By Mark Aumann, NASCAR.COM
January 29, 2005
10:59 AM EST (15:59 GMT)
Cale Yarborough became the first driver to win back-to-back Daytona 500s since Richard Petty in 1973-74, passing Darrell Waltrip on the final lap to win the 26th Daytona 500 on Feb. 19, 1984. The Chevrolet Corvette was Motor Trend's choice for Car of the Year in 1984. A two-door Corvette coupe would have cost $21,800, so Yarborough could have purchased seven new Corvettes with his check for $160,300.  |  | NASCAR ACCELERATION | |
| ALSO IN 1984 ... |
| • | AT&T is broken up into 22 independent units (Jan. 1) |
| • | Space Shuttle Challenger astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart make the first untethered space walk (Feb. 7) |
| • | William Buckley, CIA station chief in Beirut, is kidnapped by Islamic fundamentalists and later dies in captivity (March 16) |
| • | Carmaker John De Lorean is acquitted of all eight counts of possessing and distributing cocaine due to entrapment (Aug. 16) |
| • | Space Shuttle Challenger astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan becomes the first American woman to perform a space walk (Oct. 11) |
Courtesy: Wikipedia
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The population of the United States reached 235 million in 1984, 135,000 of whom made it to Daytona to watch Yarborough's victory. Nearly six million people attended the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. That figure did not include any athletes from the Soviet Union. That country announced a boycott of the L.A. Games on May 8. If Yarborough had driven a Corvette from his hometown of Timmonsville, S.C., to Los Angeles to see the United States win a record 83 gold medals, the 2,465-mile trip would have taken 45 hours at freeway speeds -- or 16 hours and 20 minutes at Yarborough's race-winning average of 150.994 mph. Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. was the top-selling album of 1984, beating Prince's Purple Rain and Van Halen's 1984. With an ad -- based on George Orwell's novel 1984 -- that debuted during the Super Bowl broadcast, Apple introduced its Macintosh computer on Jan. 22. A day later, Michael Jackson's fire caught fire during filming of a Pepsi commercial. That month, Wendy's began its "Where's the Beef?" campaign. Walter Payton passed Jim Brown as pro football's all-time leading rusher in 1984. After his retirement from football, Payton formed a race team with Michel Jourdain Jr. as driver. In 2005, Jourdain is scheduled to drive a Busch Series car for ppc Racing. Singer James Brown released the movie Soul Julibee in 1984. Sports announcer James Brown was hired as a CBS analyst that year. Virgin Atlantic Airlines made its inaugural flight on June 22. Miss America Vanessa Williams resigned a month later after Penthouse magazine published her nude photos. Madonna's Like A Virgin was the No. 1 song in the country on Dec. 29. Ronald Reagan easily defeated challenger Walter Mondale to earn a second term. Margaret Thatcher survived an IRA bombing attempt. However, India's Indira Ghandi was assassinated and Russian leader Yuri Andropov died in 1984. Beverly Hills Cop edged Ghostbusters and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom at the box office, but Ray Parker Jr.'s theme song for Ghostbusters was a top-10 smash. Parker was sued by Huey Lewis for copyright infringement, claiming that Ghostbusters was a riff off I Want a New Drug. Lewis received an out-of-court settlement. Highway to Heaven, The Cosby Show, Who's The Boss, Miami Vice and Murder, She Wrote all debuted on network television in 1984. On Nov. 25, British and Irish musicians met to form Band Aid and record Do They Know It's Christmas? to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. More than 3.5 million copies of the song were sold in Great Britain. In 1989, the song was re-recorded as part of Band Aid II, and was re-recorded again in 2004 by Band Aid 20 for Sudanese relief. → Click here for more Daytona Countdown. | 
