1987 Archives | HISTORY

On January 3, 1987, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame admits its first woman: Aretha Franklin. Fewer than 100 female performers—less than 10 percent—have been added since the Hall began its induction ceremonies.

Richard Crafts, a Connecticut man accused and later found guilty of murdering his wife and disposing of her body in a wood-chipper, is arrested on January 13, 1987.  Helle Crafts, a Pan Am flight attendant, had vanished on November 18, 1986. Although her body was never found, authorities did find enough evidence to convict her husband of murder.

On February 13, 1987, Wall Street professional Martin Siegel pleads guilty to tax and securities law violations related to a lucrative insider trading scheme. He had netted $700,000 over four years for providing stock tips to high-powered arbitrager Ivan Boesky.

On February 25, 1987, the NCAA suspends the Southern Methodist University football program for 1987 season for repeated rules violations but stops short of imposing the so-called "death penalty." Still, the sanctions are the most severe levied by the NCAA against a major college football program.

In a surprising announcement, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev indicates that his nation is ready to sign “without delay” a treaty designed to eliminate U.S. and Soviet medium-range nuclear missiles from Europe. Gorbachev’s offer led to a breakthrough in negotiations and, eventually, to the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in December 1987.

A British ferry leaving Zeebrugge, Belgium, capsizes, drowning 188 people, on March 6, 1987. Shockingly poor safety procedures led directly to this deadly disaster. Lord Justice Barry Sheen, an investigator of the accident, later said of it, from top to bottom, the body corporate was affected with the disease of sloppiness.

On March 24, 1987, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) holds its first-ever demonstration on Wall Street—the world's financial center—targeting pharmaceutical companies that were profiting off the AIDS pandemic.

Responding to a 911 call, police raid the Philadelphia home of Gary Heidnik and find an appalling crime scene. In the basement of Heidnik’s dilapidated house is a veritable torture chamber where three naked women were found chained to a sewer pipe. A fourth woman, Josefina Rivera, had escaped and called police.

Just days before he is to travel to Moscow for talks on arms control and other issues, U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz states that he is “damned upset” about possible Soviet spy activity in the American embassy in the Soviet Union. Soviet officials indignantly replied that the espionage charges were “dirty fabrications.”

Klaus Barbie, the former Nazi Gestapo chief of German-occupied Lyon, France, goes on trial in Lyon more than four decades after the end of World War II. He was charged with 177 crimes against humanity.

On June 12, 1987, in one of his most famous Cold War speeches, President Ronald Reagan challenges Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down” the Berlin Wall, a symbol of the repressive Communist era in a divided Germany.

In a dramatic turnaround, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev indicates that he is willing to negotiate a ban on intermediate-range nuclear missiles without conditions. Gorbachev’s decision paved the way for the groundbreaking Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with the United States.

On August 7, 1987, Lynne Cox braves the freezing waters of the Bering Strait to make the first recorded swim from the United States to the Soviet Union.

A plane crash at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Michigan kills 156 people on August 16, 1987. A four-year-old girl was the sole survivor of the accident, which was caused by pilot error.

Rudolf Hess, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s former deputy, is found strangled to death in Spandau Prison in Berlin at the age of 93, apparently the victim of suicide. Hess was the last surviving member of Hitler’s inner circle and the sole prisoner at Spandau since 1966.

On August 28, 1987, the home of the Ray brothers—three HIV-positive Florida boys—burns down in what was almost certainly a case of arson. The three brothers, who are not in the house at the time, have already faced intense discrimination due to their HIV status, and today their story serves as a reminder of the brutal reality of America’s reaction to the HIV/AIDS crisis.

On September 18, 1987, the thriller Fatal Attraction, about a married man who has a fling with a woman who then becomes obsessed with him and stalks his family, opens widely in U.S. theaters. The film, which starred Michael Douglas and Glenn Close, was a box-office hit and garnered six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director (Adrian Lyne) and Best Actress (Close). The film featured a now-famous scene in which Alex (Close), a single book editor, boils the pet bunny belonging to the young daughter of Douglas’ character, a New York City attorney named Dan, after Dan ends their affair. Fatal Attraction became a bona fide cultural phenomenon and stirred a debate among audiences about infidelity.

On September 18, 1987, cesium-137 is removed from an abandoned cancer-therapy machine in Brazil. Hundreds of people were eventually poisoned by radiation from the substance, highlighting the danger that even relatively small amounts of radiation can pose.

An earthquake in Whittier, California, kills 6 people and injures 100 more on October 1, 1987. The quake was the largest to hit Southern California since 1971, but not nearly as damaging as the Northridge quake that would devastate parts of Los Angeles seven years later.

On October 10, 1987, the song “Here I Go Again” by English hard-rock group Whitesnake tops the Billboard pop singles chart in the United States. Today, what most people remember about the song is its saucy video: The actress Tawny Kitaen spends a great deal of it in a white negligee, writhing and cartwheeling across the hoods of two Jaguars parked next to one another. It is one of the most iconic music videos of the 1980s, and it features two of the most famous cars in pop-culture history.

On October 11, 1987, the new AIDS Memorial Quilt, stitched together with 1,920 panels memorializing people who had died from the disease, goes on display on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The unveiling of the quilt, which unfurls over a space larger than a football field, coincides with the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.

On October 16, 1987, in an event that had viewers around the world glued to their televisions, 18-month-old Jessica McClure is rescued after being trapped for 58 hours in an abandoned water well in Midland, Texas.

The largest-ever one-day percentage decline in the Dow Jones Industrial Average comes not in 1929 but on October 19, 1987. As a number of unrelated events conspired to tank global markets, the Dow dropped 508 points—22.6 percent—in a panic that foreshadowed larger systemic issues.

After nearly a year of hearings into the Iran-Contra scandal, the joint Congressional investigating committee issues its final report. It concluded that the scandal, involving a complicated plan whereby some of the funds from secret weapons sales to Iran were used to finance the Contra war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, was one in which the administration of Ronald Reagan exhibited “secrecy, deception, and disdain for the law.”

Tawana Brawley, a young Black woman, is found covered with feces and wrapped in garbage bags outside the Pavilion Condominiums in Wappingers Falls, New York. Brawley appeared to have undergone an extremely traumatic experience: Parts of her hair were cut off, her pants were slightly burned, and there were racial slurs scrawled on her body. Brawley told authorities that for four days she had been held against her will and repeatedly raped by a gang of white men, one of whom she claimed had a police badge.

At a summit meeting in Washington, D.C., President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sign the first treaty between the two superpowers to reduce their massive nuclear arsenals. Previous agreements had merely been attempts by the two Cold War adversaries to limit the growth of their nuclear arsenals. The historic agreement banned ground-launched short- and medium-range missiles, of which the two nations collectively possessed 2,611, most located in Europe and Southeast Asia.

In the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip, the first riots of the Palestinian intifada, or “shaking off” in Arabic, begin one day after an Israeli truck crashed into a station wagon carrying Palestinian workers in the Jabalya refugee district of Gaza, killing four and wounding 10.