The official narrative of Leonid Brezhnev’s death is that he died of abrupt heart arrest. Despite the Secretary General’s poor health, his untimely death has resulted in several misconceptions. And it’s no surprise: some of the circumstances surrounding Brezhnev’s death remain odd. His mysterious death is one of the top political events … Read more
Muslim radicals assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Al-Sadat during a military parade commemorating the 1973 Yom Kippur War against Israel on October 6, 1981. The CBS News Bureau in Cairo tries to make sense of contradictory reports on whether Egyptian President Anwar Sadat had dead in the hours after the shooting while Sadat … Read more
Argentina attacked the British foreign territory of the Falkland Islands on April 2, 1982. Argentina had claimed sovereignty over the islands for many years, and the country’s governing military dictatorship did not believe Britain would try to reclaim them by force. Despite the enormous distance involved – the Falklands were 8,000 miles … Read more
After seven months and ten deaths, an Irish nationalist hunger strike at the Maze Prison in Belfast, Northern Ireland, has been called off. Bobby Sands, the imprisoned Irish Republican Army or IRA leader who started the protest on March 1, 1981–the fifth anniversary of Britain’s “criminalization” of Irish political prisoners–was the first … Read more
Sandra Day O’Connor was appointed in the Supreme Court by President Reagan on August 19, 1981, thereby fulfilling his 1980 campaign pledge to nominate the first woman to the highest court in the United States. At the time of her nomination, the fifty-one-year-old O’Connor was a judge in the Arizona Court of … Read more
From November 4, 1979, and ended on January 20, 1981, the Iran hostage crisis was a severe diplomatic standoff between the U.S. and Iranian administrations. Iranian terrorists held 52 American citizens prisoner in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran for 444 days. The hostage crisis, which was sparked by anti-American sentiment following Iran’s … Read more
Representatives of Poland’s communist government gave in to the demands of striking shipyard workers in Gdansk on August 31, 1980. Lech Walesa, a former electrician, led the striking workers, who later formed Solidarity, the first autonomous labor organization to emerge from a Soviet bloc country. In September 1980, Solidarity was founded and … Read more
Ted Turner, the maverick television mogul, founded CNN as part of his Turner Broadcasting System, or TBS, despite industry experts telling him it couldn’t be done. On June 1, 1980, CNN debuted after four years of development, with a news program hosted by Dave Walker and Lois Hart, a husband-and-wife combination. The … Read more
