BRITAIN AND THE WORLD SINCE 1953

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1981

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

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