An 80s RPG TIMELINE

1985 Timeline for an RPG Scenario

1985

January 1st: The first British mobile phone call is made by Ernie Wise to Vodafone.

January 2nd: UFO sightings around the world increase and persist throughout the year.

January 7th: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launches Sakigake, Japan's first interplanetary spacecraft and the first deep space probe to be launched by any country other than the United States or the Soviet Union.

January 10th: Sandinista National Liberation Front named Sandinista Daniel Ortega becomes president of Nicaragua and vows to continue the transformation to socialism and alliance with the Soviet Union and Cuba; American policy continues to support the Contras.

January 20th: Ronald Reagan begins his second term as the President of the United States.

January 23rd: The animated series "Thundercats" debuts.

February 3rd: Manhattan Project physicist Frank Oppenheimer, younger brother of renowned physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, passes away at his home.

February 7th: The movie "The Breakfast Club" premieres.

February 16th: Hezbollah is founded.

February 19th: William J. Schroeder becomes the first recipient of an artificial heart.

As part of Disneyland's 30th anniversary, Mickey Mouse makes a surprise visit to China.

February 28th: The Provisional Irish Republican Army carries out a 1985 Newry mortar attack on the Royal Ulster Constabulary police station at Newry, killing nine officers in the highest loss of life for the RUC on a single day.

March 3rd: An 8.3 magnitude earthquake strikes the Valparaíso Region of Chile, killing 177 and leaving nearly a million people homeless.

The television series "Moonlighting" premieres.

March 6th: Eighteen-year-old Mike Tyson makes his professional boxing debut with a first-round TKO victory over Hector Mercedes in Albany, New York.

March 7th: The star-studded charity single "We Are the World," written by Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson, was released to raise funds for Ethiopian famine relief. The recording session also made headlines due to the absence of Prince, who opted to spend the evening at a nightclub instead.

March 8th: A 1985 Beirut Car Bombing named failed assassination attempt on Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah in Beirut, Lebanon, kills at least 45 and injures 175 others.

Brazilian military dictatorship ends

March 10th: General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Konstantin Chernenko dies after falling into a coma brought on by chronic emphysema, an enlarged and damaged heart, congestive heart failure and liver cirrhosis. Chernenko became the third Soviet leader to die in less than three years. Upon being informed in the middle of the night of the Soviet leader's death, U.S. President Ronald Reagan is reported to have remarked, "How am I supposed to get anyplace with the Russians if they keep dying on me?"

March 11th: The Soviet Central Committee elects Mikhail Gorbachev.

March 15th: The first Internet domain name is registered (symbolics.com).

March 17th: Serial killer Richard Ramirez, aka the "Night Stalker", commits the first two murders in his Los Angeles, California murder spree.

March 31st: WrestleMania, the biggest wrestling event from the World Wrestling Federation, takes place in Madison Square Garden in New York.

April 7th: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev declares a moratorium on the deployment of middle-range missiles in Europe.

April 19th: FBI siege on the compound of The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSAL) in Arkansas.

The U.S.S.R performs nuclear weapon tests in Eastern Kazakhstan/Semipalatinsk.

April 20th: The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms or ATF raids The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord compound in northern Arkansas.

April 23rd: Coca-Cola changes its formula and releases New Coke. The response is overwhelmingly negative.

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced a series of economic reforms known as perestroika.

May 5th: U.S. President Ronald Reagan joins West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl for a controversial funeral service at a cemetery in Bitburg, West Germany, which includes the graves of 59 elite S.S. troops from World War II.

May 9th: The 3rd total Victory Day Parade (the first "Victory" being in 1945 and the next in 1965) is held on Red Square in Moscow in the Soviet Union. It features T-34-85 tanks, veterans of World War II from Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, and is the first parade to be held during the reign of Mikhail Gorbachev.

May 11th: The FBI brings charges against the suspected heads of the five Mafia families in New York City.

Bradford City stadium fire: Fifty-six spectators die and more than 200 are injured in a flash fire at Valley Parade association football known as football ground during a match against Lincoln City in Bradford, England.

May 16th: Scientists of the British Antarctic Survey announce the discovery of a hole in the ozone hole layer.

May 20th: John Anthony Walker, a United States Navy chief warrant officer and communications specialist, was arrested by the FBI for spying on behalf of the Soviet Union since 1968.

May 22nd: :Rambo: First Blood Part II" and the James Bond spy thriller "A View to a Kill" premiere.

May 25th: Approximately 10,000 people are killed when Bangladesh is affected by the storm surge from Tropical Storm One.

May 31st: Forty-one tornadoes hit Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Ontario, leaving 90 dead.

June 6th: The remains of Josef Mengele, the physician notorious for Nazi human experimentation on inmates of the Auschwitz concentration camp, buried in 1979 under the name of Wolfgang Gerhard, are exhumed in Embu das Artes, Brazil.

June 7th: "The Goonies" premieres.

June 14th: TWA Flight 847 is hijacked by Lebanon named Lebanese Islamist organization Hezbollah shortly after take-off from Athens, Greece.

June 15th: Animation studio Studio Ghibli is founded in Tokyo.

June 17th: STS-51-G Space Shuttle Discovery launches carrying Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the first Arab and first Muslim in space, as a Payload Specialist.

June 19th: Members of the Revolutionary Party of Central American Workers, dressed as El Salvador or Salvadoran soldiers, attack the Zona Rosa area of San Salvador.

June 22nd: British and Irish police foil a "mainland bombing campaign" sponsored by the Provisional Irish Republican Army which targets luxury vacation resorts.

June 23rd: A terrorist bomb aboard Air India Flight 182 brings the Boeing 747 down off the coast of Ireland killing all 329 aboard.

June 27th: U.S. Route 66 is officially removed from the United States Highway System.

June 30th: Thirty-nine American hostages from the hijacked TWA Flight 847 are freed in Beirut after being held for 17 days.

July 3rd: The movie "Back to the Future" is released.

July 10th; The Greenpeace vessel "Rainbow Warrior" is bombed and sunk in Auckland, New Zealand Auckland harbour by French DGSE agents, killing Fernando Pereira.

"Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome" premieres.

July 13th; The Live Aid benefit concert takes place in London, England and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as well as other venues such as Sydney, Australia and Moscow in the Soviet Union.

July 19th: New Hampshire teacher Christa McAuliffe is selected as the first person to go into space under the Teacher in Space Project, and designated to ride aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger.

July 20th: The government of Aruba passes legislation to secede from the Netherlands Antilles.

August 2nd: Delta Air Lines Flight 191, a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar crashes at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport killing 137.

August 12th: Japan Airlines Flight 123 crashes into Mount Osutaka e.g Osutaka ridge in Gunma Prefecture, Japan, killing 520, becoming the worst single-plane air disaster.

August 14th: The Accomarca massacre occurs in the peasant village of Accomarca, Peru. The Peruvian military massacred unarmed men, women and children. The official number of villagers killed is 69, although other reports list anywhere from 47 to 74.

August 22nd: British Airtours Flight 28M or Manchester Air Disaster sees 55 people killed when a fire breaks out on a commercial aircraft at Manchester Airport.

August 23rd: Hans Tiedge, top counter-spy of West Germany, defects to East Germany.

August 27th: The Nigerian government is peacefully overthrown by Army Chief of Staff Major General Ibrahim Babangida.

September 1st: A joint American–French expedition locates the wreckage of the RMS called Titanic.

September 4th: Buckminsterfullerene is discovered, the first fullerene molecule of carbon.

September 6th: Midwest Express Airlines Flight 105, a Douglas DC-9 crashes just after takeoff from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, killing 31.

September 13th: The "Super Mario Bros." video game is released in Japan for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

September 19th: A devastating earthquake kills thousands and destroys approximately 400 buildings in Mexico City.

September 19th: Tipper Gore and other political wives form the Parents Music Resource Center as Frank Zappa and other musicians testify at United States Congress or U.S. Congressional hearings on obscenity in rock music

September 27th: The Chuck Norris movie "Invasion USA" premieres.

October 1st: Operation Wooden Leg: The Israeli air force bombs the Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters near Tunis.

October 3rd: The Space Shuttle Atlantis makes its maiden flight. (Mission STS-51-J).

October 4th: "Commando" starring Arnold Schwarzenegger premieres.

October 7th: The cruise ship "MS Achille Lauro" is hijacked in the Mediterranean Sea by four heavily armed Palestinian terrorists, members of the PLO. One passenger, American Leon Klinghoffer, is killed.

The Mameyes landslide kills close to 300 in the worst landslide in North American history.

October 10th: United States Navy Grumman F-14 Tomcat F-14 fighter jets intercept an Egyptian plane carrying the hijackers of the "MS Achille Lauro" cruise ship, and force it to land at a NATO base in Sigonella, Sicily where the hijackers are apprehended.

October 19th: Blockbuster Video is founded in Dallas, Texas (as a mom-and-pop home video rental shop.)

October 30th: Space Shuttle Challenger lifts off for mission STS-61-A.

November, 1985. Now.

- U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev plan to meet in Geneva for the first time. The Cold War is still simmering.

- A means for using DNA analysis for criminal investigative purposes continues to be perfected.

- A New Rocky movie is coming out. Balboa fights a Russian. Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase have a spy movie coming out too.

- The CIA has begun efforts aimed at protecting its deep cover moles after an alarming number of moles were exposed and went missing in the past year.

- G.I. Joe Action Stars, Ghostbusters and Rainbow Brite breakfast cereals were introduced.

- The Microsoft Corporation is releasing a graphical operating system shell for MS-DOS called "Windows."

- U.S. Prices: A gallon of milk costs around $2.20; a gallon of gas, $1.12; a Big Mac, $1.69; a Buick Skyhawk, just under 9K. For 25 cents, you can buy a newspaper or make a call at a payphone.