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...a retrospective of the most memorable events year-by-year | 1956: ATWT debuts; Jim Lowell's affair with Edith Hughes destroys his marriage. 1957: Nancy Hughes begins meddling when she disapproves of son Donald's fiancee, Janice. 1958: Ellen Lowell gives birth to daytime's first illegitimate child, who she names Jimmy. 1959: Wildly popular couple Jeff and Penny remarry on Christmas Eve. 1960: Lisa Miller arrives and begins wreaking havoc as one of daytime's first love-to-hate vixens. 1961: Ellen realizes her son, Jimmy, has been adopted by David Stewart and his wife and renamed Dan. 1962: Jeff dies, causing unprecedented fan outrage. 1963: David and Ellen become engaged.
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| | 1964: Bob gets over Lisa by dating nurse Sylvia, who is battling lupus. 1965: ATWT spins off into primetime with OUR PRIVATE WORLD, which follows Lisa to Chicago. 1966: Evil Dr. Michael Shea gets a job at Oakdale Memorial and pegs Bob and David as his enemies. 1967: Lisa returns from Chicago and takes up with Dr. Shea. 1968: Penny leaves town. 1969: Infamous villain John Dixon debuts. 1970: Tom goes on trial for Michael Shea's murder, thinking he is protecting his mother, Lisa. 1971: Susan tries desperately to hang on to her husband, Dan Stewart, who is in love with Liz Talbot.
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| | 1972: Kim comes to town and falls in love with her sister, Jennifer's husband, Bob. 1973: John is paralyzed after chasing Kim out of their apartment in rage. 1974: While married to John, Kim falls for Dan, whose ex-wife, Susan, makes his life a living hell. 1975: Lisa marries Grant Colman. 1976: Grandpa Hughes dies. 1977: Dan and Kim finally marry. 1978: Annie marries Beau, even though her sister, Dee, loves him, too. 1979: Lisa gets lost in a storm and ends up in a gothic romance with an innkeeper.
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| | 1980: James Stenbeck arrives just in time to stop Barbara from marrying Tom. 1981: Margo learns that John is her father during his trial for raping his wife, Dee. 1982: Lisa marries Whit McColl. 1983: Jeff and Annie Stewart Ward become the parents of quadruplets. 1984: Betsy Stewart marries Steve Andropoulos. 1985: Lucinda Walsh hires Holden Snyder as her stableboy. 1986: Kim is terrorized by the psychotic Douglas Cummings. 1987: Lily learns that Josh and Iva are her biological parents.
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| | 1988: Hank Eliot is the first openly gay male character to be a regular on a soap. 1989: Margo admits to her partner, Hal, that he is baby Adam's father, to the dismay of Tom and Barbara. 1990: John and Kim learn that their son, Andy, is an alcoholic. 1991: Holden and Lily marry for the first time. 1992: Margo is raped. 1993: Nancy's second husband, Dan McCloskey, develops Alzheimer's disease. 1994: Emily donates an egg so that mother Susan and stepfather Larry McDermott can conceive. 1995: Mike and Rosanna fall in love, but he sleeps with her sister, Carly.
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| | 1996: A vengeful John woos Lisa and then dumps her at their engagement party. 1997: Holden and Lily reunite, but her husband, Damian, returns from the dead. 1998: Carly loves Jack, but weds Hal, then John to have a baby and claim a $50 million trust fund. 1999: Emily gives birth to Tom's son, Daniel, a sixth-generation descendent of Oakdale's two founding families. 2000: Lily meets her twin sister, Rose, in Atlantic City. 2001: Barbara is severely burned in a boathouse explosion. 2002: Carly sleeps with Mike the night before her wedding to Jack. 2003: Oakdale Memorial is terrorized by a serial killer--Rick Decker, Susan's husband. |  | |
