• January 1 - The first British mobile phone call is made (by Ernie Wise to Vodafone).

• January 3 - Finnish government announces that a Soviet cruise missile has fallen into Inarinjärvi lake in Finnish Lapland

• January 17 - British Telecom announces it is going to phase out its famous red telephone boxes.

• January 21 - U.S. President Ronald Reagan is sworn in for a second term in office.

• January 23 - A debate in the British House of Lords is televised for the first time.
   

• February 1 - AM stereo broadcasting starts in Australia.

• February 5 - Australia cancels its involvement in U.S.-led MX missile tests.

• February 7 - "New York, New York" becomes the official city anthem of New York City.

• February 11 - Pakistani bowler Wasim Akram takes ten wickets in his second Test cricket match, but New Zealand still wins.

• February 14 - CNN reporter Jeremy Levin is freed from captivity in Lebanon.

• February 19 - William Schroeder becomes the first artificial heart patient to leave hospital.

• February 26 - US federal grand jury indicts 15 members of New York Mafia for racketeering
   

• GNU Manifesto first written by Richard Stallman.

• March 2 - Government of John Cain reelected in Victoria for second consecutive term.

• March 4 - The Food and Drug Administration approves a blood test for AIDS, used since then for screening all blood donations in the United States.

• March 11 - Mikhail Gorbachev becomes the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and de facto leader of the Soviet Union.

• March 11 - Mohammed Al Fayed buys the London-based department store company, Harrods.

• March 11 - The Prague Appeal by Jiří Dienstbier, Czech dissident.

• March 14 - Five lionesses at the Singapore Zoo are put on birth control because the lion population had increased from two to 16.

• March 15 - José Sarney takes oath as acting president of Brazil, because the president-elect Tancredo Neves becomes severely ill.

• March 15 - The first .com domain name, symbolics.com, is registered by the Symbolics corporation. However, in this early stage of the rollout of domain names, .edu domains, for educational institutions, still predominate over the commercial .com ones.

• March 16 - Associated Press newsman Terry Anderson is taken hostage in Beirut. He would later be released on December 4, 1991.

• March 17 - Serial killer Richard Ramirez (the "Night Stalker") commits his first two murders in Los Angeles, California.

• March 20 - Libby Riddles becomes the first woman to win the 1,135-mile Iditarod dog sled race.

• March 31 - Wrestlemania I occurs at Madison Square Garden, New York. The Main Event features Hulk Hogan and Mr. T with Jimmy Snuka vs. Roddy Piper and Paul Orndorff with Bob Orton, Jr.
   

• April 1 - Villanova University's "perfect upset" of Georgetown University and Patrick Ewing for the NCAA Basketball Championship.

• April 1 - Sports Illustrated magazine publishes an article about the non-existent baseball prodigy Sidd Finch.

• April 15 - South Africa ends its ban on interracial marriages.

• April 21 - Tancredo Neves, president-elect of Brazil, dies after 38 days of illness that prevented him to take oath.

• April 23 - Coca-Cola company changed its recipe/formula and packaging to New Coke (not successfully)

• April 24 - Secular Organizations for Sobriety formed.

• April 26 - High Court judge Justice Lionel Murphy is committed to stand trial on charges of trying to pevert the course of justice.

• April 28 - Australian Nuclear Disarmament Party (NDP) splits.
   

• May 8 - New Coke is released on the 99th anniversary of Coca-Cola. It will later become a major flop with consumers.

• May 11 - The FBI brings charges against suspected heads of the five Mafia families in New York City

• May 11 - Fire breaks in Valley Parade stadium in Bradford, England - 56 dead

• May 13 - Philadelphia's mayor orders police to storm the radical group's MOVE headquarters to end a stand-off. The police drop an explosive device into the headquarters killing 11 MOVE members and destroying the homes of 61 city residents in the resulting fire and leaving 250 people homeless.

• May 15 - Unabomber bomb injures John Hauser at UC Berkeley

• May 17- United Airlines Pilots go on strike for 29 days.

• May 20 - Propaganda: Radio Marti begins broadcasting to Cuba.

• May 23 - Thomas Patrick Cavanagh is sentenced to life in prison for attempting to sell stealth bomber secrets to the Soviet Union.

• May 25 - Bangladesh is hit by a tropical cyclone and storm surge which kills approximately 10,000 people.

• May 29 - In the Heysel Stadium disaster at the European Cup final in Brussels, 39 football (soccer) fans die and hundreds are injured.

• May 31 - Last day of classes for Chief Sealth High School Seniors.

• May 31 - The US-Canadian Outbreak: 41 tornadoes hit in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Ontario. By its end, 76 perish.
   

• June 6 - The body of Josef Mengele is located and exhumed in Brazil.

• June 7 - Graduation Day for Chief Sealth High School.

• June 9 - Thomas Sutherland is kidnapped in Lebanon (he is not released until 1991).

• June 10 - Claus von Bulow is acquitted on charges of trying to kill his wife.

• June 13 - In Auburn, Washington, police defuses an Unabomber bomb sent to Boeing

• June 14 - TWA Flight 847 is hijacked by Hezbollah.

• June 23 - Air India Flight 182, a Boeing 747, blows up 31,000 feet (9,500 m) above the Atlantic Ocean, south of Ireland, killing all 329 aboard.
   

• July 4 - 13-year-old Ruth Lawrence achieves a first in Mathematics at Oxford University, by becoming the youngest British person ever to earn a first-class degree and the youngest known graduate of Oxford University.

• July 10 - The Greenpeace vessel, the Rainbow Warrior, is bombed and sunk in Auckland harbour by French DGSE agents.

• July 10 - After a storm of controversy surrounding a change in its cola's formula (see New Coke), Coca-Cola re-introduces the old formula as "Coca-Cola Classic".

• July 13 - Live Aid pop concerts in Philadelphia and London raise over £50 million for famine relief in Ethiopia.

• July 19 - U.S. Vice President George H. W. Bush announces that New Hampshire teacher Christa McAuliffe will become the first schoolteacher to ride aboard the Space Shuttle.

• July 20 - The main ship wreck site of the Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de Atocha (which sank in 1622) is found 40 miles off the coast of Key West, Florida by treasure hunters who soon begin to raise $400 million in coins and silver.
   

• August 2 - Delta Air Lines Flight 191 crashes in Dallas, Texas, killing 137 people.

• August 6 - In Hiroshima, tens of thousands mark the 40th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the city.

• August 7 - Takao Doi, Mamoru Mohri and Chiaki Mukai are chosen to be Japan's first astronauts.

• August 12 - Japan Airlines Flight 123, a Boeing 747SR-46 plane en route from Tokyo to Osaka, crashed northwest of Tokyo, killing 520 of the 524 people on board.

• August 22 - 55 people killed at in the Manchester air disaster at Manchester International Airport when a British Airtours Boeing 737 burst into flames after the pilot aborts the takeoff.

• August 31 - Richard Ramirez arrested for the "Night Stalker" murders.
   

• September 1 - A joint American-French expedition locates the wreck of the RMS Titanic.

• September 5 - John Howard replaces Andrew Peacock as Australian Federal Opposition Leader.

• September 6 - Midwest Express Airlines Flight 105, a Douglas DC-9 crashes just after takeoff from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, killing 31.

• September 15 - U.S. hostage Benjamin Weir released in Lebanon.

• September 19 - 8.1 Richter scale earthquake strikes Mexico City. More than 9,000 people are killed, a further 30,000 injured, and 95,000 lose their homes.
   

• November 6 - In Colombia, leftist guerrillas of the M-19 movement seize control of the Palace of Justice in Bogotá. By the next day, 115 people are dead, including 11 Supreme Court justices.

• November 15 - In separate events, mail bombs kill two people in Salt Lake City, Utah; a third bomb explodes the next day, injuring Mark Hoffman. The ensuing police investigation leads to the arrest of Hoffman for these murders, as well as forgery.

• November 16 - When 1,800 staff of Baragwanath hospital in Soweto, South Africa go on strike for better pay, they are dismissed and troops called in to help run the hospital.

• November 18 - First Calvin and Hobbes comic strip printed in a handful of newspapers; the strip is not carried in the hometown newspaper of its creator, Bill Watterson.

• November 19 - Cold War: In Geneva, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet for the first time.

• November 19 - Pennzoil wins a $10.53 billion verdict from Texaco in the largest civil verdict in U.S. history (Texaco established a signed contract to buy Getty Oil after Pennzoil entered into an unsigned, yet still binding, buyout contract with Getty).

• November 20 - Microsoft Corporation releases the first version of Windows, Windows 1.0.

• November 21 - United States Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard is arrested for spying (he was caught giving Israel classified information on Arab nations and was eventually sentenced to life in prison).

• November 23 - Gunmen hijack EgyptAir Flight 648 while en route from Athens to Cairo when the plane lands in Malta, Egyptian commandos storm the hijacked jetliner but 60 people die in the raid).

• November 25 - Man wearing a chicken suit walks into the Australian House of Representatives and sits on the government front bench. He is later removed

• November 26 - U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs over rights to his autobiography to Random House for a record US$3 million.

• November 28 - Gerard Hoarau, exile political leader from the Seychelles, assassinated in London
   

• Ford Taurus released. It would become one of Ford's biggest successes ever.

• December 12 - Arrow Air Flight 1285 DC-8 crashes after takeoff in Gander, Newfoundland, killing 256, 248 of whom were U.S. servicemen returning from overseeing a peacekeeping force in Sinai.

• December 16 - In New York City, Mafia bosses Paul Castellano and Thomas Bilotti are shot dead in front of Sparks Steak House, making hit organizer John Gotti the leader of the powerful Gambino organized crime family.

• December 23 - Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov returns to Moscow after 7 years of internal exile

• December 27 - Rome and Vienna Airport Attacks - Groups of Abu Nidal members open fire in the airports of Rome and Vienna - 18 dead, 120 injured

• December 27 - American naturalist Dian Fossey is found murdered in Rwanda.

• December 31 - Last issue of The Columbus Citizen-Journal is distributed.
   

 

Environmental and weather-related

• Asian tiger mosquito, an invasive species is first found in Houston, Texas

• November 13 - The volcano Nevado del Ruiz erupts in Colombia, killing an estimated 23,000 people.

• Ethiopian famine continues - Live Aid attempts to raise funds for famine relief.
  

Miscellaneous facts

• Victoria celebrates its 150th anniversary.

• Capital gains tax introduced to Australia.

• Buckyballs discovered by Harold Kroto, Robert Curl and Richard Smalley.

• Western Sahara is admitted to the Organization of African Unity; Morocco, which claims Western Sahara, leaves in protest.

• Solarquest, space age real estate game, first published by Golden.

• Free Software Foundation founded.

• Norma Phillips Thornworth elected president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
  

Births

• February 5 - Cristiano Ronaldo, Portuguese footballer

• February 9 - Rachel Melvin, American actress

• February 10 - Anette Sagen, Norwegian ski jumper

• February 18 - Lee Boyd Malvo, American serial killer

• February 19 - Haylie Duff, American actress and singer

• February 28 - FeFe Dobson, Canadian singer

• March 2 - Robert Iler, American actor

• March 13 - Emile Hirsch, American actor

• March 15 - Antti Autti, Finnish snowboarder