Year 1981 (MCMLXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday (link displays the 1981 Gregorian calendar).

[edit] Events of 1981

[edit] January

• January - The subterranean Sarawak chamber is discovered in Borneo.
• January 1 - Greece enters the European Community, which later becomes the European Union.

• January 1 - Palau becomes self-governing.
• January 4 - Sheffield police arrest Peter Sutcliffe, a 34-year-old lorry driver, on suspicion of being the Yorkshire Ripper who has killed 13 women and attacked 7 others over the last 6 years.
• January 5 - Margaret Thatcher carries out a Cabinet reshuffle, sacking Norman St. John-Stevas.
• January 6 - The Brazilian double decker boat Novo Amapo capsizes in the Amazon River, Belem de Cajari, Macapa, Brazil; 230 are killed.
• January 16 - Protestant gunmen shoot and wound Bernadette Devlin McAliskey and her husband.
• January 17 - Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos lifts martial law.
• January 19 - United States and Iranian officials sign an agreement to release 52 American hostages after 14 months of captivity.
• January 20 - Ronald Reagan succeeds Jimmy Carter, as the 40th President of the United States. Minutes later, Iran releases the 52 Americans held for 444 days, ending the Iran hostage crisis.
• January 21 - The first De Lorean DMC-12 automobile, a stainless steel sports car with gull-wing doors, rolls off the production line in Dunmurry, Northern Ireland.
• January 22 - Fowzi Nejad, sole survivor of the terrorists from the Iranian Embassy siege in London, pleads guilty to manslaughter of 2 hostages and gets jailed for life.
• January 24 - The British Labour Party special conference at Wembley decides that leadership elections should be by electoral college.
• January 25 - Four former Labour cabinet ministers (Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, William Rodgers and David Owen) issue the Limehouse Declaration, leading to the formation of the Social Democratic Party.
• January 25 - Chiang Ching ('Madame Mao') is sentenced to death in the People's Republic of China.
• January 25 - Super Bowl XV: The Oakland Raiders defeat the Philadelphia Eagles 27-10 at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana.
• January 27 - The Indonesian passenger ship Tamponas 2 catches fire and capsizes in the Java Sea, killing 580.

[edit] February

February 24: A powerful earthquake hits Athens.

• February 4 - Gro Harlem Brundtland becomes Prime Minister of Norway.
• February 8 - 19 fans of Olympiacos FC and 2 fans of AEK Athens die, and 54 are injured, after a stampede at the Karaiskaki Stadium in Pireus, possibly because Gate 7 does not open immediately after the end of the game.
• 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 8 and injures 198.
• February 13 - Rupert Murdoch buys The Times and The Sunday Times for £12 million.
• February 14 - Stardust fire: A fire at the Stardust nightclub in Artane, Dublin, Ireland in the early hours kills 48 and injures 214.
• 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 is about to be named president of the government. The coup d'état fails thanks to King Juan Carlos.
• February 24 - A powerful, magnitude 6.7 earthquake hits Athens, killing 16 people, injuring thousands and destroying several buildings, mostly in Corinth and the nearby towns of Loutraki, Kiato and Xylokastro.

[edit] March

• March 1 - Bobby Sands, a Provisional Irish Republican Army member, begins a hunger strike for political status in Long Kesh prison (he dies May 5, the first of 10 men).
• March 6 - After 19 years hosting the CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite signs off for the last time.
• March 10 - Sir Geoffrey Howe announces the British budget, which raises taxes in the middle of a recession.
• March 11 - Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet is sworn in as President of Chile for another 8-year term.
• March 17 - In Italy the Propaganda Due Masonic Lodge is discovered.
• March 19 - Three workers are killed and 5 injured during a test of the Space Shuttle Columbia.

• March 26 - The British Social Democratic Party is launched at the Connaught Rooms in London.
• March 29 - The first London Marathon starts with 7,500 runners.
• March 30 - U.S. President Ronald Reagan is shot in the chest outside a Washington, D.C. hotel by John Hinckley, Jr.. Two police officers and Press Secretary James Brady are also wounded.
• March 31 - The 53rd Academy Awards, hosted by Johnny Carson, are held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. Robert Redford's directorial debut in Ordinary People wins Best Picture and Best Director.

[edit] April

April 12: First STS launch: Columbia.

• April 1 - Daylight saving time is introduced in the USSR.
• April 2 - Tony Benn announces that he will challenge Denis Healey for the Deputy Leadership of the British Labour Party.
• April 4 - The UK pop group Bucks Fizz wins the Eurovision Song Contest 1981 with the song, Making Your Mind Up.
• April 10 - IRA hunger-striker Bobby Sands wins the Fermanagh and South Tyrone by-election.
• April 11 - Brixton riot (1981): Rioters in South London throw petrol bombs, attack police and loot shops.
• April 12 - The Space Shuttle program: Space Shuttle Columbia (John Young, Robert Crippen) launches on the STS-1 mission, returning to Earth on April 14.
• April 15 - The Australian Foreign Minister Andrew Peacock resigns from the cabinet, accusing 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 is not played until June 23).
• April 18 - The rock band Yes splits up (regrouping in 1983).
• April 24 - French presidential election: A first-round runoff results between Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and François Mitterrand.

[edit] May

• May - Daniel K. Ludwig abandons the Jari project in the Amazon Basin.
• May 1 - The new Chilean pension system, based on private pension funds, begins.
• May 5 - Bobby Sands, Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteer and elected member of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, dies aged 27 while on hunger strike in HM Prison Maze.
• May 6 - A jury of architects and sculptors unanimously selects Maya Lin's design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial from 1,421 other entries.
• May 7 - The Greater London Council election results in a small Labour majority. On May 8, Ken Livingstone becomes Leader of the Council.
• May 10 - In the second round of the presidential elections in France, François Mitterrand beats Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.
• May 10 - In Italy a popular referendum rejects the abrogation of the law allowing abortion.
• May 13 - Pope John Paul II is shot and nearly killed by Mehmet Ali Ağca, a Turkish gunman, as he enters St. Peter's Square in Rome to address a general audience.
• May 15 - Donna Payant is murdered by serial killer Lemuel Smith, the first time a female prison officer has been killed on-duty in the United States.
• May 21 - In France, Socialist François Mitterrand becomes President.
• May 22 - Peter Sutcliffe is found guilty of being the Yorkshire Ripper. He is sentenced to life imprisonment on 13 counts of murder and 7 of attempted murder.
• 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 Propaganda Due.
• May 30 - Bangladesh President Ziaur Rahman is assassinated in Chittagong.

[edit] June

• June 5 - The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that 5 homosexual men in Los Angeles, California have a rare form of pneumonia seen only in patients with weakened immune systems (the first recognized cases of AIDS).
• June 6 - Bihar train disaster: Seven coaches of an overcrowded passenger train fall off the tracks into the River Kosi in Bihar, India; about 800 die.
• June 7 - The Israeli Air Force destroys Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor.
• June 12 - Major League Baseball goes on strike, forcing the cancellation of 38 percent of the schedule.
• June 13 - At the Trooping the Colour ceremony in London, Marcus Sarjeant fires 6 blank shots at Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.
• June 21 - Wayne Williams, a 23-year-old African American, is arrested and charged with the murders of 2 other African Americans. He is later accused of 28 others, in the Atlanta child murders.
• June 22 - Iranian president Abolhassan Banisadr is deposed.
• June 26 - Couples For Christ, a Christian charismatic organization, is established in the Philippines.
• June 29 - Morris Edwin Robert, armed with a machine gun, holds hostages in the FBI section at the Atlanta, Georgia Federal Building. After 3 hours the hostages are rescued and Robert is shot (dead?).

[edit] July

• July 2 - The Wonderland Gang is brutally murdered in a massacre involving Eddie Nash.
• July 3 - The Toxteth riots in Liverpool, UK start after a mob saves a youth from being arrested. Shortly afterward, the Chapeltown riots in Leeds start after increased racial tension.
• July 7 - President Ronald Reagan nominates the first woman, Sandra Day O'Connor, to the Supreme Court of the United States.
• July 8 - California Governor Jerry Brown, faced with a Mediterranean fruit fly infestation, chooses to delay the aerial spraying of malathion, in favor of continuing ground-based eradication efforts.
• July 8 - Irish Republican Joe McDonnell dies at the Long Kesh Internment Camp after a 61-day hunger strike.
• July 10 - Mahathir bin Mohamad becomes the 4th Prime Minister of Malaysia.
• 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 aircraft bomb Beirut, destroying multi-story apartment blocks containing the offices of PLO associated groups, killing approximately 300 civilians and resulting in worldwide condemnation and a U.S. embargo on the export of aircraft to Israel.^[1]
• July 17 - In 1981 Gral. Luis Gracia Meza leads a bloody coup d'état in Bolivia against the democratic government of Lidia Gayler.
• July 19 - The 1981 Springbok Tour commences in New Zealand, amid controversy over the support of apartheid.
• July 21 - Tohui The Panda is born in Chapultepec Zoo in Mexico, DF. It is the first Panda to ever be born and survive in captivity outside of China.
• July 27 - Six-year-old Adam Walsh is kidnapped from a Sears store in Hollywood, Florida.
• July 29 - Lady Diana Spencer marries Charles, Prince of Wales.

[edit] August

• August 1 - MTV (Music Television) is launched on cable television in the United States.
• August 3 - The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) goes on strike.
• 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 9 - Major League Baseball resumes from the strike with the All-Star Game in Cleveland's Municipal Stadium.
• August 10 - Exactly two weeks after his disappearance, the severed head of 6-year-old Hollywood, Florida native Adam Walsh is found in a canal in Vero Beach; to this day the rest of the boy's body has never been recovered.
• August 12 - The original Model 5150 IBM PC (with a 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 processor) is released in the United States at a base price of $1,565.
• August 19 - Gulf of Sidra incident (1981): Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi sends 2 Sukhoi Su-22 fighter jets to intercept 2 U.S. fighters over the Gulf of Sidra. The American jets destroy the Libyan fighters.
• August 19 - U.S. President Ronald Reagan appoints the first female U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O'Connor.
• August 24 - Mark David Chapman is sentenced to 20 years to life imprisonment after being convicted of murdering John Lennon in Manhattan 8 months earlier.
• August 28 - South African troops invade Angola.
• August 31 - A bomb explodes at the U.S. Air Force base in Ramstein, West Germany, injuring 20 people.

[edit] September

• September 4 - An explosion at a mine in Záluží, Czechoslovakia, kills 65 people.
• September 10 - Picasso's painting "Guernica" is moved from New York to Madrid.
• September 11 - A small plane crashes into the Swing Auditorium in San Bernardino, California, damaging the venue beyond repair.
• September 14 - Margaret Thatcher appoints Cecil Parkinson as Chairman of the Conservative Party.
• 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 16 - In Britain, the Liberal Party Assembly votes for an electoral pact with the new Social Democratic Party.
• September 18 - France abolishes capital punishment.
• September 19 - The second Wranslide occurs in New South Wales, with the Wran government re-elected for a third term with an increased majority, and reducing the Liberal Party of Australia to just 14 members in the Legislative Assembly.
• September 19 - Simon and Garfunkel perform The Concert in Central Park, a free concert in New York in front of approximately half a million people.
• September 20 - The Brazilian river boat Sobral Santos capsizes in the Amazon River, Óbidos, Brazil, killing at least 300.
• September 21 - Belize becomes independent.
• September 25 - Sandra Day O'Connor takes her seat as the first female justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
• September 25 - The Rolling Stones begin their Tattoo You tour at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia.
• September 26 - The Boeing 767 airliner makes its first flight.
• September 27 - TGV high speed rail service between Paris and Lyon, France begins.
• September 27 - Denis Healey retains the post of Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, beating Tony Benn by 50.426% to 49.574%.

[edit] October

• October 6 - Egyptian president Anwar Sadat is assassinated during a parade by army members who belong to the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization; they opposed his negotiations with Israel.
• October 10 - The Ministry for Education of Japan issues the jōyō kanji.
• October 10 - A Provisional IRA bomb at Chelsea Barracks in London kills a woman pensioner.
• October 13 - James Tobin wins the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.
• October 14 - Vice President Hosni Mubarak is elected President of Egypt 1 week after Anwar Sadat's assassination.
• October 15 - The heavy metal band Metallica forms.
• October 16 - Gas explosions at a coal mine at Hokutan, Yūbari, Hokkaidō, Japan, kill 93.
• October 21 - Andreas Papandreou becomes Prime Minister of Greece.
• October 22 - The founding congress of the Nepal Workers and Peasants Organization faction led by Hareram Sharma and D.P. Singh begins.
• October 22 - Liberal candidate Bill Pitt wins the Croydon North West byelection, the first election win by the Liberal-S.D.P. Alliance.
• October 26 - An IRA bomb in a Wimpy Bar in Oxford Street, London, kills a bomb disposal expert.
• October 27 - A Soviet submarine runs aground outside the Karlskrona,