What happened in 1984

World3

• Oct 26The science fiction action film The Terminator premieres. It is the third film directed by James Cameron, and stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, and Michael Biehn.
• Nov 21Start of Operation Moses, the evacuation of refugee Beta Israel Ethiopian Jews from Sudan to Israel via Brussels.
• Dec 19The People's Republic of China and the United Kingdom sign the Sino-British Joint Declaration on the future of Hong Kong.

North America17

• Jan 9Van Halen releases their sixth studio album 1984 (MCMLXXXIV), which debuts at number 2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, and will go to sell over 10 million copies in the United States.
• Jan 24Steve Jobs launches the Macintosh personal computer in the United States.
• Feb 3STS-41-B: Space Shuttle Challenger is launched on the 10th Space Shuttle mission.
• Feb 23TED (conference) is founded.
• Mar 16The United States Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Beirut, William Francis Buckley, is kidnapped by the Islamic Jihad Organization and later dies in captivity.
• Apr 15Pittsburgh Light Rail opens to the public.
• Jun 16The Canadian entertainment company Cirque du Soleil is founded.
• Jul 18San Ysidro McDonald's massacre: 41-year-old James Huberty walks into a McDonald's in the San Ysidro district of San Diego, resulting in 21 deaths, with Huberty being killed by a sniper 77 minutes after the ordeal begins.
• Jul 28The 1984 Summer Olympics are held in Los Angeles, California.
• Aug 30STS-41-D: the Space Shuttle Discovery takes off on its maiden voyage.
• Sep 5STS-41-D: the Space Shuttle Discovery lands after its maiden voyage at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
• Oct 2John Schnatter founded Papa John's in Jeffersontown, Kentucky.
• Oct 5STS-41-G: Marc Garneau becomes the first Canadian in space, aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger.
• Oct 20Monterey Bay Aquarium is opened to the public after seven years of development and construction.
• Nov 61984 United States presidential election: Republican President Ronald Reagan defeats Democratic former Vice President Walter F. Mondale with 59% of the popular vote, the highest since Richard Nixon's 61% popular vote victory in 1972. Reagan carries 49 states in the electoral College; Mondale wins only his home state of Minnesota (by a mere 3,761 vote margin) and the District of Columbia.

2 more in the app

Europe11

• Feb 8The 1984 Winter Olympics are held in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia.
• Mar 12The National Union of Mineworkers strikes as tens of thousands of miners in the United Kingdom stop working in protest over colliery closures, starting the United Kingdom miners' strike that lasts a year.
• Apr 15British comedian, performer and magician Tommy Cooper suffers a heart attack during a live TV performance at His Majesty's Theatre, London and dies aged 63.
• Apr 17Metropolitan Police officer Yvonne Fletcher was fatally shot, during a demonstration outside the Libyan embassy in London, leading to an eleven-day siege of the embassy, and the severing of diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and Libya.
• May 5The Herreys' song "Diggi-Loo Diggi-Ley" wins the Eurovision Song Contest for Sweden in Luxembourg. It subsequently becomes a top-ten hit in five European countries.
• Jun 22Virgin Atlantic makes its inaugural flight.
• Jun 27France beats Spain 2–0 to win Euro 84.
• Oct 9Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends by Britt Allcroft broadcasts its first two episodes in the United Kingdom.
• Oct 12The Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) attempts to assassinate Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the British Cabinet in the Brighton hotel bombing with an explosive device planted nearly a month earlier in their conference hotel. The terror attack kills five people and injures 31.
• Oct 19Polish secret police kidnapped and assassinated Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, a Catholic priest who supported the Solidarity movement. His body was found in a reservoir 11 days later on October 30. of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko on 3 November 1984, 15 days after his assassination.]]
• Oct 23The world learns from moving BBC News television reports presented by Michael Buerk of the famine in Ethiopia, where thousands of people have already died of starvation due to a famine, and as many as 10,000,000 more lives are at risk.

USSR / Russia3

• Feb 13Konstantin Chernenko succeeds the late Yuri Andropov as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
• May 8The Soviet Union announces that it will boycott the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
• Oct 11Aeroflot Flight 3352 crashes at Omsk Airport into maintenance vehicles on the runway, killing 174 people on board and 4 on the ground.

Asia10

• Jan 1The Bornean Sultanate of Brunei gains full independence from the United Kingdom, having become a British protectorate in 1888.
• Apr 2Indian Squadron Leader Rakesh Sharma is launched into space, aboard the Soyuz T-11.
• Apr 13India launches Operation Meghdoot, bringing most of the disputed Siachen Glacier region of Kashmir under Indian control and triggering the Siachen conflict with Pakistan.
• Jun 5The Indian government begins Operation Blue Star, the planned attack on the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
• Oct 31Assassination of Indira Gandhi: Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi is assassinated by her two Sikh security guards in New Delhi. Anti-Sikh riots break out, leaving 10,000 to 20,000 Sikhs dead in Delhi and surrounding areas with the majority populations of Hindus. Rajiv Gandhi becomes Prime Minister of India.
• Nov 1Anti-Sikh mass murder takes place in Delhi and various parts of India following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
• Nov 30Sri Lankan Civil War, Kent and Dollar Farm massacres: the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam begin their first massacres of the Sinhalese people, in North and East Sri Lanka. 127 are killed.
• Dec 1The Light Rail Transit in Manila begins service with the opening of its southern segment, as the first rapid transit service in Southeast Asia.
• Dec 3Bhopal disaster: A methyl isocyanate leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India, kills more than 8,000 people outright and injures over half a million (with more later dying from their injuries the death toll reaches 23,000+) in the worst industrial disaster in history.
• Dec 4Sri Lankan Civil War, 1984 Mannar massacre: Sri Lankan Army soldiers kill over 200 civilians in the town of Mannar.

Middle East1

• Sep 20Hezbollah car-bombs the U.S. Embassy annex in Beirut, killing 24 people.

Latin America1

• Nov 19A 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.

Africa2

• Nov 25Band Aid (assembled by Bob Geldof) records the charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas?" in London to raise money to combat the famine in Ethiopia. It is released on December 3.
• 1983–85 famine in Ethiopia intensifies with renewed drought by mid-year, killing a million people by the end of this year.