January 8, 1981

By the winter of 1981, Reagan was in the White House and the federal minimum wage stood at $3.35/hr — the country was also watching Secretary of State Haig warn Congress of the urgent need to contain Soviet arms growth, signaling that Cold War tensions would define the new administration's foreign policy from its earliest days. On television, "Dallas" was the most-watched show in the country, while John Lennon's "(Just Like) Starting Over" sat at the top of the charts — made all the more significant by his murder in December 1980, which had turned the song into an unexpected elegy heard on radios across America. The Los Angeles Dodgers had just defeated the New York Yankees in the World Series, and on January 21, the first DeLorean automobile rolled off the production line in Dunmurry, Northern Ireland — a stainless steel sports car with gull-wing doors that had captured American imaginations before a single one reached a showroom floor.