Important Historical Events of the year 1986, Year 1986 in History
List of 1986 Major News Events in History, Most Important Historical Events in 1986
What happened in the year 1986?
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| January 11, 1986 | The Gateway Bridge, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia is officially opened. |
| January 12, 1986 | Space Shuttle program: NASA Administrator Bill Nelson lifts off from Kennedy Space Center aboard Columbia on mission STS-61-C as a payload specialist. |
| January 13, 1986 | A month-long violent struggle begins in Aden, South Yemen between supporters of Ali Nasir Muhammad and Abdul Fattah Ismail, resulting in thousands of casualties. |
| January 19, 1986 | The first IBM PC computer virus is released into the wild. A boot sector virus dubbed (c)Brain, it was created by the Farooq Alvi Brothers in Lahore, Pakistan, reportedly to deter unauthorized copying of the software they had written. |
| January 20, 1986 | In the United States, Martin Luther King Jr. Day is celebrated as a federal holiday for the first time. |
| January 20, 1986 | Leabua Jonathan, Prime Minister of Lesotho, is ousted from power in a coup d'état led by General Justin Lekhanya. |
| January 23, 1986 | The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducts its first members: Little Richard, Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Fats Domino, The Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley. |
| January 24, 1986 | The Voyager 2 space probe makes its closest approach to Uranus. |
| January 25, 1986 | The National Resistance Movement topples the government of Tito Okello in Uganda. |
| January 26, 1986 | The Ugandan government of Tito Okello is overthrown by the National Resistance Army, led by Yoweri Museveni. |
| January 28, 1986 | Space Shuttle program: STS-51-L mission: Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrates after liftoff, killing all seven astronauts on board. |
| February 7, 1986 | Twenty-eight years of one-family rule end in Haiti, when President Jean-Claude Duvalier flees the Caribbean nation. |
| February 8, 1986 | Hinton train collision: Twenty-three people are killed when a VIA Rail passenger train collides with a 118-car Canadian National freight train near the town of Hinton, Alberta, west of Edmonton. It is the worst rail accident in Canada until the Lac-Mégantic, Quebec derailment in 2013 which killed forty-seven people. |
| February 9, 1986 | Halley's Comet last appeared in the inner Solar System. |
| February 16, 1986 | The Soviet liner MS Mikhail Lermontov runs aground in the Marlborough Sounds, New Zealand. |
| February 16, 1986 | China Airlines Flight 2265 crashes into the Pacific Ocean near Penghu Airport in Taiwan, killing all 13 aboard. |
| February 19, 1986 | Akkaraipattu massacre: the Sri Lankan Army massacres 80 Tamil farm workers in eastern Sri Lanka. |
| February 20, 1986 | The Soviet Union launches its Mir spacecraft. Remaining in orbit for 15 years, it is occupied for ten of those years. |
| February 22, 1986 | Start of the People Power Revolution in the Philippines. |
| February 25, 1986 | People Power Revolution: President of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos flees the nation after 20 years of rule; Corazon Aquino becomes the Philippines' first woman president. |
| February 28, 1986 | Olof Palme, 26th Prime Minister of Sweden, is assassinated in Stockholm. |
| March 3, 1986 | The Australia Act 1986 commences, causing Australia to become fully independent from the United Kingdom. |
| March 4, 1986 | The Soviet Vega 1 begins returning images of Halley's Comet and the first images of its nucleus. |
| March 7, 1986 | Challenger Disaster: Divers from the USS Preserver locate the crew cabin of Challenger on the ocean floor. |
| March 15, 1986 | Collapse of Hotel New World: Thirty-three people die when the Hotel New World in Singapore collapses. |
| March 21, 1986 | Debi Thomas became the first African American to win the World Figure Skating Championships |
| March 24, 1986 | The Loscoe gas explosion leads to new UK laws on landfill gas migration and gas protection on landfill sites. |
| March 27, 1986 | A car bomb explodes outside Russell Street Police HQ in Melbourne, Australia, killing one police officer and injuring 21 people. |
| April 1, 1986 | Communist Party of Nepal (Mashal) cadres attack a number of police stations in Kathmandu, seeking to incite a popular rebellion. |
| April 2, 1986 | Alabama governor George Wallace, a former segregationist, best known for the "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door", announces that he will not seek a fifth four-year term and will retire from public life upon the end of his term in January 1987. |
| April 11, 1986 | FBI Miami Shootout: A gun battle in broad daylight in Dade County, Florida between two bank/armored car robbers and pursuing FBI agents. During the firefight, FBI agents Jerry L. Dove and Benjamin P. Grogan were killed, while five other agents were wounded. As a result, the popular .40 S&W cartridge was developed. |
| April 14, 1986 | The heaviest hailstones ever recorded, each weighing 1 kilogram (2.2 lb), fall on the Gopalganj district of Bangladesh, killing 92. |
| April 15, 1986 | The United States launches Operation El Dorado Canyon, its bombing raids against Libyan targets in response to a discotheque bombing in West Germany that killed two U.S. servicemen. |
| April 17, 1986 | An alleged state of war lasting 335 years between the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly declared peace bringing an end to any hypothetical war that may have been legally considered to exist.[3] |
| April 26, 1986 | The Chernobyl disaster occurs in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. |
| April 27, 1986 | The city of Pripyat and surrounding areas are evacuated due to Chernobyl disaster. |
| April 28, 1986 | High levels of radiation resulting from the Chernobyl disaster are detected at a nuclear power plant in Sweden, leading Soviet authorities to publicly announce the accident. |
| April 29, 1986 | A fire at the Central library of the City of Los Angeles Public Library damages or destroys 400,000 books and other items. |
| April 29, 1986 | The United States Navy aircraft carrier USS Enterprise becomes the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to transit the Suez Canal, navigating from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea to relieve the USS Coral Sea. |
| April 29, 1986 | Chernobyl disaster: American and European spy satellites capture the ruins of the 4th Reactor at the Chernobyl Power Plant. |
| May 2, 1986 | Chernobyl disaster: The City of Chernobyl is evacuated six days after the disaster. |
| May 3, 1986 | Twenty-one people are killed and forty-one are injured after a bomb explodes on Air Lanka Flight 512 at Colombo airport in Sri Lanka. |
| May 7, 1986 | Canadian Patrick Morrow becomes the first person to climb each of the Seven Summits. |
| May 19, 1986 | The Firearm Owners Protection Act is signed into law by U.S. President Ronald Reagan. |
| May 25, 1986 | The Hands Across America event takes place. |
| May 26, 1986 | The European Community adopts the European flag. |
| June 4, 1986 | Jonathan Pollard pleads guilty to espionage for selling top secret United States military intelligence to Israel. |
| June 14, 1986 | The Mindbender derails and kills three riders at the Fantasyland (known today as Galaxyland) indoor amusement park at West Edmonton Mall in Edmonton, Alberta. |
| June 22, 1986 | The famous Hand of God goal, scored by Diego Maradona in the quarter-finals of the 1986 FIFA World Cup match between Argentina and England, ignites controversy. This was later followed by the Goal of the Century. Argentina wins 2–1 and later goes on to win the World Cup. |
| June 30, 1986 | The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Bowers v. Hardwick that states can outlaw homosexual acts between consenting adults. |
| July 2, 1986 | Rodrigo Rojas and Carmen Gloria Quintana are burnt alive during a street demonstration against the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet in Chile. |
| July 2, 1986 | Aeroflot Flight 2306 crashes while attempting an emergency landing at Syktyvkar Airport in Syktyvkar, in present-day Komi Republic, Russia, killing 54 people. |
| July 9, 1986 | The New Zealand Parliament passes the Homosexual Law Reform Act legalising homosexuality in New Zealand. |
| August 6, 1986 | A low-pressure system that redeveloped off the New South Wales coast dumps a record 328 millimeters (13 inches) of rain in a day on Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. |
| August 20, 1986 | In Edmond, Oklahoma, U.S. Postal employee Patrick Sherrill guns down 14 of his co-workers and then commits suicide. |
| August 21, 1986 | Carbon dioxide gas erupts from volcanic Lake Nyos in Cameroon, killing up to 1,800 people within a 20-kilometer range. |
| August 31, 1986 | Aeroméxico Flight 498 collides with a Piper PA-28 Cherokee over Cerritos, California, killing 67 in the air and 15 on the ground. |
| August 31, 1986 | The Soviet passenger liner Admiral Nakhimov sinks in the Black Sea after colliding with the bulk carrier Pyotr Vasev, killing 423. |
| September 5, 1986 | Pan Am Flight 73 from Mumbai, India with 358 people on board is hijacked at Karachi International Airport. |
| September 6, 1986 | In Istanbul, two terrorists from Abu Nidal's organization kill 22 and wound six congregants inside the Neve Shalom Synagogue during Shabbat services. |
| September 7, 1986 | Desmond Tutu becomes the first black man to lead the Anglican Diocese of Cape Town. |
| September 7, 1986 | Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet survives an assassination attempt by the FPMR;[8] |
| September 8, 1986 | Nicholas Daniloff, a correspondent for U.S. News & World Report, is indicted on charges of espionage by the Soviet Union. |
| September 13, 1986 | A magnitude 6.0 earthquake strikes Kalamata, Greece with a maximum Modified Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme), killing at least 20 and causing heavy damage in the city. |
| September 28, 1986 | The Democratic Progressive Party becomes the first opposition party in Taiwan. |
| October 3, 1986 | TASCC, a superconducting cyclotron at the Chalk River Laboratories in Canada, is officially opened. |
| October 5, 1986 | Mordechai Vanunu's story in The Sunday Times reveals Israel's secret nuclear weapons. |
| October 9, 1986 | The Phantom of the Opera, eventually the second longest running musical in London, opens at Her Majesty's Theatre. |
| October 9, 1986 | Fox Broadcasting Company (FBC) launches as the "fourth" US television network. |
| October 10, 1986 | A 5.7 Mw San Salvador earthquake shakes El Salvador, killing 1,500. |
| October 11, 1986 | Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev meet in Iceland to continue discussions about scaling back IRBM arsenals in Europe. |
| October 19, 1986 | The president of Mozambique and a prominent leader of FRELIMO, along with 33 others, die when their aircraft crashes into the Lebombo Mountains. |
| October 20, 1986 | Aeroflot Flight 6502 crashes while landing at Kuibyshev Airport (now Kuromoch International Airport) in Kuibyshev (now present-day Samara, Russia), killing 70 people. |
| October 21, 1986 | In Lebanon, pro-Iran kidnappers claim to have abducted American writer Edward Tracy (he is released in August 1991). |
| October 24, 1986 | Nezar Hindawi is sentenced to 45 years in prison, the longest sentence handed down by a British court, for the attempted bombing of an El Al flight at Heathrow Airport. |
| October 27, 1986 | The British government suddenly deregulates financial markets, leading to a total restructuring of the way in which they operate in the country, in an event now referred to as the Big Bang. |
| October 29, 1986 | British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher opens the last stretch of the M25 motorway. |
| November 2, 1986 | Lebanon hostage crisis: U.S. hostage David Jacobsen is released in Beirut after 17 months in captivity. |
| November 3, 1986 | Iran–Contra affair: The Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa reports that the United States has been secretly selling weapons to Iran in order to secure the release of seven American hostages held by pro-Iranian groups in Lebanon. |
| November 3, 1986 | The Compact of Free Association becomes law, granting the Federated States of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands independence from the United States. |
| November 5, 1986 | USS Rentz, USS Reeves and USS Oldendorf visit Qingdao, China; the first US naval visit to China since 1949. |
| November 6, 1986 | Sumburgh disaster: A British International Helicopters Boeing 234LR Chinook crashes 2.mw-parser-output .frac{white-space:nowrap}.mw-parser-output .frac .num,.mw-parser-output .frac .den{font-size:80%;line-height:0;vertical-align:super}.mw-parser-output .frac .den{vertical-align:sub}.mw-parser-output .sr-only{border:0;clip:rect(0,0,0,0);height:1px;margin:-1px;overflow:hidden;padding:0;position:abso |
| November 17, 1986 | The flight crew of Japan Airlines Flight 1628 are involved in a UFO sighting incident while flying over Alaska. |
| November 21, 1986 | National Security Council member Oliver North and his secretary start to shred documents allegedly implicating them in the Iran–Contra affair. |
| November 25, 1986 | Iran–Contra affair: U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese announces that profits from covert weapons sales to Iran were illegally diverted to the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua. |
| November 25, 1986 | The King Fahd Causeway is officially opened in the Persian Gulf. |
| November 26, 1986 | Iran–Contra affair: U.S. President Ronald Reagan announces the members of what will become known as the Tower Commission. |
| November 26, 1986 | The trial of John Demjanjuk, accused of committing war crimes as a guard at the Nazi Treblinka extermination camp, starts in Jerusalem. |
| November 29, 1986 | The Surinamese military attacks the village of Moiwana during the Suriname Guerrilla War, killing at least 39 civilians, mostly women and children. |
| December 4, 1986 | The MV Amazon Venture oil tanker begins leaking oil while at the port of Savannah in the United States, resulting in an oil spill of approximately 500,000 US gallons (1,900,000 L). |
| December 14, 1986 | Qasba Aligarh massacre: Over 400 Muhajirs killed in revenge killings in Qasba colony after a raid on Pashtun heroin processing and distribution center in Sohrab Goth by the security forces. |
| December 19, 1986 | Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the Soviet Union, releases Andrei Sakharov and his wife from exile in Gorky. |
| December 23, 1986 | Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, lands at Edwards Air Force Base in California becoming the first aircraft to fly non-stop around the world without aerial or ground refueling. |
| December 25, 1986 | Iraqi Airways Flight 163, a Boeing 737-270C, is hijacked and crashes in Arar, Saudi Arabia, killing 63 people. |