July 1984: Twenty-one people were fatally shot in a McDonald's restaurant in San Ysidro, California by James Oliver Huberty, an out-of-work security guard. Huberty was killed by a police sharpshooter. It was one of the worst mass murders in American history.

April 1985: It was revealed that the U.S. Pentagon was paying weapons-makers $500 to $1,200 a page to produce training manuals for U.S. troops. As a hidden cost was the correction of frequent errors in the texts, which were corrected with taxpayers' money. Critics argued that the high cost of the manuals showed how the U.S. military's purchasing system rewarded inefficiency, much to the government's embarrassment.

February 1987: Fawn Hall, the attractive 27-year-old secretary to Lt. Col. Oliver North, told the independent counsel investigating the Iran-Contra affair, that she helped North destroy National Security documents and, at his instruction, made alterations in four key memos in order to obscure the role played by the NSC in the matter. Hall's disclosure came only after she was granted immunity from prosecution.

June 1987: The UNICEF chief in Belgium resigned over a scandal tying the organization to a child pornography ring.

February 1988: TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart announced tearfully that he'd relinquish the pulpit because of a confrontation with photographs of him visiting a prostitute. Only a year earlier, Swaggart had denounced his rival evangelist Jim Bakker after a sex scandal had destroyed Bakker's "Praise The Lord" (PTL) ministry. Swaggart was quoted, "I have sinned against you, and I beg your forgiveness." Swaggart said he did not engage in intercourse with the woman, but "paid her to perform pornographic acts." ABC reported that Marvin Gorman, a television evangelist from New Orleans, was believed to have provided the incriminating photos to church officials.

April 1988: The Arizona Senate removed Gov. Evan Mecham from office, the first ouster of a governor in almost 60 years. The Senate found him guilty on two charges: attempting to block an investigation into a death threat from a state aide to a grand jury witness, and channeling state funds into his struggling automobile dealership. Mecham had antagonized minorities in 1987 soon after taking office by canceling the Martin Luther King, Jr. state holiday. While in office, the governor angered many people with his frequent casual slurs directed at ethnic groups, homosexuals, and women.

June 1989: In Beijing, China, at Tiananmen Square, the People's Liberation Army stormed the city to end the square's occupation by thousands of university students pressing for reform. It was estimated that 3,000 students were killed by the government army, although China admitted only to "up to 300" deaths caused by the army's fight to regain control of the city.

June 1989: A pipeline carrying liquefied-petroleum gas exploded in the Ural mountains, 745 miles southeast of Moscow, and unleashed a "tornado of fire" on two passing trains carrying more than 1,200 people. At least 500 people were killed by the explosion. Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev rushed to the scene of the grisly accident and blamed the catastrophe on negligence.

Author: Vicki McClure Davidson

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