August 25, 1983

A Big Mac cost $1.25 that summer of 1983, and the Dow Jones sat at 1,259 — Reagan was predicting improved relations with the Soviet Union following a recent summit, a sign that Cold War tensions, while ever-present, were being managed through diplomacy rather than confrontation. On movie screens, "Return of the Jedi" was drawing massive crowds, while radio stations played "Every Breath You Take" by The Police so frequently that it would end the year as one of the defining songs of the decade. On July 21, scientists at the Soviet research station in Vostok, Antarctica recorded a temperature of negative 89.2 degrees Celsius, setting the record for the lowest naturally occurring temperature ever measured on the surface of the Earth.