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Events from the year 1985 in the United Kingdom.
[edit] Events
- January 1 - The first British mobile phone call is made (by Ernie Wise to Vodafone). [1]
- January 10 - launch of Sinclair C5. [2][3]
- January 10 - Eight people are killed by a gas explosion in Putney. [4]
- January 17 - British Telecom announces it is going to phase out its famous red telephone boxes.
- January 23 - A debate in the House of Lords is televised for the first time.[2]
- January 29 - Margaret Thatcher became the first post-war Prime Minister to be refused an honorary degree by Oxford University. [5]
- 16 February - Clive Ponting resigns from the Ministry of Defence after his acquittal of breaching the Official Secrets Act concerning the leaking of documents relating to the sinking of the ARA General Belgrano during the Falklands War. [6]
- 19 February - First episode of the long-running soap opera EastEnders broadcast. [2]
- March 3 - a year long miners' strike comes to an end. [7]
- March 11 - Mohammed Al Fayed buys the London-based department store company, Harrods.
- May 11 - Fire engulfs a wooden stand in the Valley Parade stadium in Bradford, England during a football match, killing 56 people and injuring more than 200 others. [8]
- May 16 - Two South Wales miners are sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of taxi driver David Wilkie. Dean Hancock and Russell Shankland, both 21, dropped a concrete block on Mr Wilkie's taxi from a road overbridge in November last year.
- May 29 - In the Heysel Stadium disaster at the European Cup final in Brussels, 39 football fans die and hundreds are injured. Despite the tragedy, the match is played and Juventus beat Liverpool 1-0.
- May 31 - In response to the Heysel Disaster, the latest result of Hooliganism that has plagued English football for at least a decade, UEFA places an indefinite ban on all English clubs in European competitions. The current terms of the ban also state the Liverpool should serve an additional three years whenever all other English teams have the ban lifted. [9][10]
- June 1 - Battle of the Beanfield, end of Stonehenge Free Festivals. [11]
- June 25 - Police arrest 13 suspects in connection with the Brighton hotel bombing of 1984. [12]
- July 4 - 13-year-old Ruth Lawrence achieves a first in Mathematics at Oxford University, by becoming the youngest British person ever to earn a first-class degree and the youngest known graduate of Oxford University. [13]
- July 13 - Live Aid pop concerts in Philadelphia and London raise over £50 million for famine relief in Ethiopia. [14]
- August 13 - First ever heart-lung transplant carried out at the Harefield Hospital in Middlesex. [15]
- August 22 - 55 people killed in the Manchester air disaster at Manchester International Airport when a British Airtours Boeing 737 burst into flames after the pilot aborts the takeoff.
- September 1 - A joint American-French expedition locates the wreck of the RMS Titanic.
- September 28 - A riot in Brixton erupts after an accidental shooting of a woman by police.[16]
- October 1 - Riots in Toxteth and Peckham; Lord Scarman's report blamed the riots on economic deprivation and racial discrimination. [17]
- October 6 - PC Keith Blakelock is killed during the Broadwater Farm Riot in Tottenham, London. [18]
- November 15 - Anglo-Irish Agreement signed at Hillsborough Castle. Treasury Minister Ian Gow resigns in protest at the deal. [19]
- November 28 - Gerard Hoarau, exiled political leader from the Seychelles, assassinated in London.
- November 29 - a gas explosion kills four people in Glasgow. [20]
[edit] Unknown dates
[edit] Births
[edit] Deaths
- 4 January - Sir Brian Horrocks, general (b. 1895)
- 26 January - David Ormsby-Gore, 5th Baron Harlech, politician (b. 1918)
- 6 February - James Hadley Chase, writer (b. 1906)
- 28 February - Ray Ellington, singer, drummer and bandleader (b. 1916)
- 21 March - Michael Redgrave, actor (b. 1908)
- 4 April - Kate Roberts, author (b. 1891)
- 5 May - Sir Donald Bailey, civil engineer (b. 1901)
- 9 June - Clifford Evans, actor (b. 1912)
- 17 June - John Boulting, film director (b. 1913)
- 2 July - David Purley, race car driver (b. 1945)
- 9 July - Jimmy Kinnon, founder of Narcotics Anonymous (b. 1911)
- 23 July - Johnny Wardle, cricketer (b. 1923)
- 1 September - Saunders Lewis, writer and founder of the Welsh National Party (Plaid Cymru)(b. 1893)
- 7 September - Rodney Robert Porter, biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1917)
- 11 September - William Alwyn, composer (b. 1905)
- 17 September - Laura Ashley, designer (b. 1925)
- 2 December - Philip Larkin, poet (b. 1922)
- 7 December - Robert Graves, writer (b. 1895)
- 12 December - Ian Stewart, rock musician (b. 1938)
[edit] References