Short answers, pulled from the story.
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th president of the United States, serving from 1981 to 1989. Before entering politics, he was a film actor and president of the Screen Actors Guild. He is primarily known for his conservative economic policies known as Reaganomics, his escalation of the Cold War arms race, and his negotiations with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that culminated in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
Reaganomics combined major federal income tax cuts, deregulation, and cuts to domestic spending. Unemployment peaked at 10.8 percent in December 1982 before falling to 5.3 percent by 1989, and inflation dropped from 12 percent in 1980 to under 5 percent by 1989. However, the national debt as a share of GDP rose from 33 percent in 1981 to 53 percent by 1989, and Reagan described the tripling of the national debt as his presidency's greatest disappointment. Economic inequality and the number of homeless individuals increased during the 1980s.
The Iran-Contra affair involved the secret, unauthorized sale of over 2,000 missiles to Iran, with proceeds illegally redirected to Contra rebels in Nicaragua. The transactions were exposed by the Lebanese newspaper Ash-Shiraa in November 1986. The Tower Commission found that Reagan had "created the conditions which made possible the crimes committed by others" and had "knowingly participated or acquiesced in covering up the scandal," though investigators found no conclusive proof he knew about the direct aid to the Contras.
Reagan's administration was widely criticized for a slow and inadequate response to the AIDS epidemic. He did not give his first public speech on AIDS until 1987, by which time 36,058 Americans had been diagnosed and 20,849 had died. Scholars Randy Shilts and Michael Bronski said AIDS research was chronically underfunded, and requests for more funding by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doctors were routinely denied. Between fiscal years 1984 and 1989, federal spending on AIDS totaled $5.6 billion, with the larger portion driven by congressional Democrats rather than by the administration's own proposals.
Reagan pursued a strategy combining military buildup, hard-line rhetoric, and eventual diplomacy with Mikhail Gorbachev. He and Gorbachev held four summits between 1985 and 1988 and signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in December 1987, committing both nations to eliminating short-range and medium-range missile stockpiles. Historian Melvyn P. Leffler described Reagan as "Gorbachev's minor, yet indispensable partner," while a broad scholarly consensus credits him with contributing to, though not solely causing, the Cold War's end and the Soviet dissolution in 1991.
Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in August 1994 and announced it through a handwritten letter in November of that year. His doctors said he first began exhibiting overt symptoms in late 1992 or 1993. By 1997, he recognized few people other than his wife Nancy. By the end of 2003, he had lost the ability to speak and was mostly confined to his bed. He died on the 5th of June 2004 of pneumonia complicated by Alzheimer's.