A Look Back at the Year 1987

The year that had a bit of everything

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It was a year of incredible political and economic strife and continuing Cold War tensions. But while all this was going on, we were experiencing a monumental time when it came to pop culture and technological innovations. Many beloved movies were released, as were some era-defying television shows, that became all-time favorites.

But first, if you want to get caught up with my other yearly reviews, I’ve got you covered with links to all of them:

• 1980
• 1981
• 1982
• 1983
• 1984
• 1985
• 1986

World Events of 1987

even though this is more focused on the pop culture moments from the year, we still need to look at some of the other significant events happening worldwide. And 1987 is quite a doozy. Here are just a few of these notable events.

• Mikael Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan meet at a summit to discuss nuclear weapons. In June of that year, Regan would also Challenge Gorbachev and deliver his famous speech to tear down the Berlin Wall
• Les Miserables wins the Tony Award for best musical
• In 1987, USA today became the first newspaper to publish a digital photograph on its front page.
• The first Starbucks outside of the US opens in Vancouver, Canada. Speaking of Canadian money, 1987 is the year we launched our one-dollar coin, better known as the Loonie.
• An agreement is signed by Michael Eisner and the president of France to begin work on what would become EuroDisney
• In the UK, Margaret Thatcher is elected to her third term
• October 19th, 1987 would be one of the darkest days in the history of Wall Street in what became known as Black Monday. This is when the DOW dropped over 500 points. This was the biggest one-day drop in history. 500 Billion in market capital was gone and 22% of the entire market value was lost.
• This was twice as bad as the crash of 1929, which led to the great depression. If you want some more on this, I have a previous article all about…