June 24, 1986

A Big Mac cost $1.60 that summer of 1986, and the Dow Jones sat at 1,896 — the Soviet Union was in the midst of announcing ambitious new space plans even as American confidence in its own space program was still shaken from the Challenger disaster earlier that year. On movie screens, "The Karate Kid Part II" was pulling in crowds at the multiplex, while on television, "The Golden Girls" had just won the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series. That July, Moscow hosted the inaugural Goodwill Games, the first major international athletic competition between the United States and the Soviet Union in roughly a decade, drawing competitors from 79 countries across two weeks of events.