1988 Newspaper Headlines Summary
13-28th February 1988
The 1988 Winter Olympics are held in Calgary, Canada.
29th March 1988
“Rain Man” wins five Oscars, including ‘Best Picture‘.
30th April 1988
Celine Dion wins the Eurovision Song Contest for Switzerland with the song “Ne partez pas sans moi“.
15th May 1988
After more than eight years of fighting in the Soviet war, the Red Army begins to withdraw from Afghanistan.
6th June 1988
The Queen strips jockey Lester Piggott of his Order of the British Empire, following his imprisonment for tax irregularities.
11th June 1988
Wembley Stadium hosts a concert featuring stars from the fields of music, comedy and film, in celebration of the 70th birthday of jailed African National Congress leader, Nelson Mandela.
25th June 1988
The Netherlands defeat the Soviet Union 2-0 to win the 1988 European Football Championships.
6th July 1988
The Piper Alpha drilling platform in the North Sea is destroyed by explosions and fires, killing 165 oil workers and two rescue mariners.
20th August 1988
The Iran-Iraq War ends, with an estimated one million lives lost.
17th September 1988
The 1988 Summer Olympics open in Seoul, South Korea.
29th September 1988
NASA resumes space shuttle flights with the Space Shuttle ‘Discovery‘. Missions had previously been grounded after the ‘Challenger’ disaster in 1983 had culminated in the death of all seven crew members.
11th October 1988
Women are allowed to study at Magdalene College, Cambridge, for the first time. Male students wear black armbands and the porter flies a black flag.
8th November 1988
George H. W. Bush is elected over Michael Dukakis in the 1988 United States presidential election.
2nd December 1988
Benazir Bhutto is sworn in as Prime Minister of Pakistan, becoming the first woman to head the government of an Islam-dominated state.
6th December 1988
Roy Orbison, American singer (b. 1936) dies from a heart attack.
7th December 1988
In Armenia, an earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale killsnearly 25,000 people. It also injures 15,000 and leaves 400,000 homeless.
12th December 1988
The Clapham Junction rail crash kills thirty-five passengers and injures 132.
21st December 1988
‘Pan Am Flight 103’ is blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing a total of 270 people. Those responsible are believed to be either Iranians or Libyans.
Whether you’re looking for particular 1988 headlines as a historian or for students and research, our archives feature over 4 million titles. History is simply fascinating through the first-hand accounts of newspapers who witnessed the events that shaped the world as we know it.
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