The 1980s: the first Arab in space and the personal computer

In 1982, King Fahd began his reign. He adopted the title Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques in 1986 and oversaw major expansions of the Kingdom's infrastructure and universities.

On 17 June 1985, Prince Sultan bin Salman flew aboard the US Space Shuttle Discovery on mission STS-51-G, becoming the first Arab in space. During the seven-day mission, the crew deployed a communications satellite for Arabsat.

In 1980, the World Health Organization declared smallpox eradicated, the first human disease ever wiped out.

In April 1981, NASA launched Columbia, the first space shuttle, a reusable spacecraft that flew 135 missions until 2011.

In August 1981, IBM released its Personal Computer. Its design became the standard for most of the world's PCs, and software from a young company called Microsoft ran on it.

In April 1986, an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, caused the worst nuclear accident in history.

On 9 November 1989, the Berlin Wall was opened. The same year, at CERN in Switzerland, Tim Berners-Lee proposed a system that became the World Wide Web.