theodore Kaczynski arrested, Dolly cloned, TWA 800 explodes, Olympic Park bombing
1997 Timothy McVeigh convicted, Hong Kong returned to China, Gianni Versace shot, Princess Diana killed.
1998 iMac, Monica Lewinsky, Google founded, Matthew Shepard, John Glenn returns to space, Jesse Ventura elected
1999 Michael Jordan retires, Amadou Diallo shot by NYC police, Pluto further from the sun than Neptune, Melissa worm, Dr. Kevorkian found guilty of murder, The Matrix, Columbine High School massacre, Jenny Jones show murder, Lance Armstrong wins his 1st Tour de France, Microsoft ruled a monopoly, George Harrison attacked.
2000 AOL/Timer-Warner merger, Elian Gonzalez, Vermont legalizes same-sex unions, USS Cole attacked, Montgomery Ward announces closure, Concorde crash.
2001 Dale Earnhardt killed, Mir deorbits, First space tourist. September 11 attacks, iPod released.
2002 Euro released, Rudolph Giuliani knited, Queen Mother dies, Mozilla 1.0 released, Beltway sniper, I get married.
2003 Columbia disintegrates upon reentry, Bombing of Baghdad begins, Meigs Field Demolished, Chicago porch collapse, Massibe Power outage, Arnold Schwarzengger elected, Bartman Ball, Concorde retires, Saddam Hussein captured.
2004 Wardrobe Malfunction, train bombings in Madrid, Abu Ghraib abuse revealed, Final Oldsombile manufactured, Ceiling collapse at Charles de Gaulle Airport, Reagan dies, Spaceship One, Martha Stewart goes to jail, Ken Jennings, Tsunami, Aiden Thomas born.
2005 Pope John Paul II dies, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, White Sox win World Series, Southwest Airlines flight overshoots runway at Midway.
2006 Sago Mine Disaster, passenger ferry carrying more than 1,400 people sinks in the Red Sea, Dick Cheney accidentally shoots his friend, Warren Buffet donates $30 Billion, Floyd Landis wins Tour de France, Donald Rumsfeld resigns, Saddam Hussein executed, Gerald Ford dies.
2007 The Mooninite scare. Bears lose Super Bowl XLI, Va Tech massacre, Lady Bird Johnson dies....
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