“This is your Woodstock, and it’s long overdue.” That was the introduction offered by 1960s folk icon Joan Baez at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the opening of the North American portion of Live Aid on this day in 1985. The biggest rock concert and charity event in the history of the world, staged […]
Continue ReadingLive Aid Concert
On July 13, 1985, at Wembley Stadium in London, Prince Charles and Princess Diana officially open Live Aid, a worldwide rock concert organized to raise money for the relief of famine-stricken Africans. Continued at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia and at other arenas around the world, the 16-hour “superconcert” was globally linked by satellite to more […]
Continue ReadingThe Sinking Of The Rainbow Warrior
In Auckland harbor in New Zealand, Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior sinks after French agents in diving gear plant a bomb on the hull of the vessel. One person, Dutch photographer Fernando Pereira, was killed. The Rainbow Warrior, the flagship of international conservation group Greenpeace, had been preparing for a protest voyage to a French nuclear test […]
Continue Reading“Back To The Future” Released, Features 1981 DeLorean DMC-12
On this day in 1985, the blockbuster action-comedy “Back to the Future”–in which John DeLorean’s iconic concept car is memorably transformed into a time-travel device–is released in theaters across the United States. “Back to the Future,” directed by Robert Zemeckis, starred Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly, a teenager who travels back 30 years using […]
Continue ReadingRoute 66 Decertified
After 59 years, the iconic Route 66 enters the realm of history on this day in 1985, when the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials decertifies the road and votes to remove all its highway signs. Measuring some 2,200 miles in its heyday, Route 66 stretched from Chicago, Illinois to Santa Monica, California, […]
Continue ReadingTWA Flight 847 Is Hijacked By Terrorists
TWA Flight 847 from Athens to Rome is hijacked by Shiite Hezbollah terrorists who immediately demand to know the identity of ”those with Jewish-sounding names.” Two of the Lebanese terrorists, armed with grenades and a 9-mm. pistol, then forced the plane to landin Beirut, Lebanon. Once on the ground, the hijackers called for passengers with […]
Continue ReadingEnglish Football Clubs Banned From Europe
On June 2, 1985, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) bans English football (soccer) clubs from competing in Europe. The ban followed the death of 39 Italian and Belgian football fans at Brussels’ Heysel Stadium in a riot caused by English football hooligans at that year’s European Cup final. The 1985 European Cup final […]
Continue ReadingSerial Killing Spree Is Put To An End
Leonard Lake is arrested near San Francisco, California, ending one of the rare cases of serial killers working together. Lake and Charles Ng were responsible for a series of particularly brutal crimes against young women in California and the Pacific Northwest during the mid-1980s. Lake was a former Marine who had served time in Vietnam. […]
Continue ReadingA Raid Is Set For MOVE Headquarters
In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, police begin evacuating people from their Osage Avenue homes in order to prepare for an operation against MOVE, a radical cult group that had assembled a large arsenal. By the end of the confrontation, 11 people were dead and 61 homes had been burned down. The roots of the 1985 incident date […]
Continue ReadingFire Kills 50 At Soccer Stadium
Fifty people die in a fire in the grandstand at a soccer stadium in Bradford, England, on this day in 1985. The wooden roof that burned was scheduled to be replaced by a steel roof later that same week. Bradford was playing Lincoln City on the afternoon of May 11. Many fans were there to […]
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