Events, Verisoph

1983 Suriname enters agreements with Brazil ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In spring 1983, Suriname entered into agreements with the neighboring right-wing govern- ment of Brazil which provided f ●●

1983 Gates announces Windows in Manhattan ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Gates unveiled Microsoft Windows in November 1983, two months before the Macintosh launch, angering Jobs. ●●

1 January 1984 Independence of Brunei 0 cit. no story Brunei gains full independence from the United Kingdom, ending the British protectorate over the sultanate. politics ●●

1984 Original Apple Macintosh unveiled ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The original Apple Macintosh was unveiled in 1984 with a 3.5-inch floppy disk holding 400,000 bytes. Wood uses this to trace the growth of data storage toward the era of big data. ●●

1984 Judge Clark takes over Kansas City schools ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Gatto describes how in 1984 Judge Russell G. Clark took control of the Kansas City school district after an NAACP desegregation suit. Clark ordered large tax increases and huge spending, which Gatto says produced no improvement. ●●

1984 Judge Casson reopens the 1972 Peteano bombing ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The book says that in 1984 Judge Felice Casson began digging into the unsolved 1972 Peteano car bombing that killed three police officers. His work is credited with beginning to unravel Operation Gladio. ●●

1984 CIA station chief Buckley kidnapped in Beirut ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Amid a wave of abductions in Beirut, CIA station chief Bill Buckley was kidnapped on his way to work. His captivity and torture would weigh heavily on Bill Casey and the White House. ●●

1984 CIA issues burn notice on Ghorbanifar ai_extracted 1 cit. no story After the Iranian middleman Manucher Ghorbanifar flunked lie-detector tests, the CIA formally certified him a fabricator and issued a worldwide burn notice. The agency nonetheless kept dealing with him. ●●

1984 Casey briefs Reagan on the covert Afghan war ai_extracted 1 cit. no story CIA director William Casey briefed President Reagan about the progress of the covert Afghan war after four years of operations. ●●

1984 Morgan Grenfell's Mackworth-Young dies of lung cancer ai_extracted 1 cit. no story CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR BANG IN late 1986, Morgan Grenfell presented a curious study in contrasts. Outwardly it maintained a sedate air. Upholding a tradition of nearly 150 years, the bank posted no nameplate outside—the old brass plaques hung in the... ●●

1984 United States withdraws from UNESCO ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The Reagan administration withdrew the United States from UNESCO, marking a dramatic reversal of Franklin Roosevelt's internationalist legacy and increasing American UN isolation. ●●

1984 Polish police murder priest Jerzy Popieluszko ai_extracted 1 cit. no story JERZY POPIELUSZKO VERSUS A HUNDRED RELIGIOUS VICTIMS IN LATIN AMERICA A useful comparison can be made between the mass media’s treatment of Jerzy Popieluszko, a Polish priest murdered by the Polish p ●●

1984 China directs softer enforcement of one-child policy ai_extracted 1 cit. no story medal, and in 1984 a new directive called for implementing China’s policy in a “fair and reasonable” way more “acceptable to the peasants.”66 At the same time, the IPPF European Regional Council be... ●●

1984 Herbert Blaize elected Grenada prime minister ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Postscript: At the end of 1984, former Premier Herbert Blaize was elected prime minister, his party capturing 14 of the ●●

1984 Apple launches the Macintosh ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Macintosh shipped in January 1984, later than planned, accompanied by the famous '1984' television ad. ●●

1984 Stewart Brand helps launch The WELL ai_extracted 1 cit. no story As modems spread, Brand helped create the prototype online community known as The WELL. ●●

1985 Casey's two commands: hostages and contras ai_extracted 1 cit. no story At the start of Reagan's second term, Casey faced two urgent presidential demands: free the hostages in Lebanon and save the contras. He resolved to merge both into a grand bargain with Iran. ●●

1985 Hezbollah hijacks TWA Flight 847 ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Hezbollah hijacked TWA Flight 847 out of Athens, took it to Beirut, and murdered a U.S. Navy diver. The ordeal taught Casey that Reagan was willing to make deals with terrorists. ●●

1985 Reagan signs the arms-for-hostages finding ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Reagan signed a retroactive, backdated finding authorizing CIA assistance in shipping arms to Iran to free American hostages. It made Casey the man ultimately responsible for the deal. ●●

1985 Soviets deploy Spetsnaz to seal the Afghan-Pakistan border ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The Soviet Fortieth Army deployed Spetsnaz special forces and intelligence teams in 1985 to try to seal the Afghan-Pakistan border against CIA supply flows. ●●

1985 Morgan Stanley names Eric Gleacher M&A chief ai_extracted 1 cit. no story CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE BULL WALL Street in the Reagan era self-consciously retraced the experience of the 1920s. Commentators noted eerie parallels between the decades—a booming stock market, Republican tax cuts, a Latin American debt crisis, fluctu... ●●

1985 Ronald Perelman acquires Revlon ai_extracted 1 cit. no story CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE BULL WALL Street in the Reagan era self-consciously retraced the experience of the 1920s. Commentators noted eerie parallels between the decades—a booming stock market, Republican tax cuts, a Latin American debt crisis, fluctu... ●●

1985 Morgan Stanley and CIGNA create leveraged buyout fund ai_extracted 1 cit. no story With its unerring instinct for profitable activities, Morgan Stanley noted the LBO profits at First Boston and Merrill Lynch. In 1985, it joined with CIGNA Insurance to create a leveraged buyout fund. It struck spectacular deals that made merger p... ●●

1985 Neil Postman publishes Amusing Ourselves to Death ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Neil Postman's media criticism book examining the decline of discourse in the Age of Television was first published by Viking. The work compares Orwell's and Huxley's visions for the future, arguing Huxley was more accurate in predicting how entertainment would pacify populations. ●●

1985 Gorbachev becomes Soviet General Secretary ai_extracted 1 cit. no story This collapse would have seemed fantastic in March 1985, when Gorbachev was anointed General Secretary. ●●

1985 Clue film released ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Jonathan Lynn and John Landis's Clue, a board-game adaptation, was released with a 15 million budget but garnered only 14 million at box office. ●●

1985 WNET loses Gulf and Western funding over documentary ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Public-television station WNET lost its corporate funding from Gulf + Western in 1985 after the station showed the documentary “Hungry for Profit,” which contains material critical of multinational co ●●

1985 Third UN World Conference on Women in Nairobi ai_extracted 1 cit. no story An important battle occurred in Nairobi in 1985 at the third UN World Conference on Women. ●●

1985 France sinks Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior ai_extracted 1 cit. no story It should be noted that France—the United States’ chief “anti-terrorism” partner—in 1985 deliberately sank the Greenpeac ●●

1985 Quantum launches Q-Link for Commodore users ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Jim Kimsey's reconfigured company launched the Q-Link online service, the forerunner of AOL. ●●

1985 Steve Jobs is ousted from Apple ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Jobs left Apple after a power struggle, a rupture the book compares to Xerox's earlier failure to commercialize its inventions. ●●

11 February 1986 First Battle of al-Faw wikidata 0 cit. no story 1986 battle ●●

21 October 1986 Independence of the Marshall Islands 0 cit. no story The Marshall Islands becomes self-governing in free association with the United States, ending the UN trusteeship. politics ●●

3 November 1986 Independence of Micronesia 0 cit. no story The Federated States of Micronesia becomes self-governing in free association with the United States. politics ●●

1986 Gatto's teaching license secretly terminated ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Gatto states that on September 3, 1986 his teaching license of 26 years was secretly terminated while he was on medical leave, beginning a long fight to clear his name. ●●

1986 Contra supply plane shot down over Nicaragua ai_extracted 1 cit. no story A Nicaraguan soldier shot down an American cargo plane ferrying weapons to the contras. The surviving crewman said he worked for the CIA, helping unravel the secret arms network. ●●

1986 Iran-Contra deals exposed ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On U.S. election day, Iran's parliament speaker Rafsanjani revealed that American officials had come to Iran bearing gifts. The disclosure blew open the secret arms-for-hostages dealings. ●●

1986 KGB executes CIA source Tolkachev ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The KGB chairman told Gorbachev that Adolf Tolkachev, the CIA's greatest Soviet source in twenty years, had been executed for treason. He was one of a dozen agents the agency lost to a still-unknown betrayal. ●●

1986 Milton Bearden becomes CIA station chief in Islamabad ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Milton Bearden replaced William Piekney as CIA station chief in Islamabad in July 1986, taking over Afghan operations. ●●

1986 Gorbachev decides on Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On November 13, 1986, Gorbachev told the Soviet Politburo that the Soviet Union must end its military involvement in Afghanistan. He announced the strategic goal to finish the war within one to two years and withdraw all troops. ●●

1986 Bin Laden opens first training camp at Jaji ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Bin Laden established his first training facility at Jaji in 1986. Young Arab jihadists learned to use assault rifles, explosives, and detonators. The camp was modeled on facilities run by Pakistani intelligence across the Afghan border. ●●

1986 CIA Director Bill Casey suffers fatal seizure ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On December 15, 1986, CIA Director Bill Casey suffered a severe seizure at headquarters. A CAT scan revealed a brain mass. He never recovered consciousness and died four months later at age seventy-four. ●●

1986 People Power revolution ousts Marcos ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Filipinos rose up in the People Power revolution against dictator Marcos after opposition leader Benigno Aquino's assassination. The uprising led to a presidential election where Corazon Aquino defeated Marcos, forcing his exile. ●●

1986 Guinness transfers £69 million in share-support scheme ai_extracted 1 cit. no story As in any share-rigging scheme, there was a critical weakness: what would happen to artificially elevated share prices when the secret props were removed? Apparently Roger Seelig feared that friendly parties might suddenly dump up to 20 percent of... ●●

1986 Roger Seelig arrested in Guinness affair ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Now Thatcher began to pressure Nigel Lawson, chancellor of the Exchequer, to draw more blood from the Guinness affair. In an extraordinary intervention, she reportedly told Lawson, “I want Reeves and Walsh out today, not next week or next month, b... ●●

1986 Morgan Stanley partners with Jefferson Smurfit ai_extracted 1 cit. no story With its unerring instinct for profitable activities, Morgan Stanley noted the LBO profits at First Boston and Merrill Lynch. In 1985, it joined with CIGNA Insurance to create a leveraged buyout fund. It struck spectacular deals that made merger p... ●●

1986 Reagan's Statue of Liberty centenary speech ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Ronald Reagan delivered a televised speech before millions on July 4, 1986, for the Statue of Liberty centenary, repeating themes about America's mysterious divine destiny that he had expressed before CPAC in 1974. ●●

1986 Reagan and Gorbachev meet at Reykjavik summit ai_extracted 1 cit. no story This happened most dramatically at Reagan’s 1986 summit meeting with Gorbachev at Reykjavik. ●●

1986 US bombing raid on Libya ai_extracted 1 cit. no story He was explaining that the American bombing attack upon Libya of 14 April 1986 was in retaliation for the Libyan bombing ●●

1986 Al Gore launches a study of computer networks ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Senator Al Gore pushed a study on interconnecting research networks and expanding their bandwidth and access. ●●

1987 Tania Aebi sets out to sail around the world ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Gatto describes Tania Aebi, a seventeen-year-old New York City school dropout who in 1987 set out to become the first American woman to sail around the world alone. He offers her as an example of self-education outside school. ●●

1987 Gates serves as acting CIA director ai_extracted 1 cit. no story After Casey's collapse, Bob Gates ran the CIA as acting director for five months, but his nomination to the permanent post was doomed. William Webster was chosen instead. ●●

1987 Cuban intelligence officer defects, exposing double agents ai_extracted 1 cit. no story A senior Cuban intelligence officer defected in Vienna and revealed that every Cuban agent the CIA had recruited over twenty years was a double working for Havana. Analysts confirmed it was true. ●●

1987 Gorbachev tells Warsaw Pact he won't invade ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Gorbachev privately told the Warsaw Pact that the Soviets would never again invade Eastern Europe to prop up their empire. The CIA did not know it. ●●

1987 ISI teams raid Soviet Central Asia ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In April 1987, three ISI-equipped teams crossed the Amu Darya into Soviet Central Asia. Teams targeted an airfield near Termez in Uzbekistan, set up ambushes along border roads, and hit a factory site with rockets over ten miles inside Soviet territory. ●●

1987 Acting CIA chief Gates meets KGB's Kryuchkov ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On December 4, 1987, Robert Gates, acting CIA director, met with Vladimir Kryuchkov, chief of the Soviet KGB, for an unprecedented dinner at the Maison Blanche restaurant in Washington. Kryuchkov assured Gates the Soviet Union wanted to withdraw from Afghanistan. ●●

1987 CIA begins Eagle drone reconnaissance program ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The CIA began a classified project called Eagle to adapt small kit airplanes manufactured in California to carry cameras for reconnaissance. ●●

1987 Ernest Saunders arrested in Guinness scandal ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Now Thatcher began to pressure Nigel Lawson, chancellor of the Exchequer, to draw more blood from the Guinness affair. In an extraordinary intervention, she reportedly told Lawson, “I want Reeves and Walsh out today, not next week or next month, b... ●●

1987 Black Monday stock market crash ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The merger of industry and finance had made some sense in the Baronial Age and had given some stability to the American economy. Companies were then weak and had difficulty tapping capital markets, especially abroad. Only the banker’s reputation c... ●●

1987 Lethal Weapon released ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Lethal Weapon, featuring Mel Gibson and directed by Shane Black, centered around a massive L.A. drug bust linked to Iran-Contra and featured the Phoenix Program. ●●

17 April 1988 Operation Ramadan ul-Mubarak wikidata 0 cit. no story 1988 Iraqi military operation ●●

November 1988 Founding of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 0 cit. no story The WMO and UNEP establish the IPCC, which holds its first session in Geneva in November 1988, to assess the science of climate change for governments. It shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. diplomacy / environment / science ●●●

15 November 1988 Declaration of the State of Palestine 0 cit. no story The Palestine Liberation Organization proclaims the State of Palestine in Algiers; it holds UN observer state status since 2012. politics ●●●

February 1988 to 12 May 1994 Nagorno-Karabakh War 0 cit. no story Armenians and Azerbaijanis fight over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave as the Soviet Union collapses. Armenian forces win control of the region and surrounding districts, displacing hundreds of thousands. war ●●●

1988 Prince Charles visits Steel Valley High ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Gatto recounts Prince Charles's 1988 visit to Steel Valley High in Homestead, Pennsylvania, to discuss converting closed steel mills into arboretums. He uses the scene, near where Braddock fell, as a symbol of elite indifference to a dying industrial community. ●●

1988 Carlucci lectures Soviet generals in Moscow ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Reagan's defense secretary went to Moscow and told Soviet generals to publish their military budget as the Americans did. The exchange showed the Soviets that their system, built on secrecy, could not win. ●●

1988 Gorbachev announces unilateral troop cut at UN ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Days after the CIA declared Soviet defense policy unchanged, Gorbachev stood at the UN and offered to cut 500,000 troops. The agency had judged such a move unthinkable. ●●

1988 Geneva Accords commit to Soviet withdrawal ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On April 14, 1988, the Geneva Accords were signed by Afghanistan's communist-led regime, Pakistan, the United States, and the Soviet Union. The accords formally committed to Soviet troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, though the Afghan rebels had no role in negotiations. ●●

1988 Soviet troops begin withdrawal from Jalalabad ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In May 1988, the first Soviet troops began rolling out of Jalalabad. Some twelve thousand men and their equipment withdrew as part of the formal Soviet pullout. CIA officers and ISI brigadiers worked to prevent rebel commanders from attacking the retreating Soviet forces. ●●

1988 Florida grand juries indict Noriega on drug charges ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Then, early in 1988, two grand juries in Florida handed up criminal indictments charging Noriega and more than a dozen others, including Pablo Escobar (1988) ●●

1988 Morgan Grenfell shuts its securities operation ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On December 6, 1988, Morgan Grenfell abruptly shut its securities operation, ending its chances of becoming an integrated global investment bank. There was a wholesale firing of 450 people, or a quarter of its entire payroll—one of the biggest sac... ●●

1988 Morgan bank borrows $400 million from Dai-Ichi Mutual ai_extracted 1 cit. no story By 1989, the bank had outgrown its shrine at 23 Wall. Lew Preston wanted a personal computer on every banker’s desk, and trading desks required an exotic jungle of electric wiring. To accommodate a high-tech bank, Morgans bought a new forty-seven-... ●●

1988 Yellowstone fire burns nearly 800,000 acres ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The public began to take notice after the huge Yellowstone fire in 1988, which ended up burning nearly eight hundred thousand acres and took several months to control. ●●

1988 Russian Church canonizes Andrei Rublev ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Russian Orthodox Church declares Rublev a saint during millennium celebrations for conversion of Prince Vladimir. ●●

11 December 1989 Timor Gap Treaty wikidata 0 cit. no story treaty between Australia and Indonesia ●●●

17 November 1989 to 29 December 1989 Velvet Revolution wikidata 0 cit. no story democratization process in Czechoslovakia in 1989 ●●●

15 December 1989 to 27 December 1989 Romanian Revolution (1989) wikidata 0 cit. no story 1989 popular uprising in Romania against the regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu ●●●

22 September 1989 Founding of the International Paralympic Committee 0 cit. no story Disability sport organizations found the International Paralympic Committee in Düsseldorf as the single global governing body of the Paralympic Games and movement. culture / diplomacy / society ●●

24 December 1989 to 2 August 1997 First Liberian Civil War 0 cit. no story Charles Taylor's rebellion collapses Liberia into factional warfare notorious for child soldiers. Around 200,000 die before elections bring Taylor to power in 1997. war ●●●

c. 15 February 1989 to c. October 2001 Afghan Civil War of 1989-2001 0 cit. no story After the Soviet withdrawal, Afghan factions fight over the country, destroying Kabul, until the Taliban seize most of it by 1996. The Taliban's harboring of al-Qaeda leads to the US invasion of 2001. politics / war ●●●

1989 Campaign to change mathematics teaching launched ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Citing Tom Loveless, Gatto argues that in 1989 a group of math-education experts launched a campaign to change the content and teaching of mathematics, which he sees as a deliberate de-emphasis of math skills. ●●

1989 Gatto's grant to pay students, 1989 ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Gatto recounts that in 1989 he secured a foundation grant to pay his students cash for work they had done for free, an experiment that backfired. ●●

1989 Last Soviet soldier leaves Afghanistan ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan ended as the last soldier withdrew. The CIA's weapons kept flowing to radical Afghan factions, seeding forces that would become al Qaeda. ●●

1989 George H. W. Bush sworn in as president ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The CIA celebrated as Bush, the only president who had run the agency, took office. He became his own director of central intelligence and demanded daily briefings from professionals. ●●

1989 U.S. invades Panama to seize Noriega ai_extracted 1 cit. no story After the CIA repeatedly failed to unseat its old ally Manuel Noriega, the United States mounted its biggest military operation since the fall of Saigon. Special Forces fought through Panama City to arrest the dictator. ●●

1989 Noriega annuls Endara's election victory ai_extracted 1 cit. no story When an opposition figure, Guillermo Endara, won the presidential election held in May 1989, Noriega simply ignored the result and imposed his own can (1989) ●●

1989 Morgan Grenfell reports its first annual loss ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On December 6, 1988, Morgan Grenfell abruptly shut its securities operation, ending its chances of becoming an integrated global investment bank. There was a wholesale firing of 450 people, or a quarter of its entire payroll—one of the biggest sac... ●●

1989 Tiananmen protests and the 1989 crackdown ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The contemporaneous Gorbachev reforms in the former Soviet Union inspired the Tiananmen protest movement and the government’s bloody crackdown in June 1989. ●●

1989 China permits village elections ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The Chinese government has permitted village elections in rural areas since 1989 to elect village committees and village leaders with certain limited local powers. ●●

1989 FMLN guerrillas launch major offensive in El Salvador ai_extracted 1 cit. no story A major offensive launched by the guerrillas in late 1989—in which they “brought the war home” to wealthy neighborhoods ●●

1989 Berners-Lee proposes the World Wide Web to CERN ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Berners-Lee formally proposed his hypertext networking design to CERN managers. ●●

21 March 1990 Independence of Namibia 0 cit. no story Namibia becomes independent from South African rule after a long liberation struggle and a UN-supervised transition. politics / war ●●●

22 May 1990 Unification of Yemen 0 cit. no story North and South Yemen unite to form the Republic of Yemen. politics ●●●

1 October 1990 to 18 July 1994 Rwandan Civil War 0 cit. no story The Tutsi-led RPF invades from Uganda, and the war culminates in the 1994 genocide in which Hutu extremists murder around 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu in a hundred days. The RPF's victory ends the genocide and reshapes the region. politics / war ●●●●

1990 Holes appear in Gatto's classroom floor ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Gatto recounts that in October 1990 three holes appeared in the floor of his classroom at Booker T. Washington Junior High in Spanish Harlem. His attempt to fix them, blocked by bureaucracy for five months, becomes his illustration of school power fragmentation. ●●

1990 First government disclosure of Operation Gladio ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The book says the first on-the-record government disclosure of Operation Gladio came in 1990, only because earlier denials could no longer hold. It presents the operation as hidden for more than forty years. ●●

1990 Iraq's invasion of Kuwait ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Saddam Hussein's Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. Graeber notes Iraq was still paying reparations to Kuwait for the aggression. ●●

1990 Eagleburger mediates the Noriega standoff in Panama ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger arrived in Panama to mediate the standoff with General Noriega, who was holed up in the papal nunciatura. ●●

1990 Noriega surrenders to US forces in Panama ai_extracted 1 cit. no story General Manuel Noriega surrendered to U.S. forces on January 3 after spending eleven days hiding in the papal nunciatura. He was immediately arrested and transported to Miami for trial. ●●

1990 Bush proclaims a 'new world order' to Congress contested ai_extracted 1 cit. no story President George H.W. Bush addressed a joint session of Congress on September 11, 1990, at the start of the first Iraq War, describing the emergence of a 'new world order,' a phrase that later became subject to conspiracy theories. ●●