1981: Encyclopedia II - 1981 - Events

1981 - Events

1981 - January-February

• January - Sarawak chamber found
• January 1 - Greece enters the EEC
• January 1 - Palau becomes self-governing
• January 4 - Sheffield police arrests Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper
• January 13 - Donna Griffiths, a schoolgirl in Pershore, Worcestershire, UK, begins a uncontrollable series of sneezes that end September 16, 1983 - after 978 days
• January 16 - Protestant gunmen shoot and wound Bernadette Devlin McAliskey and her husband
• January 19 - United States and Iranian officials sign an agreement to release 52 American hostages after 14 months of captivity
• January 20 - President-elect Ronald Reagan succeeds Jimmy Carter as President of the United States of America. Minutes after Reagan becomes president, Iran releases 52 American hostages that had been held captive for 444 days - Iran hostage crisis ends.
• February 4 - Gro Harlem Brundtland becomes the Prime Minister of Norway
• February 9 - Polish Prime Minister Józef Pinkowski resigns and is replaced by General Wojciech Jaruzelski
• February 10 - A fire at the Las Vegas Hilton hotel-casino kills eight and injures 198
• February 14 - Australia withdraws recognition of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia
• February 23 - Antonio Tejero, with members of the Guardia Civil enters the Spanish Congress of Deputies, and stops the session, where Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo was going to be named president of the government. The coup d'état would fail thanks to King Juan Carlos.

1981 - March-April

• March 1 - Bobby Sands, an IRA member, begins hunger strike for political status in Long Kesh prison - he dies May 5, the first of ten men.
• March 6 - After 19 years hosting the CBS Evening News Walter Cronkite signs off for the last time.
• March 7 - Colombian guerillas execute US bible translator Chester Allen Bitterman for being a CIA agent
• March 11 - Chilean president Augusto Pinochet sworn in for an eight-year term as president.
• March 19 - Three workers are killed and five injured during a test of the Space Shuttle Columbia.
• March 30 - President Ronald Reagan is shot in the chest outside a Washington, D.C., hotel by John Hinckley, Jr., whose family had connections with the vice president. Two police officers and James Brady are also wounded.
• April 11 - Riot in Brixton, South London - rioters throw petrol bombs, attack police and loot shops.
• April 12 - The first launch of a Space Shuttle: Columbia launches on the STS-1 mission.
• April 15 - The Australian Foreign Minister Andrew Peacock resigns from cabinet accusing the Australian Prime Minister Fraser of gross disloyalty.
• April 18 - A Minor League baseball game between the Rochester Red Wings and the Pawtucket Red Sox at McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket, Rhode Island becomes the longest professional baseball game in history: 8 hours and 25 minutes/33 innings (the 33rd inning was not played until June 23rd).

1981 - May

• May - Daniel K. Ludwig abandons the Jari project in the Amazon Basin
• May 6 - A jury of architects and sculptors unanimously selects Maya Ying Lin's design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial from 1,421 other entries.
• May 10 - In the second round of the presidential elections in France (French presidential election, 1981), François Mitterrand beats Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.
• May 13 - Pope John Paul II is shot at and nearly killed by Mehmet Ali Ağca, a Turkish gunman, as he entered St. Peter's Square in Rome to address a general audience. (Two days after Christmas in 1983, Pope John Paul went to the prison to meet and forgive his would-be assassin)
• May 21 - In France, socialist François Mitterrand becomes president of the Republic.
• May 22 - Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, imprisoned for life for 13 counts of murder
• May 24 - Indianapolis 500-Mile Race: Bobby Unser wins for a third time for both he as a driver and Roger Penske as a car owner, but race sanctioning-body USAC temporarily strips him of victory over accusation of illegally passing other cars under a caution period (see racing flags). After team appeal, Unser's win is reinstated on October 8.
• May 25 - In Riyadh, the Gulf Cooperation Council is created between Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
• May 26 - The Italian government resigns over its links to the fascist Masonic cell P-2
• May 30 - Bangladesh President Ziaur Rahman assassinated in Chittagong.

1981 - June-July

• June 5 - The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that five homosexual men in Los Angeles, California have a rare form of pneumonia seen only in patients with weakened immune systems (these were the first recognized cases of AIDS).
• June 6 - Seven coaches of an overcrowded passenger train fall off the tracks into the River Kosi, in Bihar, India - about 800 dead
• June 7 - Israeli Air Force destroys Iraq's Osiraq nuclear reactor
• June 13 - At the Trooping the Colour ceremony in London, a teenager Marcus Sargeant fires six blank shots at Queen Elizabeth II.
• June 22 - Hamas attacks a travel agency in Greece - two dead
• June 22 - Iranian president Abolhassan Banisadr deposed
• June 29 - Morris Edwin Robert armed with a machine gun holds hostages in the FBI section in Atlanta Federal Building. After three hours the hostages are rescued - Robert is shot
• July 17 - Hyatt Regency walkway collapse: Two skywalks filled with people at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri collapse into a crowded atrium lobby killing 114
• July 17 - Israeli bombers destroy the PLO HQ in Beirut
• July 27 - Wheel of Fortune premiers in Australia on the Seven Network.
• July 29 - Lady Diana Spencer marries Charles, Prince of Wales.

1981 - August-October

• August 1 - MTV (Music Television) is launched.
• August 5 - Ronald Reagan fires 11,359 striking air-traffic controllers who ignored his order for them to return to work.
• August 7 - The Washington Star ceases all operations after 128 years of publication.
• August 11 - The original Model 5150 IBM PC with a 4.77 Mhz Intel 8088 processor was released in the United States at a base price of $1,565.
• August 19 - Gulf of Sidra incident (1981). Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi sends two Sukhoi Su-22 fighter jets to intercept two US fighters over the Gulf of Sidra. The American jets destroyed the Libyan fighters.
• August 19 - US President Ronald Reagan appoints the first female US Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O'Connor.
• August 28 - South African troops invade Angola.
• August 31 - A bomb explodes at the US Army base in Ramstein, West Germany injuring 20 people.
• September 4 - An explosion at a mine in Zalizin, Czechoslovakia - 65 dead.
• September 10 - Picasso's painting "Guernica" is moved from New York to Madrid.
• September 15 - The John Bull becomes the oldest operable steam locomotive in the world, at 150 years old, when it operates under its own power outside Washington, DC.
• September 18 - France abolishes capital punishment.
• October 6 - Egyptian president Anwar Sadat is assassinated during a parade by army members who were part of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization, who opposed his negotiations with Israel.
• October 10 - The Ministry for Education of Japan issues the jōyō kanji.
• October 14 - Vice President Hosni Mubarak is elected President of Egypt one week after Anwar Sadat was assassinated.
• October 21 - Andreas Papandreou becomes Prime Minister of Greece.

1981 - November-December

• November 1 - Antigua and Barbuda gain independence from the United Kingdom
• November 13 - The first Friday the 13th event held by motorcyclists in Port Dover, Ontario, Canada
• November 23 - Iran-Contra scandal: Ronald Reagan signs the top secret National Security Decision Directive 17 (NSDD-17), giving the Central Intelligence Agency the authority to recruit and support Contra rebels in Nicaragua
• November 25-November 26 - Group of mercenaries led by Mike Hoare take over Mahe airport in the Seychelles in a coup attempt. Most of the mercenaries escape by a commandeered Air India passenger jet, six are later arrested
• November 30 - Cold War: In Geneva, representatives from the United States and the Soviet Union begin to negotiate intermediate-range nuclear weapon reductions in Europe (the meetings ended inconclusively on Thursday, December 17)
• December 1 - A Yugoslavian DC-9 crashes into a mountain while approaching Ajaccio Airport in Corsica killing 178
• December 4 - South Africa grants "homeland" Ciskei independence (not recognized outside South Africa)
• December 8 - No. 21 Mine explosion in Whitwell, Tennessee kills 13
• December 11 - El Mozote massacre - in El Salvador, army units kill 900 civilians
• December 13 - Wojciech Jaruzelski declares the state of martial law in Poland to prevent dismantling of the communist system by Solidarity
• December 15 - A car bomb destroys the Iraqi Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 61 people. This is the first modern suicide bombing. Syrian intelligence is blamed.
• December 20 - The Penlee lifeboat disaster off the coast of South-West Cornwall
• December 28 - The first American test-tube baby, Elizabeth Jordan Carr, is born (Norfolk, Virginia)

1981 - unknown dates

• Millennium Renactment of the translation of Saint Edward the Martyr's relics from Wareham to Shaftesbury
• Mauritania abolishes the institution of slavery.
• James Tobin wins the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.
• Mike Cooley, Bill Mollison and Patrick van Rensburg / Education with Production win the Right Livelihood Award
• The counter-culture wire service LNS ceases operations.
• Public funding of election Campaigns introduced in New South Wales, Australia
• The State Council of the People's Republic of China listed the four cities (Beijing, Hangzhou, Suzhou and Guilin) as where the protection of historical and cultural heritage as well as natural scenery should be treated as a prior project.
• Cuba suffers a major outbreak of Dengue hemorrhagic fever, with 344 203 cases. [1]
• Computer and Video Games (magazine) begins publication.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Events", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki