| 1984-10-16
Desmond Tutu is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
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| 1984-07-18
McDonald's massacre in San Ysidro, California: in a fast-food restaurant, James Oliver Huberty opens fire, killing 21 people and injuring 19 others before being shot dead by police.
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| 1984-08-04
The African republic Upper Volta changes its name to Burkina Faso.
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| 1984-07-25
Salyut 7 cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the first woman to perform a space walk.
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| 1984-11-25
36 top musicians gather in a Notting Hill studio and record Band Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas in order to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia.
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| 1984-02-13
Konstantin Chernenko succeeds the late Yuri Andropov as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
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| 1984-02-29
Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau announces he will retire as soon as the Liberals can elect another leader.
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| 1984-01-27
Pop singer Michael Jackson suffers second and third degree burns to his scalp during the filming of a Pepsi commercial in the Shrine Auditorium.
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| 1984-10-05
Marc Garneau becomes the first Canadian in space, aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger.
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| 1984-09-14
Joe Kittinger becomes the first person to fly a hot air balloon alone across the Atlantic Ocean.
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| 1984-10-20
The Monterey Bay Aquarium opens in Monterey Bay, California.
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| 1984-09-21
Brunei joins the United Nations.
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| 1984-07-01
The PG-13 rating is introduced by the MPAA.
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| 1984-10-11
Aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan becomes the first American woman to perform a space walk.
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| 1984-11-28
Over 250 years after their deaths, William Penn and his wife Hannah Callowhill Penn are made Honorary Citizens of the United States.
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| 1984-01-01
The Sultanate of Brunei becomes independent of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
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| 1984-09-18
Joe Kittinger completes the first solo balloon crossing of the Atlantic.
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| 1984-12-22
Bernhard Hugo Goetz shoots four would-be African-American muggers on an express train in Manhattan, New York City.
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| 1984-11-02
Capital punishment: Velma Barfield becomes the first woman executed in the United States since 1962.
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| 1984-06-22
Virgin Atlantic Airways launches with its first flight from London Heathrow Airport.
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| 1984-11-27
Under the Brussels Agreement signed between the governments of the United Kingdom and Spain, the former agreed to enter into discussions with Spain over Gibraltar, including sovereignty.
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| 1984-01-07
Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
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| 1984-10-12
Brighton hotel bombing: The Provisional Irish Republican Army attempt to assassinate Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet. Thatcher escapes but the bomb kills five people and wounds 31.
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| 1984-04-19
Advance Australia Fair is proclaimed as Australia's national anthem, and green and gold as the national colours.
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| 1984-09-05
Western Australia becomes the last Australian state to abolish capital punishment.
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| 1984-11-20
The SETI Institute is founded.
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| 1984-02-07
Space Shuttle program: STS-41-B Mission – Astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart make the first untethered space walk using the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU).
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| 1984-06-08
Homosexuality is declared legal in the Australia state of New South Wales.
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| 1984-07-09
York Minster is struck by a lightning bolt and the resulting fire ravages most of the building.
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| 1984-04-02
Squadron Leader Rakesh Sharma is launched aboard Soyuz T-11, and becomes the first Indian in space.
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| 1984-03-05
6,000 miners in the United Kingdom begin their strike at Cortonwood Colliery.
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| 1984-09-26
The United Kingdom agrees to handover of Hong Kong
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| 1984-05-06
103 Korean Martyrs are canonized by Pope John Paul II in Seoul
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| 1984-04-13
India moves into Siachen Glacier thus annexing more territory from the Line of Control.
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| 1984-08-30
STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery takes off on its maiden voyage.
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| 1984-06-02
Operation Bluestar, a military offensive, is launched by the Indian government at Harmandir Sahib, also known as Golden Temple, the holiest shrine for the Sikhs, in Amritsar. The operation continues until June 6 with casualties, most of them civilians, in excess of 5,000.
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| 1984-01-10
The United States and the Vatican establish full diplomatic relations after 117 years.
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| 1984-06-05
Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi orders an attack on the Golden Temple, the holiest site of the Sikh religion.
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| 1984-03-16
William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut, Lebanon, is kidnapped by Islamic fundamentalists and later dies in captivity.
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| 1984-05-08
Corporal Denis Lortie enters the Quebec National Assembly and opens fire, killing three and wounding 13. René Jalbert, sergeant-at-arms of the assembly, succeeds in calming him, for which he will later receive the Cross of Valour.
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| 1984-09-05
STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery lands after its maiden voyage.
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| 1984-12-19
The Sino-British Joint Declaration, stating that the People's Republic of China would resume the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong and the United Kingdom would restore Hong Kong to China with effect from July 1, 1997 is signed in Beijing by Deng Xiaoping and Margaret Thatcher.
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| 1984-11-19
San Juanico Disaster: A series of explosions at the PEMEX petroleum storage facility at San Juan Ixhuatepec in Mexico City starts a major fire and kills about 500 people.
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| 1984-07-20
Officials of the Miss America pageant ask Vanessa Lynn Williams to quit after Penthouse publishes nude photos of her.
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| 1984-10-26
"Baby Fae" receives a heart transplant from a baboon.
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| 1984-05-08
Thames Barrier officially opened.
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| 1984-12-03
Bhopal Disaster: A methyl isocyanate leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, kills more than 3,800 people outright and injures 150,000–600,000 others (some 6,000 of whom would later die from their injuries) in one of the worst industrial disasters in history.
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| 1984-01-24
The first Apple Macintosh goes on sale.
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| 1984-06-18
A major clash between about 5,000 police and a similar number of miners takes place at Orgreave, South Yorkshire, during the 1984-1985 UK miners' strike.
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| 1984-12-12
Maaouiya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya becomes the third president of Mauritania after a coup d'état against Mohamed Khouna Ould Haidalla while the latter was attending a summit.
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| 1984-05-17
Prince Charles calls a proposed addition to the National Gallery, London, a "monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend," sparking controversies on the proper role of the Royal Family and the course of modern architecture.
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| 1984-04-17
Police Constable Yvonne Fletcher is killed by gunfire from the Libyan People's Bureau in London during a small demonstration outside the embassy. Ten others are wounded. The events lead to an 11-day siege of the building.
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| 1984-04-04
President Ronald Reagan calls for an international ban on chemical weapons.
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| 1984-09-20
A suicide bomber in a car attacks the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing twenty-two people.
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| 1984-09-04
Brian Mulroney leads the Canadian Progressive Conservative Party to power in the 1984 federal election, ending 20 years of nearly uninterrupted Liberal rule.
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| 1984-08-15
The PKK in Turkey starts a campaign of armed attacks upon the Turkish military
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| 1984-03-22
Teachers at the McMartin preschool in Manhattan Beach, California are charged with satanic ritual abuse of the children in the school. The charges are later dropped as completely unfounded.
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| 1984-10-31
Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated by two security guards. Riots soon break out in New Delhi and nearly 10,000 Sikhs are killed.
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| 1984-04-06
Members of Cameroon's Republican Guard unsuccessfully attempt to overthrow the government headed by Paul Biya.
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| 1984-12-20
The Summit tunnel fire is the largest underground fire in history, as a freight train carrying over 1 million litres of petrol derails near the town of Todmorden in the Pennines.
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| 1984-12-04
Hezbollah militants hijack a Kuwait Airlines plane, killing four passengers.
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| 1984-01-22
The Apple Macintosh, the first consumer computer to popularize the computer mouse and the graphical user interface, is introduced during Super Bowl XVIII with its famous "1984" television commercial.
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| 1984-02-03
John Buster and the research team at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center announce history's first embryo transfer, from one woman to another resulting in a live birth.
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| 1984-01-01
The original American Telephone & Telegraph Company is divested of its 22 Bell System companies as a result of the settlement of the 1974 United States Department of Justice antitrust suit against AT&T.
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| 1984-02-26
US troops withdraw from Beirut. President Ronald Reagan had sent the troops as a peacekeeping force in August 1982.
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| 1984-06-03
The Indian Army storms the Golden Temple (Harmandir Sahib), the most sacred shrine of Sikhism, near Amritsar.
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| 1984-03-14
Gerry Adams, head of Sinn Féin, is seriously wounded in an assassination attempt in central Belfast.
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| 1984-11-14
Zamboanga City mayor Cesar Climaco, a prominent critic of the government of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, is assassinated in his home city.
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| 1984-05-08
The Soviet Union announces that it will boycott the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California.
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| 1984-02-03
Space Shuttle program: STS-41-B is launched using Space Shuttle Challenger.
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| 1984-07-23
Vanessa Williams becomes the first Miss America to resign when she surrenders her crown after nude photos of her appeared in Penthouse magazine.
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| 1984-06-06
The Indian Army attacks the Golden Temple in Amritsar following an order from Indira Gandhi. Official casualties are 576 combatants killed and 335 wounded; independent observers estimate that thousands of unarmed Sikh civilians are also killed in the crossfire. A total death count adds up to almost 6,000.
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| 1984-04-20
The Good Friday Massacre, an extremely violent ice hockey playoff game, is played in Montreal, Canada.
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