Full list  |  Top Global population: 4.4 billion Olympics: Moscow, 1980 (5,179 athletes from 80 nations); Los Angeles, 1984 (6,829 athletes from 140 nations); Seoul, 1988 (8,391 athletes from 159 nations)

Considered in broad terms several strands of the 1980s showed more optimism than pessimism. Ebbing away noticeably in American political consciousness was cynicism from gloom over the American malfunction in the Vietnamese Civil War. There were battles like the Iraq-Iran scrap which ignited in autumn 1980 – which political expediency saw America support Iraq even though after eight years produced only hundred of thousands of deaths and one bitter stalemate. Tension in the Indian Punjab continued for a separate Sikh state, which culminated in a 1984 sealing of the Punjab to lessen anti-Hindu violence and storming of the Golden Temple in Amritsar. Sensing other resolutions Indian involved itself in the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka to the south. Both events caused an assassination of Gandhi – bitter Sikhs killed Indira in 1984 and even more bitter Tamils killed Rajiv in 1991. Seeing fewer battles on televisions compared to the 1960s and 1970 combined nicely with growing feelings the Cold War was going the way of the west. While the vast and tenacious Soviet bloc might not yet be tottering it was audibly creaking and not just in the heartland but also in European fringes where garrisons inflicted Moscow’s will. So, while lower-level conflicts persisted, so too did thinking that for the first time in several decades there was no larger war sucking in American and global nervousness. Plus, for good measure, there was a larger unpleasant appointment with destiny awaiting the planned economies.

Within this cautious post-Vietnam sense of revitalization an important event happened in America, intriguingly momentous not so much for what happened but what did not happen. Murder of President Ronald Reagan (Decisive Day #85, 30/03/1981), had it transpired on this chill spring day, would have given a significantly different texture to American economic and social life in the 1980s. Escape was all the more fortunate as assassinations were common enough at the time. In the autumn of the same year half a dozen Islamist fundamentalist troops fired into an Egyptian presidential retinue during a review celebrating Yom Kippur war against Israel. Bullets killed eleven including President Saddat – a loss to the Middle East that was large enough to attract three former American presidents to his funeral (Nixon, Ford and Carter). Reagan’s survival in the spring of 1981 ensured in particular notable energy in wealth creation. Reaganomics dominated not only dreary conservative confabs throughout the democratic world but, more significantly, new British and American policy on simpler public administration and lower taxes. From this came a new global climate around entrepreneurship and commerce and a distinctive and foxy decade where greed was not just good, to a privileged but reasonably broad segment it was positively godlike.

Outside positive domestic developments in the world’s premier superpower, though, the Reagan touch was less deft. In November of 1981, a month after the adapt assassination in Egypt and six months after his own lucky escape, President Reagan discretely sanctioned support for a small Latin American rebel group, the Contras in Nicaragua. Standing against the leftist Sandinistas, not a noble force across all fronts, morphed into a discomforting fiasco in American politics. Most of the shame arose from the vague form of democracy that had elected the Sandanistas. Thus the Reagan administration’s intervention amounted to an outright betrayal of American commitment to democracy, or it not that fairly unconvincing friendship. At times, critics said, the Reagan administration seemed determined to prove Einstein’s claim that only two forces are infinite, the universe and human stupidity. Dishonour rested not only on a trifling US$19 million – ‘that isn't going to buy you much of any kind these days, and certainly not against that kind of military force’ complained one CIA leader. Overseeing was also lax. True to form the CIA expanded the project with pledges from Honduras and Argentina and elsewhere to help train yet more Nicaraguan rebels.

If the intervention had rested there Nicaragua might not have became a notable feature of the 1980s. But it transformed to an itch that would not subside. Within five years news surfaced of the centuries more bizarre conspiracies. Iran managed to buy American munitions even though it was an enemy heavily involved in a barracks bombing – through its connection with the Hezbollah terrorist organization – in a 1983 suicide bombing that killed nearly 250 American marines in Lebanon. During the 1980s Iran was also fighting Iraq, which at the time America supported as the more secular of two oil-laden powers. Reagan administration tried various excuses, including the ambitious hope that Iran might carry some influence in Lebanon which held a few prominent American and British hostages. Matters were grave enough at a global level that in the summer of 1985, in his second term, President Reagan denounced Iran as part of a ‘confederation of terrorist states’ that waged outright acts of war against America. Iran was not just an enemy of the United States but part of a grouping of evil. Meanwhile funds from selling weaponry to Tehran went to support the Contras continued insurgency. Such a dubious action – which one of the perpetrators memorably described as a ‘neat idea’ – resulted in the Iran-Contra scandal of 1986.

Crime management itself made its biggest leap since the discovery of fingerprints in the nineteenth century. DNA ‘fingerprinting’ appeared first in Britain in 1984, patented by British geneticist Alec Jeffreys, and secured its first conviction in court in 1987.

Where Nicragaua and the Iran-Contra showed a curios insight to an America content to dabble often ineffectively and usually without full-blown intervention Britain took a more direct tact. Once muscular Britain might look emaciated but the odd little finger still twitched. In the spring of 1982 Argentineans invaded South Georgia and later the Falklands – total land size 12,200 square kilometres and human population of just over 2,000 plus half a million sheep and a few million penguins. Approaching 15,000 kilometres distance the 80-odd Royal Marines were quickly overcome but Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher ruled: ‘British sovereign territory has been invaded.’ British military response involved HMS Invincible, commissioned in 1980 and whose crew including Prince Andrew, and the elderly HMS Hermes, a groaning 1950s era floating command centre with modernized communications. Imposing a naval blockade of one month including sinking an even older vessel, the General Belgrano, launched as the USS Phoenix in 1938, where over 300 died. Losses on the British side included HMS Sheffield (commissioned 1975), destroyed by a French Exocet missile and the first British warship destroyed since World War Two. During infantry landings at San Carlos HMS Antelope (commissioned 1975) exploded, memorably caught on film, and HMS Ardent sank (commissioned 1977). But despite those and other losses by mid-June the Argentineans surrendered. Unlike America’s ill-fated entanglements in Nicaragua Britain had secured a decisive win.

Several signs buttressed impressions of strong capitalism outdoing weak communism. By far the most potent of signs suggesting ends to the dictatorship-of-the-proletariat appeared in Europe, where the Soviet imprint had been in force for approaching four decades. Banning the Solidarity trade union in Poland (Decisive Day #86, 08/10/1982) proved to be a remarkable torch-like event for resistance to Communist authorities – and signs of their weakness. In the autumn of the following year came more signs of just how wobbly matters were. In September of 1983 USSR jets flying in Asia shot down a Korean 747 airliner on a flight bound for Seoul that strayed into Soviet airspace. President Reagan gleefully appeared on television with tapes of Russian pilots ordering the ‘Korean Airline Massacre’.

One of the lessons from Vietnam and the impassioned rebels like Che Guevara was that terrorism could impact superpowers. Up to the 1980s attacks against American interests exploded off American soil, with embassies in Africa and against military garrisons in Lebanon (1982) as prominent examples. More worrying closeness to America appeared in 1988 when plastic explosives ripped apart a Pan Am passenger jet leaving London for New York. The bomb detonated over the UK and causing a crash into the Scottish town of Lockerbie. All 259 souls aboard, mostly Americans, died plus another twenty in the small Scottish town of Lockerbie. The crater 155 feet long and 40 feet wide. Sherwood Crescent and Park Place entered British imagination as the impact area. Intelligence identified militant factions from Libya, although leader Qadaffi initially refused to extradite the perpetrators and paid compensation only reluctantly.

The tension of terrorism completed a brace of assassinations in the Middle East and in November of 1995 claimed Yitzak Rabin in Tel Aviv. Like Saddat, Rabin fell fighting for peace, in his case while leaving a peace rally. Although Rabin’s own background was not regularly peaceful, he was a leading character in the IDF, Israel Defence Forces, he was at least trying something new.

Most importantly in 1995 came the Oklahoma bombings in the midwest of urban America. Killing 168 people following a massive truck bombing ominously it emerged from the hand of an American citizen. More ominously still it was a Gulf war veteran from the majority white ethnic group rather than, as many experts predicted, someone wanting apocalyptic war from a disaffected Muslim minority. By the 1990s much concern had risen at connecting Islam, the second largest organized religion in the world with 1.5 billion followers, and terrorism. This connection of terror and faith remains strongest where Mohammed lived. Around 1-in-5 of Muslims live in the Arab world but a further 1-in-5 live in sub-Saharan Africa. Approaching 2-in-5 of Muslims live in the subcontinent and the other fifth scattered in Europe and America and elsewhere. France has many Muslims – approaching 10% of its population – whereas in America it is nearer 2%. Terrorism was not just an American challenge. In the same year, 1995, Shoko Asahara of the Doomsday Cult Aum Shinrikyo released poison gas in the Tokyo underground. Twelve died and over 5,000 suffered nasty upper respiratory injuries.

However more important than the continuing space shuttle was the Pioneer, which was the first time a human-made object exited the solar system. Columbia was the first reusable space shuttle to carry four people into space and return for refuelling and repairs for the next voyage. In January of 1986 the twenty-fifth space shuttle mission exploded within two minutes of launch. Included first non-astronaut, a civilian schoolteacher. President Reagan said: ‘The future does not belong to the feint hearted it belongs to the brave.’ First appeared in 1981. (Decisive Day #87, 13/06/1983).

Consuming the debate on personal health during the latter part of the decade was a new discover of a disease called AIDS (Decisive Day #88, 24/04/1984). Emerging from Africa subsequently it became clear this was not something to sidestep and could affect and change significantly all societies on earth. Initial communities in America suffered from the problems as it spread to all societies. The epidemiological impact was nowhere near the influenza pandemic of the early 1920s. But the psychological change was. In the following year attention turned to Africa not only for its health problems but for its education too. Changing at the time were attitudes towards poverty in third world nations that were suffering since independence. Prominent famines included Sudan, independent of Britain after 1956, and Ethiopia, free of all Europeans after 1944, which captured spirit. Leading to the Live Aid concerts (Decisive Day #89, 13/07/1985) this marked a milestone in changes to how the industrialized world looked on the troubles of impoverished nations.

In the summer of 1981, as one example of the grip power of global entertainment, Britain’s Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer. Attracted not just to the last great European monarchy but by the decade age gap – he was 32 years and she was 22 years – and a 25 foot train of dress an upright full-dress naval commander. Over 2,000 guests jammed into the Abbey. However, for every guest in Westminster a further 250,000 watched on television – estimates said the total audience watching live was 500 million across all the continent. Many millions more watched later recordings. As more people in industrialized societies and more people in industrializing societies found time for leisure life changed on many fronts, from increasing international travel to television entertainment. Most prominent of the entertainment advances was in computer gaming and marked principally by games featuring characters called Super Mario (Decisive Day #90, 13/09/1985). There, unlike watching celebrity lifestyles people had control.

This is not to say games seeped into all societies. For some years more gaming only associated with industrialized countries and entrenched habits. In the early 1980s China confirmed its population exceeded one billion. The vast bulk of the taut dictatorial country lived in semi-feudal settings where GDP was a tiny US$300. Broadly comparable to India’s US$500 this was miles off, say, South African GDP well over US$6,000 and US and European GDP over US$20,000. It was the first country to do so and of several accomplishments and pride it prompted questions of the energy consumption wished to support such vast population. Of all possible choices nuclear power was of particular concern. While several countries openly abstained from it China openly embraced it – indeed considered it a basic need. So too did their large Communist neighbour. One critical disaster at a Soviet plant added strength to their convictions the power would not deserve a place in modern life - or would it? (Decisive Day #91, 26/04/1986). While lurking underneath the tragedy of Chernobyl was a nagging question not only for Russia but for the world: if not nuclear power, what?

In this global climate of increased leisure and greater economic opportunities the church found itself increasingly sidelined in the industrialized world. In the autumn of 1988 the Catholic Church relaxed claims the Turin shroud was genuine. For the pious this was a galling concession as the gospel of John plus all three Synoptic gospels refer to Jesus wrapped in linen post-mortem. Mark chapter 15 mentions specifically that a disciple ‘brought fine linen and wrapped him in the linen’. Not one but three laboratories competent in carbon-14 dating, Oxford in the UK and Arizona in America, plus an institute in Switzerland, arrived at similar conclusions. The shroud was either late thirteenth century or early fourteenth century (between the precise dates of 1260 BCE and 1390 BCE). A replica, in short, from the artifact-mad medieval times. The concession might have been a long-time coming. Already in the late fourteenth century bishops in Europe claimed it was a cunningly painted fake. Pope Clement VII sanctioned its use only when displayed as ‘a representation’. By the twentieth century, with its status still ambiguous, talk swirled of the religious version of Piltdown Man, the fraud inflicted on palaeontologists during the early twentieth century. Even after the clarification Pope John Paul II still talked warmly of the shroud. Constituents could ‘continue venerating’ the linen sheeting if they wished, though only as a special pictorial image of Christ.