September 23, 1983

That fall of 1983, gas ran $1.16 a gallon and Reagan was in the White House — the Soviet Union had just admitted to shooting down a South Korean passenger jet, killing all 269 people aboard and raising Cold War tensions across the globe. On television, "60 Minutes" remained the most-watched show in the country, while Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" was the number one song on the radio. The Baltimore Orioles won the World Series that October by defeating the Philadelphia Phillies, and at the 17th General Conference on Weights and Measures, scientists formally redefined the metre using the speed of light — establishing a universal physical constant as the foundation of the world's standard unit of length.