January:
- The Internet’s Domain Name System is created
- Greenland withdraws from the European Economic Community as a result of a new agreement on fishing rights
- The first mobile phone network in the UK is launched by Vodafone
- The Sinclair C5, the world’s first bicycle car, is launched
- Tancredo Neves is elected President of Brazil, ending the 21-year military rule
- Ronald Reagan is privately sworn in for a second term as President of the United States
- The charity single “We Are the World” is recorded by USA for Africa
- The Waterside Inn at Bray, Berkshire, founded by Michel and Albert Roux, becomes the first establishment in the UK to be awarded three Michelin stars
- British Telecom announces it is going to phase out its iconic red telephone boxes
- A House of Lords debate is televised for the first time
February:
- The border between Spain and Gibraltar reopens for the first time since Francisco Franco closed it in 1969
- US DEA agent Kiki Camarena is kidnapped and murdered in Mexico by drug traffickers
- CNN reporter Jeremy Levin is freed from captivity as part of the Lebanon hostage crisis
- William J Schroeder becomes the first artificial heart patient to leave hospital
- The first episode of EastEnders is broadcast on BBC One
- Minolta releases the Maxxum 7000, the world’s first autofocus single-lens camera
- The Provisional IRA carry out a mortar attack on the Royal Ulster Constabulary, killing nine officers
March:
- After a 12-year long dictatorship, Julio María Sanguinetti is sworn in as the first democratically elected President of Uruguay
- The US FDA approves a blood test for AIDS, used hereafter to screen blood donations
- An 8.0 magnitude earthquake hits Santíago and Valparaíso, Chile, leaving 177 dead, 2575 injured and approximately a million homeless
- A Beirut cat bomb, planted in an attempt to assassinate Islamic cleric Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, kills more than 80 people and injures 200 more
- Mikhail Gorbachev becomes General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and de facto leader of the Soviet Union
- Mohamed Al-Fayed buys Harrods
- US journalist Terry Anderson is taken hostage in Beirut as part of the Lebanon hostage crisis, he remains a prisoner until December 1991
- Expo ‘85, an international exhibition, opens in Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan
- Australia’s longest-running soap opera, Neighbours, debuts on Seven Network
- Canadian paraplegic athlete and activist Rick Hansen sets out in his 25,000 mile, 26-month Man in Motion tour which raises $26 million for spinal cord research and quality of life initiatives
- The inaugural Wrestlemania pay-per-view takes place in Madison Square Garden with Hulk Hogan teaming up with Mr T in the team event against Paul Orndorff and Roddy Piper
- The UK Miners’ Strike, involving at its peak 142,000 workers, ends after one year
- Two IRA members are jailed for 35 years at the Old Bailey for plotting the bombing campaign across London in 1981
- Rioting breaks out at the FA Cup quarter-final between Luton Town and Millwall at Kenilworth Road; hundreds of hooligans tear seats from the stands, throw them onto the field and invade the pitch, resulting in injuries to 81 people
April:
- Brazilian Vice-President José Sarney becomes the first civilian president of Brazil for 21 years following the death of newly elected President Neves
- Soviet-Afghan War: the Soviet Union begins to transfer the burden of fighting the mujahideen to the armed forces of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, a cause of the Revolutions of 1989
- First Secretary Enver Hoxha, leader of the People’s Socialist Republic of Albani, dies aged 76
- A terrorist bombing attributed to the Islamic Jihad Organisation kills 18 people and injures 82 others in a restaurant near Madrid
- South Africa ends its ban on interracial marriages
- Coca-Cola changes it’s formula and releases New Coke; the original is back on the market after less than three months due to an overwhelmingly negative response
- An eighteen-month-old-boy becomes the youngest person in the UK to die of HIV/AIDS
- Bernie Grant, born in Guayana, becomes the first black council leader when he is elected as leader of the Labour-controlled London Borough of Haringey council
May:
- US President Ronald Reagan joins West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl for a controversial funeral service at cemetery in Bitburg which includes the graves of 59 elite SS troops from World War II
- The third Victory Day Parade (first in 1945, second in 1965) is held on the Red Square, Moscow
- The FBI brings charges against the suspected heads of the five Mafia families in New York City
- A fire engulfs a wooden stand at the Valley Parade stadium in Bradford killing 56 people
- Police storm the radical Christian group MOVE’s headquarters to end a stand-off, dropping an explosive device that kills 11 MOVE members and destroying the homes of 61 Philadelphia residents
- An explosive device sent by the Unabomber injures John Hauser at University of California, Berkeley
- Argentinian President Raúl Alfonsin terminates Argentinian administration of the Falklands Islands but does not relinquish their claim to the islands
- Scientists of the British Antarctic Survey announce the discovery of a hole in the ozone layer
- Approximately 10,000 people are killed when Bangladesh is affected by the storm surge from Tropical Storm One
- A fourteen year-old boy is killed, 20 people are injured and several vehicles are wrecked when Leeds United hooligans riot at St Andrew’s, Birmingham
- Everton, having already clinched their first Football League title for fifteen years, win the European Cup Winners’ Cup, their first European trophy, with a 3-1 win over Rapid Vienna in Rotterdam
- Manchester United win the FA Cup for the sixth time in their history with a 1-0 win over Everton at Wembley
- Thirty-eight spectators are killed in rioting on the terraces of the Heysal Stadium, Brussels, during the European Cup final between Liverpool and Juventus; despite the tragedy, the match is played resulting in a 1-0 Juventus win
- Following the Heysal Stadium disaster, the FA bans all English clubs from playing in Europe until further notice
June:
- The remains of Josef Mengele aka the Angel of Death, the physician notorious for human experimentation on inmates of Auschwitz, are exhumed in Embu das Artes, Brazil
- The Schengen Agreement is signed between certain members of the European Economic Community, creating the Schengen Area, a block of (at the time) five states with no internal border controls
- Studio Ghibli is founded in Tokyo
- The Discovery Channel is launched in the United States
- A series of bomb blasts occur in Kathmandu and other cities in Nepal
- British and Irish police foil a “mainland bombing campaign” sponsored by the Provisional IRA which targets luxury holiday resorts
- Space Shuttle Discovery completes its mission, onboard is Sultan bin Salman Al Saud, the first Arab and Muslim in space
- US Route 66 is officially decommissioned
- Battle of the Beanfield, Britain’s largest mass arrest takes place when Wiltshire Police prevent several hundred New Age travellers from setting up the 1985 Stonehenge Free Festival, effectively putting an end to future festivals
- UEFA also bans all English clubs from European competition for an indefinite period following the Heysal Stadium disaster
- A View to a Kill is released, marking Roger Moore’s seventh and final appearance as James Bond
July:
- Ruth Lawrence, aged 13, achieves a first in Mathematics at the University of Oxford, becoming the youngest Briton to ever earn a first-class degree and the youngest Oxford graduate
- Live Aid benefit concerts in London and Philadelphia raise over £50 million for famine relief in Ethiopia
- The Val di Stava dam collapses in Italy, killing 268 people, destroying 63 buildings and demolishing eight bridges
- State President of South Africa, P W Botha, declares a state emergency in 36 magisterial districts amid growing civil unrest in black townships
- Commodore launches the Amiga personal computer
- Country code top-level domain .uk is released
August:
- Takao Doi, Mamoru Mohri and Chiaki Mukai are chosen to be Japan’s first astronauts
- In the worst single-aircraft disaster in history, Japan Airlines Flight 123 crashes killing 520 people
- The Accomarca massacre takes place in Ayacucho, Peru; the Peruvian military kill (officially) 69 inhabitants of a peasant village on the orders that they are to be considered communist terrorists
- Iran-Contra affair: the first arms are sent to Iran in exchange for hostages in Lebanon and profits for the Nicaraguan Contras, without public knowledge
- Five people are found killed in the White House Farm murders in Essex; Nevill and June Bamber, a couple in their sixties, are found shot dead as is their 27 year-old adopted daughter Sheila Caffell and her six year-old twin sons, Daniel and Nicholas. Police initially suspected diagnosed schizophrenic Sheila to be responsible in a murder-suicide, but Sheila’s brother Jeremy was later convicted of the murders, believed to be motivated by a large inheritance
- The first UK heart-lung transplant is a carried out at Harefield Hospital, Middlesex
- The Sinclair C5 ceases production after just seven months and fewer than 17,000 units sold
- Five-year-old John Shorthouse is shot dead by police at his family’s house in Birmingham, they were arresting his father on suspicion of armed robbery
- A Boeing 737 bursts into flames at Manchester International Airport killing 55 people
September:
- The wreck of the RMS Titanic is located by a joint American-French expedition using side-scan sonar
- Super Mario Bros. is released for the Nintendo Entertainment System
- Steve Jobs resigns from Apple Computer in order to found NeXT
- An 8.0 magnitude earthquake strikes Mexico City killing between 5,000 and 45,000 people
- The capital gains tax is introduced in Australia
- The Plaza Accord is signed by representatives of the US, UK, Japan, West Germany and France
- The 1985 Brixton riot is sparked by the shooting of Dorothy “Cherry” Groce by the Metropolitan Police; one person dies, fifty are injured and more than 200 are arrested
- Earliest confirmed case of mad cow disease in British cattle
- England regain the Ashes after a 3-1 series win
- Rioting, mostly motivated by racial tension, breaks out in the Handsworth area of Birmingham; after several days, two deaths and 35 injuries are reported, two people are unaccounted for
- Scotland national football team manager, Jock Stein, collapses and dies from a heart attack at the end of his team’s 1-1 draw with Wales in Cardiff
October:
- The Israeli Air Force bombs Palestine Liberation Organisation Headquarters near Tunis
- The cruise ship Achille Lauro is hijacked in the Mediterranean Sea by four heavily armed members of the Palestinian Liberation Front; passenger Leon Klinghoffer is killed
- The first Nintendo home video game console in the United States is release as the Nintendo Entertainment System
- Emirates Airlines is established in Dubai and performs its first flight to Karachi
- Rioting on the Broadwater Farm estate in London begins after Cynthia Jarrett, a 49-year-old black woman, dies after falling over during a police search of her home; PC Keith Blakelock is fatally stabbed in the riots, while two of his colleagues and three journalists are treated in hospital for gunshot wounds
- The House of Lords decides the legal case of Gillick v West Norfolk and Wisbech Area Health Authority, which sets the precedent of Gillick competence
November:
- Members of the M-19 Marxist guerrilla group siege the Palace of Justice in Bogotá, Colombia and hold the Supreme Court hostage; after a military raid hours later, almost half of the 25 Supreme Court Justices are dead
- The Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupts killing an estimated 23,000 people in the town of Armero, Colombia
- The comic strip Calvin and Hobbes is first published
- US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet for the first time, in Geneva
- Microsoft releases the first version of Windows, Windows 1.0
- Gérard Hoarau, exiled opposition leader from the Seychelles, is assassinated in London
- Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock suspends the Liverpool District Labour Party amid allegations that the Trotskyist Militant group was attempting to control it
December:
- Hugh Scrutton is killed outside his Sacramento computer rental store by a Unabomber explosive, becoming the first fatality of the bombing campaign
- American Mafia bosses Paul Castellano and Thomas Bilotti are shot dead in New York City, making hit organiser John Gotti the leader of the powerful Gambino crime family
- Right-wing extremist David Lewis Rice murders civil rights attorney Charles Goldmark, as well as Goldmark’s wife and two children in Seattle, believing them to be Jewish Communists
- Abu Nidal terrorists open fire in Rome and Vienna airports, leaving 18 dead and 120 injured
- American naturalist Dian Fossey is found brutally murdered in Rwanda
- Charitable organisation Comic Relief is launched
Other:
- Buckminsterfullerene is first intentionally prepared at Rice University, Texas
- DNA is first used in a criminal case
- Clothing brand Tommy Hilfiger is established in the United States
- Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is published
- Earning $385.5 million at the global box-office, Back to the Future is the highest grossing film of the year worldwide
- The best-selling single of 1985 in the UK is “The Power of Love” by Jennifer Rush
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