1981

From top to bottom, left to right: Ronald Reagan is shot after leaving a hotel; Pope John Paul II is wounded in an assassination attempt in St. Peter’s Square; Anwar Sadat is assassinated in Cairo; the 1981 Iranian Prime Minister's office bombing kills 8 Iranian officials; the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse in Kansas City kills 114; MTV launches, reshaping music and youth culture; STS-1 sends the Space Shuttle Columbia on its first flight; the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer captivates a global audience; and the IBM Personal Computer debuts, transforming personal computing.
1981 in various calendars
Gregorian calendar1981
MCMLXXXI
Ab urbe condita2734
Armenian calendar1430
ԹՎ ՌՆԼ
Assyrian calendar6731
Baháʼí calendar137–138
Balinese saka calendar1902–1903
Bengali calendar1387–1388
Berber calendar2931
British Regnal year29 Eliz. 2 – 30 Eliz. 2
Buddhist calendar2525
Burmese calendar1343
Byzantine calendar7489–7490
Chinese calendar庚申年 (Metal Monkey)
4678 or 4471
    — to —
辛酉年 (Metal Rooster)
4679 or 4472
Coptic calendar1697–1698
Discordian calendar3147
Ethiopian calendar1973–1974
Hebrew calendar5741–5742
Hindu calendars
 - Vikram Samvat2037–2038
 - Shaka Samvat1902–1903
 - Kali Yuga5081–5082
Holocene calendar11981
Igbo calendar981–982
Iranian calendar1359–1360
Islamic calendar1401–1402
Japanese calendarShōwa 56
(昭和５６年)
Javanese calendar1913–1914
Juche calendar70
Julian calendarGregorian minus 13 days
Korean calendar4314
Minguo calendarROC 70
民國70年
Nanakshahi calendar513
Thai solar calendar2524
Tibetan calendarལྕགས་ཕོ་སྤྲེ་ལོ་
(male Iron-Monkey)
2107 or 1726 or 954
    — to —
ལྕགས་མོ་བྱ་ལོ་
(female Iron-Bird)
2108 or 1727 or 955
Unix time347155200 – 378691199
Wikimedia Commons has media related to 1981.

1981 (MCMLXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1981st year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 981st year of the 2nd millennium, the 81st year of the 20th century, and the 2nd year of the 1980s decade.

Events

January

February

  • February 4 – Gro Harlem Brundtland becomes Prime Minister of Norway.[10]
  • February 8 – In Greece, 20 fans of Olympiacos F.C. and 1 fan of AEK Athens die, while 54 are injured, after a stampede at the Karaiskakis Stadium in Piraeus, possibly because Gate 7 does not open immediately after the end of the game.
  • February 9 – Polish Prime Minister Józef Pińkowski resigns and is replaced by General Wojciech Jaruzelski.[11]
  • February 14 – Stardust fire: A fire at the Stardust nightclub in Artane, Dublin, Ireland, in the early hours kills 48 young people and injures 214.[12] In 2024 these will be declared as unlawful killings.[13]
  • February 17–22 – Pope John Paul II visits the Philippines.
  • February 23 – 1981 Spanish coup d'état attempt ("23-F"): 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 fails after being denounced by King Juan Carlos.[14]
  • February 24 – A powerful Ms6.7 magnitude earthquake hits Athens, killing 22 people, injuring 400 people and destroying several buildings and 4,000 houses, mostly in Corinth and the nearby towns of Loutraki, Kiato and Xylokastro.

March

April

April 12: First Space Shuttle launch: Columbia, April 12, 1981

May

June

  • June 5 – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States report that five homosexual men in Los Angeles 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 Bagmati River in Bihar, India, killing between 500 and 800.
  • June 7 – The Israeli Air Force destroys Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, killing ten Iraqi troops and a French technician.
  • June 10 – Alfredo Rampi, a 6-year-old boy, falls into an artesian well in Vermicino, near Rome. After nearly three days of failed rescue attempts followed with bated breath from all over Italy, Alfredo dies inside the well, at a depth of 60 meters (200 ft).
  • June 13 – At the Trooping the Colour ceremony in London, teenager Marcus Sarjeant fires 6 blank shots close to Queen Elizabeth II, startling her horse.[22][23]
  • June 18
  • June 22 – Iranian president Abolhassan Banisadr is deposed.
  • June 27
    • The first game of paintball is played, in Henniker, New Hampshire, United States.[25]
    • The E-mu Emulator sampler keyboard with floppy disk operation is unveiled at NAMM international Sound & Music Expo, Chicago. Production Model Serial Number 001 is issued to Stevie Wonder.[26]

July

  • July 1 – Wonderland murders: The Wonderland Gang of cocaine dealers is brutally murdered in Los Angeles.[27] Eddie Nash is suspected of involvement, but will never be convicted.[28]
  • July 3 – The Toxteth riots in Liverpool, England, start after a mob prevents a youth from being arrested. Shortly afterward, the Chapeltown riots in Leeds start amid increased racial tension.
  • July 7 – United States President Ronald Reagan nominates the first woman, Sandra Day O'Connor, to the Supreme Court of the United States.[29]
  • July 9 – Donkey Kong is released, marking the first Donkey Kong and Mario smash hit arcade game developed by Nintendo in Japan.
  • July 10
  • July 16–21 – England become the first team this century to win a cricket Test match after the follow-on when they beat Australia by 18 runs at Headingley cricket ground, Leeds, England.
  • 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.
    • 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.[31]
  • July 19 – The 1981 Springbok Tour commences in New Zealand, amid controversy over the support of apartheid.
  • July 21 – Panda Tohui is born in Chapultepec Zoo in Mexico City, the first panda to ever be born and survive in captivity outside of China.
  • July 29 – A worldwide television audience of over 750 million people watch the Wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer at St Paul's Cathedral in London, UK.[32]
  • July 30 – 1981 Polish hunger demonstrations: As many as 50,000 demonstrators, mostly women and children, take to the streets in Łódź to protest about food ration shortages in Communist Poland.[33]

August

August 1, 1981: MTV cable network begins
  • August 1 – The first 24-hour video music channel MTV (Music Television) is launched in the United States and airs its first video, "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles.[34]
  • August 9 – 1981 Major League Baseball strike ends in the United States, and Major League Baseball resumes with the All-Star Game in Cleveland's Municipal Stadium.[35]
  • 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.[36]
  • August 19 – Gulf of Sidra incident: Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi sends two Sukhoi Su-22 fighter jets to intercept two U.S. Navy fighters over the Gulf of Sidra. The U.S. jets destroy the Libyan fighters.[37]
  • August 23 – South African troops attack SWAPO bases in Xangongo and Ongiva, Angola, during Operation Protea.[38]
  • August 24 – Mark David Chapman is sentenced to 20 years to life in prison after pleading guilty to murdering John Lennon in Manhattan eight months earlier.
  • August 27 – North Korea fires a surface-to-air missile at a U.S. SR-71 Blackbird spy plane flying in South Korean and international airspace. The missile misses and the airplane is unharmed.[39]
  • August 30 – 1981 Iranian Prime Minister's office bombing: Eight people, including the country's president and prime minister, are killed when a briefcase explodes in the building. The office of Iran's Prosecutor General blames the People's Mujahedin of Iran.[40]
  • August 31 – A bomb explodes at the United States Ramstein Air Base in West Germany, injuring 20 people.

September

  • September – Little Miss Bossy, the first book in the Little Miss series (the female counterpart to the Mr. Men series) is first published, in the U.K.
  • September 1 – Gregorio Conrado Álvarez is inaugurated as a military de facto President of Uruguay.[41]
  • September 4 – An explosion at a mine in Záluží, Czechoslovakia, kills 65 people.
  • September 7 – British plantation company Guthrie is taken over by the Malaysian government after successfully purchasing shares to become the major shareholder. This is famously called the 'Dawn Raid attack'.[42]
  • September 10 – Picasso's painting Guernica is moved from New York to Madrid.
  • September 15
    • Our Lady of Akita in Japan cries for the last time, on the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows.
    • 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, D.C.
  • September 17 – Ric Flair defeats Dusty Rhodes to win his first World Heavyweight Wrestling Championship in Kansas City.
  • September 18 – France's National Assembly votes to abolish Capital punishment in France.[43]
  • September 19 – Solidarity Day march, in support of organized labor, draws approximately 250,000 people in Washington, D.C.
  • September 20 – The overcrowded ferry boat Sobral Santos II capsizes in the Amazon River, Ób, idos, Brazil, killing at least 300 people.[44]
  • September 21 – Belize, formerly British Honduras, gains its independence from the United Kingdom.
  • September 22 – A Northrop F-5 crashes during a military exercise, in Babaeski, Turkey, killing 1 crew and 65 soldiers on ground.[45]
  • September 25 – Sandra Day O'Connor takes her seat as the first female justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
  • September 26
    • The Boeing 767 airliner makes its first flight.[46]
    • The Sydney Tower opens to the public in Australia.
  • September 27 – TGV high-speed rail service between Paris and Lyon, France, begins.
  • September 27–29 – Iran–Iraq War: Iranian forces break the Siege of Abadan in Operation Samen-ol-A'emeh.[47]

October

November

November 1: Antigua and Barbuda.

December

Date unknown

  • January to March – Heavy snow causes several houses and buildings to collapse in northwestern Japan; 152 are killed.
  • Cuba suffers a major outbreak of dengue fever, with 344,203 cases.[59]
  • Use of crack cocaine, a smokeable form of the drug, first reported in the United States and Caribbean.[60]
  • Luxor AB presents the ABC 800 computer.
  • Polybius, an urban legend game, is said to have been released in Portland, Oregon; there is no evidence for its existence.
  • The State Council of the People's Republic of China lists the cities of Beijing, Hangzhou, Suzhou and Guilin as those where the protection of historical and cultural heritage, as well as natural scenery, should be treated as a priority project.
  • Pepsi enters China.[61]
  • Around the end of 1981, China becomes the first country ever to reach a population of 1 billion.[62]

Births and deaths

Nobel Prizes

References

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  2. ^ Economist Publications (1988). The World in Figures. G.K. Hall. p. 282. ISBN 978-0-8161-8954-0.
  3. ^ Vinocur, John (January 7, 1981). "WAR VETERANS COME TO BURY, AND TO PRAISE, DOENITZ". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved September 16, 2023.
  4. ^ "Thousands at funeral for Hitler's successor – UPI Archives". UPI. Retrieved September 16, 2023.
  5. ^ Angelika Schlunck (2000). Amnesty Versus Accountability: Third Party Intervention Dealing with Gross Human Rights Violations in Internal and International Conflicts. Berlin Verlag Arno Spitz GmbH. p. 91. ISBN 978-3-87061-894-0.
  6. ^ W. J. Twierdochlebow (1985). Solidarność: A Biblio-historiography of the Gdansk Strike and Birth of Solidarity Movement. Center for the Study of Opposition in Poland. p. 61.
  7. ^ ʻAlī Rāhnamā; Farhād Nuʻmānī (1990). The Secular Miracle: Religion, Politics, and Economic Policy in Iran. Zed Books. p. 311. ISBN 978-0-86232-938-9.
  8. ^ Scientific Event Alert Network (National Museum of Natural History (U.S.)) (1981). SEAN Bulletin. Scientific Event Alert Network. p. 14.
  9. ^ Mark S. Hoffman (1990). The World Almanac and Book of Facts, 1990. World Almanac. p. 541. ISBN 978-0-88687-559-6.
  10. ^ Christine Ingebritsen (2006). Scandinavia in World Politics. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 59. ISBN 978-0-7425-0965-8.
  11. ^ Neal Ascherson (1982). The Book of Lech Wałęsa. Simon and Schuster. p. 14. ISBN 978-0-671-45684-9.
  12. ^ Fetherstonhaugh, Neil; McCullagh, Tony (2001). They Never Came Home: The Stardust Story. Merlin. p. 8. ISBN 978-1-903582-09-1.
  13. ^ Moore, Aoife (April 18, 2024). "Jury delivers unlawful killing verdict in Stardust inquest". BBC News. Retrieved April 18, 2024.
  14. ^ Daily Report. West Europe. The Service. 1990. p. 30.
  15. ^ "Client Challenge". www.ft.com. Retrieved September 14, 2025.
  16. ^ "The history of the London Marathon". Sky HISTORY TV channel. Retrieved September 28, 2025.
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  25. ^ "Complete History of Paintball". Paintball Award. May 2021. Retrieved May 15, 2021.
  26. ^ "NAMM Exhibitor Manual-Summer 1981". namm.org. Retrieved June 16, 2018.
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  28. ^ Timnick, Lois (March 21, 1990). "Trial Begins for 2 in Grisly Laurel Canyon Murders of Mid-1981". Los Angeles Times.
  29. ^ Graya: A Magazine for Members of Gray's Inn. Gray's Inn. 1980. p. 51.
  30. ^ Shukor Omar (2003). The Malay Lost World: With Emphasis on Entrepreneurship. Anzagain. p. 36. ISBN 978-983-037-120-7.
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  33. ^ Quarterly Economic Review of Poland, East Germany. Economist Intelligence Unit Limited. 1980. p. 14.
  34. ^ Jan-Patrick Stolpmann (May 2011). MTV: The (r)evolution & Impact Between 1981 - 1994. GRIN Verlag. p. 3. ISBN 978-3-640-91967-3.
  35. ^ Texas Business Review. Bureau of Business Research. 1981. p. 268.
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  37. ^ John Norton Moore; Robert F. Turner (1995). Readings on International Law from the Naval War College Review, 1978-1994. Naval War College. p. 489.
  38. ^ Jacqueline Audrey Kalley; Elna Schoeman; Lydia Eve Andor (1999). Southern African Political History: A Chronology of Key Political Events from Independence to Mid-1997. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 17. ISBN 978-0-313-30247-3.
  39. ^ "Missile is Fired by North Koreans at U.S. Spy Plane Near the DMZ". The New York Times. August 27, 1981.
  40. ^ United Press International (September 14, 1981). "Iranian Says Secretary to Premier Hid Fatal Bomb in Teheran Office". The New York Times. Retrieved March 14, 2017.
  41. ^ Arthur S Banks; William Overstreet; Thomas Muller (April 15, 2008). Political Handbook of the World 2008. CQ Press. p. 1446. ISBN 978-0-87289-528-7.
  42. ^ Shakila Yacob; Nicholas White (May 2011). "The 'Unfinished Business' of Malaysia's Decolonisation: The Origins of the Guthrie 'Dawn Raid'". Modern Asian Studies. 44 (5).
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  47. ^ William F. Hickman (1982). Ravaged and Reborn: The Iranian Army, 1982 : a Staff Paper. Brookings Institution. p. 27. ISBN 978-0-8157-3611-0.
  48. ^ Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts: LLBA. Sociological Abstracts, Incorporated. 1985. p. 893.
  49. ^ Amnesty International Report. Amnesty International Publications. 1982. p. 320. ISBN 9780939994021.
  50. ^ Intelligence Digest. Intelligence International Limited. April 1984. p. 20.
  51. ^ Lähteenmäki, Lauri (October 10, 2016). "Dramaattinen kuva Ylen uutuusdokumentissa hauraasta Kekkosesta – ensimmäinen eroilmoitus presidenttiydestä sensuroitiin". Ilta-Sanomat (in Finnish). Retrieved October 26, 2025.
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  53. ^ United States. Visa Office (1984). Report of the Visa Office. U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs. p. 43.
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  55. ^ "HISTORY >> Grey Cup >> 1981 | CFL.ca | Official Site of the Canadian Football League". Archived from the original on August 19, 2013. Retrieved August 23, 2017.
  56. ^ "European Severe Weather Database". www.eswd.eu.
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  59. ^ "Dengue Bulletin 23 - DHF Epidemics in Cuba, 1981 & 1997: Some Interesting Observations". Archived from the original on January 4, 2005. Retrieved May 26, 2005.
  60. ^ "DEA History Book, 1876–1990" (drug usage & enforcement), US Department of Justice, 1991, USDoJ.gov webpage: DoJ-DEA-History-1985-1990.
  61. ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on June 11, 2013. Retrieved July 12, 2013.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  62. ^ "Chinese Population Hits 1 Billion". History Channel Australia. June 19, 2016. Archived from the original on April 22, 2019.
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