6 Feb 1911 Ronald Reagan born, Tampico IL.
1932 Graduates Eureka College.
25 Jun 1940 Marries actress Jane Wyman two months after knocking her up.
4 Jan 1941 Daughter Maureen Reagan born.
18 Mar 1945 Son Michael Reagan born.
9 Dec 1945 Ronald Reagan receives an honorable discharge from the U.S. Army. He had spent World War II in Hollywood, acting in military training films.
1948 Divorces Jane Wyman.
4 Mar 1952 Marries actress Nancy Davis.
17 Jul 1955 Ronald Reagan cohosts live coast-to-coast television coverage of the opening day at Disneyland.
20 May 1958 Son Ronald Jr. (Ronald Prescott) born.
10 Oct 1965 California gubernatorial candidate Ronald Reagan is quoted in the Fresno Bee as saying: "We should declare war on North Vietnam... It's silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking strips on it, and be home by Christmas."
20 Oct 1965 California gubernatorial candidate Ronald Reagan is quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying: "I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at the point of a bayonet, if necessary."
17 Jun 1966 California gubernatorial candidate Ronald Reagan is quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying: "I would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964."
Nov 1966 Elected Governor of California, the first actor to hold that position.
16 Oct 1967 Ronald Reagan is quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying: "I have a feeling that we are doing better in the (Vietnam) war than the people have been told."
15 May 1969 Regarding the ongoing student protests at UC Berkeley, California governor Ronald Reagan is quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle as saying: "If there has to be a bloodbath, then let's get it over with."
3 Oct 1972 "I am very proud to be called a pig. It stands for pride, integrity, and guts." Speech in Oroville, CA.
17 May 1976 Ronald Reagan tells Time magazine: "Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal. It was Mussolini's success in Italy, with his government-directed economy, that led the early New Dealers to say 'But Mussolini keeps the trains running on time.'"
1979 Ronald Reagan: "The American Petroleum Institute filed suit against the EPA
charged that the agency was suppressing a scientific study for fear it might be misinterpreted... The suppressed study reveals that 80 percent of air pollution comes not from chimneys and auto exhaust pipes, but from plants and trees."
1980 During an interview with televangelist Jim Bakker on the PTL network, presidential candidate Ronald Reagan predicts that "We may be the generation that sees Armageddon."
15 Feb 1980 Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan is quoted in the Burlington Free Press as saying: "All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk." The claim is provably false.
14 Apr 1980 Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan is quoted in Time magazine as saying: "History shows that when the taxes of a nation approach about 20 percent of the people's income, there begins to be a lack of respect for government... When it reaches 25 percent, there comes an increase in lawlessness." The claim is provably false.
21 Apr 1980 Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan is quoted in Newsweek magazine as saying: "Because Vietnam was not a declared war, the veterans are not even eligible for the G.I. Bill of Rights with respect to education or anything." The claim is provably false.
10 May 1980 Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan is quoted in the Chicago Tribune as saying: "Trains are not any more energy efficient than the average automobile, with both getting about 48 passenger miles to the gallon." The claim is provably false.
10 Sep 1980 Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan is quoted in Sierra magazine as saying: "Approximately 80% of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation. So let's not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emissions standards from man-made sources." The claim is provably false.
9 Oct 1980 Ronald Reagan is quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying: "Growing and decaying vegetation in this land are responsible for 93% of the oxides of nitrogen." The claim is provably false.
20 Oct 1980 Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan is quoted in Time magazine as saying: "I have flown twice over Mount St. Helens. I'm not a scientist and I don't know the figures, but I have a suspicion that one little mountain out there, in these last several months, has probably released more sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere than has been released in the last ten years of automobile driving or things of that kind." The claim is provably false.
24 Oct 1980 During a nationally-televised campaign speech, Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan declares: "Mr. Carter is acting as if he hasn't been in charge for the past three and a half years; as if someone else was responsible for the largest deficit in American history." (Carter's total deficit: $252 billion; Reagan's: $1.4 trillion)
4 Nov 1980 Elected 40th President.
6 Mar 1981 Ronald Reagan's second press conference held, in which names of reporters are drawn out of a jellybean jar. Those not chosen (including Associated Press and two of the Big Three TV networks) mostly boycott the conference in disgust.
4 Feb 1981 Ronald Reagan: "I want you to know that it is not true that the Moral Majority has been trying to exert undue influence. That rumor started recently when Jerry Falwell called me with a suggestion for Ambassador to Iran: the publisher of Penthouse."
30 Mar 1981 President Ronald Reagan shot by John W. Hinckley, Jr. Alexander Haig asserts that he is "in control here", forgetting momentarily about the Consititutional line of succession. The Academy Awards show is postponed one night out of respect for the former thespian and president of the Screen Actors Guild.
27 May 1981 John W. Hinckley attempts suicide with a Tylenol overdose, fails.
19 Oct 1981 Senator John Schmitz from California reveals during a television interview that, if President Reagan's policies fail, "the best we could probably hope for is a military coup, or something like that." He refines his statement somewhat by explaining that he's referring to "a good military coup, not a bad military coup."
23 Nov 1981 After President Reagan vetoes an emergency spending bill which would have prevented a shutdown of the federal government, House Speaker Tip O'Neill tells a reporter: "He knows less about the budget than any president in my lifetime. He can't even carry on a conversation about the budget. It's an absolute and utter disgrace."
May 1982 President Ronald Reagan declares: "In England, if a criminal carried a gun, even though he didn't use it, he was tried for first-degree murder and hung if he was found guilty."
18 May 1982 Ronald Reagan has a small benign polyp removed from his colon.
7 Jun 1982 President Ronald Reagan falls asleep during a meeting with Pope John Paul II.
1983 President Ronald Reagan honors former CIA Director Richard Helms with the National Security Medal. Regarding his 1977 felony conviction for lying to Congress, Helms remarks: "I have no feelings about remorse or exoneration."
7 Mar 1983 President Ronald Reagan tells a group of ultraconservatives that "this country is compelled by scripture and the Lord Jesus Christ to oppose Russia with all military and political means."
21 Sep 1983 Ronald Reagan's Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, describes his staff's racial diversity to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce: "We have every mixture you can have. I have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple. And we have talent." Watt is forced to resign 18 days later over these comments.
31 Jan 1984 President Ronald Reagan tells Good Morning America: "What we have found in this country, and maybe we're more aware of it now, is one problem that we've had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice."
6 Mar 1984 Former President Jimmy Carter observes: "President Reagan doesn't always check the facts before he makes statements, and the press accepts this as kind of amusing."
30 Apr 1984 When a student at Shanghai's University of Fudan asks which life experiences best prepared him for being President of the United States, Ronald Reagan replies: "You'd be surprised how much being a good actor pays off."
24 Jul 1984 Ronald Reagan's doctor reveals that the President has a small polyp in his large intestine.
11 Aug 1984 Not realizing that his weekly radio address is already on the air, President Ronald Reagan quips into his live microphone: "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."
15 Oct 1984 During a campaign stop at a McDonald's restaurant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, President Ronald Reagan asks an aide "What am I supposed to order?"
6 Mar 1985 During a White House briefing on the MX missile, President Ronald Reagan opines: "Nuclear war would be the greatest tragedy, I think, ever experienced by mankind, in the history of mankind."
8 Mar 1985 Another benign polyp is discovered in Ronald Reagan's colon.
18 Apr 1985 "I think that there's nothing wrong with visiting that cemetery , where those young men are victims of Nazism also, even though they were fighting in the German uniform, drafted into service to carry out the hateful wishes of the Nazis. They were victims, just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps."
19 Apr 1985 "I know all the bad things that happened in that war. I was in uniform four years myself."
5 May 1985 After giving a speech at the Bergen-Belsen death camp, President Ronald Reagan accompanies German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to the Kolmesh�he military cemetery in Bitburg, Germany. There Reagan lays a wreath in memory of the German war dead. In addition to roughly 2,000 German soldiers of both World Wars, 49 members of the Waffen SS are also buried there.
23 May 1985 President Ronald Reagan personally honors an unlikely duo with the Presidential Medal of Freedom: Mother Teresa and Frank Sinatra.
18 Jun 1985 President Ronald Reagan: "Americans will never make concessions to terrorists -- to do so would only invite more terrorism -- once we head down that path there would be no end to it, no end to the suffering of innocent people, no end to the bloody ransom all civilized people must pay."
12 Jul 1985 Ronald Reagan undergoes surgery to have a benign polyp removed from his colon. During that procedure, surgeons discover another one, which is also removed. It later turns out to have been cancerous.
4 Dec 1985 Anticipating arms control discussions with his Soviet counterpart, President Reagan draws on an extraterrestrial analogy: "ow easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held if suddenly there was a threat to this world from some other species from another planet outside in the universe. We'd forget all the little local differences that we have between our countries ..."
17 Jan 1986 Three polyps are discovered in Ronald Reagan's colon.
21 Mar 1986 In an interview with the New York Times, President Ronald Reagan repeats his long-debunked claim: "In England, if a criminal carried a gun, even though he didn't use it, he was tried for first-degree murder and hung if he was found guilty."
20 Jun 1986 Surgeons remove two polyps from Ronald Reagan's large intestine.
4 Jan 1987 Ronald Reagan is admitted to the hospital for prostate surgery and the removal of four polyps in his colon.
17 Feb 1987 Soviet premiere Mikhail Gorbachev reveals Reagan's preoccupation with space aliens: "At our meeting in Geneva, the U.S. President said that if the earth faced an invasion by extraterrestials, the United States and the Soviet Union would join forces to repel such an invasion. I shall not dispute the hypothesis, though I think it's early yet to worry about such an intrusion..."
May 1987 According to his authorized biography (published in 2000), Reagan wonders aloud about the AIDS pandemic: "Maybe the Lord brought down this plague... illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments."
26 Jun 1987 Two polyps are excised from Ronald Reagan's colon.
15 Sep 1987 During a luncheon with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnatze in the White House, President Reagan once again wondered what would happen if the Earth were under attack from an external threat: "Don't you think the United States and the Soviet Union would be together?"
4 May 1988 During a question-and-answer session in Chicago, President Reagan revisits his 'invaders from space' notion: "I've often wondered, what if all of us in the world discovered that we were threatened by an outer -- a power from outer space, from another planet. Wouldn't we all of a sudden find that we didn't have any differences between us at all, we were all human beings, citizens of the world, and wouldn't we come together to fight that particular threat?"
9 Dec 1988 Ronald Reagan undergoes surgery to extract a polyp from his large intestine. It is the 15th polyp removed from the President during his tenure.
Ronald Reagan bio
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