On this day
Revisit the music, news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.
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LEAD: The Federal Reserve is likely to hold monetary policy unchanged at this week's Open Market Committee meeting, where Fed officials and their advisers meet to assess the economy and plot a course.
LEAD: For the last two decades, MCA Inc., the giant entertainment company long known as a cautious spender, was, in the words of one media executive, ''a day late and a dollar short'' when it came to acquisitions. But once-staid MCA is starting to shed its tight-fisted image.
LEAD: The trouble began at William Howard Taft High School in the Bronx when a sophomore boy threw a piece of chalk at a sophomore girl. Ethnic slurs were exchanged, along with threats, and by lunchtime the girl was on the telephone to fellow gang members. In the office of Project Smart, the coordinator, Dorothea Grant, recalls glancing out and seeing ''a big gang of kids outside the school.
LEAD: The Cross & Trecker Corporation, a major manufacturer of machine tools, has long been plagued by the industry's continuing troubles: flat orders, weakening prices and intensifying foreign competition. Now, a downturn in automobile production, plus predictions of declining capital investment by industry, spell more distress for the company.
LEAD: Pressure is growing on American companies to completely sever business ties with South Africa - not just hand over local operations to South Africans.
Music on My Birthday
The Top 50 albums for the chart week of February 4, 1987, covering February 9, 1987.
Bon Jovi
The Bangles
Cinderella
Beastie Boys
Bruce Hornsby & The Range
1987Michael B. Jordan, American actor[†]
Michael Bakari Jordan is an American actor, producer and director. He is best known for his film roles in Fruitvale Station (2013), Creed (2015), Black Panther (2018), Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022), and Sinners (2025), all of which were written and directed by Ryan Coogler and earned him critical acclaim. Jordan reprised his role of Creed in Creed II (2018) and Creed III (2023); the latter also marked his directorial debut.
1987Davide Lanzafame, Italian footballer[†]
Davide Lanzafame is an Italian football coach and former professional player, who played as a striker or right winger. He is in charge of Eccellenza amateurs Borgaro.
1987Rose Leslie, Scottish actress[†]
Rose Eleanor Arbuthnot-Leslie is a Scottish actress. She portrayed Gwen Dawson in the ITV drama series Downton Abbey and Ygritte in the HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones. She played Maia Rindell in three seasons of the CBS All Access legal and political drama The Good Fight and starred as Clare Abshire in HBO's The Time Traveler's Wife.
1987Magdalena Neuner, German biathlete[†]
Magdalena "Lena" Holzer is a retired German professional biathlete. She is the most successful woman of all time at Biathlon World Championships and a two-time Olympic gold medalist. At the age of 21, she became the youngest Overall World Cup winner in the history of the International Biathlon Union (IBU). With 34 World Cup wins, Holzer is ranked second all-time for career victories on the Biathlon World Cup tour. She has won the Overall World Cup title three times, in 2007–08, in 2009–10 and her final season in 2011–12. At only 25 years old, Holzer retired from the sport in March 2012, citing a lack of motivation and her desire for a normal life.
1987Civil unrest broke out across the Occupied Palestinian territories.[†]
The occupied Palestinian territories, also referred to as the Palestinian territories, consist of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip—two regions of the former British Mandate for Palestine that have been occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967. These territories make up the State of Palestine, which was self-declared by the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1988 and is recognized by 147 out of 193 UN member states.
In 1987, the world population was approximately 5,049,746,397 people[†]