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(NAPSI)-Stonewashed jeans, pop music and space shuttle launches are all typically associated with the '80s. One year in particular, 1982, marked some major innovations and signs of things to come. Twenty-five years is a significant milestone by any measure, so here's a look back at American history and a year worth talking about.
The Iron Man's Run
Baltimore Orioles Hall-of-Fame shortstop Cal Ripken, Jr. began his record-breaking streak of consecutive games played in 1982. When the dust settled, baseball's "Iron Man" played in 2,632 straight games, spanning 16 seasons, breaking the record set by Lou Gehrig (known as the "Iron Horse") in 1939.
Intelligence Cubed
On June 5, 1982, the first Rubik's Cube World Championship was held in Budapest. Nineteen "speed-cubists" attended the event, representing countries ranging from Australia to Hungary. The contest was won by Mihn Thai, from the U.S.A., with an official time of 22.95 seconds.
Getting The Message
In 1982, by some estimates, only one in four phone calls resulted in a completed call and half of calls made were "one-way," meaning they did not require a conversation, only for a message to be left. Soon, engineers developed a solution: voice mail. Since then, countless messages have been left, helping people to connect worldwide.
Driving New Trends
On November 1, 1982, for the first time, an international automaker built a car in the United States. With its license plate reading "USA 001," a silver Honda Accord rolled off the production line in Marysville, Ohio. That car is now displayed prominently at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich. Since then, Americans have purchased more than 7 million American-made versions of the car, with the 8th-generation model currently rolling off the assembly line.
The car was assembled using primarily imported parts, including the engine. Today, the car uses engines from an engine plant in nearby Ohio, the automaker's largest auto engine plant in the world. And while some of the parts are still imported, most of the parts come from suppliers in the Midwest.
Today, the production of that first U.S.-made model is recognized as a turning point in American manufacturing. No other international automaker had attempted to make cars in the U.S. before that point. But that first car led to a wave of automakers bringing their operations and thousands of good-paying jobs to America. Since 1982, 10 other major international automakers have started producing cars in the U.S.
Back in the early 1980s, when Honda was building its first U.S. plant, many experts considered it a risky move. But the carmaker's American workforce not only built high-quality products in Ohio, it led all U.S. automakers to improve the quality of their own products to keep up. At the carmaker's invitation, engineers from the "Big 3" automakers visited its plants to study its methods.
Over the last 25 years, the company has continued to build more and more of its vehicles in the U.S. Today, nearly 80 percent of Hondas sold in this country are built in North America. That's nearly 1 million cars a year produced by workers in Ohio and Alabama. In fact, the company has now built 10 U.S. manufacturing plants and invested more than $8 billion in the U.S. economy, employing 27,000 people in the United States.