The 1980s
Five real newspaper headlines from the 1980s, with their dates removed. Read each one and guess the year it was published. Five headlines, five different years, all within half a decade — so precision matters more here than usual.
They run from a wedding watched by three quarters of a billion people to a launch that stopped the American space programme for nearly three years. Headlines publishes a new five-headline history quiz every day.
Headline one
The Daily Mirror
1981
St Paul’s Cathedral rather than Westminster Abbey, because it seated more guests. The day was declared a public holiday in Britain, and the broadcast reached what was then the largest television audience ever assembled for any event.
Headline two
The Daily Telegraph
1982
A task force sailed 8,000 miles within days. The war lasted ten weeks, cost 907 lives, ended the Argentine military junta, and is widely credited with turning around Margaret Thatcher’s standing before the following year’s election.
Headline three
The Times
1983
A majority of 144, the largest since 1945, achieved with a slightly smaller share of the vote than four years earlier. The opposition had split, and the electoral system did the rest.
Headline four
The New York Post
1984
She performed "Like a Virgin" in a wedding dress and rolled around the stage, and her manager reportedly thought her career was finished before she left it. The channel itself was only three years old, and this is the performance usually credited with proving what it could do to a career.
Headline five
The Washington Post
1986
A rubber O-ring, stiffened by an unusually cold Florida morning, failed on a solid rocket booster. A schoolteacher was aboard and many American children were watching live in classrooms. The shuttle programme did not fly again for thirty-two months.
Answer the five above to see your score.
Scoring works as it does in the daily game. Each headline is worth up to 100 points, and you lose two points for every year you are out. Being a decade wrong still earns you 80. A perfect round is 500.
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