List of 1984 Major News Events in History, Most Important Historical Events in 1984
Date | Event |
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January 1, 1984 | The original American Telephone & Telegraph Company is divested of its 22 Bell System companies as a result of the settlement of the 1974 United States Department of Justice antitrust suit against AT&T. |
January 1, 1984 | Brunei becomes independent of the United Kingdom. |
January 7, 1984 | Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). |
January 10, 1984 | Holy See–United States relations: The United States and Holy See (Vatican City) re-establish full diplomatic relations after almost 117 years, overturning the United States Congress's 1867 ban on public funding for such a diplomatic envoy. |
January 22, 1984 | The Apple Macintosh, the first consumer computer to popularize the computer mouse and the graphical user interface, is introduced during a Super Bowl XVIII television commercial. |
January 24, 1984 | Apple Computer places the Macintosh personal computer on sale in the United States. |
January 28, 1984 | Tropical Storm Domoina makes landfall in southern Mozambique, eventually causing 214 deaths and some of the most severe flooding so far recorded in the region. |
February 3, 1984 | Doctor John Buster and a research team at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in the United States announce history's first embryo transfer, from one woman to another resulting in a live birth. |
February 3, 1984 | Space Shuttle program: STS-41-B is launched using Space Shuttle Challenger. |
February 7, 1984 | Space Shuttle program: STS-41-B Mission: Astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart make the first untethered space walk using the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU). |
February 10, 1984 | Kenyan soldiers kill an estimated 5000 ethnic Somali Kenyans in the Wagalla massacre. |
February 13, 1984 | Konstantin Chernenko succeeds the late Yuri Andropov as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. |
February 24, 1984 | Tyrone Mitchell perpetrates the 49th Street Elementary School shooting in Los Angeles, killing two children and injuring 12 more. |
February 29, 1984 | Pierre Trudeau announces his retirement as Liberal Party leader and Prime Minister of Canada. |
March 6, 1984 | In the United Kingdom, a walkout at Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow signals the start of a strike that lasted almost a year and involved the majority of the country's miners. |
March 16, 1984 | William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Lebanon, is kidnapped by Hezbollah; he later dies in captivity. |
March 29, 1984 | The Baltimore Colts load its possessions onto fifteen Mayflower moving trucks in the early morning hours and transfer its operations to Indianapolis. |
April 1, 1984 | Singer Marvin Gaye is shot to death by his father in his home in Arlington Heights, Los Angeles, California. |
April 4, 1984 | President Ronald Reagan calls for an international ban on chemical weapons. |
April 6, 1984 | Members of Cameroon's Republican Guard unsuccessfully attempt to overthrow the government headed by Paul Biya. |
April 19, 1984 | Advance Australia Fair is proclaimed as Australia's national anthem, and green and gold as the national colours. |
May 6, 1984 | One hundred and three Korean Martyrs are canonized by Pope John Paul II in Seoul. |
May 8, 1984 | Corporal Denis Lortie enters the Quebec National Assembly and opens fire, killing three people 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. |
May 8, 1984 | The USSR announces a boycott upon the Summer Olympics at Los Angeles, later joined by 14 other countries. |
May 8, 1984 | The Thames Barrier is officially opened, preventing the floodplain of most of Greater London from being flooded except under extreme circumstances. |
May 17, 1984 | 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. |
May 27, 1984 | The Danube–Black Sea Canal is opened, in a ceremony attended by the Ceaușescus. It had been under construction since the 1950s. |
June 3, 1984 | Operation Blue Star, a military offensive, is launched by the Indian government at Harmandir Sahib, also known as the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine for Sikhs, in Amritsar. The operation continues until June 6, with casualties, most of them civilians, in excess of 5,000. |
June 5, 1984 | Operation Blue Star: Under orders from India's prime minister, Indira Gandhi, the Indian Army begins an invasion of the Golden Temple, the holiest site of the Sikh religion. |
June 8, 1984 | Homosexuality is decriminalized in the Australian state of New South Wales. |
June 18, 1984 | A major clash between about 5,000 police and a similar number of miners takes place at Orgreave, South Yorkshire, during the 1984–85 UK miners' strike. |
June 22, 1984 | Virgin Atlantic launches with its first flight from London to Newark. |
July 1, 1984 | The PG-13 rating is introduced by the MPAA. |
July 5, 1984 | The United States Supreme Court gives its United States v. Leon decision providing a good-faith exception from the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule against use of evidence obtained through defective warrants in criminal trials. |
July 17, 1984 | The national drinking age in the United States was changed from 18 to 21. |
July 18, 1984 | McDonald's massacre in San Ysidro, California: In a fast-food restaurant, James Oliver Huberty opens fire, killing 21 people and injuring 19 others before being shot dead by police. |
July 25, 1984 | Salyut 7 cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the first woman to perform a space walk. |
July 28, 1984 | Olympic Games: Games of the XXIII Olympiad: The summer Olympics were opened in Los Angeles. |
August 1, 1984 | Commercial peat-cutters discover the preserved bog body of a man, called Lindow Man, at Lindow Moss, Cheshire, England. |
August 4, 1984 | The Republic of Upper Volta changes its name to Burkina Faso. |
August 5, 1984 | A Biman Bangladesh Airlines Fokker F27 Friendship crashes on approach to Zia International Airport, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, killing all 49 people on board. |
August 11, 1984 | "We begin bombing in five minutes": United States President Ronald Reagan, while running for re-election, jokes while preparing to make his weekly Saturday address on National Public Radio. |
August 15, 1984 | The Kurdistan Workers' Party in Turkey starts a campaign of armed attacks upon the Turkish Armed Forces with an attack on police and gendarmerie bases in Şemdinli and Eruh. |
August 30, 1984 | STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery takes off on its maiden voyage. |
September 2, 1984 | 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 5, 1984 | STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery lands after its maiden voyage. |
September 5, 1984 | Western Australia becomes the last Australian state to abolish capital punishment. |
September 7, 1984 | An explosion on board a Maltese patrol boat disposing of illegal fireworks at sea off Gozo kills seven soldiers and policemen. |
September 12, 1984 | Dwight Gooden sets the baseball record for strikeouts in a season by a rookie with 276, previously set by Herb Score with 246 in 1954. Gooden's 276 strikeouts that season, pitched in 218 innings, set the current record. |
September 14, 1984 | Joe Kittinger becomes the first person to fly a gas balloon alone across the Atlantic Ocean. |
September 18, 1984 | Joe Kittinger completes the first solo balloon crossing of the Atlantic. |
September 20, 1984 | A suicide bomber in a car attacks the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing twenty-two people. |
September 21, 1984 | Brunei joins the United Nations. |
September 26, 1984 | The United Kingdom and China agree to a transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong, to take place in 1997. |
October 5, 1984 | Marc Garneau becomes the first Canadian in space. |
October 9, 1984 | The popular children's television show Thomas The Tank Engine & Friends, based on The Railway Series by the Reverend Wilbert Awdry, premieres on ITV. |
October 11, 1984 | Aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan becomes the first American woman to perform a space walk. |
October 11, 1984 | Aeroflot Flight 3352 crashes into maintenance vehicles upon landing in Omsk, Russia, killing 178. |
October 12, 1984 | The Provisional Irish Republican Army fail to assassinate Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet. The bomb kills five people and wounds 31. |
October 16, 1984 | Desmond Tutu is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. |
October 19, 1984 | A Roman Catholic priest, Jerzy Popiełuszko, associated with the Solidarity Union, is killed by three agents of the Polish Communist internal intelligence agency. |
October 21, 1984 | Niki Lauda claims his third and final Formula One Drivers' Championship Title by half a point ahead of McLaren team-mate Alain Prost at the Portuguese Grand Prix. |
October 31, 1984 | Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated by two Sikh security guards. Riots break out in New Delhi and other cities and around 3,000 Sikhs are killed. |
November 1, 1984 | After the assassination of Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India on 31 October 1984, by two of her Sikh bodyguards, anti-Sikh riots erupt. |
November 2, 1984 | Capital punishment: Velma Barfield becomes the first woman executed in the United States since 1962. |
November 14, 1984 | Zamboanga City mayor Cesar Climaco, a prominent critic of the government of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, is assassinated in his home city. |
November 19, 1984 | San Juanico disaster: A series of explosions at the Pemex petroleum storage facility at San Juan Ixhuatepec in Mexico City starts a major fire and kills about 500 people. |
November 25, 1984 | Thirty-six top musicians gather in a Notting Hill studio and record Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?" in order to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. |
November 27, 1984 | Under the Brussels Agreement signed between the governments of the United Kingdom and Spain, the former agrees to enter into discussions with Spain over Gibraltar, including sovereignty. |
December 1, 1984 | NASA conducts the Controlled Impact Demonstration, wherein an airliner is deliberately crashed in order to test technologies and gather data to help improve survivability of crashes. |
December 3, 1984 | Bhopal disaster: A methyl isocyanate leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, kills more than 3,800 people outright and injures 150,000–600,000 others (some 6,000 of whom later died from their injuries) in one of the worst industrial disasters in history. |
December 4, 1984 | Sri Lankan Civil War: Sri Lankan Army soldiers kill 107–150 civilians in Mannar. |
December 10, 1984 | United Nations General Assembly recognizes the Convention against Torture. |
December 19, 1984 | The Sino-British Joint Declaration, stating that China would resume the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong and the United Kingdom would restore Hong Kong to China with effect from July 1, 1997, is signed in Beijing by Deng Xiaoping and Margaret Thatcher. |
December 20, 1984 | The Summit Tunnel fire, one of the largest transportation tunnel fires in history, burns after a freight train carrying over one million liters of gasoline derails near the town of Todmorden, England, in the Pennines. |
December 20, 1984 | Disappearance of Jonelle Matthews from Greeley, Colorado. Her remains were discovered on July 23, 2019, located about 24 km (15 mi) southeast of Jonelle's home.[12][13] The cause of death "was a gunshot wound to the head." |
December 22, 1984 | "Subway vigilante" Bernhard Goetz shoots four would-be muggers on a 2 express train in Manhattan section of New York, United States. |
December 23, 1984 | After experiencing an engine fire, Aeroflot Flight 3519 attempts to make an emergency landing at Krasnoyarsk International Airport but crashes, killing 110 of the 111 people on board. |