The World in 1980 the year the cube took over
1 in 5US homes with cable TV
1%US homes with a VCR
1stUS news channel on day and night
$1.25Gallon of gas (US)
255Levels in Japan's new Pac-Man
1Children per family in China
7thIndia joins the satellite club
6 daysEmbassy siege ended in London
1974Year Hungary's cube was invented
A Rubik's Cube can be twisted into about 43 quintillion arrangements, and only one of them has each side a single color. At one try a second you would still be turning it long after the sun burns out.
Life back then

Three networks ran American television, and cable reached only about one home in five. Kids fed quarters into the new Pac-Man machines at the mall, then went home and twisted a Rubik's Cube until the stickers peeled off. Hardly anyone owned a video recorder, so a missed episode was simply gone until the summer reruns. In Poland people queued with ration cards for meat, and those queues were part of what put the shipyards on strike.
The year in 8 events
- ๐Apr 18 Zimbabwe becomes an independent country, with Robert Mugabe as its first prime minister.
- ๐ฏ๏ธMay 4 Tito dies at 87 after 35 years running Yugoslavia. Leaders from both sides of the Cold War come to the funeral.
- ๐May 18 Mount St. Helens erupts in Washington state. Ash drifts over towns hundreds of miles away.
- ๐
Jul 19 The Olympics open in Moscow, and dozens of countries stay away in protest at the Soviet war in Afghanistan.
- โAug 31 Poland's government gives in to striking shipyard workers in Gdansk. They win the right to a union of their own, called Solidarity.
- โ๏ธSep 22 Iraq invades Iran. The war between them lasts eight years.
- ๐ณ๏ธNov 4 Ronald Reagan wins the US presidential election by a wide margin.
- ๐ฏ๏ธDec 8 John Lennon is shot and killed outside his apartment building in New York.