January
01 – Spain and Portugal join the European Economic Community (EEC).
04 – Thin Lizzy bass player and vocalist, Phil Lynott dies of heart failure after laying in a coma for a week following a drug overdose. He is 34 years old (b. 20 August 1951).
07 – President Reagan announces economic sanctions against Libya, in response to their involvement in terrorist attacks on the Rome and Vienna airports last month.
09 – British Defence Secretary Michael Heseltine resigns after a Cabinet row about the procurement of helicopters in the “Westland Affair”.
12 – Luther Vandross is seriously injured when his Mercedes Benz goes out of control on Laurel Canyon Boulevard in Los Angeles, killing his passenger. Vandross is charged with manslaughter.
20 – Britain and France agree (again) to construct a rail tunnel beneath the English Channel linking the two countries.
20 – “Martin Luther King Jr. Day” (often referred to in shorthand as “MLK Day”), honouring the murdered civil rights champion, is observed as a federal holiday in the US for the first time. The holiday was signed into law in 1983.
24 – Voyager 2 space probe flies past the planet Uranus eight years after being launched from Earth and sends back pictures revealing that the planet has 10 rings and 15 moons.
28 – The American space shuttle Challenger explodes seconds after lift-off, killing its crew of seven. Among them is Christa McAuliffe, a school teacher selected as the first to fly in the “citizen in space” programme. Her husband and children, along with the families of other astronauts, witness the disaster.
29 – Yoweri Museveni, leader of the National Resistance Army, is sworn in as president of Uganda after his men oust General Tito Okello’s troops, who had been terrorising people in many parts of the country.
February
02 – Nurse Anita Cobby is raped and murdered in Sydney, Australia.
04 – Electrification of the Illawarra railway line in NSW, Australia.
06 – The mother and sister of The Undertones‘ vocalist Feargal Sharkey are held at gunpoint by terrorists in Londonderry. Their four-hour ordeal ends without anyone getting hurt.
07 – The body of whistle-blowing prostitute Sallie-Anne Huckstepp is found in a pond in Centennial Park, Sydney. Her murder results in one of the longest-running inquests in Australian history, beginning in 1987 and running until 1991. Notorious Sydney criminal “Neddy” Smith was recorded confessing to the murder – committed on the instructions of corrupt Sydney detective Roger Rogerson, who had killed Huckstepp’s partner, Warren Lanfranchi, in 1981 – but was acquitted.
07 – Lindy Chamberlain is released from jail in Darwin (Australia) today, three years and three months after being jailed for life for the murder of her baby daughter, Azaria. She has been given an unconditional release by the Northern Territory Government following the discovery of further evidence at the alleged murder scene at Ayers Rock. Mrs Chamberlain has always maintained a dingo took her baby.
07 – Haitian president-for-life Baby Doc Duvalier flees to France after demonstrations against his regime. He takes more than $150m with him.
15 – President Ferdinand Marcos flees the Philippines to the USA. Mrs Corazon Aquino is sworn in as president.
15 – Eight police officers are injured and 58 people arrested in the worst outbreak of violence yet outside the News International printing plant in Wapping, east London, since the start of a strike three weeks ago.
16 – 700 rescued from sinking Russian cruise ship in New Zealand.
20 – The Soviets launch the world’s biggest space station, Mir, which will provide a base for a permanently manned complex orbiting the Earth.
28 – Swedish PM Olof Palme is assassinated in a Stockholm street. He is gunned down by a lone sniper as he and his wife, Lisbeth, walk home from a night out at the cinema.
March
02 – “The Australia Bill” becomes law, cutting Australia’s legal ties with Britain.
04 – Richard Manuel, the pianist in The Band, hangs himself from a shower curtain rail in a motel room in Winter Haven, Florida, after a reunion show in the Cheek to Cheek lounge. He is 42.
07 – The state of emergency imposed in South Africa in 1985 is lifted.
13 – The Russians launch Soyuz T-15, intended to establish a permanent human presence in space when docked with the Mir space station, which was launched three weeks ago.
14 – Sir Huw Wheldon, former BBC Television Managing Director, dies aged 69.
15 – 33 people are killed when a seven-storey tourist hotel collapses without warning in Singapore.
19 – Buckingham Palace announces the engagement of Prince Andrew to Sarah Ferguson, aged 26, daughter of Major Ronald Ferguson and Mrs Hector Barrantes.
20 – Jacques Chirac becomes Prime Minister of France.
24 – Libya launches a missile attack on US Navy vessels in the Gulf of Sidra. The US fleet responds with missile attacks that damage a Libyan missile site and destroy two Libyan patrol boats.
24 – In Britain, the Department of Health announces a ban on all cigarette advertising in cinemas, and stronger, more prominently displayed health warnings on cigarette packets and posters.
25 – The West Indies record their third Test win over England by an innings and 3-0 runs in Bridgetown, Barbados, and secure victory in the five-match series.
25 – US Congress approves $20 million in military aid to Honduras, where Nicaraguan Contra rebels have set up bases just inside the country’s border.
26 – Police shoot dead nine Sikh militants and wound 22 when a crowd storms a meeting in Punjab, India. In the following days, Sikh extremists kill 28 Hindus and 11 cities are put under curfew.
27 – The Russell Street Police Headquarters in Melbourne, Australia, is bombed. The explosion kills Angela Rose Taylor, the first Australian policewoman to be killed in the line of duty.
28 – Singer Lady Gaga is born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, New York City.
29 – Cambridge beats Oxford University in the Boat Race.
30 – Hollywood film star James Cagney dies in New York, aged 85.
31 – The Greater London Council (GLC) is abolished, ending 97 years of local rule in London. Six other metropolitan county councils also come to an end today: the West Midlands, Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Tyne and Wear, West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire councils.
31 – A Mexican airliner carrying 170 people crashes into a mountain 80 miles from Mexico City.
April
02 – A bomb explodes in mid-air on board a TWA Boeing 727 and sucks four people to their deaths while on a flight from Rome to Athens. A shepherd reports seeing bodies tumbling from the sky and Greek police later find three bodies and an aircraft seat near the town of Argos. A fourth body is recovered from the sea. The victims are a Colombian-born American man and grandmother, daughter and granddaughter from the same Greek-American family. Nine others are injured. The plane lands safely.
04 – Film star Clint Eastwood is elected mayor of Carmel, California, with 72% of the vote.
05 – Three Americans die as a bomb explodes in a West Berlin discothèque. US officials blame Libya for the bombing and retaliate ten days later by bombing Libya.
07 – Home-computing pioneer Sir Clive Sinclair sells the marketing and merchandising rights to his computer business for £5m to computing rival Amstrad, who will continue to produce the ZX Spectrum for two more years.
08 – Jennifer Guinness, wife of merchant banker John Guinness of the Irish being and banking family, is kidnapped from her home in Howth, Co Dublin. A ransom of IR£2 million is demanded.
14 – Bishop Desmond Tutu is elected Archbishop of Cape Town.
14 – The US launches an airstrike from British bases against targets in Tripoli and Benghazi, Libya, in retaliation for the West Berlin nightclub bombing on 5 April. 60 people are killed, including Colonel Gadaffi’s adopted daughter.
17 – British journalist John McCarthy is kidnapped by Islamic Jihad in Beirut. He will not be released for four-and-a-half years.
18 – President Botha announces that South Africa will no longer arrest blacks under the pass-law regulations and those currently in prison for these offences will be released.
22 – The United States conducts its third nuclear test of the year under the Nevada desert.
23 – Film producer and director Otto Preminger dies aged 79.
24 – Duchess of Windsor, Wallis Simpson, dies in Paris, aged 89. She is laid to rest alongside her husband, the abdicated King Edward VIII, at Frogmore in Windsor.
26 – Soviet nuclear power plant at Chernobyl, Ukraine, explodes releasing dangerous radiation into the air across Europe.
26 – Seamus McElwaine, a convicted IRA terrorist who broke out of the Maze prison in September 1983, is shot dead and an accomplice wounded by security forces in the Irish Republic as the two men are setting a booby trap landmine.
27 – The French explode a nuclear device at the Mururoa Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
30 – Norwegian Prime Minister Kaare Willoch resigns after being defeated in a vote on economic austerity measures.
May
02 – The Prince and Princess of Wales open Expo 86, the Vancouver world fair in British Columbia, Canada.
03 – Twenty-one people are killed and 41 injured after a bomb explodes in an aircraft at Colombo airport in Sri Lanka. The bomb is the work of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a Tamil guerrilla group.
03 – 175 policemen and 150 pickets are injured in the worst violence yet seen at News International’s new printing plant at Wapping in east London.
03 – Liverpool wins the Football League Championship by beating Chelsea in their final match of the season.
03 – Castleford RLFC wins the Rugby League Challenge Cup for the fourth time.
05 – Joe Johnson wins the Embassy World Snooker Championships in Sheffield, beating Steve Davis in the final.
06 – Michael Jackson is paid $15 million to become a sponsor for Pepsi, the biggest sponsorship deal of its kind to date.
07 – The French explode their second nuclear device this year at Mururoa Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
07 – Steaua Bucharest beats Barcelona on penalties after extra time in the European Cup Final in Seville, Spain.
09 – Sherpa Tenzing, who conquered Mt Everest with Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953, dies aged 71.
10 – Liverpool completes the “double” by beating Everton 3-1 in the FA Cup Final at Wembley.
13 – Two airmen and a Gurkha soldier are killed and 14 others injured when an RAF Chinook helicopter crashes during an exercise in the Falklands.
13 – A US Justice Department commission on pornography, headed by Attorney General Edwin Meese, rules that such material is potentially harmful and can lead to violent behaviour against women and children.
16 – Elvis Costello marries Cait O’Riordan of The Pogues.
19 – South African troops launch raids on three neighbouring countries in an effort to destroy bases purportedly used by the anti-apartheid organisation the African National Congress (ANC). At least three people are reported dead after the coordinated attacks on cities in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana by South African warplanes, helicopters and commandos.
25 – To raise money for the homeless, six million Americans form a ‘Hands Across America‘ human chain across the continent.
31 – A European Ariane rocket, carrying a communications satellite, is destroyed over the Atlantic Ocean when its third-stage engine fails to ignite after lift-off from the French Space Centre at Kourou, French Guyana,
31 – France explodes its fourth nuclear device this year in the South Pacific.
June
04 – Ex-US Navy analyst, Jonathan Jay Pollard, 31, found guilty as spy for Israel.
08 – Kurt Waldheim is elected Austrian President, despite allegations of wartime Nazi involvement.
10 – Patrick Joseph Magee, 35, is convicted of the IRA bombing that ripped through the Grand Hotel in Brighton during the 1984 Conservative Party conference, killing five people and injuring 34. He is given eight life sentences.
12 – British government dissolves the Northern Ireland Assembly set up in 1982.
12 – Derek Hatton, the controversial deputy leader of Liverpool Council, is expelled from the Labour Party for belonging to the left-wing Militant faction.
13 – Jazz clarinet legend Benny Goodman dies.
16 – Millions of South African blacks refuse to go to work following the government’s declaration of a state of emergency and the arrest of over 1,000 black activists.
17 – Chief Justice Warren Burger retires from the US Supreme Court. Reagan names the more conservative William Rehnquist as his successor and also names Antonin Scalia to the court.
17 – Two Spanish army officers and their drivers are shot dead in Madrid by Basque separatists.
22 – Maradona knocks England out of the soccer World Cup with “the hand of God”. Argentina wins 2-1 in the quarter-final match in Mexico City.
23 – 13 people die when a transit van carrying fans from a pop festival crosses the central crash-barrier of the M4 motorway near Maidenhead and collides with an estate car.
24 – Hard-line Democratic Unionist Party leader Ian Paisley is forcibly carried out from the Assembly building in Northern Ireland by police after an outburst where he claimed that Northern Ireland is on the verge of civil war.
25 – Britain explodes a nuclear device beneath the Nevada desert.
26 – Entrepreneur Richard Branson sets off from New York on his second attempt to claim the Blue Riband (for the transatlantic crossing record) for Britain in the 72 ft powerboat Virgin Challenger II.
27 – The International Court of Justice in The Hague rules that US aid to Contra rebels in Nicaragua is illegal.
27 – After New Zealand bans US nuclear-armed warships in its waters, the US declares it cannot be bound by the 1951 ANZUS pact on NZ defence.
29 – Argentina wins the soccer World Cup in Mexico, beating West Germany 3-2.
29 – Millionaire Richard Branson smashes the world record for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic in his 72-ft powerboat, the Virgin Atlantic Challenger II. Branson completes the voyage more than two hours faster than the previous record-holder, the SS United States, which held the title since 1952, but he is denied the Blue Riband by the trustees of the award because his vessel did not have a commercial maritime purpose and he had stopped to refuel.
30 – US Supreme Court rules 5-4 that homosexual activity between consenting adults in the privacy of the home is not protected by the Constitution.
July
04 – The Statue of Liberty celebrates her 100th birthday by reopening her newly-refurbished doors to visitors. America’s great symbol of hope is now restored to full health. The first visitor on Independence Day is, perhaps appropriately, an English tourist.
04 – Rudy Vallee dies of throat cancer at the age of 85.
04 – In Australia, Neville Wran retires. Barrie Unsworth is new NSW Premier.
07 – Australians Kevin Barlow and Brian Chambers are hanged in Pudu Prison in Malaysia for heroin trafficking.
07 – Shares on the New York Stock Exchange suffer their biggest one-day fall on record with the Dow Jones industrial average closing 61.87 points down.
08 – The London stock market suffers its largest-ever one-day fall with a drop of 30.1 points in the FT Index.
08 – ‘Classic’ Coke is reintroduced after New Coke’s failed ten-week run on the market.
09 – Two British soldiers are killed in an IRA mortar attack on an Army observation post at Crossmaglen, South Armagh, Northern Ireland.
10 – Israeli helicopter gunships attack a Palestinian refugee camp in Sidon, seriously wounding at least 10 people. The raid is in response to a Palestinian and Lebanese guerrilla attack near Naqqoura, southern Lebanon, in which two Israeli soldiers and four guerrillas are killed.
10 – Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead falls into a diabetic coma at home in San Rafael, California. He is rushed to Marin General Hospital, where he remains in a coma for five days before recovering.
12 – Dozens are injured as violence flares in Portadown, County Armagh when protestant ‘Orangemen’ converge on the town after their annual march to commemorate the Battle of the Boyne.
13 – British driver Nigel Mansell wins the British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch.
16 – Country star Dolly Parton opens her own theme park – “Dollywood” – in Tennessee.
23 – Prince Andrew marries Sarah Ferguson at Westminster Abbey, watched by a worldwide tv audience of 500 million.
24 – The Duke of Edinburgh opens the 13th Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh.
26 – 10 people die and 41 are injured when a train carrying holidaymakers ploughs into a van on a level-crossing near Hull.
26 – Three Ulster policemen are shot dead in their patrol car by the IRA in the centre of Newry, County Down.
27 – Greg LeMond becomes the first American to win the Tour de France bicycle race.
27 – The International Court of Justice orders the US to stop training and arming Nicaragua’s Contra rebels, and to pay restitution to Nicaragua.
28 – Kenneth Erskine – known as “The Stockwell Strangler” – is arrested and charged with the sexual assault and murder of between seven and 11 senior citizens in London between April and July 1986. Erskine is found guilty of seven murders in January 1988 and sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommended minimum term of 40 years. He is later found to have a mental disorder and is from prison to the maximum security Broadmoor Hospital.
30 – Boy George of Culture Club is fined £250 for possession of heroin.
August
11 – Eight people die when Israeli aircraft attack Palestinian guerrilla bases in the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley, Lebanon.
16 – Two British climbers, Julie Tullis and Alan Rouse, die after reaching the summit of K 2 in the Himalayas. They had been trapped in a blizzard for more than a week. One Polish and two Austrian mountaineers also die.
19 – One man is killed and 13 people injured when a bomb explodes in an Iranian-owned shop in Kensington High Street, London. Rival Iranian factions blame each other for the blast.
20 – A part-time postal worker who was about to be sacked shoots dead 14 people in Oklahoma post office, wounding four more, then kills himself.
21 – More than 1700 people are killed in Cameroon, West Africa when a cloud of lethal gas escapes from the volcanic Lake Nyos. Most of the victims die in their sleep as the gas kills all living things within a 15-mile (25km) radius of the lake.
29 – Britain’s oldest twins, May and Marjorie Chavasse, receive telegrams from the Queen as they celebrate their 100th birthday with a joint birthday party.
30 – American journalist Nicholas Daniloff is seized by Soviet authorities and accused of being a spy, seven days after the FBI arrest a Soviet diplomat to the UN on charges of espionage. In September Daniloff will be exchanged for the diplomat, though the White House denies it negotiated a swap.
31 – Former Boomtown Rats vocalist Bob Geldof marries Paula Yates in Las Vegas.
31 – Sculptor Henry Moore dies.
September
05 – The 16-hour siege on a Pan Am jet in Pakistan comes to a bloody end with 22 people dead and over 150 injured. Palestinian gunmen boarded the Bombay to New York flight at Karachi Airport disguised as security guards and opened fire on the 390 passengers.
07 – Restrictions on civil liberties are imposed in Chile following an assassination attempt on General Pinochet and his wife while travelling in their presidential car which kills five of his bodyguards and wounds 11 more.
07 – Desmond Tutu is enthroned as South Africa’s first black archbishop.
15 – After a gap of 28 years, Europe wins the Ryder Cup, beating the US at the Belfry in Sutton Coldfield, UK.
16 – At least 177 people die during a lethal fire in a South African gold mine. Poisonous gas spreads rapidly through the shafts and tunnels of the Kinross mine in the Eastern Transvaal, killing most of the miners where they stood.
19 – Two passenger trains collide in Staffordshire, killing the driver of the Liverpool-London train and injuring almost 100 more. Several carriages derail when the crowded Inter City services crash at Colwich Junction near Rugeley.
22 – The world’s youngest heart transplant patient – a two-and-a-half-month-old baby from northwest London – is given the heart of a five-day-old Belgian boy by one of the world’s leading heart specialists, Dr Magdi Yacoub, at the Harefield Hospital in the UK.
28 – Sir Robert Helpmann dies, aged 77.
October
02 – USA imposes sanctions on South Africa.
05 – Pilot Eugene Hasenfus is captured by the Nicaraguan Sandinistas and admits that the CIA has been involved in privately arming the Contra rebels. Hasenfus is tried in Managua and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
09 – Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Broadcasting Co. launches as the fourth US television network.
12 – US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev fail to reach an agreement at a disarmament summit in Reykjavik. The two leaders come close to striking a radical arms reduction deal but the talks finally stall over President Reagan’s refusal to abandon his Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI).
13 – Nick Cave spends two days in jail in New York City, having been arrested during a police swoop to clear the streets of vagrants.
20 – Yitzhak Shamir takes over from Shimon Peres as prime minister of Israel.
21 – Australian Labor Party icon Justice Lionel Murphy dies of cancer.
22 – A helicopter from WNBC Radio in New York crashes into the Hudson River while giving a live traffic report during the Joey Reynolds Show. Traffic reporter Jane Dornacker, 39 – who had been a singer with The Tubes and her own band, Leila and the Snakes – dies on her way to Saint Vincent’s Catholic Medical Center. The other occupant, pilot Bill Pate, is severely injured but survives.
22 – Reagan signs a revised federal income tax law, lowering taxes for everyone, especially those in the highest tax brackets.
26 – Novelist and MP Jeffrey Archer steps down as Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party after reports in the News of the World alleging he tried to pay prostitute Monica Coghlan to go abroad to avoid a scandal.
28 – 24-year-old Jeremy Bamber is jailed for life for killing five members of his family at their farmhouse in Essex.
31 – Roger Waters instigates legal proceedings in London to prevent his former colleagues David Gilmour and Nick Mason from using the name Pink Floyd. He fails.
November
01 – A catastrophic fire at a chemicals factory near Basel, Switzerland, sends tons of toxic chemicals into the nearby river Rhine, turning it red. Within 10 days the pollution has travelled the length of the Rhine and into the North Sea and an estimated half a million fish are killed, with some species wiped out entirely.
02 – American hostage David Jacobsen is set free in Beirut after 17 months of captivity at the hands of Islamic Jihad.
02 – Singer/songwriter Billy Bragg is arrested for cutting through wire fences surrounding a US Air Force base in Norfolk.
06 – 45 people are feared dead after a Chinook helicopter carrying oil rig workers from the Brent field, northeast of Shetland, to Sumburgh airport plunges into the North Sea off the coast of Scotland. The cause of the accident is subsequently discovered to be gear box failure.
13 – President Reagan admits a secret arms deal with Iran, in the so-called Iran-Contra scandal.
14 – Financier Ivan Boesky agrees to pay the US government $100 million as a penalty for illegal insider trading on the security exchange. The Securities and Exchange Commission bars Boesky from participating in the securities business for the rest of his life. He is also sentenced to three years in prison.
17 – The head of the Renault car company, Georges Besse, is assassinated in Paris by members of the left-wing, anti-capitalist group “Action Directe”. Mr Besse is shot several times at about 2030 local time outside his home.
22 – 20-year-old boxer Mike Tyson becomes the youngest ever world heavyweight champion, beating Canadian Trevor Berbick in two rounds in Las Vegas.
24 – Pope John Paul II begins tour of Australia.
25 – Vice Admiral Poindexter and Colonel Oliver North are dismissed from the National Security Council after it is revealed that money from arms sales in Iran funded Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
29 – British-born actor Cary Grant dies in Iowa.
30 – “Irangate” row over hostage release.
December
11 – British church leaders condemn a BBC radio campaign about AIDS for “condoning promiscuity”. The “Play Safe” campaign aims to encourage people to have only one sexual partner and to use a condom as protection against diseases.
12 – 69 people die when a Soviet airliner crashes near East Berlin airport.
17 – The world’s first combined heart, lungs and liver transplant is performed at Papworth Hospital, Cambridgeshire, UK.
19 – Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov and his wife are permitted to return to Moscow after seven years of internal exile.
21 – At least 20,000 students march through the streets of Shanghai to demonstrate for more freedom and democracy. 31 policemen are injured, and more than 200 students are arrested.
23 – The Voyager, a two-man super-light aeroplane, becomes the first aircraft to fly non-stop around the world. It circles the globe in nine days and requires only one tank of gas.
25 – 62 people die during a failed hijack attempt on an Iraqi Airways Boeing 737 on a flight from Baghdad to Amman. The plane crash lands at Arar in Saudi Arabia.
28 – England retains the Ashes in the Fourth Test match in Melbourne beating Australia by an innings and 14 runs.
28 – Australia beats Sweden in Melbourne to win the Davis Cup for tennis.
29 – Lord Stockton, the former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan dies, aged 92, following a short illness.
Also this year . . .
- Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev institutes a policy of glasnost (openness) in the arts and literature, allowing many previously banned works to be published.
- Halley’s Comet passes the Earth – An event that only occurs every 76 years.
- Bärbara Palacios Teyde (Venezuela) is crowned Miss Universe.
- Edinburgh Commonwealth Games opens (minus 23 nations).
- Launch of NICAM digital stereo sound on television.
- ‘At Talaq’ wins Melbourne Cup.
Top 20 TV Shows (UK)
- EastEnders (BBC)
- Just Good Friends (BBC)
- Only Fools and Horses (BBC)
- Coronation Street (ITV)
- Prince and Princess (ITV)
- Boxing (BBC)
- Blind Date (ITV)
- Last of the Summer Wine (BBC)
- People Do the Funniest Things (ITV)
- Duty Free (ITV)
- You Only Live Twice (ITV)
- Royal Variety Performance (ITV)
- Late, Late Breakfast Show (BBC)
- An Officer and a Gentleman (ITV)
- Russ Abbot’s Xmas (BBC)
- Surprise, Surprise (ITV)
- Clash of the Titans (BBC)
- Dear John (ITV)
- Yanks (ITV)
- The Grand National (BBC)