BRITAIN AND THE WORLD SINCE 1953
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| Jan1 | Greece was admitted as the 10th member of the EEC. |
| Jan4 | Sheffield Police arrest Peter Sutcliffe, the "Yorkshire Ripper" who was eventually found guilty of thirteen murders. Initial suspicion was drawn to him on account of false licence plates |
| Jan16 | Protestant gunmen shoot and wound Bernadette Devlin McAliskey and her husband |
| Jan20 | President Reagan became the oldest President to take office (69 years and 349 days) |
| Iran releases U.S. hostages after 444 days in captivity. | |
| Jan25 | Launch in the U.K. of Social Democratic Party by the 'Gang of Four'. Four days earlier another member of the "Gang of Four", Mao's widow, was sentenced to death in Beiijing |
| Feb5 | A military jury in North Carolina convicts Pfc. Robert Garwood of collaborating with the enemy while a prisoner of war in Vietnam |
| Feb9 | Polish Prime Minister Pinkowski resigns and is replaced by General Wojciechk Jaruzelski |
| Feb15 | Football League games are played on Sunday for the first time |
| Feb23 | General Antonio Tejero attempts a coup in the Spanish Parliament. King Juan Carlos in uniform and acting as commander in chief appears on TV and orders the arrest of the coup leaders. The coup fails |
| Mar1 | Bobby Sands, an IRA member, begins hunger strike. At 1.17 a.m. on Tuesday, May 5th, having completed sixty-five days on hunger-strike, Bobby Sands MP, died in the H-Block prison hospital at Long Kesh. |
| Mar10 | Francois Mitterand wins the French presidential Election |
| Mar11 | Chilean President Augusto Pinochet was sworn in for an eight-year term as President. |
| Mar21 | Michael
Donald, a black teenager in Mobile, Alabama
was abducted, tortured and lynched in what prosecutors
charged was a Ku Klux Klan plot. (A lawsuit brought by Donald's mother, Beulah Mae Donald, later resulted in a landmark judgment that bankrupted one Klan organization.). One of those guilty of the attack Henry Hays was executed 16 years later on 6th June 1997 |
| Mar23 | Former World Motor Cycling champion Mike Hailwood dies alongside his nine year old daughter when his car is in a collision with a lorry near his home |
| Mar29 | First London Marathon held |
| Mar30 | President Reagan was shot and seriously injured outside a Washington DC hotel by John W.Hinckley Jr. Also wounded were White House press secretary James Brady, a Secret Service agent and a District of Columbia police officer. |
| Apr4 | Bob Champion after recovering from cancer won the Grand National on the Josh Gifford trained Aldaniti, who had recovered from tendon problems-broken hock. |
| Youths rioted in Brixton, South London, throwing petrol bombs, attacking police and looting shops. | |
| Apr5 | 1981 Census day in Britain |
| Apr12 | The
Columbia Space Shuttle makes the first shuttle flight
with a crew of Young and Crippen. This is the first space
flight with a reusable spacecraft. |
| Apr25 | Worst April blizzards this century in Britain |
| May1 | The first person dies in Spain as a result of using contaminated food oil. The scandal bedeviled Spanish politics for a long time |
| May10 | Social Democrats lost elections in West Berlin for the first time since World War II. |
| May11 | Bob Marley, Jamaican-born singer who popularized reggae with his group The Wailers, died of cancer and is buried 10 days later in Jamaica. |
| May13 | Pope John Paul II was shot and wounded as he drove through a crowd of 20,000 in St Peter's Square in Rome. The gunman, Mehmet Ali Agca, was arrested. |
| May22 | Peter Sutcliffe (the Yorkshire Ripper) was jailed for life after being convicted of 13 counts of murder. |
| May26 | The Italian government resigns over its links to the fascist masonic cell P-2 |
| Jun5 | Center of Disease Control reports of a pneumonia affecting gays (AIDS) |
| Jun6 | The
world's worst rail disaster, seven coaches of an
overcrowded passenger train were blown off the tracks
into the River Kosi, in Bihar, India. At least 800 people were killed. |
| Jun7 | Israeli planes destroy a nuclear plant in Iraq |
| Jun13 | Teenager Marcus Sargeant fires six blanks at Queen Elizabeth II during the Trooping The Colour ceremony in London |
| June29 | Morris Edwin Robert armed with a machine gun holds hostages in the FBI section (Atlanta). After three hours the hostages are rescued and Robert is shot |
| Jul17 | 114 people were killed when a pair of walkways above the lobby of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel collapsed during a tea dance. |
| Israeli Bombers destroy the PLO HQ in Beruit | |
| Jul21 | "Botham's Test" at Headingley Leeds |
| Jul29 | Wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer at St Pauls Cathedral London. The day was declared a public holiday and the event was watched on TV by an estimated worldwide audience of 750 million |
| MTV made its debut at 12:01 AM. The first video shown was "Video Killed the Radio Star" by the Buggles. | |
| Aug12 | First IBM PC is launched |
| Aug19 | US shoot two Libyan planes down over the Mediterranean Sea |
| Aug28 | John Hinckley Jr pleads innocent in attempt to kill Pres Reagan |
| South African troops invade Angola killing 240 people | |
| Aug31 | A bomb explodes at the US Army base in Reamstein West Germany injuring 20 people |
| Sept1 | Hitler's architect and Minister of War Production Albert Speer dies |
| Sept4 | An explosion at a mine in Zalizin Checkoslovakia kills 65 miners |
| Sep10 | Picasso's painting "Guernica" is moved from New York to Madrid |
| Oct6 | Anwar Sadat is assassinated by his own bodyguards - Hosnai Mubarak becomes Egytian president on 13.10.1981. On 5 March 1982 five of the attackers are sentenced to death in Cairo |
| Oct26 | Ken Howarth a bomb disposal expert is killed in an Oxford Street Wimpey Bar whilst attempting to defuse an IRA bomb |
| Nov29 | Natalie Wood (43) actress and wife of Robert Wagner, drowns off Santa Catalina CA |
| Dec11 | Muhammad Ali's 61st and final fight, saw him lose to Trevor Berbick |
| Dec13 | The Polish government imposed martial law in an attempt to crush the Solidarity movement. |
| Dec20 | The Penlee lifeboat disaster occurred off the coast of SW Cornwall. |
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Last Updated 19/09/02 14:26