The 1980s are often remembered as the decade of the rise of consumerism, from the large shoulder pads on Dynasty to the Yuppie with their brick sized mobile phones. It wasn’t without it’s share of pain though, there was great hardship during the miner’s strike, AIDS was first clinically reported in the U.S. and in one of the worst man-made accidents in history on April 26th 1986, when the number four RBMK reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station exploded, releasing large amounts of radiation into the atmosphere, countries as far away as Finland were subjected to the fallout. TV dominated many people’s lives, MTV started, Band Aid was watched by 1.9 billion people worldwide and the marriage of Prince Charles to Lady Diana Spencer saw many street parties, we were also first introduced to Bart and Homer Simpson. After ten years of construction the Thames Flood Barrier opened protecting central London from potentially catastrophic storm surges. As the decade came to an end so it seemed did the Soviet Union as on the 9th November 1989 the first news reports were coming out that Berliners were taking pickaxes to the wall which had separated their city since the end of the 2nd World War. 1980s
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