January:
- High ranking Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie is arrested in Bolivia
- The International Olympic Committee restores Jim Thorpe’s Olympic medals to his family
- Seatbelt use for drivers and front seat passengers becomes mandatory in the UK
- CITV is launched as a new branding for late afternoon programming on ITV
- First breakfast time television programme, Breakfast Time, is broadcast on BBC1
February:
- Over 2000 people, mostly Bangladeshi Muslims, are massacred in Assam, India
- Dismembered human remains are found at a block of flats in Muswell Hill, North London. 37 year-old civil servant Dennis Nilsen is later charged with the murder of 20 year-old Stephen Sinclair, last seen alive in January, while police work to identify the other set of human remains found at Nielsen’s flat
- The Monster Raving Loony Party contests in its first election
March:
- Chuck Hull invents the 3D printer
- The West Bank fainting epidemic erupts, large numbers of Palestinians complain of fainting and dizziness
- US President Ronald Reagan proposes plans for the Strategic Defense Initiative, or the “Star Wars” program as it would be nicknamed, a technology intended to intercept enemy missiles
- Compact discs go on sale in the UK
April:
- The Space Shuttle Challenger is launched in its maiden voyage
- The United States embassy in Beirut is attacked in a suicide bombing, killing 63 people
- US schoolgirl Samantha Smith is invited to visit Soviet leader Yuri Andropov after reading her letter expressing her fear of nuclear war
- Thousands of protestors form a 14-mile human chain in reaction to the siting of American nuclear weapons in British military bases
- The government expels three Russians named as KGB agents by a Soviet defector
- Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi wins eight Oscars at the 55th Academy Awards, including Best Picture
- The one pound coin is introduced in England and Wales
May:
- A 7.8 magnitude earthquake under the Sea of Japan causes a tsunami killing 100 people
- Wheel clamps are introduced to combat illegal parking in London
June:
- Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government is re-elected with a landslide majority. Among the new members of parliament are three Labour MPs: Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Jeremy Corbyn, while former prime minister Harold Wilson retired after 38 years as a Labour MP
- Ten Iranian women are hanged because they are members of the Bahá ‘í Faith, a new religion teaching the essential worth of all religions and unity of all people
- The first episode of Blackadder is broadcast on BBC1
July:
- The lowest temperature in Earth, -89.2 Celsius, is recorded in Vostok Station, Antarctica
- Thirteen Sri Lanka Army soldiers are killed in an ambush by Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, starting the Sri Lankan Civil War which continues until 2009
- MPs vote 361-245 against the reinstatement of the death penalty, 18 years after its abolition
- Catholic mother of ten, Victoria Gillick, loses a case in the High Court of Justice against the Department of Health and Social Services. She sought to prevent the distribution of contraceptives to children under 16 without parental consent
August:
- The Bill first airs as a one-off drama called Woodentop
- Hurricane Alicia hits the coast of Texas, killing 22 and causing over $3.8 billion worth of damage
- Benigno Aquino Jr., Phillipines opposition leader, is assassinated in Manila just as he returns from exile
- 22 Provisional IRA members receive sentences totalling over 4000 years from a Belfast Court
September:
- Korean Air Lines Flight 007 is shot down by Soviet Union Air Force Su-15 Flagon pilot Major Gennadi Osipovich when the commercial aircraft enters Soviet airspace, killing all 269 on board including US Congressman Larry McDonald
- 38 Provisional IRA prisoners, armed with six handguns, hijack a prison lorry and smash their way out of HM Prison Maze in Northern Ireland, the largest prison escape in British history
- Soviet military officer Stanislav Petrov averts a worldwide nuclear war by correctly identifying a warning of attack by US missiles as a false alarm, as the Emergency Broadcast System goes off for multiple television and radio stations in the US
- Seven members of Wolverhampton Wanderers associated football firm, the Subway Army, are convicted of taking part in a fight near the club’s stadium in an attempt to crack down on hooliganism
October:
- Neil Kinnock is elected leader of the Labour Party
- South Korea’s Foreign Minister Lee Bum Suk and 21 others are killed in a North Korea orchestrated bombing in Rangoon, Burma
- Simultaneous suicide truck-bombings destroy both French Army and US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, killing 241 American servicemen, 58 French paratroopers and 6 Lebanese civilians
- Word processor software, Multi-Tool Word, soon to become Microsoft Word, is released in the United States
- Over a million people demonstrate against nuclear weapons at a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament march in London
- Dennis Nilsen goes on trial at the Central Criminal Court accused of six murders and two attempted murders, he confesses to murdering “15 or 16” men and is later sentenced to life in prison
November:
- Soviet officials misinterpret the Able Archer NATO exercise as a nuclear first strike, causing the last nuclear scare of the Cold War
- Lynda Mann, 15, is found raped and strangled in the village of Narborough. Colin Pitchfork is later sentenced to life imprisonment after his conviction based on DNA evidence, the first of its kind
- 6800 gold bars worth nearly £26 million are taken from the Brink-Mat vault at Heathrow Airport. Only a fraction is ever recovered and only two men are convicted
- England beat Luxembourg 4-0 but still fail to qualify for the finals of Euro 84. Twenty England fans are arrested after going on a violent rampage in Luxembourg
- Janet Walton, a 31 year-old Liverpool woman, gives birth to female sextuplets, a world first
December:
- Military rule ends and democracy is restored in Argentina
- A Provisional IRA cat bomb kills six people and injured 90 others outside Harrods, London
- The Jules Rimet Trophy is stolen from the Brazilian Soccer Confederation building in Rio de Janeiro, it has never been recovered
- Brunei gains independence from the UK
Other:
- McDonalds introduces the McNugget
- James Dyson produces his prototype vacuum cleaner
- Barbara Cartland publishes 23 romantic novels throughout the year
- Terry Pratchett’s first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic, is published
- The highest grossing film of the year is Return of the Jedi, earning over $250 million globally
- The best selling single in the UK is Culture Club’s “Karma Chameleon“
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