News
Remember 1989?
I know – 1989 is more like history than news! But I thought it might be interesting to look back.
Markus began life in 1989 in a 50ft x 25ft unit in Gillingham.
The first sale had an invoice value of £42.00
There were three recipes on file.
The world has changed a great deal since then, so what else was going on in Markus’s first year?
Prices:
Petrol – around 38p per litre (happy days!)
Beer – around 96p per pint
Interest rates – 14 to 15% (OUCH!)
£1 = $1.61 (approx) (not much change there then!)
Cars - Fiat Panda 750L £4160, Mazda MX-5 £15,580, Volvo 480 ES £12,640,
VW Corrado 16v £16,699 (with scrappage & discounts on offer, you could probably match these prices today!)
TV/Entertainment:
Blackadder goes Forth and Spitting Image are on television.
Sales of compact discs overtake vinyl LPs for the first time in Britain.
Satellite television is broadcast direct to homes in Britain via satellite dish decoders. Four Sky TV channels are available, featuring news, film, sport, and a general channel.( a whole FOUR channels!!)
The proceedings of the House of Commons are broadcast live on television in Britain for the first time, beginning with the debate on the Queen's Speech
Yugoslavia wins the Eurovision Song Contest in Lausanne with the song Rock me performed by Riva.(obviously memorable!)
Nintendo releases the GameBoy portable video game system in North America.
The first full-length episode of The Simpsons, "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire", premieres on Fox
Movies:
The Abyss
Back to the Future part 2
Batman
Born on the 4th of July
Dead Poets Society
Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade
My Left Foot
Chart Hits:
Kyle Minogue & Jason Donovan – several times together & individually
Jive Bunny – 3 number 1’s
New Kids on the Block
Sonia
Soul 2 Soul
Madonna
The Bangles
Marc Almond & Gene Pitney
Other:
Ninety-six Liverpool fans die in a crush during the FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest at Hillsborough, Sheffield.
Kegworth Air Disaster: A British Midland Boeing 737 crashes on approach to East Midlands Airport, leaving 47 dead
Serial killer Theodore Bundy is executed in Florida
The first of 24 Global Positioning System satellites is placed into orbit.(the beginnings of sat-nav!)
A federal grand jury indicts Cornell University student Robert Tappan Morris, Jr. for releasing a computer virus, making him the first person to be prosecuted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
Voyager II passes the planet Neptune and its moon Triton
Friday the 13th mini-crash: The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunges 190.58 points, or 6.91 percent, to close at 2,569.26
Births:
Rebecca Adlington – swimmer
Daniel Radcliffe – “Harry Potter”
Peaches Geldof – daughter of Sir Bob
Vladimir Weiss – Manchester City
Hayden Panettiere – “the cheerleader” from TV series Heroes
Deaths:
Salvador Dalí
Hirohito, Emperor of Japan
Lucille Ball
Laurence Olivier
Irving Berlin
Graham Chapman (Python)
Bette Davis
Nature:
An earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale hits San Francisco, California, killing at least 273 people, many of whom die when the upper level of the Nimitz Highway collapses. It is North America's most destructive earthquake since 1906
Exxon Valdez oil spill: In Alaska's Prince William Sound the Exxon Valdez spills 240,000 barrels (11 million gallons) of oil after running aground.
Politics:
Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issues a fatwa against the British author Salman Rushdie, calling for his death for blasphemy against Islam in his book The Satanic Verses.
The US Air Force's Stealth Bomber (B-2) makes its first flight.
East Germany announces the opening of its border with West Germany as unrest continues
and refugees continue to reach the West through the neighbouring countries. The authorities begin demolishing sections of the Berlin Wall the following day.
George H. W. Bush succeeds Ronald Reagan as the 41st President of the United States of America.
The US president George Bush and the Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev formally declare the Cold War to be at an end.
The last Soviet Union armoured column leaves Kabul, Afghanistan, ending 9 years of military
occupation.
Students from Beijing, Shanghai, Xian, and Nanjing begin protesting in Tiananmen Square.
Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is placed under house arrest.
The South African general election, 1989 (the last under apartheid) returns the National Party with a much-reduced majority
The Guildford Four are freed after 14 years