1984

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This article is about the year 1984. For the number, see 1984 (number). For the novel by George Orwell, see Nineteen Eighty-Four. For other uses, see 1984 (disambiguation).

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	19th century – 20th century – 21st century
Decades:	1950s 1960s 1970s – 1980s – 1990s 2000s 2010s
Years:	1981 1982 1983 – 1984 – 1985 1986 1987

1984 by topic:
Subject
Archaeology Architecture Art Aviation Awards Comics Film Home video Literature (Poetry) Meteorology Music (Country, Heavy metal) Rail transport Radio Science Spaceflight Sports Television Video gaming
By country
Australia Canada People's Republic of China Ecuador France Germany Greece India Ireland Israel Italy Japan Luxembourg Malaysia Mexico New Zealand Norway Pakistan Philippines Singapore South Africa Soviet Union United Kingdom United States Zimbabwe
Leaders
Sovereign states State leaders Religious leaders Law
Birth and death categories
Births Deaths
Establishments and disestablishments categories
Establishments Disestablishments
Works and introductions categories
Works Introductions
v t e

1984 in other calendars
Gregorian calendar	1984 MCMLXXXIV
Ab urbe condita	2737
Armenian calendar	1433 ԹՎ ՌՆԼԳ
Assyrian calendar	6734
Bahá'í calendar	140–141
Bengali calendar	1391
Berber calendar	2934
British Regnal year	32 Eliz. 2 – 33 Eliz. 2
Buddhist calendar	2528
Burmese calendar	1346
Byzantine calendar	7492–7493
Chinese calendar	癸亥年 (Water Pig) 4680 or 4620 — to — 甲子年 (Wood Rat) 4681 or 4621
Coptic calendar	1700–1701
Discordian calendar	3150
Ethiopian calendar	1976–1977
Hebrew calendar	5744–5745
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat	2040–2041
- Shaka Samvat	1906–1907
- Kali Yuga	5085–5086
Holocene calendar	11984
Igbo calendar	984–985
Iranian calendar	1362–1363
Islamic calendar	1404–1405
Japanese calendar	Shōwa 59 (昭和５９年)
Juche calendar	73
Julian calendar	Gregorian minus 13 days
Korean calendar	4317
Minguo calendar	ROC 73 民國73年
Thai solar calendar	2527
Unix time	441763200–473385599
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1984 (MCMLXXXIV) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar, the 1984th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 984th year of the 2nd millennium, the 84th year of the 20th century, and the 5th year of the 1980s decade.

Events

January

January 1
- Brunei becomes a fully independent state.
- Bell System in the United States is broken up.
January 3 – President of the United States Ronald Reagan meets with Navy Lieutenant Robert Goodman and the Reverend Jesse Jackson at the White House, following Lieutenant Goodman's release from Syrian captivity.
January 5 - President Ronald Reagan nominates Elizabeth Dole as U.S. Secretary of Transportation.^[1]
January 7 – Brunei becomes the 6th member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
January 10
- The United States and the Vatican (Holy See) restore full diplomatic relations.^[2]
- The Victoria Agreement is signed.
January 18 – The Mitsui Miike coal mine explosion at Ōmuta, Fukuoka, Japan, kills 83.
January 21 – Jackie Wilson passes away after lengthy coma, aged 49.
January 24 – Apple Computer places the Macintosh personal computer on sale in the United States.
January 27 – Michael Jackson is accidentally severely burned at the filming of a Pepsi commercial.

February

February 1 – Medicare comes into effect in Australia.
February 3
- Dr. John Buster and the research team at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center announce history's first embryo transfer from one woman to another, resulting in a live birth.
- STS-41-B: Space Shuttle Challenger is launched on the 10th space shuttle mission.
February 7 – Astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart make the first untethered space walk.
February 8–19 – The 1984 Winter Olympics are held in Sarajevo, Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
February 13 – Konstantin Chernenko succeeds the late Yuri Andropov as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
February 26 – The United States Marine Corps pulls out of Beirut, Lebanon.
February 29 – Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau announces his retirement.

March

March 5 – Iran accuses Iraq of using chemical weapons; the United Nations condemns their use on March 30.
March 6 – A year-long strike action begins in the British coal industry (see UK Miners' Strike (1984-1985)).
March 14 – Sinn Féin's Gerry Adams and 3 others are seriously injured in a gun attack by the Ulster Volunteer Force.
March 16 – The United States Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Beirut, William Francis Buckley, is kidnapped by the Islamic Jihad Organization and later dies in captivity.
March 22 – Teachers at the McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, California are charged with Satanic ritual abuse of the school children; the charges are later dropped as completely unfounded.
March 23 – General Rahimuddin Khan becomes the first man in Pakistan's history to rule over 2 of its provinces, after becoming interim Governor of Sindh.
March 25
- Pope John Paul II consecrates the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, in Fatima, Portugal.
- The Institute of the Incarnate Word (IVE) is founded under Fr. Carlos Miguel Buela.

April

Diretas Já demonstration held in São Paulo.

April 1 – Marvin Gaye is shot to death by his father, one day before his 45th birthday.
April 2 – Indian Squadron Leader Rakesh Sharma is launched into space, aboard the Soyuz T-11.
April 4 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan calls for an international ban on chemical weapons. Orwell's dark vision of 1984 is adverted.
April 9 – The 56th Academy Awards, hosted by Johnny Carson, are held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
April 12 – Palestinian gunmen take Israeli Bus Number 300 hostage. Israeli special forces storm the bus, freeing the hostages (1 hostage, 2 hijackers killed).
April 16 - More than one million people led by Tancredo Neves occupy the streets of São Paulo to demand direct presidential elections during the Brazilian military government of João Figueiredo. It is the largest protest during the Diretas Já civil unrest, as well as the largest public demonstration in the history of Brazil. The elections are granted in 1989.
April 13 – India launches Operation Meghdoot, as most of the Siachen Glacier in Kashmir comes under Indian control.
April 15 – British comedian Tommy Cooper suffers a massive heart attack and dies while live on TV.
April 17 – WPC Yvonne Fletcher is shot and killed by a secluded gunman, leading to a police siege of the Libyan Embassy in London.
April 19 – Advance Australia Fair is proclaimed as Australia's national anthem, and green and gold as the national colours.
April 23 - United States researchers announce their discovery of the AIDS virus.
April 25 – The term of Sultan Ahmad Shah as the 7th Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia ends.
April 26 – Sultan Iskandar, Sultan of Johor, becomes the 8th Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia.

May

May 2 – The Liverpool International Garden Festival opens in Liverpool.
May 5 – The Herreys win the Eurovision Song Contest 1984 for Sweden, with the song Diggi-Loo, Diggi-Ley.
May 8
- The Soviet Union announces that it will boycott the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California.
- Denis Lortie kills 3 government employees in the National Assembly of Quebec building.
- The Chicago White Sox defeat the Milwaukee Brewers 7-6 in the longest game in Major League Baseball history: 25 innings totalling 8 hours, 6 minutes.
May 11 – A transit of Earth from Mars takes place.
May 12 – The Louisiana World Exposition opens.
May 14 – The one dollar coin is introduced in Australia.
May 17 – Michael Silka kills 9 people near Manley Hot Springs, Alaska.
May 23 – A methane gas explosion at Abbeystead water treatment works in Lancashire, England kills 16 people.
May 27 – An overnight flash flood rages through neighborhoods in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Nearly 15 inches of rain falls in some areas over a 4-hour period; 14 people are killed.
May 31 – Six inmates, including James and Linwood Briley, escape from a death row facility at Mecklenburg Correctional Center, the only occasion this has ever happened in the United States.

June

June 1 – William M. Gibbons is released as receiver and trustee of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific railroad, after all of its debts and creditors are paid off by order of a federal bankruptcy court.
June 3 – Ronald Reagan visits his ancestral home in Ballyporeen, the Republic of Ireland.
June 5 – The Indian government begins Operation Blue Star, the planned attack on the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
June 8 – A deadly F5 tornado nearly destroys the town of Barneveld, Wisconsin, killing 9 people, injuring nearly 200, and causing over $25,000,000 in damage.
June 20 – The biggest exam shake-up in the British education system in over 10 years is announced, with O-level and CSE exams to be replaced by a new exam, the GCSE.
June 22
- The official name of the Turkish city Urfa is changed into Şanlıurfa.
- Virgin Atlantic Airways makes its inaugural flight.
June 27 – France beats Spain 2–0 to win the Euro 84.
June 28 – Richard Ramírez, aka the "Night Stalker," murders his first confirmed victim.
June 30 – John Napier Turner becomes Canada's 17th Prime Minister.
June 30 - Elton John plays the famous Night and Day Concert at Wembley Stadium.

July

July 13 – Terry Wallis, a 19-year old living in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, falls into a deep coma after a severe automobile accident (he will eventually awaken 19 years later on June 13, 2003).
July 14 – New Zealand Prime Minister Robert Muldoon calls a snap election and is heavily defeated by opposition Labour leader David Lange.
July 18
- Beverly Lynn Burns becomes the first woman Boeing 747 captain in the world.
- In San Ysidro, San Diego, 41-year-old James Oliver Huberty sprays a McDonald's restaurant with gunfire, killing 21 people before being shot and killed himself.

Newspaper vending machine featuring news of the 1984 Summer Olympics, which opened on July 28.

July 23 – Vanessa L. Williams becomes the first Miss America to resign when she surrenders her crown, after nude photos of her appear in Penthouse magazine.
July 25 – Salyut 7: Cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the first woman to perform a space walk.
July 28–August 12 – The 1984 Summer Olympics are held in Los Angeles, California.

August

August 1 – Australian banks are deregulated.
August 4 – The African republic Upper Volta changes its name to Burkina Faso.
August 4 – Soviet submarine K-278 Komsomolets reaches a record submergence depth of 1,020 meters.
August 11
- United States President Ronald Reagan, during a voice check for a radio broadcast remarks, "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes".
- Barefoot South African runner Zola Budd, controversially granted British citizenship earlier in the year, collides with Mary Decker of the U.S. in the Olympic 3000 meters final, neither finishing as medallists.^[3]
August 16 – John De Lorean is acquitted of all 8 charges of possessing and distributing cocaine.
August 17 – Peru recognizes the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.

The launch of Shuttle Discovery on STS-41-D, its first mission.

August 21 – Half a million people in Manila demonstrate against the regime of Ferdinand Marcos.
August 30 – STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery takes off on its maiden voyage.

September

September 2 – Seven people are shot and killed and 12 wounded in the Milperra massacre, a shootout between the rival motorcycle gangs Bandidos and Comancheros in Sydney, Australia.
September 4
- The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, led by Brian Mulroney, wins 211 seats in the Canadian House of Commons, forming the largest majority government in Canadian history.
- The Sandinista Front wins the Nicaraguan general elections.
September 5
- STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery lands after its maiden voyage at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
- Western Australia becomes the last Australian state to abolish capital punishment.
September 14 – P. W. Botha is inaugurated as the first executive State President of South Africa.
September 16 – Edgar Reitz's film series Heimat begins release in Germany.
September 17 – Brian Mulroney is sworn in as Prime Minister of Canada.
September 18 – Joe Kittinger becomes the first person to cross the Atlantic, solo, in a hot air balloon.
September 20 – Hezbollah car-bombs the U.S. Embassy annex in Beirut, killing 24 people.
September 23 – The television drama Threads, a documentary of nuclear war, broadcasts on BBC Two.
September 26 – The United Kingdom and the People's Republic of China sign the initial agreement to return Hong Kong to China in 1997.

October

October 4 – Tim Macartney-Snape and Greg Mortimer become the first Australians to summit Mount Everest.
October 5 – STS-41-G: Marc Garneau becomes the first Canadian in space, aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger.
October 11 – Aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan becomes the first American woman to perform a space walk.
October 12 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) attempts to assassinate Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the British Cabinet in the Brighton hotel bombing.
October 19 – Polish secret police kidnap Jerzy Popiełuszko, a Catholic priest who supports the Solidarity movement. His dead body is found in a reservoir 11 days later on October 30.
October 23 – The world learns from moving BBC News television reports presented by Michael Buerk of the famine in Ethiopia, where thousands of people have already died of starvation due to a famine, and as many as 10,000,000 more lives are at risk.^[4]
October 25 – The European Economic Community makes £1.8 million available to help combat the famine in Ethiopia.^[5]
October 31 – Assassination of Indira Gandhi: Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi is assassinated by her 2 Sikh security guards in New Delhi. Anti-Sikh riots break out, leaving 10,000 to 20,000 Sikhs dead in Delhi and surrounding areas with majority populations of Hindus. Rajiv Gandhi becomes prime minister of India.

November

November 6 – United States presidential election, 1984: Ronald Reagan defeats Walter F. Mondale with 59% of the popular vote, the highest since Richard Nixon's 61% popular vote victory in 1972. Reagan carries 49 states in the electoral college; Mondale wins only his home state of Minnesota by a mere 3,761 vote margin and the District of Columbia.
November 9 – Cesar Chavez delivers his speech, "What The Future Holds For Farm Workers And Hispanics", at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.
November 14 – Zamboanga City mayor Cesar Climaco, a prominent critic of the government of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, is assassinated in his home city.
November 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.
November 25
- An East Rail train derails between Sheung Shui and Fanling stations, Hong Kong.
- Band Aid (assembled by Bob Geldof) records the charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas?" in London to raise money to combat the famine in Ethiopia. It is released on December 3.^[6]
- Uruguayan presidential election, 1984: Julio María Sanguinetti is democratically elected President of Uruguay after 12 years of military dictatorship.
November 28 – Over 250 years after their deaths, William Penn and his wife Hannah Callowhill Penn are made Honorary Citizens of the United States.
November 30 – The Tamil Tigers begin the purge of the Sinhalese people from North and East Sri Lanka; 127 are killed.

December

Controlled Impact Demonstration

December – A peace agreement between Kenya and Somalia is signed in the Egyptian capital Cairo. With this agreement, in which Somalia officially renounces its historical territorial claims, relations between the two countries began to improve.
December 1 – Controlled Impact Demonstration: NASA crashes a remote controlled Boeing 720.
December 2 – Bob Hawke's government is re-elected in Australia with a reduced majority.
December 3
- Bhopal Disaster: A methyl isocyanate leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India, kills more than 8,000 people outright and injures over half a million (with more later dying from their injuries the death toll reaches 23,000+) in the worst industrial disaster in history.
- British Telecom is privatised.
December 4
- Sri Lankan Civil War: Sri Lankan Army soldiers kill 107-150 civilians in Mannar.
- Hezbollah militants hijack a Kuwait Airlines plane and kill 4 passengers.
December 10 – Cisco Systems is founded.
December 14 – Nigeria recognizes the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.
December 19 – The People's Republic of China and United Kingdom sign the Sino-British Joint Declaration on the future of Hong Kong.
December 22
- Four African-American youths (Barry Allen, Troy Canty, James Ramseur, and Darrell Cabey) board an express train in the Bronx borough of New York City. They attempt to rob Bernhard Goetz, who shoots them. The event starts a national debate about urban crime in the United States.
- In Malta, Prime Minister Dom Mintoff resigns.
December 28 – A Soviet cruise missile plunges into Inarinjärvi lake in Finnish Lapland. Finnish authorities announce the fact in public on January 3, 1985.

Date unknown

1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia intensifies with renewed drought by mid-year, killing a million people by the end of this year.
Crack cocaine, a smokeable form of the drug, is first introduced into Los Angeles and soon spreads across the United States in what becomes known as the Crack epidemic.