REFERENDUM REBOUND

Glasgow defeat is a real 80s throwback

THE Iranian Embassy siege and the shooting of JR Ewing were big news in the year Labour last lost control of Glasgow’s council.

Millions tuned in to the siege in London which was ended after a dramatic raid by SAS troopers in May 1980.

Five Iranian gunmen were killed and one was arrested. Nineteen hostages were set free but one died and two were injured in the crossfire.

Millions of viewers also tuned in to the soap opera Dallas to learn who shot lead character JR when it aired here that March.

Scot Allan Wells wowed the world when he became the 100 metres Olympic champion at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow in July.

Three months later, TV star Hercules the bear went missing on a Scottish island while filming a Kleenex commercial.

He was finally recaptured after hundreds of volunteers searched for him on Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides.

A crofter spotted the 8ft 4in half-ton animal swimming almost three weeks after the hunt had been called off.

In the same month, Saddam Hussein ordered his forces to invade western Iran, triggering the start of the bloody Iran-Iraq War.

Fighting continued between the two nations until 1988 when they signed a cease-fire – after a million soldiers and civilians had died.

In the US, Ronald Reagan was elected president in November.

And the music world was rocked to its foundations when John Lennon was shot outside his New York apartment by a lone gunman in December.