On this day
Revisit the music, news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.
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LEAD: Senator Dan Quayle of Indiana, the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee, confronted questions about his military service today, saying that he had done nothing improper in finding a coveted position in the National Guard and that he had not enlisted in the Guard to avoid combat in Vietnam.
LEAD: In approving the recommendations made by the Vincennes board of investigation, Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci sent a clear signal to the Navy today that - at least in the Persian Gulf - he will bend the rules of accountability when a ship captain does what the captain thinks is necessary to defend his ship.
LEAD: The Federal Home Loan Bank Board today announced its most expensive rescue package yet for insolvent savings and loan associations. The transaction could cost the Government as much as $5.5 billion over 10 years.
LEAD: It was clear that the hometown crowd was going to be receptive, even before the motorcade passed a Walgreen's drugstore bearing the sign: ''Dan, tell your Dad his film is in.'' But the people here turned out to be more than receptive for Dan Quayle's debut on the national campaign trail, after several days of intense questions about his military record.
LEAD: Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci said today that no one from the United States Navy would be disciplined for the downing of an Iranian civilian jetliner by an American warship in the Persian Gulf last month.
Music on My Birthday
The Top 50 albums for the chart week of August 17, 1988, covering August 20, 1988.
Steve Winwood
Def Leppard
Guns N' Roses
Tracy Chapman
D.J. Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince
1988Jerryd Bayless, American basketball player[†]
Jerryd Andrew Bayless is an American former professional basketball player. He played a year of college basketball for the Arizona Wildcats after playing high school basketball at St. Mary's High School in Phoenix. He was selected 11th overall in the 2008 NBA draft by the Indiana Pacers and was then traded to the Portland Trail Blazers.
1988Sarah R, Lotfi, American director, producer, and screenwriter[†]
Sarah R. Lotfi is an American filmmaker best known for her short film Menschen.
1988José Zamora, Spanish footballer[†]
José Zamora Girona is a Spanish former footballer who played as a winger.
1988"Black Saturday" of the Yellowstone fire in Yellowstone National Park[†]
The Yellowstone fires of 1988 collectively formed the largest wildfire in the recorded history of Yellowstone National Park in the United States. Starting as many smaller individual fires, the flames quickly spread out of control due to drought conditions and increasing winds, combining into several large conflagrations which burned for several months. The fires almost destroyed two major visitor destinations and, on September 8, 1988, the entire park was closed to all non-emergency personnel for the first time in its history. Only the arrival of cool and moist weather in the late autumn brought the fires to an end. A total of 793,880 acres (3,213 km2), or 36 percent of the park, burned at varying levels of severity.
1988Iran–Iraq War: A ceasefire is agreed after almost eight years of war.[†]
The Iran–Iraq War, also known as the First Gulf War, was an armed conflict between Iran and Iraq that lasted from September 1980 to August 1988. Active hostilities began with the Iraqi invasion of Iran and lasted for nearly eight years, until the acceptance of United Nations Security Council Resolution 598 by both sides. Iraq's primary rationale for the attack against Iran cited the need to prevent Ruhollah Khomeini—who had spearheaded the Iranian revolution in 1979—from exporting the new Iranian ideology to Iraq. There were also fears among the Iraqi leadership of Saddam Hussein that Iran, a theocratic state with a population predominantly composed of Shia Muslims, would exploit sectarian tensions in Iraq by rallying Iraq's Shia majority against the Baʽathist government, which was officially secular but dominated by Sunni Muslims. Iraq also wished to replace Iran as the power player in the Persian Gulf, which was not seen as an achievable objective prior to the Islamic Revolution because of Pahlavi Iran's economic and military superiority as well as its close relationships with the United States and Israel.
1988The Troubles: Eight British soldiers are killed and 28 wounded when their bus is hit by an IRA roadside bomb in Ballygawley, County Tyrone.[†]
The Troubles were an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted for about 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it began in the late 1960s and is usually deemed to have ended with the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Although the Troubles mostly took place in Northern Ireland, at times violence spilled over into parts of the Republic of Ireland, England, and mainland Europe.
In 1988, the world population was approximately 5,141,992,542 people[†]