The 1980s portal

The1980s (pronounced "nineteen-eighties", shortened to "the '80s" or "the Eighties") was the decade that began on January 1, 1980, and ended on December 31, 1989.

The decade saw a dominance ofconservatism andfree market economics, socioeconomic changes due to advances in technology and a worldwide move away fromplanned economies and towardslaissez-faire capitalism in comparison to the 1970s. As economic deconstruction increased in thedeveloped world, multiplemultinational corporations associated with themanufacturing industry relocated intoThailand, Mexico,South Korea,Taiwan, and China. Japan andWest Germany saw large economic growth during this decade. TheAIDS epidemic became recognized in the 1980s and has since killed an estimated 40.4 million people (as of 2022^[update]). Theglobal warming theory began to spread within the scientific and political community in the 1980s.

The United Kingdom and the United States moved closer tosupply-side economic policies, beginning a trend towards global instability of international trade that would pick up more steam in thefollowing decade as the fall of the USSR maderight-wing economic policy more powerful.

Thefinal decade of the Cold War opened with the US–Soviet confrontation continuing largely without any interruption. Superpower tensions escalated rapidly as President Reagan scrapped the policy of détente and adopted a new, much more aggressive stance on the Soviet Union. The world came perilously close to nuclear war for the first time since theCuban Missile Crisis in 1962, butthe second half of the decade saw a dramatic easing of superpower tensions and ultimately the total collapse of Soviet communism.

Developing countries across the world faced economic and social difficulties as they suffered from multiple debt crises in the 1980s, requiring many of these countries to apply for financial assistance from theInternational Monetary Fund (IMF) and theWorld Bank.Ethiopia witnessedwidespread famine in the mid-1980s during the corrupt rule ofMengistu Haile Mariam, resulting in the country having to depend on foreign aid to provide food to its population and worldwide efforts to address and raise money to help Ethiopians, such as theLive Aid concert in 1985.

Major civil discontent and violence occurred, including theAngolan Civil War, theEthiopian Civil War, theMoro conflict, theSalvadoran Civil War, theUgandan Bush War, theinsurgency in Laos, theIran–Iraq War, theSoviet–Afghan War, the1982 Lebanon War, theFalklands War, theSecond Sudanese Civil War, theLord's Resistance Army insurgency, and theFirst Nagorno-Karabakh War.Islamism became a powerful political force in the 1980s and manyjihadist organizations, includingAl Qaeda, were formed.

By 1986, nationalism was making a comeback in the Eastern Bloc, and the desire for democracy insocialist states, combined with economic recession, resulted inMikhail Gorbachev'sglasnost andperestroika, which reduced Communist Party power, legalized dissent and sanctioned limited forms of capitalism such asjoint ventures with companies fromcapitalist countries. After tension for most of the decade, by 1988 relations between the communist and capitalist blocs had improved significantly and the Soviet Union was increasingly unwilling to defend its governments in satellite states.

1989 brought theoverthrow and attempted overthrow of a number of communist-led governments, such as inHungary, theTiananmen Square protests of 1989 in China, theCzechoslovak "Velvet Revolution",Erich Honecker's East German regime, Poland's Soviet-backed government, andthe violent overthrow of theNicolae Ceaușescu regime inRomania. Destruction of the 155-kmBerlin Wall, at the end of the decade, signaled a seismic geopolitical shift. TheCold War ended in the early 1990s with the successfulReunification of Germany and theUSSR's demise after theAugust Coup of 1991.

The 1980s was an era of tremendous population growth around the world, surpassing the 1970s and 1990s, and arguably being the largest in human history. During the 1980s, the world population grew from 4.4 to 5.3 billion people. There were approximately 1.33 billion births and 480 million deaths. Population growth was particularly rapid in a number of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian countries during this decade, with rates of natural increase close to or exceeding 4% annually. The 1980s saw the advent of the ongoing practice ofsex-selective abortion in China and India asultrasound technology permitted parents to selectively abort baby girls.

The 1980s saw great advances in genetic and digital technology. After years of animal experimentation since 1985, the first genetic modification of 10 adult human beings took place in May 1989, agene tagging experiment which led to the first true gene therapy implementation in September 1990. The first "designer babies", a pair of female twins, were created in a laboratory in late 1989 and born in July 1990 after being sex-selected via the controversialassisted reproductive technology procedurepreimplantation genetic diagnosis.Gestational surrogacy was first performed in 1985 with the first birth in 1986, making it possible for a woman to become a biological mother without experiencing pregnancy for the first time in history.

The globalinternet took shape in academia by the second half of the 1980s, as well as many othercomputer networks of both academic and commercial use such asUSENET,Fidonet, and thebulletin board system. By 1989, the Internet and the networks linked to it were a global system with extensive transoceanic satellite links and nodes in mostdeveloped countries. Based on earlier work, from 1980 onwardsTim Berners-Lee formalized the concept of theWorld Wide Web by 1989.Television viewing became commonplace in theThird World, with the number of TV sets in China and India increasing by 15 and 10 times respectively.

TheAtari Video Computer System console became widespread in the first part of the decade, often simply called "Atari". The 1980 Atari VCS port ofSpace Invaders was its firstkiller app. Thevideo game crash of 1983 ended the system's popularity and decimated the industry until theNintendo Entertainment System re-established the console market in North America. The hand-heldGame Boy launched in 1989.Super Mario Bros. andTetris were the decade's best selling games.Pac-Man was the highest grossing arcade game.Home computers became commonplace. The 1981IBM PC led to a large market forIBM PC compatibles. The 1984 release of theMacintosh popularized theWIMP style of interaction. (Full article...)

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  The firstSpace Shuttle,Columbia, lifts off in 1981
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  American presidentRonald Reagan andSovietleaderMikhail Gorbachev ease tensions between the two superpowers, leading to the end of theCold War
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  Thefall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 is considered to be one of the most momentous events of the 1980s
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  In 1981, theIBM Personal Computer is released
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  In 1985, theLive Aid concert is held in order to fund relief efforts for thefamine in Ethiopia during the timeMengistu Haile Mariam ruled the country
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  Ukraine and much of the world is filled with radioactive debris from the 1986Chernobyl disaster
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  TheIran–Iraq War leads to over one million dead and $1 trillion spent