2. The U.S. Navy achieves a dramatic increase in operational efficiency due to my leaving active duty in 1980.
3. Reagan's election.
4. The microcomputer revolution (I saw it from Silicon Valley).
5. The fall of the Soviet Union.
There was an awful lot of stuff in between, but those were the signal events from my personal point of view. Item (1) may seem curious to anyone who wasn't around at the time - it was the final crashing repudiation to the post-Vietnam malaise of Jimmy Carter and a finger thrust into the face of the international Left. In itself it was a silly athletic contest; in the context of the time it was a watershed.
08/13/81 - 20 years after the Berlin Wall was erected President Reagan signed “Reaganomics” into law.
I can remember a textbook showing a photo of Woz and Jobs and thinking "do these guys shower?" I also remember my family having this in their magazine rack: