Top News Stories from 1988

World Events

World Statistics

Population: 4.378 billion
population by decade
Nobel Peace Prize: U.N. Peacekeeping Forces
More World Statistics...

U.S. Events

U.S. Statistics

President: Ronald W. Reagan
Vice President: George Bush
Population: 244,498,982
Life expectancy: 74.9 years
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000): 56.6
Property Crime Rate (per 1,000) 50.3
More U.S. Statistics...

Economics

US GDP (1998 dollars): $5,049.60 billion
Federal spending: $1064.14 billion
Federal debt $2601.3 billion
Median Household Income(current dollars): $27,225 billion
Consumer Price Index: $118.3
Unemployment: 5.5%
Cost of a first-class stamp: $0.22 ($0.25 as of 4/3/88)

Sports

Super Bowl
Washington d. Denver
World Series
LA Dodgers d. Oakland A's (4-1)
NBA Championship
LA Lakers d. Detroit Pistons
Stanley Cup
Edmonton d. Boston
Wimbledon
Women: Steffi Graf d. M. Navratilova (5-7 6-2 6-1)
Men: Stefan Edberg d. B. Becker (4-6 7-6 6-4 6-2)
Kentucky Derby Champion
Winning Colors
NCAA Basketball Championship
Kansas d. Oklahoma
NCAA Football Champions
Notre Dame (12-0-0) 1988 Summer Olympics

Entertainment

Entertainment Awards

Pulitzer Prizes
Fiction: Beloved, Toni Morrison
Music: 12 New Etudes for Piano, William Bolcom
Drama: Driving Miss Daisy, Alfred Uhry
Academy Award, Best Picture: The Last Emperor, Jeremy Thomas, producer (Columbia)
Nobel Prize for Literature: Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt)
Record of the Year: "Graceland," Paul Simon
Album of the Year: Joshua Tree, U2 (Island)
Song of the Year: "Somewhere Out There," James Horner, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, songwriters
Miss America: Kaye Lani Rae Rafko (MI)
More Entertainment Awards...

Events

  • Ninety-eight percent of U.S. households have at least one television set.
  • CDs outsell vinyl records for the first time.
  • Ted Turner starts Turner Network Television (TNT) and buys MGM's film library.

Movies

  • Rain Man, Mississippi Burning, A Fish Called Wanda, Bull Durham

Books

Science

Nobel Prizes in Science

Chemistry: Johann Deisenhofer, Robert Huber, and Hartmut Michel (all West Germany), for unraveling the structure of proteins that play a crucial role in photosynthesis
Physics: Leon M. Lederman, Melvin Schwartz, and Jack Steinberger (all US), for research that improved the understanding of elementary particles and forces
Physiology or Medicine: Gertrude B. Elion, George H. Hitchings (both US), and Sir James Black (UK), for their discoveries of important principles for drug treatment
More Nobel Prizes in 1998...

Death

  • Roy Orbison
  • Chet Baker
  • Luis Alvarez
  • Edgar Jean Faure
  • Nora Astorga
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