Daytona Countdown: '88

With son Davey's Ford snapping at his Buick's bumper on the final lap, Bobby Allison kept his foot firmly on the accelerator, pulling away at the line for a two-car length victory in the 30th Daytona 500 on Feb. 14, 1988, making the 50-year-old veteran the oldest driver to win the Daytona 500.

"Father Figure" by George Michael was the No. 1 song on the Cash Box singles charts in February. On Aug. 8, Prince Andrew became a father. "A Father's Revenge" was released in 1988.

NASCAR ACCELERATION •   Know Your NASCAR •   Tickets for Daytona •   2004 Daytona 500 highlights •   Get TrackPass for 2005! ALSO IN 1988... •   Wayne Gretzky is traded from the Edmonton Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings in one of the most controversial transactions in hockey history (Aug. 9)  •   Summer Olympic Games in Seoul, Korea opens (Sep. 17)  •   Benazir Bhutto is sworn in as prime minister of Pakistan, the first woman to head the government of an Islam-dominated state (Dec. 2)  •   The Consumer Product Safety Commission bans the sale of lawn darts following the deaths of three children (Dec. 19)  •   Pan Am flight 103 is blown up by Libyan terrorists over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 259 on board and 11 on the ground (Dec. 21)  Courtesy: Wikipedia

In November, George Herbert Walker Bush defeated Michael Dukakis to become the 41st President of the United States. George W. Bush would become the 43rd President in winning the 2000 election, making the Bushes the second father-son Presidents in history.

A 1988 Buick Regal Limited Edition two-door coupe had a list price of $12,782. With his first-place check for $202,940, Allison could have bought 14 Regals and one Thunderbird for Davey.

On April 12, former pop singer Sonny Bono was elected mayor of Palm Springs, Calif. If the Allisons had wanted to be present for Bono's first city countil meeting, the 1,981-mile trip from Hueytown, Ala. to Palm Springs would have taken about 36 hours in the family Buick -- or 14 hours and 24 minutes at Allison's race-winning average of 137.531 mph.

Bono's former wife, Cher -- whose legal name at the time was Cherilyn Sarkisian LaPierre Bono Allman -- won an Academy Award for best actress in 1987. U2's Bono was the lead singer for "The Joshua Tree" that year.

Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart confessed to an "unspecified sin" during the taping of his program on Feb. 21 and left the pulpit temporarily. The "unspecified sin" turned out to be an affair with a prostitute. Billy Ocean's "Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car" was a top-10 hit in 1988.

On May 16, a report by Surgeon General C. Everett Koop stated that the addictive properties of nicotine were similar to those of heroin and cocaine. In October, Philip Morris bought Kraft Foods for $13.1 billion. One month later, RJR Nabisco was bought for $25 million.

Also in May, the Soviet Union began to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. In August, Iraq and Iran agreed to a cease-fire, ending that war.

On Sept. 29, NASA resumed space shuttle flights, which had been grounded since the Challenger disaster two years previous. Two months later, the Soviet Union sent its unmanned version of the shuttle into space for the first and only time.