Enter your birthdate to find out.
1980Fernando Arce, Mexican footballer[†]
Fernando Enrique Arce Ruiz is a Mexican former professional footballer who played as a midfielder.
1980Karen Asrian, Armenian chess player (died 2008)[†]
Karen Asrian was an Armenian chess player. Awarded the title of Grandmaster by FIDE in 1998, he was a three-time Armenian champion. Asrian was a member of the gold medal-winning Armenian team in the 37th Chess Olympiad.
1980Alejo Carpentier, Swiss-Cuban musicologist and author (born 1904)[†]
Alejo Carpentier y Valmont was a Cuban novelist, essayist, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous "boom" period. Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, of French and Russian parentage, Carpentier grew up in Havana, Cuba, and despite his European birthplace, he strongly identified as Cuban throughout his life. He traveled extensively, particularly in France, and to South America and Mexico, where he met prominent members of the Latin American cultural and artistic community. Carpentier took a keen interest in Latin American politics and often aligned himself with revolutionary movements, such as Fidel Castro's Communist Revolution in Cuba in the mid-20th century. Carpentier was jailed and exiled for his leftist political philosophies.
1980Eight U.S. servicemen die in Operation Eagle Claw as they attempt to end the Iran hostage crisis.[†]
Operation Eagle Claw was a failed U.S. Department of Defense attempt to rescue 52 embassy staff held captive by Revolutionary Iran on 24 April 1980. It was ordered by US President Jimmy Carter after the staff were seized at the Embassy of the United States, Tehran. The operation, one of Delta Force's first, encountered many obstacles and failures and was subsequently aborted. Eight helicopters were sent to the first staging area called Desert One, but only five arrived in operational condition. One had encountered hydraulic problems, another was caught in a sand storm, and the third showed signs of a cracked rotor blade. During the operational planning, it was decided that the mission would be aborted if fewer than six helicopters remained operational upon arrival at the Desert One site, despite only four being absolutely necessary. In a move that is still discussed in military circles, the field commanders advised President Carter to abort the mission, which he did.
Last year was a good one for C. Raymond Dahl, chairman and chief executive of the Crown Zellerbach Corporation. In addition to an impressive $421,000 in salary and annual bonus, Mr. Dahl collected another $97,335 as a special bonus.
DETROIT, April 23--Domestic sales of cars made by the nation's Big Three manufacturers dropped 33.5 percent in the mid-April selling period, the steepest year-to-year decline for any 10-day period this year, the companies reported today.
TEHERAN, Iran, April 23--Apparently reacting to the threat of economic sanctions by West Europe's Common Market, Iran today announced "important" new trading accords with the Soviet Union, Rumania and East Germany.
LUXEMBOURG, April 23--An unspoken strategy lay behind yesterday's decision by the European Economic Community to take a series of diplomatic and economic steps against Iran in support of ...
The rally in the money markets continued yesterday, as the Treasury sold one-year bills at an average discount rate of 10.44 percent. This represents an extremely sharp decline of four percentage points from the previous sale of bills a month earlier.
Iran's only hope of selling all the oil that its European and Japanese customers have stopped buying in recent weeks is to export it either to the Soviet bloc or to the less-developed countries of the West.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy and George Bush won the Pennsylvania Presidential primaries, but President Carter and Ronald Reagan made the greater gains in delegates in Tuesday's elections and caucuses, and political analysts agreed that the underdogs needed a series of landslide victories if they were to catch up with the leaders.
"I CAN'T understand," I said to Michel, "why someone like you who has lived in Paris would want to move to New York City."
KEY WEST, Fla., April 23--Hundreds of Cuban dissidents arrived here today aboard a ragtag American flotilla of weathered Florida lobster boats and seedy pleasure craft. The boats were jammed to the gunwales with scores of haggard, frightened-looking refugees.
The author insists that none of the characters in her murder mystery is based on any person living or dead. The corpse, Secretary of State Lancard Blaine, is "pure fiction." President Robert Webster, a suspect in the slaying, is "like no President I've ever known." Whodunit?
I was wondering if anything interesting on the news was going on when I was born, and decided to create this website for fun. The purpose is to show people what was going on when they were born. With this website I've found out that it was a pretty slow news day on my birthday, but I bet it would feel cool to know a historical event happened on your birthday.
The data used in this project is provided by the New York Times API. They have by far the best API I was able to find, with articles dating back to the 1950s. There weren't any other major newspapers that had an API with close to as much data. The closest was the Guardian API, but theirs only went back to the 1990s. I decided to only use articles from the New York Times because their API was by far the best. This tool works if you have a birthday after the 1950s or so.
Some important dates in history I'd recommend looking up on this website are:
These historical events are just a few examples of the fascinating moments in history you can explore through this tool. Whether you're interested in your own birthday, significant historical dates, or just curious about what was making headlines on any given day, this website offers a unique window into the past through the lens of contemporary news coverage.
You can read more on our blog.