1985 Year in Review

 Highlights:

•  Attended the Super Bowl at Stanford stadium January 20.

• Moved to Falls Church, VA  and took an interim job with Peace Corps Washington pending employment with the Department of State as a GS-12 Budget Analyst with the Office of the Comptroller.   

U.S. Events:

• Ronald Reagan, 73, takes oath for second term as 40th President (Jan. 20).
• General Westmoreland settles libel action against CBS (Feb. 18).
• US Supreme Court, 5–4, bars public school teachers from parochial schools (July 1).
• Arthur James Walker, 50, retired naval officer, convicted by federal judge of participating in Soviet spy ring operated by his brother, John Walker (Aug. 9).
• US budget-balancing bill enacted (Dec. 12).

World Events:

• Soviet leader Chernenko dies at 73 and is replaced by Mikhail Gorbachev, 54 (March 11). Under the slogans of glasnost and Perestroika, Gorbachev initiates a broad program of reform and liberalization. Background: Rulers of Russia since 1533
• Two Shi'ite Muslim gunmen capture TWA airliner with 133 aboard, 104 of them Americans (June 14); 39 remaining hostages freed in Beirut (June 30).
• PLO terrorists hijack Achille Lauro, Italian cruise ship, with 80 passengers, plus crew (Oct. 7); American, Leon Klinghoffer, killed (Oct. 8); Italian government toppled by political crisis over hijacking (Oct. 16).
• Reagan and Gorbachev meet at summit (Nov. 19); agree to step up arms control talks and renew cultural contacts (Nov. 21). Background: nuclear disarmament
• Terrorists seize Egyptian Boeing 737 airliner after takeoff from Athens (Nov. 23); 59 dead as Egyptian forces storm plane on Malta (Nov. 24).

Movies:

Best Picture was "Amadeus".  Best Actor went to F. Murray Abraham in Amadeus.  Best Actress was Sally Fields "Places in the Heart".  Best Supporting actor was Hang S Ngor in "The Killing Fields".  Best supporting actress went to Peggy Ashcroft in "A Passage to India".  Best Director Milos Forman "Amadeus".  Best original score "Purple Rain", Prince.

Super Bowl:

Super Bowl XIX pitted AFC champion Miami Dolphins against the NFC champion San Francisco 49ers to decide the NFL champion for the 1984 season. The 49ers defeated the Dolphins by the score of 38–16, to win their second Super Bowl. The game was played on January 20, 1985, at Stanford Stadium, on the campus of Stanford University in Stanford, California, the first Super Bowl played in the San Francisco Bay Area. This also became the second Super Bowl after Super Bowl XIV where the game was coincidentally played in the home market of one of the participants. The game was hyped as the battle between two great quarterbacks: Miami's Dan Marino and San Francisco's Joe Montana. The Dolphins entered their fifth Super Bowl in team history after posting a 14–2 regular season record. The 49ers were making their second Super Bowl appearance after becoming the first team to win 15 regular season games since the league expanded to a 16-game schedule in 1978.  With Marino and Montana, the game became the first Super Bowl in which the starting quarterbacks of each team both threw for over 300 yards.

World Series:

The 1985 World Series had the Kansas City Royals against the St. Louis Cardinals. The Royals upset the heavily favored Cardinals in seven games. The Series was popularly known as the "Show-Me Series" or the "I-70 Showdown Series," as both cities are in the state of Missouri which is nicknamed the "Show Me State" and are connected by Interstate 70.  The Cardinals won the NL East division by three games over the New York Mets, then defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers four games to two in the NL Championship Series. The Royals won the AL West division by one game over the California Angels, then defeated the Toronto Blue Jays four games to three in the AL Championship Series.  The Cardinals were seeking to win their NL-leading 10th World Series title, while the Royals were seeking their first World Series title. The Royals were completing one of the most successful decades by any expansion team, with six division titles and two pennants from 1976 to 1985. This was the first World Series in which all games were played at night. Also, this was the first World Series to feature television commentator Tim McCarver, who called the games for ABC with Al Michaels and Jim Palmer. (Howard Cosell was originally scheduled to be in the booth with Michaels and Palmer but was removed from his assignment just prior to Game 1 because of the controversy surrounding his book "I Never Played the Game".  McCarver would go on to call a record 24 World Series telecasts with ABC, CBS and Fox.  This was the second all-Missouri World Series; the first in 1944 was all-St. Louis series between the Cardinals and Browns (a decade later, they became the Baltimore Orioles). This was the second of four World Series played completely on artificial turf; the first was in 1980 and the others were in 1987 and 1993.