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Jimmy Carter was elected the 39th President of the United States on November 2, 1976. The Democratic nominee and former Georgia governor narrowly defeated the Republican incumbent, Gerald R. Ford, securing 297 electoral votes to Ford's 240. He was inaugurated on January 20, 1977. -
The world premiere of the new film Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu took place in Los Angeles on May 14, 2026, ahead of its wide theatrical and IMAX release on May 22, 2026. The red carpet event was held nearly 49 years after the original Star Wars premiered on May 25, 1977. -
The Three Mile Island accident was a partial nuclear meltdown of the Unit 2 reactor (TMI-2) of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station, located on the Susquehanna River in Londonderry Township, Dauphin County near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The reactor accident began at 4:00 a.m. on March 28, 1979, and released radioactive gases and radioactive iodine into the environment. -
On May 18, 1980, at 8:32 a.m., Mount St. Helens in Skamania County, Washington experienced a catastrophic explosive eruption which had a volcanic explosivity index of 5. It was the first to occur in the contiguous United States since the much smaller 1915 eruption of Lassen Peak in California. -
The 52 American hostages held in Tehran were released on January 20, 1981, exactly 444 days after the U.S. Embassy was seized by Iranian militants on November 4, 1979. -
On March 30, 1981, Ronald Reagan, the president of the United States, was shot and wounded by John Hinckley Jr. outside of the Washington Hilton in Washington, D.C., as Reagan was returning to his limousine after a speaking engagement at the hotel. -
The Iran–Contra affair, also referred to as the Iran–Contra scandal, the Contragate, Iran Initiative, or simply Iran–Contra, was a political scandal in the United States that centered on arms trafficking to Iran between 1981 and 1986, facilitated by senior officials of the Reagan administration. -
On January 28, 1986, Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members. The spacecraft disintegrated about 46,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 16:39:13 UTC. -
On 26 April 1986, reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, located near Pripyat, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union, exploded. -
George H.W. Bush was elected the 41st President of the United States on November 8, 1988, defeating Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis. As the sitting Vice President under Ronald Reagan, he secured a sweeping Electoral College victory of 426 to 111, and was inaugurated on January 20, 1989 -
The Berlin Wall fell on 9 November 1989 during the Peaceful Revolution, marking the beginning of the destruction of the figurative Iron Curtain, as East Berlin transit restrictions were overwhelmed and discarded. Sections of the wall were breached, and planned deconstruction began the following June. -
The Gulf War began on August 2, 1990, when Iraqi forces invaded and occupied Kuwait. In response, a U.S.-led coalition initiated the air offensive, Operation Desert Storm, on January 17, 1991. The conflict officially concluded on February 28, 1991, following the liberation of Kuwait -
Los Angeles, California, experienced a series of riots and civil disturbances during April and May of 1992.[5] Civil unrest began in South Central Los Angeles on April 29, after a jury acquitted four officers of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) charged with using excessive force in the arrest and beating of Rodney King. The incident had been videotaped by George Holiday, who was a bystander to the incident, and was heavily reported on by various news and media outlets. -
The 1992 United States Men's Olympic Basketball Team, universally known as the "Dream Team," was the first American Olympic squad to feature active NBA players. Widely considered the most dominant sports team ever assembled, they went 8-0 in the Barcelona Olympics, winning every game by at least 32 -
Bill Clinton was elected President of the United States in the 1992 Presidential Election and was re-elected in 1996. -
Google was officially launched in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin to market Google Search, which has become the most used web-based search engine. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, students at Stanford University in California, developed a search algorithm first (1996) known as "BackRub", with the help of Scott Hassan and Alan Steremberg. -
On December 19, 1998, the House of Representatives impeached President Bill Clinton on charges of perjury (lying to a grand jury) and obstruction of justice regarding his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Clinton was the second U.S. president to be impeached, and he was subsequently acquitted by the Senate in February 1999.
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The September 11 attacks were a coordinated series of suicide attacks against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four airliners, then flew one into each of the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center in New York City. The third plane crashed into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense. The fourth plane crashed in a rural Pennsylvania field during a passenger revolt.
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