Explore 6636 historical events from 1980–1989.
Eugene "Gene" Eisenmann was an American and Panamanian lawyer and amateur ornithologist of German-Jewish ancestry. He had a long association with the Linnaean Society of New York (…
Eugene Eisenmann, Panamanian-American lawyer and ornithologist (born 1906)
Muhammad Anwar es-Sadat was an Egyptian politician and military officer who was the third president of Egypt from 1970 until his assassination in 1981. A former member of the Free …
Anwar Sadat, Egyptian colonel and politician, 3rd President of Egypt, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1918)
Moshe Dayan was an Israeli military leader and politician. As commander of the Jerusalem front in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Chief of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces…
Moshe Dayan, Israeli general and politician, 5th Foreign Affairs Minister of Israel (born 1915)
Muthiah Sathappan Chettiar, better known as Kannadasan, was a poet, film song lyricist, producer, actor, script-writer, editor, philanthropist, and is heralded as one of the most i…
Kannadasan Indian author, poet, and songwriter (born 1927)
Abraham Albert Cohen was a Greek-born Romaniote Jewish Swiss novelist who wrote in French. He worked as a civil servant for various international organizations, such as the Interna…
Albert Cohen, Greek-Swiss civil servant and author (born 1895)
Lina Tsaldari was a right-wing Greek politician. She became the first female minister in Greece in 1956, serving as the Minister for Social Welfare under Konstantinos Karamanlis' g…
Lina Tsaldari, Greek politician (born 1887)
Georges Charles Brassens was a French singer-songwriter and poet.
Georges Brassens, French singer-songwriter and guitarist (born 1921)
A five-year protest during the Troubles by Irish republican prisoners in Northern Ireland culminated in a hunger strike in 1981. The protest began as the blanket protest in 1976 wh…
After a 66-day hunger strike, Irish republican Bobby Sands died of starvation in HM Prison Maze
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer and impresario of musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and o…
Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats (performers pictured), opened at the New London Theatre
Marcus Simon Sarjeant is a British man who fired six blank shots near Queen Elizabeth II as she rode down The Mall to the Trooping the Colour ceremony in London in 1981.
English teenager Marcus Sarjeant fired six blanks at Queen Elizabeth II as she rode down The Mall to the Trooping the Co
Nintendo Co., Ltd. is a Japanese multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto. It develops, publishes, and manufactures both video games and video game consoles.
Nintendo released the arcade game Donkey Kong, which featured the debut of Mario, one of the most famous characters in…
The Sinhalese people, also known as the Sinhalese or Sinhala people, are an Indo-Aryan ethno-linguistic group native to the island of Sri Lanka. They are the largest ethnic group i…
An organized mob of police and government-sponsored Sinhalese paramilitary forces began three days of attacks that led t
The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a retrovirus that attacks the immune system. Without treatment, it can lead to a spectrum of conditions including acquired immunodeficienc…
The first clinical cases of AIDS were published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
The Israeli Air Force operates as the aerial and space warfare branch of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). It was founded on May 28, 1948, shortly after the Israeli Declaration of I…
The Israeli Air Force attacked a nuclear reactor under the assumption that it was about to start producing plutonium to
Raiders of the Lost Ark is a 1981 American action-adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Lawrence Kasdan, based on a story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman. S…
Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first film to star Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, was released
The wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer took place on Wednesday, 29 July 1981, at St Paul's Cathedral in London, England. The groom was the heir apparent to the Britis…
An estimated worldwide television audience of 750 million watched the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer…
In mid-1981, amid a widespread economic crisis and food shortages in the Polish People's Republic, thousands of Poles, mainly women and their children, took part in several hunger …
Amid a widespread economic crisis and food shortages in Poland, up to 50,000 people, mostly women and children, took…
"Video Killed the Radio Star" is a song written by Trevor Horn, Geoff Downes, and Bruce Woolley in 1979. It was recorded concurrently by Bruce Woolley and the Camera Club for their…
"Video Killed the Radio Star" by the Buggles became the first music video broadcast on the American cable television…
Ronald Wilson Reagan was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. A member of the Republican Party, he became an im…
U.S. president Ronald Reagan fired the 11,345 striking members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers…
Mohammad-Ali Rajai was an Iranian politician who served as the second president of Iran from 2 August 1981 until his assassination four weeks later. Before his presidency, Rajai ha…
Iranian president Mohammad-Ali Rajai and prime minister Mohammad-Javad Bahonar were assassinated in a bombing…
Nestor Pirotte, known as The Crazy Killer, was a Belgian serial killer, considered one of the deadliest Belgian criminals of the 20th century before Marc Dutroux. He was sentenced …
While posing as an aristocrat, Belgian serial killer Nestor Pirotte murdered an antiques dealer in Brussels, for which…
Sandra Day O'Connor was an American attorney, politician, and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 to 2006. Nominated by Pr…
Sandra Day O'Connor (pictured) became the first female justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
The Iran–Iraq War, also called the First Imposed War by Iran, began with the Iraqi invasion of Iran in September 1980. After eight years of conflict, both countries accepted a ceas…
Iran–Iraq War: Iran broke the Iraqi siege of Abadan by Operation Samen-ol-A'emeh.
A five-year protest during the Troubles by Irish republican prisoners in Northern Ireland culminated in a hunger strike in 1981. The protest began as the blanket protest in 1976 wh…
A hunger strike by Irish republican prisoners at HM Prison Maze outside Belfast, Northern Ireland, ended after seven…