Born in 1986

If you were born in 1986, you came into a year that began with the nation's heart in its throat. On January 28th, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart seventy-three seconds after launch, and the seven crew members—including teacher Christa McAuliffe, whose classroom presence had made the launch a nationwide school event—were killed. Children watching in classrooms across the country saw it happen live.

Reagan's address to the nation that evening—"slipped the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God"—was beautiful in a way that couldn't fill the silence. The Cold War went through the strange detour of the Reykjavik Summit, Reagan and Gorbachev almost agreeing to abolish nuclear weapons before it collapsed. The Iran-Contra affair was surfacing and would shadow the administration's final years.

On lighter notes: *Top Gun* turned Tom Cruise into a superstar and made Navy recruitment jump thirty-three percent. *Ferris Bueller's Day Off* captured something true about adolescence in the Reagan era. The Oprah Winfrey Show went national and changed daytime television.

Mike Tyson became the youngest heavyweight champion in history at twenty. Halley's Comet returned and was disappointingly faint. The Chernobyl disaster in April sent a cloud of radioactive fallout across Europe and made nuclear power's risks undeniable.

The Phantom of the Opera opened on London's West End and was on its way to Broadway.