Today In...

1981 - the Centers for Disease Control reports of a pneumonia affecting gays. By the end of the year, 422 cases of this "gay cancer" (soon to be renamed "gay-related immune deficiency") will have been diagnosed in the US; 159 are dead.
(This was one of the earliest detections of the viral disease later named AIDS.)

1986 - a federal jury in Baltimore convicted Ronald W. Pelton of selling secrets to the Soviet Union. Pelton was sentenced to three life prison terms plus 10 years.

1989 - in one of the most remembered images of China's crushed pro-democracy movement, a lone man stood defiantly in front of a line of tanks in Beijing until friends pulled him out of the way.

Wow, first off I have never heard of all that early AIDS info. How sad.:(

Second, does anybody have more to the story about the man who stood in front of the tanks in Beijing. I hate to admit I know nothing about this. My husband and I were talking about it tonight but he couldn't remember much either.

http://www.cnn.com/resources/video.almanac/1989/tiananmen/still.jpg
photo property of CNN

To refresh everyone's memory, here's the photo were talking about. To answer your question, Lisa, noone knows. The Chinese government claims he was neither arrested nor killed. Anyone who knew him won't reveal his identity (for his safety, I'm sure), so all we know about him is this one brave act.

Interestingly, the Chinese government also showed this image widely in it's media following the crackdown, obviously with a different spin. They claimed it showed the incredible restraint of the Chinese troops in putting down the uprising.

there was a good HBO movie about about the dicovery of AIDS called The Boys in the Band it's available on Video and maybe DVD. BTW I never heard of Aids being discussed until after I was out of highschool in 1983-84

Thanks for the info Nolanbuc! Amazing picture.

Cal, I don't ever remember discussing AIDS until around 1986-87!

Actually, it wasn't called Aquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome until a couple of years after it was first noticed. The AIDS virus (HIV) was from a group of viruses previously thought to be fairly benign in humans (retroviruses). They didn't even have a test to detect the HIV in humans until 1985.