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Private Notes
The truth now about the big stories then
The 1987 voyage of a barge loaded with New York garbage became a sensational fiasco, but it ended up fueling the modern recycling movement.
Military sexual assault is not a new phenomenon. A second look at the Tailhook scandal in 1991 reveals what happened then. And what it all means now.
In the 1980s, many government officials, scientists, and journalists warned that the country would be plagued by a generation of “crack babies.” They were wrong.
The Y2K bug threatened to wipe out computers and disrupt modern society at the end of the 20th century. We all remember the doomsday hype, but what really happened?
In 1988, the nation learned the truth about the alleged crimes against Tawana Brawley, but the shocking story was far from over.
With dreams of one day colonizing space, eight people sealed themselves inside a giant glass biosphere in the Arizona desert in 1991. By the time they emerged two years later, they had “suffocated, starved and went mad.”
The decades-long quest to save wild horses has run amok, creating a problem that even swooping helicopters, aging cowboys, camera-savvy activists, and millions of dollars can’t solve.
In the 1990s, a bunch of gene jockeys brought the first genetically engineered food to market. The business crashed but biotech science has flourished far beyond the produce aisle.
The lessons learned from the summer of 1988 when fires burned nearly one third of Yellowstone National Park continue to shape the way we fight wildfires raging across the West today.
A story of America’s school integration and what happened when the buses stopped rolling.
In the wake of the 1993 hit movie Free Willy, activists and fans campaigned to release the movie’s star – a captive killer whale named Keiko — and launched a story Hollywood couldn’t invent.
In the 1950s, thalidomide cut a wide swath of destruction across the world, leaving behind thousands of deformed infants, but that was only the beginning of the story.
In 2007, the scandalous treatment of wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center shocked the nation. Today, after major reforms, what’s changed for America’s injured soldiers?
The 1996 Olympics in Atlanta were rocked by a bomb that killed one and injured more than 100. In the rush to find the perpetrator, one man became a target. There was only one problem. He was innocent.
In 1997, Scottish scientists announced they had cloned a sheep and named her Dolly, and sent waves of future shock around the world that continue to shape frontiers of science today.
In 1992, Stella Liebeck spilled scalding McDonald’s coffee in her lap and later sued the company, attracting a flood of negative attention. It turns out, there’s more to the story.
Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005, and Louisiana’s troubled housing recovery has shaped the response to every major disaster since, including Hurricane Sandy.
Forty-two years ago when President Richard Nixon vowed to make curing cancer a national crusade, many anticipated quick results.
In 2003, a blackout crippled areas of the U.S. and Canada, leaving some 50 million people in the dark. Ten years later, we are still grappling with concerns over the vulnerability of our power grid.
Six days after 9/11, the FBI’s raid on a Detroit sleeper cell signaled America’s resolve to fight terrorism. But, despite a celebrated conviction, there was one problem — they’d gotten it wrong.
In 1978, toxic chemicals leaking from an old landfill thrust an upstate New York community called “Love Canal” into the national headlines, and made it synonymous with “environmental disaster.”
After the 1993 murder of a California child, many states passed laws to lock up repeat offenders for life, but today those laws are raising new questions about how crime is handled in America.
On a cold March night in 1989, the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground off the coast of Southern Alaska, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil into the waters of Prince William Sound and creating one of the worst oil spills in American history.
On March 8, 1971, a group of eight Vietnam War protestors broke into a Federal Bureau of Investigation field office in Media, Pennsylvania and stole hundreds of government documents that shocked a nation.
At the height of rush hour on August 1, 2007 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a bridge carrying eight lanes of I-35W over the Mississippi River suddenly collapsed, sending cars trucks plunging into the water below. Thirteen people died and 145 were injured in one of the worst bridge accidents in years.
The nightmare began in 1983 when a 39-year-old mother called the police department in Manhattan Beach, California and accused a teacher at the McMartin Preschool, Raymond Buckey, of molesting her two and a half-year old son.
In the summer of 1981, the Mediterranean fruit fly spread through California’s Santa Clara Valley, infesting backyard fruit trees and threatening the state’s $14 billion agricultural industry.
The custody battle over Baby M was the first time a court considered surrogacy. Today’s families are created in many different ways. But have we resolved the question of surrogacy?
Sexual abuse in the Catholic Church has been making headlines for years. Some priests have been punished, but what about the bishops who shielded them?
In the mid-1990s, after a decade of soaring juvenile crime, some social scientists warned the violence would only get worse. Reality proved otherwise.
The 1989 earthquake that shook San Francisco sent out a wake up call that continues to echo across the country.
The controversy over Terri Schiavo’s case elevated a family matter into a political battle that continues to frame end-of-life issues today.
More than three decades after the accident at Three Mile Island cast a shadow on the atomic dream, is America again ready to give nuclear energy a chance?
After the 1998 NFL draft produced one of the greatest busts in history, what have we learned about the science of evaluating human talent – on and off the field?
Before DNA testing, prosecutors relied on less sophisticated forensic techniques, including microscopic hair analysis, to put criminals behind bars. But how reliable was hair analysis?
On January 28, 1986, seven astronauts “slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.” America’s space program was never the same.
SWAT teams were created in the 1960’s to combat violent events. Since then, the specialized teams have morphed into a force increasingly used in routine policing, most often to serve drug warrants. The media has shone a light on isolated botched raids, but it took the show of force in response to protests in Ferguson, Missouri to start a national dialogue on the appropriate role of SWAT teams in today’s police force.
How did cars become “computers on wheels,” so automated that some are about to start driving themselves? The story begins forty-five years ago with a quest to make cars safer and the battle over the air bag.
When Prozac was introduced in 1988, the green-and-cream pill to treat depression launched a cultural revolution that continues to echo.
The mystery of Colony Collapse Disorder has pushed honeybees into the public eye. But the story of their plight — and its impact – is much more complicated.
When baseball star Curt Flood rejected a trade in 1969, he challenged America’s pastime and helped spark a revolution that rippled beyond the game.
The Watergate campaign finance scandals led to a landmark law designed to limit the influence of money in politics. Forty years later, some say the scandal isn’t what’s illegal, it’s what’s legal.
When armed suspects stand off against the law today, one event continues to cast a shadow on both sides of the police line: the 1992 siege at Ruby Ridge.
In the 1990s, the federal government reintroduced the gray wolf to Yellowstone National Park. It was considered a big success. And that’s when the real fight began.
The murder of four American churchwomen focused attention on the United States’ involvement in El Salvador. Nearly 35 years later, the case continues to take surprising turns.
In 1982, an Australian mother was convicted of murdering her baby daughter. She was later exonerated, but soon fell victim to a joke that distracted the world from the real story.
In the 1970s, the T.V. movie “Sybil” introduced much of the nation to multiple personality disorder and launched a controversy that continues to resonate.
News media coverage in the 1980s and early 1990s fueled fears of a national cancer epidemic caused by power lines and generated a debate that still lingers today.
In 1999, a file-sharing program created in a Boston dorm room sent shockwaves across the music industry and served notice that a major cultural shift was underway.
An outbreak of measles that started at Disneyland has turned a spotlight on those who choose not to vaccinate their children. How did we get to a point where personal beliefs can triumph over science?
Weeks before Selma's Bloody Sunday in 1965, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. urged residents of Gee's Bend, Ala., to vote, and fed a continuing fight over a small ferry that would last for decades.
Should doctors be allowed to help suffering patients die? Twenty-five years ago, with his homemade suicide machine, Dr. Jack Kevorkian raised that question. It's an issue Americans still struggle with today.
Burmese pythons, often released into the wild by well-meaning pet owners, have infested the Florida Everglades and created a reptilian nightmare in the ecosystem.
The story of the first and only interrogator connected to the CIA to be convicted in a torture-related case.
There are over 80,000 chemicals in use today. The story of TRIS, removed from children's pajamas in the 1970s, illustrates just how hard it is to regulate chemicals, or to even know if they're safe.
A 1993 E. coli outbreak linked Jack in the Box hamburgers sickened 700 people and acted as a wake up call about the dangers of food-borne illness. More than 20 years later, how far have we come?
In the 1960s, fears of overpopulation sparked campaigns for population control. But whatever became of the population bomb?
Transgender issues today are rooted in a decades-long struggle for inclusion.
22 years ago, federal agents raided the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, and generated a legacy that continues to shape antigovernment groups today.
In the 1980s, many government officials, scientists, and journalists warned that the country would be plagued by a generation of “crack babies.” They were wrong. More than 25 years later, the media is sounding a similar alarm. This is an update to the previous report on the same issue
In 1997, a young British nanny charged with murder brought shaken baby syndrome into the national spotlight, and raised a scientific debate that continues to shape child abuse cases today.
The killing of twelve students and a teacher at Columbine High School in 1999 continues to shape how we view and understand school shootings today.
Estela de Carlotto has spent nearly four decades searching for her grandson, one of the estimated 500 babies who disappeared after their mothers were taken by the military regime in Argentina in the 1970s.
When Tipper Gore and Susan Baker founded the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), their campaign to put warning labels on albums sparked a debate over censorship and resulted in a dramatic Capitol Hill showdown with musicians like Frank Zappa. Ultimately, the record industry agreed to put parental advisory stickers on explicit albums, and today warning labels are commonly found on everything from music to television to video games. Which leads us to explore some age-old questions when it comes to kids and pop culture: how do we define harm? And who gets to decide?
On Nov. 13, 1982, boxing fans tuned in for a championship bout on national television between Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini of Ohio and South Korean fighter Duk-Koo Kim. It was an epic, 14-round slugfest – and a fight the sport wouldn’t soon forget. Afterward, medical concerns about the brutality of boxing mounted, and the sport’s foothold in mainstream American culture began to slip. Today, stories about brain injuries in football are making headlines with increasingly regularity. Is the most popular sport in America nearing its own inflection point?
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, America’s inner cities were wracked by an epidemic of heroin addiction and the crime that went with it. New York State responded with harsh drug laws, including mandatory minimum sentences up to life in prison for selling just one ounce of heroin. Soon, other states and the federal government adopted similar laws, and the nation’s prisons filled up with non-violent drug offenders, mostly young black men.
The press said that David Vetter was born into a world he could not touch. And there was no truer statement in 1971 when, as an infant, he was placed inside the protective plastic bubble that had been specially built to seal it off. The outside world was toxic to the child, who suffered from a rare genetic defect so nefarious that it could turn even the slightest cold into a death sentence. But, despite this separation, the little boy’s fishbowl life turned him into a symbol of hope and determination for the generation of Americans who watched his story evolve.
In the 1960s and 1970s, doctors pointed to two likely culprits for the country’s heart disease epidemic: dietary fat and cholesterol. Much of the country tried to avoid fat at all costs. But did the low-fat recommendation help or hurt? And why is nutrition still so controversial?
Over the decades, the Pentagon has led an aerial arms race, spending billions of dollars in a quest to develop a futuristic aircraft that could fly virtually undetected by enemy radar. In 2001, the F-35 became the latest incarnation of that stealth dream. And that’s not all. It was a plane that was slated to be more technologically advanced, and cheaper to maintain than any previous stealth jet, while also meeting the divergent needs of three branches of the US military. But more than 14 years later, the F-35 has yet to fly in combat and the weapons program is plagued with problems - many of which are not flying under the radar.
The recount of votes in Florida during the 2000 election focused worldwide attention on the country’s antiquated and disorganized voting system: chads (hanging, dimpled, pregnant or otherwise), confusing ballots, under-votes and over-votes. A bipartisan consensus soon emerged that the mechanics of voting needed to be improved. But the election also reminded many politicians that a few hundred votes could mean the difference between winning and losing. And, 16 years later, the rules of voting are more controversial - and politicized - than ever.
The first time the word “robot” ever appeared in literature in the 1920s, the fictional machines rose up and killed their creators. We’ve been telling the same story ever since. From Hal 9000 to the Terminator, it often seems the measure of a fictional machine’s intelligence is best taken by its wish to do us harm.
When a dentist named Barney Clark received a permanent artificial heart in 1982, it was hailed as a medical miracle. To the public and the press, he represented hope and a huge leap forward in fighting the world’s biggest killer: heart disease. But hope turned to controversy as Clark and other patients suffered a series debilitating complications and critics called the medical experiment cruel and unethical. Eventually the FDA said no more permanent heart implants and the device faded from public view. But it was hardly the end of the story, for the artificial heart continues to impact medical science in surprising ways.
In 1983, scientists gave the world a new reason to fear nuclear war. It had long been assumed that the immediate, direct effects of a nuclear blast would cause a devastating loss of life, and that radioactive fallout would linger. But these scientists stressed that smoke from nuclear-ignited cities might affect something far more remote — the climate around the globe.
Dungeons & Dragons debuted in 1974 and had moved from a cult classic to a mainstream hit by the early 1980s. Millions of kids around the world were gathering around tables and going on imaginary adventures set by the Dungeon Master as part of this role playing game. But a string of murder-suicides that involved kids who played the game brought a new focus, and critics, many of them conservative Christians, thought the game was an invitation to devil worship and violence.
By the mid-1990s, with record numbers of Americans on welfare, public resentment reached a tipping point. Recipients were stigmatized as lazy ne’er-do-wells feeding at the public trough. Politicians railed against “welfare queens”, the unwed mothers they claimed were gaming the system, having more babies to get more taxpayer cash.
In the 1960s, a psychologist and former Harvard teacher named Timothy Leary coined the phrase ‘Turn on. Tune in. Drop out.’ The slogan was inspired by advertising jingles, but Leary wasn’t pushing a product, he was promoting a drug: LSD.
The USS De Haven sailed from Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor on May 5, 1958, carrying 240 men deep into the Pacific on a secret mission.
In the digital age, where everyday people can suddenly become public enemy number one, how do we strike the balance between keeping free speech alive online and preventing a cyber mob from taking over?
Since the 1990s, it’s been hard to watch coverage of parenting without being told there’s a war going on. The so-called Mommy Wars are being fought between employed mothers and those who stay at home – a supposed fight over whether mothers’ choices are helping kids or doing them harm. But, as the years have passed and women have made different individual choices, it turns out that it may be the question itself – and the false assumptions behind it – that are the real problem.
Phyllis Schlafly honed her political skills in the conservative movement of the 1950s and 1960s, then put them to work to stop the ERA. She traveled the country decrying the proposed amendment, which sought to ensure equal rights for women under law, as “anti-family” and un-American.
In the 1970s, a landmark Supreme Court case named Gautreaux officially brought an end to segregated government housing in Chicago. But it also created a new challenge: how to undo decades of segregation. One part the solution was a relocation program that moved families from the city’s housing ‘projects’ to the mostly-white suburbs.
The first presidential debate in 1960 was a creation of the television age, and it quickly entered its founding lore. We’re told those who saw the debate on TV favored the handsome, well made-up Kennedy. Radio listeners, on the other hand, thought Nixon had won. Evidence supporting this story is shoddy — a mix of anecdote, assumptions and a debunked survey – but the story continues to shape how we understand debates today.
