On this day in 1985, President Ronald Reagan angers Jewish leaders and Holocaust survivors by visiting the Bitburg war cemetery in Germany. Then-German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who suggested the visit, accompanied Reagan to the cemetery, where 2,000 German troops are buried. Reagan laid a wreath at the base of a monument to fallen German soldiers. […]
Continue ReadingVillanova Beats Georgetown For NCAA Basketball Championship
On this day in 1985, in one of the greatest upsets in college basketball history, the Villanova Wildcats beat the Georgetown Hoyas, 66-64, to win the NCAA Men’s Division I tournament. The victory was Villanova’s first-ever national championship. Over 23,000 college basketball fans gathered at Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky, for the match-up between the […]
Continue ReadingSheena Easton Sets A Billboard Chart Record When “Sugar Walls” Becomes A Top 10 R&B Hit
The controversial Prince-penned song “Sugar Walls” reaches #9 on Billboard magazine’s R&B Singles chart on March 2, 1985, and makes Sheena Easton the first and still only recording artist to score top-10 singles on all five major Billboard singles charts: Pop, Country, Dance, Adult Contemporary and R&B. To be fair, this same feat might have […]
Continue ReadingAmerican Recording Artists Gather To Record “We Are The World”
The special instruction Quincy Jones sent out to the several dozen pop stars invited to participate in the recording of “We Are the World” was this: “Check your egos at the door.” Jones was the producer of a record that would eventually go on to sell more than 7 million copies and raise more than […]
Continue ReadingDon DeLillo’s White Noise Wins The American Book Award
On this day in 1985, Don DeLillo wins the American Book Award for his breakthrough novel, White Noise. Although DeLillo had been publishing novels since 1971, his books had received little attention. White Noise, a semi-satire about a professor of Hitler Studies exposed to an “airborne toxic event,” established DeLillo as a leading post-modern novelist, […]
Continue ReadingCoen Brothers Release Debut Film, Blood Simple
CThe hard-boiled, often gruesome black comedy Blood Simple, the debut offering from the Minnesota-born brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, premieres on this day in 1985. The film told the story of Julian Marty (played by Dan Hedaya), a bar owner who hires a private detective (M. Emmett Walsh) to follow his wife (Frances McDormand). When […]
Continue ReadingUnited States Walks Out Of World Court Case
For the first time since joining the World Court in 1946, the United States walks out of a case. The case that caused the dramatic walkout concerned U.S. paramilitary activities against the Nicaraguan government. For the Reagan administration, efforts to undermine the Sandinista government in Nicaragua had been a keystone of its anticommunist foreign policy […]
Continue ReadingReal-Life Psycho Ed Gein Dies
On July 26, 1984, Ed Gein, a serial killer infamous for skinning human corpses, dies of complications from cancer in a Wisconsin prison at age 77. Gein served as the inspiration for writer Robert Bloch’s character Norman Bates in the 1959 novel “Psycho,” which in 1960 was turned into a film starring Anthony Perkins and […]
Continue ReadingA Nine-Year-Old’s Murder Puts An Innocent Man In Jail
The body of nine-year-old Dawn Hamilton is found in a wooded area of Rosedale, Maryland, near her home. The young girl had been raped and beaten to death with a rock. Unfortunately, Hamilton and her family were not the only ones to suffer because of this terrible crime. After witnesses saw a suspicious man in […]
Continue ReadingMiss America Resigns
On this day in 1984, 21-year-old Vanessa Williams gives up her Miss America title, the first resignation in the pageant’s history, after Penthouse magazine announces plans to publish nude photos of the beauty queen in its September issue. Williams originally made history on September 17, 1983, when she became the first black woman to win […]
Continue Reading