"Oh no. Don't say that it's true."

A dark day indeed. RIP David Bowie.
A true giant of the music world if ever there was one.

Richard Pryor emerged from the 70s one of the biggest stars in the world. He seemingly had it all: money, fame and beautiful lovers. None of it though was apparently enough and like a lot of stars with money and time on their hands Pryor got into drugs. Most notably freebasing cocaine.

On June 9, 1980, in one of the decade's more bizarre celebrity-related events, Pryor was discovered running through the streets of Northridge California on fire. He was eventually caught and taken to the hospital by police where it is said he suffered burns on more than half his body. Initially nobody knew what to make of the incident but it wasn't too long before the facts began to emerge and paint a picture of a man who, in a fit of freebase-induced psychosis, had poured flaming 151 rum over himself then fled into the streets in panic.

Pryor spent six weeks recovering at the Grossman Burn Center and when finally well enough to resume his career didn't shy away from the incident. On the contrary in typical Richard Pryor fashion he faced it head on making frequent reference to it first in his standup routine and later in the movie "Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling" a fictionalized account of the incident and its aftermath.

New footage has just surfaced of the Challenger disaster. The short Super-8 film was taken by Jeffrey Ault from his viewing spot at the Kennedy Space Center 10 miles from the launch pad. The film gives the best view I've ever seen of a launch as you get a feel for just how fast the shuttle is going as it roars into space. The footage was licensed by the Huffington Post and you can read their entire accompanying piece here.

Kurt Waldheim (second from left) during WWII.

The UN, formed out of the dust-clouds of World War II when the Nazis murderous rampage through Europe shook the world to its core, held itself to a higher ideal of universal dialogue and peaceful co-existence; two concepts the Nazis didn't exactly hold in high esteem. Austrian diplomat Kurt Waldheim served as Secretary General of the United Nations from 1972 to 1981.

When Waldheim was running for President of Austria in 1985 a popular Austrian paper began to raise questions about his role during the war. He had admitted to being in the German army but said he had no choice and spent the war "confined to a desk". But in the wake of the paper's initial article others began to dig into Waldheim's past and allegations surfaced that he had not, in fact, been hiding in the hinterlands behind a desk during the war but was, allegedly, a member of the SS and had, again allegedly, participated in the reprisals against partisans in Greece. Waldheim called the allegations "pure lies" though he did later admit that he was aware that most of the Jewish community in the town near where he was stationed in Greece were being rounded up and sent to Auschwitz, something he'd previously denied any knowledge of.

In the end the controversy surrounding Waldheim seemed to degenerate into a series of allegations and counter-allegations none of which went anywhere substantive but which nonetheless served to permanently sully Waldheim's reputation in the eyes of millions around the world. He died in 2007 and though he was given a state funeral no sitting heads of state were invited. A telling sign of just how far he'd fallen.

Conditions at Kennedy Space Center in Florida were anything but ideal for a Space Shuttle launch on the morning of January 28, 1986. The temperature was 31 degrees farenheit, far colder than for any previous shuttle launch. Engineers at Morton Thiokold (manufacturer of the Shuttle's solid rocket boosters, or SRBs) warned against launching in such cold temperatures. They feared there was a distinct possibility that the O-rings on the SRBs might not seal correctly in such temperatures. Engineers at Rockwell International (primary contractor for the Shuttle program) also expressed grave concerns over the temperature. Primarily over the possibility that ice, which had accumulated all over the Shuttle and adjacent launch pad, would break free during launch and damage the critical heat absorbing tiles on the Shuttle's underbelly. Both sets of engineers advised against launching.

Their bosses however, feeling the pressure to launch after a week of delays and in the full glare of the public spotlight due to the presence of the first "teacher in space" (Christa McAuliffe) among the crew, overroad their engineers and gave STS-51L the green light.

They should have listened.

Just 73 seconds after lift off the Thiokold engineer's worst nightmares were realized as super-heated gas leaking through a failed O-ring on the right hand SRB burned through the external fuel tank causing a cascading series of events that led to the breakup of the Shuttle Challenger 48,000 feet over the Atlantic. Contrary to popular belief at the time the Shuttle was not torn apart by the explosion of gases in the external fuel tank but instead by aerodynamic forces exerted on the orbiter when it veered off its intended trajectory due to thrust anomolies coming from the right SRB (which had broken loose) and the external fuel tank. The last words heard from Pilot Michael Smith just milliseconds before the orbitor was torn apart were an ominous "Uh oh."

In a grissly discovery made some weeks later it was learned that several members of the crew had apparently survived the orbiter's breakup and activated their emergency oxygen supplies. Indeed Pilot Michael Smith - in a valiant but hopeless attempt to gain control of the situation - had been working the control panel, activating switches in an apparent attempt to restore electicity after the breakup. Because of these discoveries many experts now believe that at least some of the crew members survived the entire 2 minute 45 second free fall to the ocean's surface and that it was that impact with the water - at 207 mph - that was the likely cause of death, not the explosion or orbiter's initial breakup.

In the aftermath of the Challenger disaster the Shuttle program was grounded for 31 months while changes to the decision making culture at NASA as well as new, more robust safety procedures were implemented.

The crew of STS-51L were: Dick Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Greg Jarvis, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka and Christa McAuliffe.

Michael Dukakis was doing well in the polls in the late summer of 1988. Comfortably ahead of George Bush and basking in that post-convention afterglow. Then somebody in his campaign had the idea that what they needed to really put him over the top was a butch image. Something that would head off any claims that he was 'soft on defense'. So the campaign packed up the wagons and headed to Michigan where MD donned some standard issue tank wear (including a helmet with Princess Leia ear buns) and was photographed riding around conquering the General Dynamics parking lot.

To say that the resulting image backfired would be an incredible understatement. The hooting and hollering started almost immediately though nobody could quite put a finger on exactly what there was about the image that made it so cringe worthy. Dukakis was an army vet after all and had served his country honorably. Personally I think it was the helmet.

"Help me Obi Wan. You're my only hope!"

On March 11, 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev, 54, became General Secretary of the Communist Party of The Soviet Union. His ascension was hailed as the dawn of a new day for the hidebound superpower with leaders in the West salivating over the prospect of finally having someone in the Kremlin that they could, in Maggie Thatcher's words, "do business with".

Gorbachev energetically undertook the daunting task of trying to breath life into the corpse of the USSR initiating his programs of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) and letting it be known that the USSR was no longer intersted in playing the role of the cranky old uncle with all the guns in international relations.

A new kind of General Secretary: "Gorby" mingles with the people - 1985

To say that his 6 years as the big cheese atop the Kremlin wall were eventful would be an enormous understatement. He signed agreements that ultimately lead to huge reductions in the number of nuclear weapons held by the US and USSR, he relaxed state oversight of Soviet media and encouraged criticism, he released political prisoners, began the process of opening up the Soviet economy to privately owned business and reduced the overall size of the Soviet military. Yet he also oversaw the catastrophe that was/is Chernobyl, tried desperately to prevent Soviet satellite states from gaining their independence as the USSR began to crumble and was largely ineffective in trying to ram through meaningful economic reform. In the end his efforts would come back to haunt him in unexpected ways and he'd wind up losing power to Boris Yeltsin and overseeing the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In 1985 many saw his coming to power as a sign that significant change was on the horizon. Few, if any, could have predicted just how significant those changes (intended and unintended) would turn out to be.

On December 29, 1989 Japan's Nikkei 225 stock index hit it's all-time high of 38,915. That lofty point represented six times the value the market had only a decade earlier and reflected what became known as the Japanese asset price bubble. The next day the slide began and 2 days later as the 80s became the 90s the Japanese economy officially entered its "lost" period. Some say what followed was a lost decade while most others contend that all the 22 years since the Nikkei hit its incredible high qualify as 'lost' since the economy of Japan has shown no signs of emerging from its long funk. Few things illustrated the wild and crazy days of the bubble quite like the Nikkei and the same can be said of the 'lost' years as yesterday's official Nikkei 225 close was a less than impressive 8,390, a full 30,525 points below the Dec 29, 1989 high.

Dan Quayle was a controversial selection for George Bush (Sr) to make for a running mate. The guy had the face of Opie from Mayberry and (publicly at least) he did not seem to be what anyone would call an intellectual giant. Still he had the backing of conservative Republicans and there was no chance he was going to outshine the man at the head of the ticket.

But on October 5th 1988 in the only vice presidential debate of that election year he still managed to draw the media spotlight to himself and earn a place in American political sideshow history when he remarked in response to a question about his qualifications that he had as much experience as John F. Kennedy did when he sought the presidency in 1960. Though technically true his counterpart, Lloyd Bentsen of Texas, jumped on the comparison and countered "Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."

The crowd whooped and hollered, applauded and snickered. Quayle was left a bit red faced at having been bitch slapped so publicly but generally kept his composure and called Bentsen out for his breach of political etiquette. Bentsen earned plenty of democratic cred for his mean spirited put down but it was Quayle who'd get the last laugh in November when he and Bush won the general election.

On January 3, 1983 Kilauea volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii began what seemed to be a fairly routine eruption. It wasn't anything that caught the attention of the world's media like Mount Saint Helen's or Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines. There were no spectacular explosions or wide spread devastation from thick ash falls. There was virtually no ash at all. What there was was lava. At first in the form of a fountain or geyser and then, as the years passed (yes, that's YEARS) the lava took on what vulcanologist call an "effusive" character where it simply oozes out of various vents and flows downhill. While it occasionally still produces geyser-like outbursts its been basically oozing lava continuously now for 28 years expanding the landmass of the Big Island by 2 square kilometers in the process.

The 1982 Klaus Von Bulow trial had all the makings of a classic murder tale: depressed heiress, distant husband, mistrusting stepchildren and was set in Newport's mansion district to boot. Klaus Von Bulow stood accused of murdering his wife Sunny by injecting her with a lethal dose of insulin. A long line of witnesses who inhabited the fringes of the Von Bulow life painted a picture of a man driven by a desire to get his hands on the fortune of his ailing wife. After a lengthy trial that was more media circus than judicial proceeding Klaus was convicted.

Immediately Von Bulow retained the services of Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz to represent him on his appeal. Dershowitz focused on how the prosecution had acquired the crucial piece of evidence used to convict his client in the first trial: the medical bag that contained the syringe the prosecution said Von Bulow had used to inject his wife.

After a lengthy investigation Dershowitz and his team discovered that private investigators hired by Sunny's children from her previous marriage (who were no fans of Klaus) had hired a locksmith to open a closet of Klaus' in order to find out what he may have been hiding in there. Because the closet was opened without a search warrant or Klaus Von Bulow's permission the medical bag that was found inside was thrown out as evidence and the prosecution's case collapsed. Nonetheless the state went ahead with a second trial in 1985 but without any truly compelling evidence Von Bulow was acquitted on all charges. Dershowitz went on to pen the best selling book "Reversal of Fortune" about the tragedy. That book was made into a successful major motion picture starring Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons.

Today Klaus Von Bulow lives in London where he does occasional theater and art reviews. Sunny Von Bulow died in 2008 after 28 years in a coma.

Klaus Von Bulow with his daughter (left) after his acquittal on attempted murder charges.

On July 14, 1989 the great nation of France celebrated its bicentennial with enormous fanfare. The problem was that most impartial observers couldn't quite figure out exactly what they were celebrating.

The French Revolution started well enough with the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 followed by the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in August. In 1792 a Republic was formally declared and Louis XVI was guillotined. Okay, so far so good. But shortly afterward things started to go terribly wrong. 1793 saw the rise of Robespierre and the Reign of Terror during which time just about anyone with an opinion that ran contrary to Robespierre's was executed. Some say as many as 40,000 lost their lives. In 1795 Robespierre himself was arrested and executed after which the "Directory" (which was the second consecutive dictatorship after Robespierre's) took control and held power until 1799 when Napoleon (dictatorship #3) declared himself Emperor. After Napoleon was kicked out in 1814 the so-called monarchy was re-established. Then there was the constitutional monarchy, the four years of the Second Republic and then the second Empire under Napolean's nephew which ended in 1870. After that you had the Government of National Defense, the Paris Commune and so forth and so on...

The point is that in the century following the storming of the Bastille "France" was little more than a place where the power hungry toyed with the aspirations of the people that were supposed to have been liberated in 1789. The actual revolution can't really be said to have succeeded until late in the 19th century when France finally became something like a stable democratic nation (though even after that it would hand itself over to yet another dictator - one A. Hitler - with barely a wimper in 1940).

Oddly none of the above mentioned inconvienent truths were talked about much during the bicentennial celebrations. Instead what the world got was a PR job of epic proportions. It was all lots of fun though and made for some great fireworks shows so who's going to complain about a few details? Vive-la-France!

Paris: July 14,1989 - Parisians celebrate the oft-forgotten 19th century Dictatorship of the Coconut Shell.

In the early morning hours of September 19, 1985 an 8.0 magnitude earthquake occurred off the Pacific coast of Mexico. Coastal communities suffered relatively little damage and the quake did not produce any significant tsunamis. However, more than 200 miles to the east the sprawling metropolis of Mexico City, one of the largest cities on the planet, underwent horrific shaking that lasted for 5 minutes. During that time more than 400 buildings collapsed and thousands more were damaged. Millions of inhabitants lost water, electricity and phone service and worst of all an estimated 10,000 people lost their lives.

In the aftermath of the quake many were asking the same questions: how could such enormous devastation happen in a city that was so far from the quake's epicenter? And why were some parts of the city destroyed while other parts remained virtually untouched? The answers, it would turn out, lie in the nature of the land Mexico City itself is built upon. When the Spanish invaded Mexico in the 16th century they found a city perched on an island in the middle of an enormous swampy lake that lay between two volcanoes. Over the centuries as the city grew the lake/swamp was drained to provide land for expansion. As a result much of central Mexico City rests uneasily upon a mixture of volcanic clay, silt, sand and (relatively recent) lava deposits, while the outer regions are situated on much more dependable rock. The silty deposits that underpin much of the city center are perfectly tuned to the natural 'pitch' of seismic waves so when these waves arrived from the coast they found a perfect amplifier. Its not unlike an electrical signal from a guitar traveling quietly through a cable only to  burst out of the amplifier at ear splitting decibel levels.

In the aftermath of the quake the silence from the government was deafening. In fact it wasn't until 39 hours after the disaster that President de la Madrid addressed the situation publicly. With the government response virtually nonexistent the city's inhabitants took matters into their own hands and began scouring through the wreckage to find survivors. In all more than 4,000 people were pulled from the rubble alive and a large percentage of them owe their lives to these anonymous citizen heroes.

Ruins of the Hotel Regis, Mexico City Sept 19, 1985

On October 31, 1984 Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India and arguably the most powerful woman in the world, was on her way to a television interview that was to be conducted by British actor Peter Ustinov. As she crossed the grounds of the PM's residence in New Delhi she was confronted by two of her Sikh bodyguards who opened fire on her at close range. One of the assailants fired 9 rounds from a handgun at her before he was killed by other guards and the second gunman pumped as many as 30 bullets into her body as she lay on the ground before he was overpowered and taken into custody.

In response to the assassination an estimated 2,700 Indian Sikhs were murdered during four days of rioting by supporters of the late PM with some estimates putting the number of dead even higher. Several diplomatic cables that have recently been leaked show that American intelligence agencies at the time believed the anti-Sikh violence was orchestrated by high level officials of the Indian government.

Gandhi's assassination was itself a response to her having ordered the Indian military to clear the so-called "Golden Temple" - Sikhdom's holiest shrine - of Sikh militants several months earlier. That operation resulted in the deaths of a large number of Sikh militants who were holed up inside and also resulted in extensive damage to the temple.

The body of assassinated Indian PM Indira Gandhi lies in state. To the left is her son and future PM Rajiv.

Vic Morrow was a Hollywood veteran of both the big and small screen. He was probably best known for starring in the hit 60s tv series "Combat". In 1982 he signed on to appear in a feature film version of the classic Rod Serling tv series "The Twilight Zone". The film would be comprised of four segments each with its own director. Morrow's segment title "Time Out" was to be directed by a rising newcomer named John Landis.

In the wee hours of July 23, 1982 while filming a scene which required Morrow to carry two children (in real life 7 year old Mcya Dihn Le and 6 year old Renee Shin-Yi Chen) across a shallow riverbed while a helicopter loomed over their heads and explosions were set off all around something went terribly wrong. According to the official report:

"The probable cause of the accident was the detonation of debris-laden high temperature special effects explosions too near a low flying helicopter leading to foreign object damage to one rotor blade and delamination due to heat to the other rotor blade, the separation of the helicopter's tail rotor assembly, and the uncontrolled descent of the helicopter."

Morrow and one of the children were decapitated by the helicopter's rotor blades as is crashed to the ground. The other child was crushed beneath it. The accident stunned Hollywood and brought to light the shady practices some producers and directors would use to get their movies made. The two children who died had no buisness being on any set at 2:30 in the morning never mind one where so many pyrotechnics were being utilized. Landis had smuggled them to the location and kept them hidden until it was time for their scene. He also was paying them under the table to avoid drawing any union or State of California attention to them.

Ultimately Landis and a score of others who were party to the accident were aquitted of manslaughter and child endangerment charges in 1987. In fact no one went to jail as a result of the accident in spite of the fact that the official report had made it pretty clear that someone had made some very serious errors in judgement which lead to the crash. The families of Morrow and the two children ultimately settled out of court for undisclosed amounts.

Vic Morrow (center) carries Mcya Dihn Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen seconds before fatal accident.

The Rutan Voyager was the first aircraft to fly around the world non-stop without refueling. The idea for the plane was sketched out on a napkin one day over lunch by the Rutan brothers and built over the course of 5 years using private funds. The finished aircraft was marvel of space age technology that, when empty, weighed a scant 2250 lbs. If it was going to successfully circumnavigate the globe without refueling it would have to have an incredible lift to drag ratio and it did. The 29 foot long, 2-seater which was built of carbon fiber, kevlar and fiberglass and which sported incredible 110 foot wingspan achieved a L/D ratio of 27 (by comparison a 747 has a L/D ration of 17). Another important element in keeping fuel consumption down on the flight would be the weight of the crew. Having both Rutans in the cockpit would have made the plane too heavy so the Brothers enlisted the help of their colleague Jeana Yeager to handle co-piloting duties. She had been a test pilot for the Rutan brother's experimental aircraft and had established her piloting credentials by setting several speed records in those craft during the early 80s.

And so it was that on December 14, 1986 with Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager on board Voyager began its historic trip at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Filled to capacity with fuel for the flight the plane's weight ballooned to an elephantine 9700 lbs and it would need to use nearly 3 miles of runway in order to achieve takeoff. During that takeoff run the fuel-laden wingtips actually scraped along the tarmac and were permanently damaged, though it was determined that the damage didn't pose any obvious risk to the flight.

After 9 days of flight at an average speed of 116 mph Voyager and her exhausted crew touched down where they started at Edwards with the world's press in attendance to record the event. Their long journey from napkin to history book complete.

Jeana Yeager and Dick Rutan emerge from Voyager after completing their historic flight.

On October 19, 1987 the Dow Jones Industrial Average (the Dow) fell an incredible 508 points in a freefall that became known around the world as "Black Monday". The 508 point loss represented the biggest single day stock market crash in history in percentage terms as the Dow lost over 22% of its total value.

How can you put the losses of Black Monday into proper perspective? Well it helps me to think of it this way: on October 13, 2008 at the height of the recent financial crisis, the stock market had its biggest one day point loss in history; 777 points. In order for the losses that day to match what happened on Black Monday though the Dow would have had to lose 2,300 points!

A rash of possible explanations for Black Monday have been circulating for years. The most popular of these is the "program trading" theory where numerous computer sell programs began triggering each other every time the market ticked down a few more points. After a while the slide became a self generating monster no one could control. Others have pointed east and said that it was simply a reaction to what happened in Hong Kong, whose market had nosedived in the run up to the Dow opening that Monday. Still others used a word that would come back to haunt the financial world two decades later; "derivatives". In this case portfolio insurance derivatives. Most everyone agrees though that matters were made immeasurably worse by a good old-fashioned panic that swept the trading floor once the slide began and made Black Monday a day that will live in financial infamy.

Black Monday. After a while all you could do was pray.

For two days in October of 1987 the world was transfixed by the fate of Jessica McClure, an 18 month old toddler from Midland Texas who'd fallen to the bottom of a 22 foot deep, 8 inch wide well near her home. The world's media descended on the small town with the then upstart CNN network delivering live, round the clock coverage of the rescue attempt. Everyone had an opinion of what needed to be done to pull "baby Jessica" to safety but at first there was no consensus. A backhoe was tried but after digging only a few feet it hit solid rock and was taken away. It was then decided to dig a parallel shaft using equipment similar to that used in oil drilling. This yielded better results but everyone was still flying blind on what they'd do once they reached her.

Finally David Lilly of the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration was brought in to lead the rescue efforts. He'd had extensive experience rescuing trapped miners and could see that if adjustments weren't made to the drilling Jessica might be killed by her rescue. Finally, after 58 hours of work that included lowering men into the parallel shaft with jackhammers to remove the last remaining rock, the rescuers broke through and lifted her to the surface injured but basically okay.

So what is "baby Jessica" up to these days?

Today 25 year old Jessica McClure-Morales is married with two children of her own and lives a relatively quiet life near Midland. She still carries the scar on her forehead from her 1987 ordeal though she has no memory of it. Donations made in her name at the time of her ordeal were put in trust and on turning 25 she was able to collect some $800,000 from that fund which enabled her and her husband to buy a house and set aside money for their children's education. All-in-all a pretty happy ending to what could have been a tragic situation.

"Baby Jessica" at the moment of her rescue in 1987 and today, still carrying the scar on her forehead.

In the 80s the F-117 Stealth Fighter changed the way people thought of fighter aircraft forever. Looking like either a flying hat box or a flying Hershey Kiss it didn't really look like it could do much flying at all. It was the end product of a process that began with the 1964 publication of a paper by Soviet mathemetician Pyotr Ufimtsev in which he proved that the strength of a radar return was directly related to the edge configuration of the object and not its mass. At the time no country possessed the technological know-how to build on Ufimtsev's idea but in time that would change.

The F-117 was designated a fighter aircraft (hence the "F") but it was not capable of engaging other airplanes or dogfighting. Its job was to sneak in through a country's radar and drop bombs or launch missles at targets on the ground. The F-117 made its first flight in the Nevada desert on June 18, 1981. The following year the first planes were delivered and the plane was declared operational in October 1983. It was still a "black program" however and the air force vehemently denied its very existence for a further 5 years, until November of 1988.

In all 49 F-117s were built and saw service in Panama in 1989, the first Gulf War in 1991 (where it flew with impunity over an otherwise heavily defended Baghdad), Serbia in 1999 (where the first and only of its kind was shot down with the wreckage sold to the Chinese), the Afghan war and the Iraq war.

In 2005 the decision was made to incrementally retire the F-117 in favor of the new, sleeker F-22 and on April 22, 2008 the last of the Stealth Fighters was decomissioned. But though its gone now it will not soon to be forgotten for something about the war plane captured the public imagination and, for better or worse, became part of the new, hi-tech image the country was formulating for itself in the 80s.

The F-117 Stealth Fighter on the ground and in the air. Who knew Hershey's Kisses could fly?

Remember the days before tamper-proof packaging? Neither do I. Seems like it's been around my whole life. But there was a time when protection from whack-jobs was not the primary purpose of putting a cap on something. That all changed in 1982 however following the still unsolved Chicago Tylenol murders. Between September 29 and October 1, 1982 seven people in the Chicago area died after taking Tylenol capsules for various reasons. It quickly became evident that it was not a manufacturing problem but that someone had removed Tylenol packages from shelves in various stores, introduced cyanide into the capsules themselves and then returned the poisoned products back to store shelves where the victims eventually bought them. Once it became clear what was going on Tylenol's maker, Johnson and Johnson, ordered a nationwide recall of all Tylenol products, a move that is said to have cost them some $100 million.

While law enforcement has had plenty of suspects over the years (including Ted Kazcynski aka: the unabomber) no one has ever been charged with the murders. At the time a man claiming to be responsible sent a letter to authorities demanding $1 million to stop the attacks. He was caught, identified as one James Lewis, and served 13 years in prison for his attempted extortion. Though he began denying he was involved the minute he was arrested the fact is that at the time he did claim in writing to be the killer and he remains a suspect to this day (though no solid evidence against him other than his extortion letter has surfaced).

It's impossible to say if anyone will ever be convicted of this crime but the lasting legacy of the Tylenol murders is with us every time we go to the store pretty much anywhere in the world in the form of the aforementioned tamper-proof packaging that we now take for granted on everything from prescription drugs to bottled water.

The seven victims of the unsolved Chicago Tylenol murders.