political events
1981
- Assassination Attempt on U.S. President Reagan
- First Woman Appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court
- Millions Watch Royal Wedding on T.V.
- New Plague Identified as AIDS
- Personal Computers (PC) Introduced by IBM
- E.T. Movie Released
- Falkland Islands Invaded by Argentina
- King Henry VIII's Ship the Mary Rose Raised After 437 Years
- Michael Jackson Releases Thriller
- Reverend Sun Myung Moon Marries 2,075 Couples at Madison Square Garden
- Vietnam War Memorial Opened in Washington, DC
- Cabbage Patch Kids Are Popular
- Reagan Announces Defense Plan Called Star Wars
- Sally Ride Becomes the First American Woman in Space
- Soviets Shoot Down a Korean Airliner
- U.S. Embassy in Beirut Bombed
- Huge Poison Gas Leak in Bhopal, India
- Indira Gandhi, India's Prime Minister, Killed by Two Bodyguards
- PG-13 Movie Rating Created
- AdsBusiness Phonesclaimrating.com
- Discover New Business Phones Compare & Shop Online Today
- Back to the Future Opens
- Famine in Ethiopia
- First Internet Domain Name Is Registered
- Gorilla Specialist Dian Fossey Is Murdered
- Hole in the Ozone Layer Discovered
- Mikhail Gorbachev Calls for Glasnost and Perestroika
- New Coke Hits the Market
- Rock Hudson Dies of AIDS
- Serial Killer Known as "The Night Stalker" Starts Killing Spree
- Sinking of Greenpeace Ship Rainbow Warrior
- Terrorists Hijack TWA Flight 847
- U.S. Singers Record Charity Single "We Are the World"
- Wreck of the Titanic Found
- Space Shuttle Challenger Explodes
- Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster
- Ferdinand Marcos Flees the Philippines
- First PC Virus, Brain, Goes Viral
- Halley's Comet Passes By
- Iran-Contra Scandal Unfolds
- The Oprah Winfrey Show Gets National Syndication
- U.S. Bombs Libya
- U.S.S.R. Launches Mir Space Station
- DNA First Used to Convict Criminals
- Klaus Barbie, the Nazi Butcher of Lyons, Sentenced to Life in Prison
- New York Stock Exchange Suffers Huge Drop on "Black Monday"
- West German Pilot Lands Unchallenged in Russia's Red Square
- Pan Am Flight 103 Is Bombed Over Lockerbie
- U.S. Shoots Down Iranian Airliner
- Berlin Wall Falls
- Exxon Valdez Spills Millions of Gallons of Oil on Coastline
- Romanian Leader Nicolae Ceausescu and His Wife Are Executed
- Students Massacred in China's Tiananmen Square
- World Wide Web Invented