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1980Reggie Evans, American basketball player[†]
Reginald Jamaal Evans is an American former professional basketball player who last played in the Big3 League. A Power forward, Evans played 13 seasons in the NBA with seven teams. While limited in his offensive game, Evans was known for his rebounding, tenacity and hustle on the defensive end.
1980Michaël Llodra, French tennis player[†]
Michaël Llodra is a French former professional tennis player. He was ranked as the world No. 3 in men's doubles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), winning 26 career doubles titles, including three majors and an Olympic silver medal. Llodra also had success in singles, winning five career titles and with victories over Novak Djokovic, Juan Martín del Potro, Tomáš Berdych, Robin Söderling, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Nikolay Davydenko, Janko Tipsarević and John Isner. Llodra has been called "the best volleyer on tour."
1980Diego Pérez, Uruguayan footballer[†]
Diego Fernando Pérez Aguado, nicknamed "Ruso", is a Uruguayan football manager and former professional footballer who played as a defensive midfielder. He has played 89 matches for the Uruguay national football team, including the 2010 FIFA World Cup and the 2001, 2004, 2007 and 2011 editions of the Copa América. He is currently the manager of Uruguay A' and Uruguay under-18 national teams.
1980Victims of Mount St. Helens eruption:[†]
Reid Turner Blackburn was an American photographer killed in the 1980 volcanic eruption of Mount St. Helens. A photojournalist covering the eruption for a local newspaper—the Vancouver, Washington The Columbian—as well as National Geographic magazine and the United States Geological Survey, he was caught at Coldwater Camp in the blast.
1980Victims of Mount St. Helens eruption:[†]
David Alexander Johnston was an American United States Geological Survey (USGS) volcanologist who was killed by the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in the U.S. state of Washington. A principal scientist on the USGS monitoring team, Johnston was killed in the eruption while manning an observation post six miles (10 km) away on the morning of May 18, 1980. He was the first to report the eruption, transmitting "Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!" before he was swept away by a lateral blast; despite a thorough search, Johnston's body was never found, but state highway workers discovered remnants of his USGS trailer in 1993.
1980Ian Curtis, English singer-songwriter (born 1956)[†]
Ian Kevin Curtis was an English singer, songwriter and musician. He was the lead singer, lyricist and occasional guitarist of the band Joy Division, with whom he released the albums Unknown Pleasures (1979) and Closer (1980). He was noted for his on-stage behaviour and dancing style influenced by his experiences with epilepsy, as well as his dark baritone voice.
1980Mount St. Helens erupts in Washington, United States, killing 57 people and causing $3 billion in damage.[†]
Mount St. Helens is an active stratovolcano located in Skamania County, Washington, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It lies 52 miles (83 km) northeast of Portland, Oregon, and 98 miles (158 km) south of Seattle. Mount St. Helens takes its English name from that of the British diplomat Alleyne FitzHerbert, 1st Baron St Helens, a friend of explorer George Vancouver who surveyed the area in the late 18th century. The volcano is part of the Cascade Volcanic Arc, a segment of the Pacific Ring of Fire.
1980Students in Gwangju, South Korea begin demonstrations calling for democratic reforms.[†]
The Gwangju Democratization Movement, also known in South Korea as May 18 Democratization Movement, was a series of student-led demonstrations that took place in Gwangju, South Korea, in May 1980, against the coup of Chun Doo-hwan. The uprising was violently suppressed by the South Korean military.
HARTFORD A NUMBER of the performing-arts organizations that have blossomed in downtown Hartford in recent years say that they are facing eviction or ruinously higher rents because of the area's new attractiveness--to which, ironically, they have been key contributors.
Apartment referral agencies, faced with new New York State rules that prohibit them from advertising specific apartments or collecting a fee before referring a client to at least three available apartments, are beginning to pull out of the business.
NEW BRUNSWICK THE reorganization plan ap proved earlier this month by the Board of Governors of Rutgers, the State University, "will not be easy to implement," one of the board members said last week, "and there will be sore losers."
JAILS in Westchester and throughout the metropolitan region are teeming with inmates, creating what jail ad ministrators, legislators and defense lawyers describe as a pattern of tense, unhealthy and potentially dangerous conditions.
The persistent high rate of inflation is not only eating away the income of the millions of Americans who draw pensions, it is also threatening the very underpinnings of the nation's retirement and pension system.
FORT WALTON BEACH, FLA. AT Campo Libertad, the gusty tent city here at the Eglin Air Force Base that is the tempo rary home of 10,000 refugees, Julio Soto and his friends enjoy a celebrity that they never knew at home.
PORT JEFFERSON WHEN he goes out on Sunday mornings to buy a newspaper downtown here, William Strockbine, the registrar at the State University at Stony Brook, usually bumps into three or four other members of the Stony Brook staff or faculty on the same mission.
Back in the 30's, when he was still a boy in knee pants in prep school in Manhattan, Perry Morgan, a descendent of J.P., recalls being tossed into the rumble seat of the family automobile and being driven down to Constitution Hill, his grandparents' 29-room country mansion on 47 acres in Princeton, N.J.
SEOUL, South Korea, Sunday, May 18 -- Faced with the most serious student political unrest in 20 years, the South Korear Government announced this morning that it was closing the universities, prohibiting political gatherings and labor strikes, imposing rigorous press censorship and extending martial law to the entire country.
LAST night I dreamed I went to Wolf Trap Farm again. In the dream, the romantic strains of "Wunderbar" from Cole Porter's "Kiss Me Kate" drifted over our lace-covered picnic table. My escort was filling Waterford glasses with champagne and the couple with us were lighting candles and setting out our dinner of roast chicken.
While rust-colored steel columns were bolted and welded together to form the spindly looking skeleton of Park Avenue Plaza, mushy, wet concrete was poured to shape the massive structure of a different office project at 499 Park Avenue.
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.