Today in 80s History: August 1st in the 80s

1981 - "Video Killed the Radio Star" Became the First Video on MTV

Artist: The Buggles
Director: Russell Mulcahy
Note: A two-year-old song by a band nobody could name got handed the most symbolic three minutes in music history. MTV's programmers reportedly didn't even want it — nobody would be watching at 12:01 in the morning anyway. They were wrong about that part too. Videos two and three: Pat Benatar's "You Better Run" and Rod Stewart's "She Won't Dance with Me."

1980 - Kaleidoscope

Artist: Siouxsie and the Banshees (3rd Album)
UK Charts: #5
Note: The one where the Banshees swapped guitarists mid-crisis, brought in a drum machine and a sitar, and accidentally drew the blueprint half the decade's goth bands would trace.

1987 - MTV Europe Launched with "Money for Nothing"

Artist: Dire Straits
Note: Six years after "Video Killed the Radio Star" opened MTV in America, Europe got its own feed — and opened with the song whose chorus is literally "I want my MTV." Sting sang that part. Nobody has ever topped it as an inside joke.

Flight of the Navigator (1986)

Release Date: August 1, 1986
Director: Randal Kleiser
Starring: Joey Cramer, Veronica Cartwright, Sarah Jessica Parker and the voice of Paul Reubens
Budget: $9 Million
Box Office: $18.5 Million
Note: A 12-year-old falls in a ravine in 1978 and climbs out in 1986, having aged not one day. Disney let Pee-wee Herman voice the ship, uncredited, under the name "Paul Mall." A whole generation's first brush with the idea that time might not be on your side.

Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)

Release Date: August 1, 1986
Director: Tom McLoughlin
Starring: Thom Mathews, Jennifer Cooke and C.J. Graham as Jason
Budget: $3 Million
Box Office: $19.4 Million
Note: The one where the series finally admitted it was having fun. Jason gets resurrected by lightning, the counselors are self-aware, and Alice Cooper is on the soundtrack. Fans still argue it's the best of the bunch.

Howard the Duck (1986)

Release Date: August 1, 1986
Director: Willard Huyck
Starring: Lea Thompson, Jeffrey Jones and Tim Robbins
Budget: $37 Million
Note: George Lucas produced a Marvel movie about a cigar-chomping duck a full 22 years before Iron Man, and the industry spent a decade using it as a punchline. It has since found exactly the cult audience it deserved.

The Final Countdown (1980)

Release Date: August 1, 1980
Director: Don Taylor
Starring: Kirk Douglas, Martin Sheen, Katharine Ross and James Farentino
Budget: $12 Million
Note: The USS Nimitz sails into a storm and comes out on December 6, 1941, hours before Pearl Harbor. Filmed aboard the actual carrier with actual Navy pilots, which is why the flight-deck footage still looks better than most of what came after.

1981 - MTV Launched

Event: Network Launch

Network: MTV
Original VJs: Mark Goodman, Martha Quinn, Alan Hunter, J.J. Jackson and Nina Blackwood
Note: At 12:01 a.m., a countdown, a shuttle launch, a flag planted on the moon, and the words "Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll." Most of America couldn't even get the channel yet. Within three years it had rewritten what a pop star was supposed to look like.

1980 - Cinemax Debuted

Event: Network Launch

Network: Cinemax
Note: HBO's sister channel arrived exactly one year and one day before MTV, and quietly became the reason a lot of us saw movies we absolutely were not supposed to see.

1987 - Mike Tyson Unified the Heavyweight Titles

Event: Boxing

Details: A unanimous decision over Tony Tucker in Las Vegas made the 21-year-old Tyson the undisputed heavyweight champion, the youngest in history to hold all three belts at once.

1986 - Bert Blyleven Recorded His 3,000th Strikeout

Event: MLB

Details: The Twins beat the A's 10-1 at the Metrodome, Kirby Puckett went 4-for-5 with a home run, and Blyleven's curveball got Mike Davis for the milestone in front of 14,855 people.

1981 - Hulk Hogan Made His AWA Debut

Event: Pro Wrestling

Details: Before the WWF, before Hulkamania had a name, Hogan turned up in Verne Gagne's AWA in Wisconsin. The crowds decided he was a babyface whether the promotion liked it or not.

1987 - Dave Stewart and Siobhan Fahey Got Married

Details: The Eurythmics guitarist married Bananarama's Siobhan Fahey in France, on the same day MTV Europe went live. Peak 80s pop crossover, all inside 24 hours.