The 1980s produced far more than big hair, arcade games, and memorable music. These 50 true stories reveal the decade’s strangest decisions, remarkable people, unexpected disasters, and moments that still seem hard to believe.
Ghibli’s No-Cuts Warning
1. Studio Ghibli adopted a strict “no edits” policy after a disastrous 1985 dub of “Nausica of the Valley of the Winds”. When Miramax later planned to edit Princess Mononoke to make it more marketable, Studio Ghibli sent an authentic katana with the message: “No cuts”.
2. In 1988, Mad Magazine spotlighted a cigarette manufacturer that owned a life insurance company. The cigarette maker said cigarettes were harmless while charging more to insure smokers.
3. American photographer Robert Landsburg, while filming the 1980 Mount St. Helens volcano eruption, realized he would not survive it, so he rewound the film into its case, placed his camera in his backpack, and then lay on top of the backpack to protect the film for future researchers.
4. In the 1980s, Domino’s Pizza ran a campaign built around a cartoon character named “The Noid.” It ended in 1989 after a mentally ill man named Kenneth Noid held employees of an Atlanta Domino’s restaurant hostage after believing the ads were a personal attack on him.
5. In 1985, Burger King launched a viral ad campaign featuring “Herb the Nerd”, a mysterious man who had never eaten a Whopper in his life. People could get a 99 cent Whopper by saying “I’m Not Herb”, or if their name was Herb, “I’m not the Herb you’re looking for.”
6. In 1986, when a 5-year-old boy named Levan Merritt fell into a gorilla enclosure and lost consciousness, a male gorilla named Jambo positioned himself between the boy and the other gorillas in a protective gesture. He even stroked the boy’s back. This incident helped create a positive public perception of gorillas.
7. Reggie Miller, NBA Hall of Famer, could not get out from under his older sister Cheryl’s shadow while in high school. On January 26, 1982, he scored a career high 40 points. He tried bragging about it on the car ride home, only to learn that Cheryl scored 105 points and had broken 8 national records.
8. In 1984, the New Zealand Prime Minister Robert Muldoon got drunk and chose to spontaneously call a general election, which he lost.
9. In the 1980’s, A&W tried to sell a third pounder burger to compete with McDonald’s quarter pounder. They sold it for the same price, but nobody wanted to buy it because most people thought they were getting less meat, believing a third [1/3] was smaller than a quarter [1/4].
10. Technically, the longest war in recorded history lasted for 335 years and 19 days, between the Dutch and the Isles of Scilly. There were no casualties. The Dutch actually forgot about the conflict until a Scilly historian named Roy Duncan contacted them about it in 1985. A treaty was signed between them in 1986.
FBI Denied Census Access
11. In 1980, 4 FBI agents went to the Census Bureau’s Colorado Springs office with warrants but were forced to leave. Courts upheld that no agency, including the FBI, has access to Census data.”
12. In 1987, only 22 California Condors remained alive on Earth. They were all captured to support efforts to save the species. As of December 2016, 446 condors were living in the wild or in captivity.
13. In 1985, the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore hosted a youth rap contest. The winner was a 14-year-old boy named Tupac Shakur.
14. In 1987, an American actress named Jamie Lee Curtis invented and patented a diaper modification, which had a moisture proof pocket containing wipes for easy access. She refused to allow it to be marketed until companies started selling biodegradable diapers. The patent expired in 2007 and it is now in the public domain.
15. In the 1980s, the Naval Investigative Service carried out a huge but pointless search in the Chicago area for a woman named “Dorothy,” after hearing gay men call themselves “friends of Dorothy.” They believed that she was at the center of a ring of gay military personnel.
16. In 1981, Muhammad Ali prevented a man from killing himself by shouting, “I am your brother,” “I love you and I wouldn’t lie to you … I want to help you.”.
17. When President Ronald Reagan was taken to a hospital in 1981 after being shot by John Hinckley Jr., he said, “Please tell me you’re all Republicans,” and a surgeon who was a liberal democrat himself answered, “We’re all Republicans today.”.
18. In 1984, American actress Cynthia Nixon made Broadway history by performing in two Broadway plays at the same time. Her roles were brief, the two theaters were only two blocks apart, so she ran from one to the other, and she was only 18 years old.
19. The 1980’s song “The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades” is often mistaken for a cheerful statement about the future. Writer Pat MacDonald said the song is really about a bleak outlook, even suggesting that the “bright future” was actually caused by an approaching nuclear holocaust.
20. The 1983 blockbuster movie WarGames (featuring Matthew Broderick) led President Reagan to ask national security officials whether this kind of “hacking” was possible, and General Vessey replied, “The problem is much worse than you think.” This affected national security policy, ARPAnet, and ultimately the modern Internet.
Voice Warned of Tumor
21. In 1984, a woman began to hear a voice inside her head. The voice told her that she had a brain tumor, where the tumor was located, and how to treat it. Although she had no other symptoms, doctors eventually ordered tests and found a tumor in the place the voice had identified.
22. In 1982, as a protest against actions by the United States federal government, Key West in Florida seceded from the United States and then declared war on it, surrendered one minute later, and then applied for $1 billion in foreign aid.
23. In 1989, Bill Gates answered a Microsoft tech support call and identified himself only as “William”, then fixed the problem. The customer called back later asking specifically for him.
24. In 1984, a young boy named Andy Smith wrote a letter to Ronald Reagan asking for federal funds to clean his bedroom after his mother described it as a “disaster area.”
25. In 1980, a Centaur skeleton was put together from the remains of a human and a Shetland pony, then shown as a genuine artifact to challenge student skepticism.
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