1984 - What happened in 1984 ?

January 1984

Sunday 01:

The Sultanate of Brunei becomes independent of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Thursday 05:

Richard Stallman starts developing GNU.

Monday 09:

Clara Peller is featured in the "Where's the Beef?" commercial campaign for Wendy's Restaurants for the first time.

Monday 23:

Hulk Hogan wins the World Wrestling Federation Championship from the Iron Sheik, in New York's Madison Square Garden. Hulkamania is born.

Tuesday 24:

The first Apple Macintosh goes on sale.

February 1984

Friday 03:

Space Shuttle Challenger is launched on the tenth space shuttle mission.

Tuesday 07:

Astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart make the first untethered space walk.

Wednesday 08:

1984 Winter Olympics open in Sarajevo.

Monday 13:

Konstantin Chernenko succeeds the late Yuri Andropov as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Wednesday 29:

Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau announces he will retire as soon as the Liberals can elect another leader.

March 1984

Wednesday 07:

The United States attacks San Juan del Sur in Nicaragua.

Wednesday 14:

Gerry Adams, head of Sinn Féin, is seriously wounded in an assassination attempt in central Belfast.

Friday 16:

William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut, Lebanon, is kidnapped by Islamic fundamentalists and later dies in captivity.

Thursday 22:

Teachers at the McMartin preschool in Manhattan Beach, California are charged with Satanic ritual abuse of the children in the school. The charges are later dropped as completely unfounded.

Thursday 29:

The Baltimore Colts of the NFL move to Indianapolis in the middle of the night.

April 1984

Wednesday 04:

President Ronald Reagan calls for an international ban on chemical weapons.

Friday 06:

Members of Cameroon's Republican Guard from country's northern region attack various government buildings in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the government headed by Paul Biya.

Friday 13:

Pete Rose becomes the first player in National League history to collect 4,000 hits

Tuesday 17:

Police Constable Yvonne Fletcher is killed by automatic gunfire coming from the Libyan People's Bureau in central London. She had been policing a small demonstration outside the embassy. Ten other people are wounded. The events lead to an 11-day siege of the building.

Tuesday 24:

Apple Computer unveils its Apple IIc portable computer.

May 1984

Tuesday 08:

Cpl. Denis Lortie enters the Quebec National Assembly and opens fire, killing three and wounding 13. René Jalbert, sergeant-at-arms of the assembly, succeeds in calming him, for which he will later receive the Cross of Valour.

Friday 11:

A transit of Earth from Mars takes place; no one is there to observe it.

Thursday 17:

Prince Charles calls a proposed addition to the National Gallery, London, a "monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend," sparking controversies on the proper role of the Royal Family and the course of modern architecture.

June 1984

Tuesday 05:

Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi orders an attack on the Golden Temple, the holiest site of the Sikh relgion.

Friday 08:

Homosexuality is decriminalised in the state of New South Wales, Australia.

Monday 18:

Major clash between about 5,000 Police and a similar number of Miners at Orgreave,South Yorkshire during the 1984-1985 Miners Strike. Incident later known as the Battle of Orgreave

Friday 22:

William Schnoebelen and his wife Sharon are "saved" by a tract from Chick Publications. There is some debate over the reliability of this, however.

Wednesday 27:

Pierre Elliott Trudeau wins Albert Einstein Peace Prize.

July 1984

Wednesday 04:

NASCAR driver Richard Petty wins his 200th and final career victory at the Firecracker 400 race.

Tuesday 17:

Laurent Fabius becomes Prime Minister of France

Saturday 21:

In Jackson, Michigan, a factory robot crushes a worker against a safety bar in apparently the first robot-related death in the United States.

Monday 23:

Vanessa Williams becomes the first Miss America to resign when she surrenders her crown after nude photos of her appeared in "Penthouse" magazine.

Wednesday 25:

Salyut 7 Cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the first woman to perform a space walk.

August 1984

Saturday 04:

The African republic Upper Volta changes its name to Burkina Faso.

Monday 06:

Pop star Prince releases Purple Rain, the album which would launch him to superstardom.

Thursday 16:

Carmaker John De Lorean is acquitted of all eight counts of possessing and distributing cocaine.

Thursday 30:

STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery takes off on its maiden voyage.

September 1984

Wednesday 05:

1984 - Western Australia becomes the last Australian state to abolish capital punishment.

Friday 14:

Joe Kittinger becomes the first person to fly a hot air balloon solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

Monday 17:

Baseball: Reggie Jackson becomes the 13th member of the 500 home run club with a home run at Anaheim Stadium in Anaheim, California.

Thursday 20:

A suicide bomber in a car attacks the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing twelve people

Wednesday 26:

United Kingdom agrees handover of Hong Kong.

October 1984

Friday 05:

Marc Garneau becomes the first Canadian in space, aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger.

Tuesday 16:

Desmond Tutu is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

Wednesday 17:

The New York Times runs an article titled "CIA primer tells nicaraguan rebels how to kill", which describes a secret "Psychological Operations in Guerilla Warfare" manual that the CIA supplied to the Contras and that gives instructions on how to kidnap and assassinate civil officials such as judges and policemen.

Friday 26:

1984 - The Terminator is released in theaters nationwide.

Wednesday 31:

Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated by two Sikh security guards (riots soon broke out in New Delhi and nearly 2,000 innocent Sikhs were killed).

November 1984

Friday 02:

Capital punishment: Velma Barfield becomes the first woman executed in the United States since 1962.

Tuesday 06:

Ronald Reagan defeats Walter Mondale to be re-elected in one of the largest electoral landslide in United States election history.

Monday 19:

A series of explosions at the PEMEX petroleum storage facility at San Juan Ixhuatepec in Mexico City ignites a major fire and kills about 500 people.

Friday 23:

Boston College Quarterback Doug Flutie throws a game-winning 48-yard Hail Mary pass to Gerard Phelan to defeat the University of Miami Hurricanes 45-41. It is one of the most famous plays in American college football history.

Sunday 25:

A KCR train goes off track between Sheung Shui and Fanling.

December 1984

Wednesday 19:

The United Kingdom and People's Republic of China sign the Sino-British Joint Declaration, which handed Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.

Thursday 20:

The Summit tunnel fire is the largest underground fire in history, as a freight train carrying over 1 million litres of petrol derails near the town of Todmorden in the Pennines

Saturday 22:

Subway vigilante Bernhard Hugo Goetz shoots four African-American youths on an express train in The Bronx borough of New York City.

Wednesday 26:

Princess Astrid of Belgium marries Archduke Lorenz of Austria-Este

Friday 28:

The final telecast of soap opera The Edge of Night (which started from 1956 to 1975 on CBS) on ABC due to TV stations dropping the show in favor of syndicated programming, losing sponsorship, and low ratings.