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Carter was not well known outside of Georgia but he won the Democratic nomination and narrowly defeated the Republican Party president Gerald Ford. Carter pardoned all Vietnam War draft evaders on his second day. The final fifteen months of Carter's presidential tenure were marked by several major crises, including the 1979 oil crisis, the Iran hostage crisis, and the subsequent failed Operation Eagle Claw. -
The first Star Wars movie, “A New Hope” came out on May 25, 1977. Featuring Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) in their career-defining roles -
The Three Mile Island accident was a partial nuclear meltdown of the Unit 2 reactor of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station -
On March 27, 1980, a series of volcanic explosions and pyroclastic flows began at Mount St. Helens in Skamania County, Washington, United States -
An agreement was made that the hostages were released minutes after the inauguration of the new U.S. president, Ronald Reagan. -
On March 30, 1981, President of the United States Ronald Reagan was shot and wounded by John Hinckley Jr. in Washington, D.C., as he was returning to his limousine after a speaking engagement at the Washington Hilton. -
The Iran–Contra affair, often referred to as the Iran–Contra scandal, was a political scandal in the United States that occurred during the second term of the Reagan administration. -
On January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members aboard. -
The Chernobyl disaster began on 26 April 1986 with the explosion of the No. 4 reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near the city of Pripyat -
Bush, a Republican from Texas and the incumbent vice president for two terms under President Ronald Reagan, took office following his victory over Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential election. -
The fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, during the Peaceful Revolution, marked the beginning of the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the figurative Iron Curtain, as East Berlin transit restrictions were overwhelmed and discarded. -
The Gulf War (2 August 1990 – 28 February 1991), was a war waged by coalition forces from 35 nations led by the United States against Iraq. -
In the spring of 1991, Rodney King was beaten by four Los Angeles police officers after a high-speed chase. A bystander's video footage of the assault was broadcast nationally -
The 1992 United States Olympic basketball team, nicknamed the "Dream Team" was the first American Olympic team to feature active professional players. -
Clinton won the 1992 presidential election (370 electoral votes) against Republican incumbent George H. W. Bush (168 electoral votes) and billionaire populist Ross Perot (zero electoral votes), who ran as an independent on a platform that focused on domestic issues. -
Google was founded on September 4, 1998, by American computer scientists Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were PhD students at Stanford University in California -
Clinton was the second U.S. president to face a Senate impeachment trial, after Andrew Johnson. An impeachment inquiry was opened into Clinton on October 8, 1998. -
September 11th, 2001, also known as the 9/11 attacks, were four coordinated Islamist suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on September 11, 2001. That morning, 19 terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners scheduled to travel from the East Coast to California