Year 1984 (MCMLXXXIV) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link displays the 1984 Gregorian calendar).
Events of 1984
January
- January 1 - Brunei became a fully independent state.
- January 1 - Bell System divestiture breaks AT&T into 24 independent units.
- January 3 - U.S. President Ronald Reagan meets with Navy Lieutenant Robert Goodman and the Reverend Jesse Jackson at the White House, following Lieutenant Goodman's release from Syrian captivity.
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- January 5 - Richard Stallman starts developing GNU.
- January 7 - Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
- January 10 - The United States and the Vatican establish full diplomatic relations.
- January 18 - Mitsui Miike coal mine explosion at Omuta, Kyūshū, Japan, 83 killed.
- January 22 - The Oakland Raiders win their third NFL Championship, defeating the Washington Redskins 38-9 in Super Bowl XVIII at Tampa Stadium in Tampa, Florida.
- January 23 - The Peace and Friendship Treaty is signed between Argentina and Chile in Vatican City.
- January 24 - The first Apple Macintosh goes on sale.
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- February 1 - Medicare comes into effect in Australia.
- February 3 - STS-41-B: Space Shuttle Challenger is launched on the 10th space shuttle mission.
- February 7 - Astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart make the first untethered space walk.
- February 8 - The 1984 Winter Olympics open in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia.
- February 11 - STS-41-B: Space Shuttle Challenger makes the first shuttle landing at the Kennedy Space Centre
- February 13 - Konstantin Chernenko succeeds the late Yuri Andropov as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
- February 14 - British ice dancers Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean score 12 perfect 6.0s for their interpretation of Ravel's Bolero in the 1984 Winter Olympics. They win the gold medal for ice dancing.
- February 19 - The 1984 Winter Olympics close in Sarajevo.
- February 26 - United States Marines pull out of Beirut, Lebanon.
- February 29 - Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau announces his retirement.
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- March 5 - Iran accuses Iraq of using chemical weapons; the United Nations condemns their use on March 30.
- March 5 - Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi orders Operation Blue Star to flush out separatist militants from Harimandir Sahib, the most sacred shrine of Sikhism.
- March 6 - A year-long strike action begins in the British coal industry (See UK Miners' Strike (1984-1985)).
- March 14 - Sinn Féin's Gerry Adams and 3 others are seriously injured in a gun attack by the UVF.
- March 16 - The CIA station chief in Beirut, William Francis Buckley, is kidnapped by Islamic Jihad and later dies in captivity.
- March 23 - General Rahimuddin Khan becomes the first man in Pakistan's history to rule over 2 of its provinces, after becoming interim Governor of Sindh.
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- April 2 - Indian Squadron Leader Rakesh Sharma is launched into space, aboard the Soyuz T-11.
- April 4 - U.S. President Ronald Reagan calls for an international ban on chemical weapons.
- April 6 - The 56th Academy Awards, hosted by Jack Lemmon, are held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, with Terms of Endearment winning Best Picture.
- April 12 - Palestinian gunmen take Israeli Bus Number 300 hostage. Israeli special forces storm the bus, freeing the hostages (1 hostage, 2 hijackers killed).
- April 13 - India launches Operation Meghdoot, as most of the Siachen Glacier in Kashmir comes under Indian control.
- April 17 - WPC Yvonne Fletcher is shot and killed by a secluded gunman during a siege outside the Libyan Embassy in London.
- April 19 - Advance Australia Fair is proclaimed as Australia's national anthem, and green and gold as the national colours.
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- May 2 - The Liverpool International Garden Festival opens in Liverpool.
- May 5 - The Herreys win the Eurovision Song Contest 1984 for Sweden, with the song Diggi-Loo, Diggi-Ley.
- May 8 - The Soviet Union announces that it will boycott the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California.
- May 11 - A transit of Earth from Mars takes place.
- May 12 - The Louisiana World's Fair opens.
- May 14 - The one dollar coin is introduced in Australia.
June
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- June 5 - The Indian government begins Operation Blue Star, the planned attack on the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
- June 6 - Indian troops storm the Golden Temple at Amritsar, the Sikhs' holiest shrine, killing an estimated 2000 people.
- June 8 - A deadly F5 tornado nearly destroys the town of Barneveld, Wisconsin, killing 9 people, injuring nearly 200, and causing over $25,000,000 in damage.
- June 20 - The biggest exam shake-up in the British education system in over 10 years is announced, with O-level and CSE exams to be replaced by a new exam, the GCSE.
- June 22 - The official name of the Turkish city Urfa is changed into Şanlıurfa.
- June 22 - Virgin Atlantic Airways makes its inaugural flight.
- June 27 - France beats Spain 2-0 to win the Euro 84.
- June 30 - John Napier Turner becomes Canada's 17th Prime Minister.
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- July 4 - Richard Petty wins his 200th career NASCAR victory at the Firecracker 400 in Daytona, Florida.
- July 9 - Lightning sets fire to York Minster.
- July 12 - In San Francisco, the Democratic National Convention nominates Walter F. Mondale for U.S. President, and Geraldine Ferraro for Vice President.
- July 14 - New Zealand Prime Minister Robert Muldoon calls a snap election and is heavily defeated by opposition Labour leader David Lange.
- July 18 - The first Culver's opens in Sauk City, Wisconsin.
- July 25 - Salyut 7 cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the first woman to perform a space walk.
- July 28- August 12 - The 1984 Summer Olympics are held in Los Angeles, California.
August
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- August 1 - Australian banks are deregulated.
- August 4 - The African republic Upper Volta changes its name to Burkina Faso.
- August 11 - United States President Ronald Reagan, during a voice check for a radio broadcast remarks "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes".
- August 21 - Half a million people in Manila demonstrate against the regime of Ferdinand Marcos.
- August 23 - U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H.W. Bush are renominated at the Republican National Convention in Dallas, Texas.
- August 30 - STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery takes off on its maiden voyage.
The launch of Shuttle
Discovery on STS-41-D, its first mission.
September
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- September 2 - Seven people are shot and killed and 12 wounded in the Milperra massacre, a shootout between the rival motorcycle gangs Bandidos and Comancheros in Sydney.
- September 4 - The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, led by Brian Mulroney, wins 211 seats in the House of Commons, forming the largest majority government in Canadian history.
- September 4 - The Nicaraguan general elections are held, Sandinista Front is the winner.
- September 5 - STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery lands after its maiden voyage.
- September 5 - Western Australia becomes the last Australian state to abolish capital punishment.
- September 14 - The first MTV Video Music Awards are held in Radio City Music Hall, New York City.
- September 20 - Hezbollah car bombs the U.S. embassy annex in Beirut, killing 22 people.
- September 26 - The United Kingdom and the People's Republic of China sign the initial agreement to return Hong Kong to China in 1997.
- September 29 - Opening of the art exhibition: Von hier aus – Zwei Monate neue deutsche Kunst in Düsseldorf
October
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- October 4 - Tim Macartney-Snape and Greg Mortimer become the first Australians to summit Mount Everest.
- October 5 - STS-41-G: Marc Garneau becomes the first Canadian in space, aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger.
- October 11 - Aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan becomes the first American woman to perform a space walk.
- October 12 - The Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) attempts to assassinate the British Cabinet in the Brighton hotel bombing.
- October 19 - Polish secret police arrest Jerzy Popiełuszko, a Catholic priest who supports the Solidarity movement. His dead body is found in a reservoir 11 days later on October 30.
- October 31 - Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated by her 2 Sikh security guards . Riots soon break out in New Delhi, and some 2,700 Sikhs are killed.
November
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- November 4 - Dell Computers was founded as PC's Limited.
- November 6 - U.S. presidential election, 1984: Ronald Reagan defeats Walter F. Mondale with 59% of the popular vote, the highest since Richard Nixon's 61% 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.
- November 9 - Cesar Chavez delivers his speech, "What The Future Holds For Farm Workers And Hispanics", at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.
- November 14 - Zamboanga City mayor Cesar Climaco, a prominent critic of the government of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, is assassinated in his home city.
- November 19 - A 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.
- November 25 - Thirty-six of Britain and Ireland's top pop musicians gather in a Notting Hill studio to form Band Aid, and record the song " Do They Know It's Christmas", in order to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia.
- November 25 - An East Rail train derails between Sheung Shui and Fanling stations, Hong Kong.
- November 28 - Over 250 years after their deaths, William Penn and his wife Hannah Callowhill Penn are made Honorary Citizens of the United States.
- November 29 - Band Aid release the song " Do They Know It's Christmas".
- November 30 - The Tamil Tigers begin the purge of the Sinhalese from North and East Sri Lanka; 127 are killed.
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Controlled Impact Demonstration
- December 1 - Controlled Impact Demonstration NASA crashes remote controlled Boeing 720
- December 2 - Bob Hawke's government is re-elected in Australia with a reduced majority.
- December 3 - Bhopal Disaster: A methyl isocyanate leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India, kills more than 2,000 people outright and injures anywhere from 15,000 to 22,000 others (some 6,000 of whom later die from their injuries) in one of the worst industrial disasters in history.
- December 3 - British Telecom is privatised.
- December 4 - Hezbollah militants hijack a Kuwait Airlines plane and kill 4 passengers.
- December 19 - The People's Republic of China and United Kingdom sign the Sino-British Joint Declaration on the future of Hong Kong.
- December 22 - In Malta, Prime Minister Dom Mintoff resigns.
- December 28 - A Soviet cruise missile plunges into Inarinjärvi lake in Finnish Lapland. Finnish authorities announce the fact in public on January 3, 1985.
- December 31 - Rajiv Gandhi becomes prime minister of India.
Undated
- Famine in Ethiopia begins and kills a million people by the end of 1984. ( 1984 Famine in Ethiopia).
- A peace agreement between Kenya and Somalia was signed in the Egyptian capital Cairo in December 1984. With this agreement, in which Somalia officially renounced its historical territorial claims, relations between the two countries began to improve.
- Chatham Dockyard in Medway, England closed after being used a shipbuilding yard for over 400 years since the reign of King Henry VIII.
Ongoing
1984 in other calendars
| Gregorian calendar |
1984
MCMLXXXIV |
| Ab urbe condita |
2737 |
| Armenian calendar |
1433
ԹՎ ՌՆԼԳ |
| Bahá'í calendar |
140 – 141 |
| Berber calendar |
2934 |
| Buddhist calendar |
2528 |
| Burmese calendar |
1346 |
| Chinese calendar |
4620/4680-11-29
( 癸亥年十一月廿九日)— to — 4621/4681-11-10
( 甲子年十一月初十日) |
| Coptic calendar |
1700 – 1701 |
| Ethiopian calendar |
1976 – 1977 |
| Hebrew calendar |
5744 – 5745 |
| Hindu calendars |
|
| - Vikram Samvat |
2039 – 2040 |
| - Shaka Samvat |
1906 – 1907 |
| - Kali Yuga |
5085 – 5086 |
| Holocene calendar |
11984 |
| Iranian calendar |
1362 – 1363 |
| Islamic calendar |
1404 – 1405 |
| Japanese calendar |
Shōwa 59
(昭和59年) |
| Korean calendar |
4317 |
| Thai solar calendar |
2527 |
| Unix time |
441763200 – 473385599 |
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Deaths
January-March
- January 1 - Alexis Korner, British blues musician and broadcaster (b. 1928)
- January 7 - Alfred Kastler, French physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1902)
- January 14 - Ray Kroc, American entrepreneur (b. 1902)
- January 20 - Johnny Weissmuller, Austrian-born swimmer and actor (b. 1904)
- January 21 - Jackie Wilson, American singer (b. 1934)
- January 22 - Sir Count Michael Gonzi, Archbishop of Malta and past politician (b. 1885)
- January 30 - Luke Kelly, Irish folk singer (b. 1940)
- February 8 - Karel Miljon, Dutch boxer (b. 1903)
- February 9 - Yuri Andropov, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (b. 1914)
- February 10 - David Von Erich, American professional wrestler (b. 1958)
- February 12 - Julio Cortázar, Argentine writer (b. 1914)
- February 15 - Ethel Merman, American singer and actress (b. 1908)
- February 21 - Michail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov, Russian writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1905)
- February 22 - Jessamyn West, American writer. (b. 1902)
- February 22 - Syed Faiz-ul Hassan Shah a Pakistani religious leader,of Allo Mahar Shrif.
- February 25 - Sean Marsee, American athlete. (b. 1965)
- March 1 - Jackie Coogan, American actor (b. 1914)
- March 5 - Tito Gobbi, Italian baritone (b. 1915)
- March 5 - William Powell, American actor (b. 1892)
- March 12 - Arnold Ridley, English playwright and actor (b. 1896)
- March 16 - John Hoagland, American photographer (b. 1947)
- March 18 - Charlie Lau, American baseball player (b. 1933)
- March 24 - Sam Jaffe, American actor (b. 1891)
April-June
- April 1 - Marvin Gaye, American singer (b. 1939)
- April 5 - Arthur "Bomber" Harris, British air marshall. (b. 1892)
- April 8 - Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa, Russian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1894)
- April 11 - Edgar V. Saks, Estonian statesman and historian (b. 1910)
- April 15 - Tommy Cooper, Welsh comedian and magician (b. 1921)
- April 15 - Alexander Trocchi, Scottish writer (b. 1925)
- April 20 - Hristo Prodanov, Bulgarian mountaineer (b. 1943)
- April 22 - Ansel Adams, American photographer (b. 1902)
- April 26 - Count Basie, American musician and composer (b. 1904)
- May 2 - Jack Barry, American television host and producer (b. 1918)
- May 6 - Mary Cain, Mississippi newspaper editor and politician (b. 1904)
- May 16 - Andy Kaufman, American comedian (b. 1949)
- May 16 - Irwin Shaw, American author (b. 1913)
- May 19 - John Betjeman, English poet (b. 1906)
- May 24 - Vincent J. McMahon, professional wrestling promoter WWF (b. 1914)
- May 28 - Eric Morecambe, British comedian (b. 1926)
- June 6 - Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, Most well known sikh leaders of the 20th century (b. 1947)
- June 16 - Lew Andreas, American basketball coach (b. 1895)
- June 26 - Michel Foucault, French philosopher (b. 1926)
July-September
- July 1 - Moshé Feldenkrais, Ukrainian founder of the Feldenkrais Method (b. 1904)
- July 4 - Jimmie Spheeris, American singer-songwriter (b. 1949)
- July 8 - Brassaï, Hungarian-born photographer (b. 1899)
- July 14 - Philippe Wynne, American musician (b. 1941)
- July 24 - Armando Morales Barillas, Nicaraguan guitarist (b. 1936)
- July 26 - George Gallup, American statistician and opinion pollster (b. 1901)
- July 26 - Ed Gein, American serial killer (b. 1906)
- August 2 - Quirino Cristiani, Argentine animated film director (b. 1896)
- August 5 - Richard Burton, Welsh actor (b. 1925)
- August 11 - Alfred A. Knopf, American publisher (b. 1892)
- August 11 - Paul Felix Schmidt, Estonian–German chess player (b. 1916)
- August 13 - Tigran Petrosian, Georgian chess player (b. 1929)
- August 14 - J. B. Priestley, English novelist and playwright (b. 1894)
- August 25 - Waite Hoyt, baseball player (b. 1899) and Truman Capote, writer. (b. 1924)
- September 8 Frank Lowson English Test Cricketer 1951-1955 (b.1925)
- September 14 - Richard Brautigan, American counter-culture author (suicide) (b. 1935)
- September 20 - Steve Goodman, American folk musician and songwriter (b. 1948)
- September 25 - Walter Pidgeon, Canadian actor (b. 1897)
October-December
- October 5 - Leonard Rossiter, British actor (b. 1926)
- October 12 - Sir Anthony Berry, British politician (bombing) (b. 1925)
- October 14 - Martin Ryle, English radio astronomer, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics (b. 1918)
- October 18 - Jon-Erik Hexum, American actor (b. 1957)
- October 20 - Carl Ferdinand Cori, Austrian-born biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1896)
- October 20 - Paul Dirac, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1902)
- October 21 - François Truffaut, French film director (b. 1932)
- October 31 - Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India (assassinated) (b. 1917)
- November 6 - Gastón Suárez, Bolivian novelist and dramatist (b. 1929)
- November 14 - Cesar Climaco, Filipino politician (assassinated) (b. 1916)
- November 16 - Vic Dickenson, American trombonist (b. 1906)
- November 16 - Leonard Rose, American cellist (leukemia) (b. 1918)
- November 18 - Mary Hamman, American writer and editor, modern living editor LIFE and eidtor in chief Bride & Home (b. 1907)
- December 8 - Luther Adler, American actor (b. 1903)
- December 11 - Oskar Seidlin, Silesian-born Jewish-American literary scholar (b. 1911)
- December 14 - Vicente Aleixandre, Spanish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1898)
- December 15 - Jan Peerce, American tenor (b. 1904)
- December 16 - J. Roderick MacArthur, American businessman and philanthropist (b. 1920)
- December 20 - Gonzalo Márquez, Venezuelan Major League Baseball player (b. 1946)
- December 28 - Sam Peckinpah, American film director (b. 1925)
Nobel prizes
- Physics - Carlo Rubbia, Simon van der Meer
- Chemistry - Robert Bruce Merrifield
- Medicine - Niels Kaj Jerne, Georges J.F. Köhler, César Milstein
- Literature - Jaroslav Seifert
- Peace - Bishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu
- Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel - Richard Stone
Templeton Prize
- Rev. Michael Bourdeaux, founder of the Keston Institute
