1980s

File:1980s replacement montage02.PNG|thumb|335px|From top left, clockwise: The first Space Shuttle, Columbia, lifts off in 1981; US president Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev ease tensions between the two superpowers, leading to the end of the Cold War; The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 is considered to be one of the most momentous events of the 1980s; In 1981, the IBM Personal Computer is released; In 1985, the Live Aid concert is held in order to fund relief efforts for the famine in Ethiopia during the time Mengistu Haile Mariam ruled the country; Pollution and ecological problems persisted when the Soviet Union and much of the world is filled with radioactive debris from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, and in 1984, when thousands of people perished in Bhopal during a gas leak from a pesticide plant; The Iran–Iraq War leads to over one million dead and $1 trillion spent, while another war between the Soviets and Afghans leaves over 2 million dead. rect 2 3 199 169 Space Shuttle Columbia rect 201 1 497 171 End of the Cold War rect 1 172 118 336 Iran–Iraq War rect 120 172 241 336 Soviet War in Afghanistan rect 246 173 506 336 Fall of the Berlin Wall rect 123 337 223 525 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia rect 123 337 323 525 Live Aid rect 326 338 510 536 IBM Personal Computer rect 0 339 121 515 Chernobyl disaster

The 1980s (pronounced "nineteen-eighties", shortened to "'''the '80s" or "the Eighties'''") was the decade that began on 1 January 1980, and ended on 31 December 1989.