1984

For George Orwell's novel, see Nineteen Eighty-Four. For other uses, see 1984 (disambiguation).

1984 (MCMLXXXIV) is a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar.

Events

January

• January 1 - Brunei becomes a fully independent state.
• January 1 - AT&T is broken up into 24 independent units.
• January 5 - Richard Stallman starts developing GNU.
• January 7 - Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
• January 9 - Clara Peller is featured in the "Where's the Beef?" commercial campaign for Wendy's for the first time.
• January 10 - The United States and the Vatican establish full diplomatic relations.
• January 23 - Hollywood Hulk Hogan defeats The Iron Sheik to win the WWF Championship, thus beginning Hulkamania.
• January 23 - Pop star Michael Jackson's scalp is seriously burned by pyrotechnics during filming of a Pepsi commercial.
• January 24 - The first Apple Macintosh goes on sale.

February

• February 1 - Medicare comes into effect in Australia.
• February 2 - Melbourne newspaper The Age publishes phone taps incriminating an unknown judge.
• February 3 - Space Shuttle Challenger is launched on the tenth space shuttle mission.
• February 7 - Astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart make the first untethered space walk.
• February 9 - Soviet leader Yuri Andropov dies.
• February 13 - Konstantin Chernenko succeeds the late Yuri Andropov as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
• February 18 - Vatican and Italian government sign new concordant changing Roman Catholic as the official religion.
• February 26 - United States Marines pull out of Beirut,Lebanon.
• February 29 - Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau announces his retirement.

March

• March 5 - Iran accuses Iraq of the use of chemical weapons - UN condemns the use on March 30.
• March 5 - Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi orders an attack on the Golden Temple, the Sikh holy spot.
• March 6 - Twelve month long strike in British coal industry begins See UK Miners' Strike (1984-1985).
• March 14 - Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams and three others are seriously injured in a gun attack by the UVF.
• March 16 - The CIA station chief in Beirut, William Buckley, is kidnapped by Islamic fundamentalists Islamic Jihad and later dies in captivity.
• March 22 - Teachers at the McMartin preschool in Manhattan Beach, California are charged with Satanic ritual abuse of the children in the school. The charges were later dropped as completely unfounded.
• March 23 - Sarah Tisdall, the young British civil servant who told The Guardian newspaper that cruise missiles were coming to Britain, is sentenced to six months imprisonment.

April

• April 4 - President Ronald Reagan calls for an international ban on chemical weapons.
• April 12 - Palestinian gunmen take Israeli bus number 300 hostage. Israeli special forces storm the bus freeing the hostages (1 hostage, 2 hijackers killed). 2 other hijackers were captured and then killed in secret service interrogations, causing a major scandal and secret service upheaval).
• April 13 - India launches Operation Meghdoot, as most of the Siachen Glacier in Kashmir comes under Indian control.
• April 17 - WPC Yvonne Fletcher is shot dead by a secluded gunman during a siege outside the Libyan Embassy in London in the event known as the 1984 Libyan Embassy Siege.
• April 19 - Advance Australia Fair is proclaimed as Australia's national anthem, and green and gold as the national colours.
• April 25 - End of term for Sultan Haji Ahmad Shah Al-Mustain Billah ibni Almarhum Sultan Sir Abu Bakar Riayatuddin Al-Muadzam Shah as the 7th Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia.
• April 26 - Baginda Almutawakkil Alallah Sultan Iskandar Al-Haj ibni Almarhum Sultan Ismail, Sultan of Johor becomes the 8th Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia.

May

• May 2 - The Liverpool International Garden Festival opens in Liverpool.
• May 8 - The Soviet Union announces that it will boycott the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California.
• May 8 - Denis Lortie kills three government employees in the National Assembly of Quebec building.
• May 11 - A transit of Earth from Mars takes place.
• May 14 - The one dollar coin is introduced in Australia.
• May 19 - Game show contestant Michael Larson takes $100,000 in winnings from the game show Press Your Luck. It is later revealed he won the money by focusing exclusively on two squares of the Press Your Luck "Big Board."
• May 27 - Fluminense wins the Brazilian soccer league, against the Club de Regatas Vasco da Gama.

June

• June 5 - The Indian government begins Operation Blue Star, the planned attack on the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
• June 6 - Indian troops storm the Golden Temple at Amritsar, the Sikh's holiest shrine, killing an estimated 1000 people.
• June 8 - A deadly F5 tornado nearly destroys the town of Barneveld, Wisconsin, killing nine people, injuring nearly 200, and causing over $25,000,000 in damage.
• June 8 - The film Ghostbusters is released into theaters -- becoming a summer blockbuster hit with the song "Ghostbusters" by Ray Parker Jr. becoming a Top 40 hit.
• June 20 - The biggest exam shake-up in the British education system in over 10 years is announced with O-level and CSE exams to be replaced by a new exam, the GCSE.
• June 22 - The official name of the Turkish city Urfa is changed into Sanliurfa.
• June 22 - Inaugural flight of Virgin Atlantic.
• June 27 - France beat Spain 2-0 to win Euro 84.
• June 30 - John Turner becomes Canada's seventeenth prime minister.

July-August

• July 9 - Lightning sets fire to York Minster.
• July 14 - New Zealand Prime Minister Robert Muldoon calls a snap election and is heavily defeated by opposition Labour leader David Lange.
• July 18 - In San Ysidro, California, 41-year-old James Oliver Huberty sprays a McDonald's restaurant with gunfire, killing 21 people before being shot dead.
• July 21 - In Jackson, Michigan, a factory robot crushes a worker against a safety bar in what is apparently the first robot-related death in the United States.
• July 23 - Vanessa Williams becomes the first Miss America to resign when she surrenders her crown, after nude photos of her appeared in "Penthouse" magazine.
• July 25 - Salyut 7 Cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the first woman to perform a space walk.
• July 28 - Opening day of the 1984 Olympics
• August 1 - Australian banks are deregulated.
• August 4 - The African republic Upper Volta changes its name to Burkina Faso.
• August 16 - John De Lorean is acquitted of all eight charges of possessing and distributing cocaine.
• August 21 - Half a million people in Manila demonstrate against the regime of Ferdinand Marcos.
• August 30 - STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery takes off on its maiden voyage.

September-October

• September 2 - Seven people are shot dead and 12 are wounded in a bikie shootout between rival gangs Bandidos and Comancheros in the Sydney suburb of Milperra.
• September 4 - The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, led by Brian Mulroney wins 211 seats in the House of Commons, forming the largest majority government in Canadian history
• September 5 - STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery lands after its maiden voyage.
• September 5 - Western Australia becomes the last Australian state to abolish capital punishment.
• September 17 - Brian Mulroney becomes Canada's eighteenth prime minister.
• September 26 - United Kingdom and People's Republic of China sign the initial agreement to return Hong Kong to China in 1997.
• September 4 - The Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends television series was first broadcasted on ITV.
• October 5 - Marc Garneau becomes the first Canadian in space, aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger (41-6).
• October 11 - Aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan becomes the first American woman to perform a space walk.
• October 12 - The PIRA attempts to assassinate the British Cabinet in the Brighton hotel bombing.
• October 19 - Polish secret police arrests Jerzy Popiełuszko, a Catholic priest, because of his support of the Solidarity movement. His dead body is found in a reservoir 11 days later on October 30.
• October 31 - Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated by two Sikh security guards. Riots soon broke out in New Delhi, and some 2,700 innocent Sikhs were killed.

November

• November 2 - Capital punishment: Velma Barfield becomes the first woman executed in the United States since 1962.
• November 6 - Ronald Reagan defeats Walter F. Mondale in the U.S. presidential election with 59% of the popular vote, the highest since Richard Nixon's 61% victory in 1972. Reagan carries 49 states and Mondale manages to win only his home state of Minnesota by a mere 3,761 vote margin and the District of Columbia.
• November 19 - A series of explosions at the PEMEX petroleum storage facility at San Juan Ixhuatepec in Mexico City ignites a major fire and kills about 500 people.
• November 25 - 36 of Britain and Ireland's top pop musicians gathered in a Notting Hill studio to form Band Aid and recorded the song "Do They Know It's Christmas" in order to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia.
• November 28 - Over 250 years after their deaths, William Penn and his wife Hannah Callowhill Penn are made Honorary Citizens of the United States.
• November 30 - The Tamil Tigers begin the purge of the Sinhalese from North and East Sri Lanka, and 127 are killed.

December

• December 2 - Bob Hawke's government is re-elected in Australia with a reduced majority.
• December 3 - Bhopal Disaster: A methyl isocyanate leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India, kills more than 2,000 people outright and injures anywhere from 150,000 to 600,000 others (some 6,000 of whom would later die from their injuries) in one of the worst industrial disasters in history.
• December 3 - British Telecom privatised.
• December 19 - The People's Republic of China and United Kingdom signs the Sino-British Joint Declaration which concerns the future of Hong Kong.
• December 22 - Four African-American youths, Barry Allen, Troy Canty, James Ramseur, and Darrell Cabey, board an express train in The Bronx borough of New York City. They attempt to rob Bernhard Hugo Goetz, who shoots them. The event starts a national debate about urban crime, which was a plague in 1980s America.
• December 22 - In Malta, prime minister Dom Mintoff resigns.
• December 28 - A Soviet cruise missile plunges into Inarinjärvi lake in Finnish Lapland. Finnish authorities announce the fact in public on January 3, 1985
• December 31 - Rajiv Gandhi becomes prime minister of India.

Unknown dates

• Ethiopian famine begins.
• A peace agreement between Kenya and Somalia was signed in the Egyptian capital Cairo in December 1984. With this agreement, in which Somalia officially renounced its historical territorial claims, relations between the two countries began to improve.

Births

January-April

• January 1 - Keyra Augustina, model
• January 2 - Lauren Bush, model
• January 3 - Maya Ababadjani, actress
• January 3 - Charlotte Marshall, model
• January 13 - Eleni Ioannou, Greek martial artist (d. 2004)
• January 15 - Megan Quann, swimmer
• January 19 - Zakia Mrisho Mohamed
• January 25 - Ines Cudna, model
• January 26 - Rebecca Ritters, actress
• January 26 - Kelly Stables, actress
• January 26 - Luo Xuejuan, swimmer
• January 29 - Natalie du Toit, South African swimmer
• February 10 - Kim Hyo Jin, Korean actress
• February 12 - Alexandra Dahlström, actress
• February 25 - Xing Huina, Chinese athlete
• February 28 - Karolina Kurkova, model
• March 20 - Christy Carlson Romano, actress
• March 20 - Marcus Vick, American football player
• March 20 - Nomura Yuka, Japanese actress
• March 24 - Chris Bosh, American Basketball player currently playing with the Toronto Raptors
• March 28 - Nikki Sanderson, British actress
• April 3 - Allana Slater, Australian gymnast
• April 8 - Kirsten Storms, American actress
• April 10 - Mandy Moore, American singer and actress
• April 11 - Kelli Garner, American actress
• April 13 - Kris Britt, Australian cricketer
• April 17 - Rosanna Davison, Irish model
• April 18 - America Ferrera, American actress