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James Cameron is the director of Aliens

Based on the discoveries of American biologists Thomas Cech and Sidney Altman (certain types of RNA can multiply without the help of proteins) Walter Gilbert hypothesizes the RNA World, that is, first the birth of RNA, then of proteins.

The glorious Voyager 2 passes just 81,500 km from the tops of Uranus’ cloud tops: 4 antennas in Australia and 3 in Goldstone, California must be used to hear the faint signal coming from the probe.

Gorbachev wrote a message to the United States in Pravda and Izvestia, proposing a program to gradually reduce nuclear weapons with the goal of complete elimination within 15 years. This same goal had been declared by US President Ronald Reagan a few years earlier, before

United States. The amount of lead in gasoline is zero. The amount of lead in Americans’ blood will drop by up to 80% in 1995 compared to the 1970s. In Europe, such measures will be adopted with a delay of one to two decades. The

Rome: Four Palestinian attackers, from Abu Nidal’s group, departed from Syria and funded by Libya, threw several hand grenades and then opened fire with Kalashnikovs on the crowd at the counter of the Israeli airline El Al. The first to react were four plainclothes Israeli

Palestinian attacks in Rome and Vienna: 16 dead, dozens injured

Tuesday, near Geneva: Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan meet for the first time. The Americans rent the Chateau Fleur d’Eau on the western shore of Lake Geneva.

Hijacking of the “Achille Lauro”: Four heavily armed Palestinian terrorists hijack the Italian cruise ship off the coast of Egypt. Claiming membership in the Palestine Liberation Front, the militants demanded the release of 50 Palestinian militants from Israeli prisons. On October 9th, they surrendered to

Earthquake in Mexico City: 8.0 on the Richter scale, 7,000 dead

Mikhail Gorbachev is elected General Secretary of the Communist Party

American double agent Aldrich Ames had dozens of CIA spies captured; 10 were executed, and dozens more ended up in the Gulag. Oleg Goldievsky, an employee of the Russian embassy in London and a British spy, managed to escape from Moscow, where he had been

Richard Feynman publishes the seminal article “Quantum Mechanical Computers” in the journal “Optics News” and contributes, together with Paul Benioff, Charles H. Bennett, Tom Toffoli and Ed Fredkin, to laying the foundations of the physics of quantum computing, which will only begin to be put

Ronald Reagan confirmed at the White House

Launch of the Japanese Sakigake (pioneer) probe towards Halley’s Comet

Roberta Score (US Antarctic Search for Meteorites Team) finds the meteorite ALH84001, which turns out to be a fragment of Mars; the meteorite is immediately noted for its unusual color. In 1996, possible signs of Martian life are found. The initial enthusiasm (supported by a

The Space Shuttle releases the European Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF), a laboratory that will remain in orbit for 6 years and which hosts experiments of various kinds, including Bacillus Subtilus spores subjected to various conditions of space radiation. Incredibly, 80% of the spores protected

Launch of Vega 2, which on its journey to Halley’s Comet launches a balloon into the atmosphere of Venus that transmits for 46 hours and a probe that transmits from the surface for 57 minutes

First mission of the Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-41D)

Green and Schwarz prove that Veneziano’s Superstring Theory is the only self-consistent theory that includes quantum gravity. But the main obstacle is that the mathematics needed to solve String Theory is not fully understood, and furthermore, there are countless solutions (millions and millions) for the

Paleontologist Peter Sheehan of the Milwaukee Public Museum, along with 200 volunteers, decides to conduct a systematic search for fossils in a well-known and well-trodden area: the Hell Creek Formation in Montana. The meticulous search lasts three years and leads to a tripling of the

United States. The LIGO initiative is launched to build a gravitational wave detector (there will ultimately be two: one in Washington State and one in Louisiana). The initiative is supported by the NSF (National Science Foundation) and led by Kip Thorne of Caltech and Rainer

In Moscow, Yaakov Zeldovich and Andrei Starobinsij return to the question of the possible creation of a universe from nothing, or at least from the quantum vacuum. They discover that a simple flat universe with a finite topology curled up on itself can arise from

American Robert Axelrod publishes in Science “The Evolution of Cooperation” or a Prisoner Dilemma tournament open to all scholars: each submitted algorithm can cooperate (cooperate) or defect to the enemy/attack (defect): the winning strategy turns out to be the TIT-FOR-TAT (blow for blow) by Professor

During the NATO exercise Able Archer, Kremlin officials are on the verge of becoming convinced that the West is about to launch a preemptive nuclear strike.

Bill Gates announces at a conference at the Palace Hotel in Manhattan that Microsoft is working on a windowing operating system that will run on IBM PCs and its clones. It will be called Windows.

Nobel Prize in Physics to William A. Fowler for his studies on the formation of chemical elements in the universe

The young Russian Andreij Linde presents the chaotic inflationary model of the Big Bang: he thus demonstrates that the current state of the universe could have emerged from a rather large series of initial configurations that were different from each other.

Subramanyan Chandrasekhar wins Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on black holes

Microsoft introduces Windows (Windows 1.0 actually hits stores on November 20, 1985)

Westinghouse Corp. Research Report on Programmable Assembly Systems, Pilot Project for Flexible Production Lines Using Robots

Launch of Venera 16, which will enter orbit around Venus, transmitting a radar map of the planet.

Launch of Venera 15, which will enter orbit around Venus, transmitting a radar map of the planet.

Arthur Rudolph, a member of von Braun’s German team, meets with officials from the Department of Justice. In 1981, American archives revealed that Rudolph had been a superintendent of the Mettelwerk/Dora Nordhausen concentration camp. The options presented to him were: leave the United States and

The West German State Archives announces that Hitler’s diaries published by Stern and the Sunday Times (bought by Stern) are not only a fake, but a crude forgery; through Stern’s famous reporter, Gerd Heidemann, 4 million USD have gone up in smoke; the report: the

The U.S. government has made public (unclassified) the report written by Enrico Fermi with observations immediately after the nuclear explosion at Trinity Site, New Mexico, in which the Italian-American physicist describes his rough (but accurate) estimate of the force of the explosion using slips of

First mission of the Space Shuttle Challenger (STS-6)

As part of aggressive American military maneuvers off Kamchatka, 6 US Navy aircraft from the aircraft carriers Midway and Enterprise violated the Soviet border by flying over Zeleny Island in the Kurile archipelago.

The United States is conducting aggressive military maneuvers near Soviet territorial waters in the Far East. Three aircraft carriers, part of a 40-ship fleet, with B-52 bombers and 23,000 troops, are maneuvering off Kamchatka.

Ronald Reagan announces the Star Wars Strategic Initiative, an ambitious long-term project to achieve the automatic shoot-down of ICBMs in space.

The Space Telescope under construction is dedicated to Edwin Hubble

FermiLab doubles its energy (512 GeV against a stationary target and 2 TeV with a proton-antiproton collision) with the addition of a superconducting ring

Carroll Alley and colleagues at the University of Maryland perform the practical delayed-choice experiment devised by John Archibald Wheeler; it is the Young slit experiment modified with a sort of Venetian blind instead of a screen, which can be opened or closed after the photons

Big Island, Hawaii. Kilauea’s eruption begins. It will continue uninterrupted for 35 years, ending abruptly in September 2018.

Lotus 1-2-3, a spreadsheet program for IBM PCs, is born.

The American satellite IRAS detects protoplanetary dust disks around Vega, Formalhaut, Beta Pictoris and dozens of other stars.

Craxi at Palazzo Chigi

The only copy of the Gospel of Judas, stolen three years earlier, was found in Europe and locked away by its rightful owner, an Egyptian collector, in a safe in Hicksville, New York, where it remained to seriously decompose for 16 years.

Trieste. Vittorio Vidali (aka Carlosa Contreras, aka Enea Sormenti) is buried amid a blaze of red flags. He was a member of the Red Aid, initially a communist solidarity organization, and later Stalin’s armed wing. He actively participated in finding and eliminating Trotskyist supporters around

US intervention in Grenada after military coup

Civil war in Sudan: 1 million dead.

Richard Marquand is the director of “The Return of the Jedi” (“The Return of the Jedi”, episode 6 of the Star Wars saga); original title: “The Revenge of the Jedi, changed in the very last days by George Lucas; a Lucas Films production

Reagan launches the active anti-missile protection project called “Star Shield”; at the same time, Cruise and Pershing 2 missiles are installed in Europe in front of the Soviet SS20s.

The “Great Moderation” economic phase, characterized by a significant increase in government and consumer debt. The preceding phase, the “Long Boom,” was characterized by a very long economic growth in GDP and jobs. The term “Long Boom” is sometimes used to refer to the period

Thomas Cech (Univ. of Colorado), Sidney Altman (Yale) discover that RNA can itself act as a weak catalyst (within the framework of the theory that sees RNA as a precursor of DNA)

Barry Marshall, a doctor from Perth, Western Australia, discovers that many stomach cancers and most ulcers are caused by a bacterium called Helicobacter Pylori.

Soviet Union. Four underground nuclear explosives (at depths of 975 to 1,060 m) were detonated in quick succession in the Astrakhan gas field in the USSR, creating four underground cavities. The blast yield ranged from 8.5 to 13.5 kilotons. This series of explosions was part

Mexican Finance Minister Silva Hertog informs the U.S. government and the IMF that Mexico is unable to service its $80 billion foreign debt, effectively causing Mexico to default. Other Latin American countries will soon follow suit.

Italy wins the World Cup in Spain

United States. Vladimir Kosma Zworykin dies. He emigrated to the United States from Archangel after the October Revolution, where he became a rival to Baird in the development of television. The TV developed by Zworykin, unlike Baird’s mechanical version, scanned the lines electrically: it was

IBM RS-1 Cartesian assembly robot, programmed using AML language

After its discovery in 1978 in Egypt, and after incredible vicissitudes and thefts, the Egyptian merchant Hanna manages to regain possession of the Codex Tchacos, containing the Gospel of Judas.

In his Westminster speech, Ronald Reagan declared that the USSR was going against history by denying its citizens freedom and dignity. This was the public version of NSDD-32 (National Security Decision Directive 32), which stated that the Cold War was no longer to be considered

The United States has 23,254 nuclear weapons; the USSR has 40,273; this is the most atomic bombs the Soviets (or any other nation) have ever possessed.

Operation “Peace for Galilee”: Israel invades Lebanon to halt attacks on the Galilee. This soon leads to a direct confrontation with the Syrian army in the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon. The 1982 Lebanon War, also called the second Israeli invasion of Lebanon, followed a

Gilles Villeneuve dies during practice for the Belgian Grand Prix.

South Atlantic. Mission Black Duck 1. Operations Black Buck 1 to Black Buck 7 were seven very long-range air raids conducted by Royal Air Force (RAF) Vulcan bombers of RAF Waddington Wing, including aircraft from Nos. 44, 50, and 101 Squadrons, against Argentine positions in

Launch of the Soviet Salyut 7. Salyut 7 (Russian: Салют-7, translated “Hello 7”) was the seventh and final space station of the Soviet Union’s Salyut program. It operated from April 1982 to February 1991. It was visited by a total of 12 crewed missions (from

Aspect Experiment: Alain Aspect and his collaborators in Paris solve a puzzle theorized by Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, Nathan Rosen in 1935 (EPR paper)

Shubik formalizes the characteristic form of Von Neumann in Game Theory

A sample of the wallpaper from Napoleon’s rooms on Saint Helena, colored gold and Scheele’s green, was found and analyzed. It was originally made from copper arsenide or copper acetoarsenate. The article, published in Nature, confirmed the presence of arsenic in the wallpaper, which would

Venera 13 lands on Venus and transmits the first color panoramic images and soil analysis for 127 minutes. It is followed four days later by Venera 14, which transmits another 57 minutes of color panoramic images and soil analysis. They are then destroyed by the

Soviet Union. The Tupolev Tu-160 “Blackjack” takes flight for the first time. It is a supersonic heavy nuclear bomber. The first prototype is piloted by B.I. Veremey. Nine test aircraft and 27 series production aircraft will be built.

In Poland, Jarusersky orders tanks to intervene to suppress a workers’ demonstration.

Poland. Electrician Lech Walesa, head of the Solidarity trade union, is arrested by the government led by Jaruzelsky.

Launch of Venera 13, which lands on Venus and transmits the first color panoramic images and soil analysis for 127 minutes.

The Soviet submarine S-363, a Whiskey-class submarine of the Baltic Fleet, became famous under the designation U 137 when it suffered the extreme embarrassment of having to surface in Swedish territorial waters after accidentally striking an underwater reef 6.2 miles from the main Swedish naval

Wisconsin. Construction of the ELF (Extremely Low Frequencies) project begins. It involves 84 miles of antennas, communicating at 76Hz and 45Hz with deep-sea nuclear submarines. Due to the low frequency required for the depth, the system is very slow, taking 15 minutes to transmit three

Egyptian President Sadat, architect of the Camp David Accords with Israel, is assassinated by Islamic extremists, a nascent group in Egypt, which later formed the local nucleus of Al Qaeda.

Microsoft secretly begins developing a new operating system, which will replace DOS, based on the desktop, windows, icons, a mouse, and a pointer. It hires Charles Simonyi from the PARC Xerox laboratory. This puts it on a collision course with Apple, which is working on