May 14, 1989

Gas cost $1.02 a gallon in the spring of 1989, and the Dow Jones stood at 2,753 — the Bush administration was actively pressing both Israel and the P.L.O. toward a peace framework in the Middle East. On the cultural front, "The Cosby Show" remained the top-rated program on American television, while Tom Clancy's "Clear and Present Danger" held the number one spot on the fiction bestseller list. The Detroit Pistons defeated the Los Angeles Lakers to claim the NBA championship that June, the same spring that a British scientist named Tim Berners-Lee submitted a proposal document at CERN that would become the foundational blueprint for the World Wide Web.