Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. The 1980s saw social, economic, and general change as wealth and production migrated to newly industrializing economies. A... Read more

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. The 1980s saw social, economic, and general change as wealth and production migrated to newly industrializing economies. As economic liberalization increased in the developed world, multiple multinational corporations associated with the manufacturing industry relocated into Thailand, Malaysia, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan, China, and new market economies in Eastern Europe following the collapse of communism in eastern Europe. Major civil discontent and violence occurred in the Middle East, including the Iran-Iraq War, the ongoing Soviet-Afghan War, the 1982 Lebanon War, the Bombing of Libya in 1986, and the First Intifada in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. In the eastern world, hostility to authoritarianism and the failing command economies of communist states resulted in a wave of reformist policies by communist regimes such as the policies of perestroika and glasnost in the Soviet Union, along with the overthrows and attempted overthrows of a number of communist regimes, such as in Poland, Hungary, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 in China, the Czechoslovak "Velvet Revolution," and the overthrow of the Nicolae Ceau escu regime in Romania and other communist Warsaw Pact states in Central and Eastern Europe. It came to be called the late 1980s' "purple passage of the autumn of nations." By 1989, with the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet Union announced the abandonment of political hostility toward the western world and, thus, the Cold War ended. This book relates the main events of the year 1986 including the beginning of the construction of the Channel Tunnel, the explosion of Challenger, the bombing of Libya, the hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73, and more. Project Webster represents a new publishing paradigm, allowing disparate content sources to be curated into cohesive, relevant, and informative books. To date, this content has been curated from Wikipedia articles and images under Creative Commons licensing, although as Project Webster continues to increase in scope and dimension, more licensed and public domain content is being added. We believe books such as this represent a new and exciting lexicon in the sharing of human knowledge. Less