Jenny Forbes, born 1963, San Jose, California, USA. I was a junior at Live Oak High School, Morgan Hill, California in 1978-1979. Disco was still big and we were wearing Dittos slacks and Love's Baby Soft perfume, and curling our feathered hair like Farrah Fawcett. Mother Theresa won the Nobel Peace Prize, Iran took our embassy hostage, and Jim Jones staged a hideous event in Guyana. I was invited to a premiere-party to watch the first episode of 'Battlestar Galactica' ([Lyon Hyman Green Lorne Greene], Richard Hatch and Dirk Benedict) in the fall of 1978; 'Little House on the Prairie' was in the middle of its run and 'All In The Family' was in its last season, which pretty much sums up the sublime-to-ridiculous nature of the entire year. For me, any of the following names or phrases summons a flood of memories. Everything was so intense when I was 16!
Sublime:
Mother Teresa
Margaret Thatcher
SALT II
Pioneer 11
ESPN
Egyptian - Israeli peace
Smallpox eradicated
USA - PRC
Voyager 1
Polish Solidarity
Skylab
'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy', by Douglas Adams
Snowboarding invented
'Trivial Pursuit' game introduced
Usenet
VisiCalc
Sony Walkman
The Deer Hunter
Kramer vs. Kramer
Pink Floyd's"The Wall"
Taxi
Something Less Than:
Saddam Hussein
Khomeini
Sandanistas
Lord Mountbatten's assasination
The Who concert
Iran hostage crisis
American Airlines Flight 191 crashed
Patty Hearst
Sverdlovsk/anthrax
John Wayne died
Three Mile Island
Jonestown
Gas lines
Brezhnev
'Flowers in the Attic', by V.C. Andrews
Bungee-jumping reinvented
YMCA sues the Village People
McDonald's introduces the Happy Meal
Sid Vicious dies due to a heroin overdose during the trial for murdering his girlfriend
The first commercial cellular network
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
"I Will Survive", Gloria Gaynor
Mork & Mindy
USA Cost of Living:
Inflation rate - 11.2%
Average cost of new house - $58,100
Average annual income - $17,500
Average monthly rent - $280
Cost of a gallon of gas - 86 cents