1985

1985 in other calendars
Gregorian calendar	1985; MCMLXXXV
Ab urbe condita	2738
Armenian calendar	1434; ԹՎ ՌՆԼԴ
Assyrian calendar	6735
Bahá'í calendar	141–142
Bengali calendar	1392
Berber calendar	2935
British Regnal year	33 Eliz. 2 – 34 Eliz. 2
Buddhist calendar	2529
Burmese calendar	1347
Byzantine calendar	7493–7494
Chinese calendar	甲子年十一月十一日; (4621/4681-11-11) — to — 乙丑年十一月二十日; (4622/4682-11-20)
Coptic calendar	1701–1702
Ethiopian calendar	1977–1978
Hebrew calendar	5745–5746
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat	2041–2042
- Shaka Samvat	1907–1908
- Kali Yuga	5086–5087
Holocene calendar	11985
Iranian calendar	1363–1364
Islamic calendar	1405–1406
Japanese calendar	Shōwa 60; (昭和60年)
Korean calendar	4318
Minguo calendar	ROC 74; 民國74年
Thai solar calendar	2528
Unix time	473385600–504921599
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	Births; Deaths;
	Establishments and disestablishments categories
	Establishments; Disestablishments;
	Works and introductions categories
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Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	19th century – 20th century – 21st century
Decades:	1950s 1960s 1970s – 1980s – 1990s 2000s 2010s
Years:	1982 1983 1984 – 1985 – 1986 1987 1988

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This article is about the year 1985. For other uses, see 1985 (disambiguation).

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: 1985

1985 (MCMLXXXV) was a common year that started on a Tuesday, in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. The year 1985 was designated as the International Youth Year by the United Nations.

[edit] Events

[edit] January

January 10 – Kenya recognizes the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR).
January 15 – Tancredo Neves is elected president of Brazil by the Congress, ending the 21-year military rule.
January 17 – British Telecom announces it is going to phase out its famous red telephone boxes.
January 20 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan is privately sworn in for a second term in office (publicly sworn in, January 21).
January 27 – Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) formed.
January 28 – In Hollywood, California, the charity single "We Are the World" is recorded by USA for Africa.

[edit] February

February 5 – Australia cancels its involvement in U.S.-led MX missile tests.
February 9 – U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena is kidnapped and murdered in Mexico (his body is discovered March 5).
February 10 – Nelson Mandela rejects an offer of freedom from the South African government.
February 14 – CNN reporter Jeremy Levin is freed from captivity in Lebanon.^[1]
February 16 – Israel begins withdrawing troops from Lebanon.
February 19
- William J. Schroeder becomes the first artificial heart patient to leave the hospital.
- China Airlines Flight 006 is involved in a mid-air incident; while there are two injuries, no one is killed.
February 20 – Minolta releases the Maxxum 7000, world's first autofocus single-lens reflex camera.
February 27 – Colombia recognizes the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR).
February 28 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army carries out a mortar attack on the Royal Ulster Constabulary police station at Newry, killing 9 officers in the highest loss of life for the RUC on a single day.

[edit] March

March 3 – An 8.0 on the Richter magnitude scale earthquake hits Santiago and Valparaíso in Chile leaving 177 dead, 2,575 hurt, 142,489 destroyed houses and about a million people homeless.
March 4 – The Food and Drug Administration approves a blood test for AIDS, used since then to screen all blood donations in the United States.
March 8 – A Beirut car bomb, planted in an attempt to assassinate Islamic cleric Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, kills more than eighty people, injuring two hundred.
March 11
- Mikhail Gorbachev becomes General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and de facto leader of the Soviet Union.
- Mohammed Al Fayed buys the London-based department store company Harrods.
March 14 – Five lionesses at the Singapore Zoo are put on birth control after the lion population increases from two to sixteen.
March 15 – Vice-President Jose Sarney, upon becoming vice president, assumes the duties of president of Brazil, as the new president Tancredo Neves had become severely ill, the day before. Sarney would be become Brazils first civilian president in 21 years, upon Neves' death 21 April.
March 16 – Associated Press reporter Terry Anderson is taken hostage in Beirut (he is released on December 4, 1991).
March 17 – Expo '85, a World's Fair, is held in Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan, until September 16.
March 21 – Canadian paraplegic athlete and activist Rick Hansen sets out on his 40,000 km, 26 month Man in Motion tour which raises $26M for spinal cord research and quality of life initiatives.
March 23 – OCAM dissolved.
March 25 – The 57th Academy Awards are held at in Los Angeles, California with Amadeus winning Best Picture.
March 31 – WrestleMania debuts at Madison Square Garden.

[edit] April

April 1
- Two Japanese government-owned corporations, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation, and Japan Tobacco and Salt Public Corporation, are privatized and change their names to Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, and Japan Tobacco.
- Eighth seeded Villanova defeats national powerhouse Georgetown 66–64 to win the first 64 team field NCAA Tournament in Lexington, Kentucky.
April 11 – The USS Coral Sea collides with the Ecuadorian tanker ship Napo off the coast of Cuba.
April 12 – El Descanso bombing: A terrorist bombing attributed to the Islamic Jihad Organization in the El Descanso restaurant near Madrid, Spain, mostly attended by U.S. personnel of the Torrejon Air Force Base, causes 18 dead (all Spaniards) and 82 injured.
April 15 – South Africa ends its ban on interracial marriages.
April 18 – The United Kingdom has its first ever national Glow-worm day.
April 19 – The U.S.S.R performs a nuclear test at Eastern Kazakhstan.
April 21 – Brazilian President Tancredo Neves dies, he is succeeded by Vice President Jose Sarney.
April 23 – Coca-Cola changes its formula and releases New Coke. (The response is overwhelmingly negative, and the original formula is back on the market in less than 3 months.)
April 28 – The Australian Nuclear Disarmament Party (NDP) splits.

[edit] May

May 4 – The 30th Eurovision Song Contest takes place in Gothenburg, Sweden. The winning song is La det swinge sung by Bobbysocks! (Norway).
May 5 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan joins German Chancellor Helmut Kohl for a controversial funeral service at a cemetery in Bitburg, Germany, which includes the graves of 59 elite S.S. troops from World War II.
May 11
- The FBI brings charges against the suspected heads of the five Mafia families in New York City.
- Fire engulfs a wooden stand at the Valley Parade stadium in Bradford, England, during a football match, killing 56.
May 13 – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Mayor Wilson Goode orders police to storm the radical group MOVE's headquarters to end a stand-off. The police drop an explosive device into the headquarters, killing eleven MOVE members and destroying the homes of 61 city residents in the resulting fire.
May 15 – An explosive device sent by the Unabomber injures John Hauser at University of California, Berkeley.
May 16 – Scientists of the British Antarctic Survey announce discovery of the ozone hole.^[2]^[3]^[4]
May 19 – John Anthony Walker Jr., is arrested by the FBI for passing classified Naval communications to the Soviet Union.
May 23 – Thomas Patrick Cavanaugh is sentenced to life in prison for attempting to sell stealth bomber secrets to the Soviet Union.
May 25 – Bangladesh is hit by a tropical cyclone and storm surge, which kills approximately 10,000 people.
May 29 – Heysel Disaster: 38 spectators are killed in rioting on the terraces during the European Cup final between Liverpool F.C. and Juventus at Heysel Stadium in Brussels, Belgium.
May 31 – Forty-one tornadoes hit in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Ontario, killing 76.

[edit] June

June 13 – In Auburn, Washington, police defuse a Unabomber bomb sent to Boeing.
June 14
- TWA Flight 847, carrying 153 passengers from Athens to Rome, is hijacked by a Hezbollah fringe group. One passenger, U.S. Navy Petty Officer Robert Stethem, is killed.
- Schengen Agreement signed between certain member states of the European Economic Community, creating the Schengen Area, a bloc of (at this time) five states with no internal border controls.
June 17 – John Hendricks launches the Discovery Channel in the United States.
June 23 – Air India Flight 182, a Boeing 747, blows up 31,000 feet (9,500 m) above the Atlantic Ocean, south of Ireland, killing all 329 aboard.
June 24 – STS-51-G: Space Shuttle Discovery completes its mission, best remembered for having Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the first Arab and first Muslim in space, as a Payload Specialist.
June 25 – Irish police foil a Provisional Irish Republican Army-sponsored 'mainland bombing campaign' which targeted luxury vacationing resorts.
June 27 – U.S. Route 66 is officially decommissioned.

[edit] July

Live Aid at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia

July 3 – Back to the Future opens in American theatres and ends up being the highest grossing film of 1985 in the United States and the first film in the successful franchise.
July 4 – Ruth Lawrence, 13, achieves a first in mathematics at Oxford University, becoming the youngest British person ever to earn a first-class degree and the youngest known graduate of Oxford University.
July 10 – The Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior is bombed and sunk in Auckland harbour by French DGSE agents.
July 13
- Live Aid pop concerts in London and Philadelphia raise over £50 million for famine relief in Ethiopia.
- U.S. Vice President George H.W. Bush serves as Acting President for 8 hours, while President Ronald W. Reagan undergoes colon cancer surgery.
July 19
- U.S. Vice President George H.W. Bush announces that New Hampshire teacher Christa McAuliffe will become the first schoolteacher to ride aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger.
- The Val di Stava Dam in Italy collapses.
July 20 – State President of South Africa, P. W. Botha, declares a state of emergency in 36 magisterial districts of South Africa amid growing civil unrest in black townships.
July 23 – Commodore launches the Amiga personal computer at the Lincoln Center in New York.
July 31 – Liberia recognizes the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR).

[edit] August

August 2 – Delta Air Lines Flight 191 crashes near Dallas, Texas, killing 137 people.
August 6 – In Hiroshima, tens of thousands mark the 40th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the city.
August 7 – Takao Doi, Mamoru Mohri and Chiaki Mukai are chosen to be Japan's first astronauts.
August 12 – Japan Airlines Flight 123 crashes in Japan, killing 520 people (the worst single-aircraft disaster in history).
August 22 – British Airtours Flight 28M The 737's left engine caught fire while on its take off roll, 55 people are killed while trying to evacuate the aircraft.
August 25 – Samantha Smith, "Goodwill Ambassador" between the Soviet Union and the United States for writing a letter to Yuri Andropov about nuclear war, and eventually visiting the Soviet Union at Andropov's request, dies in the Bar Harbor Airlines Flight 1808 plane crash. She was 13.
August 31
- Richard Ramirez, the serial killer known as the Night Stalker, is captured in Los Angeles.

[edit] September

September 1
- The wreck of the RMS Titanic (1912) in the North Atlantic is located by a joint American-French expedition led by Dr. Robert Ballard (WHOI) and Jean-Louis Michel (Ifremer) using side-scan sonar from RV Knorr.^[5]^[6]
- India recognizes the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.
September 6 – Midwest Express Airlines Flight 105, a Douglas DC-9, crashes just after takeoff from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, killing 31.
September 19 – An 8.1 Richter scale earthquake strikes Mexico City. Around 10,000 people are killed, 30,000 injured, and 95,000 left homeless.
September 20 – The capital gains tax is introduced to Australia.^[7]^[8]
September 22 – The Plaza Accord is signed by five nations.
September 23 – Italian crime reporter Giancarlo Siani is killed by Camorra.
September 28 – Brixton race riots are sparked with the shooting of Dorothy 'Cherry' Groce by the Metropolitan Police in Brixton, an area of South London, England.

[edit] October

October 1 – The Israeli air force bombs PLO Headquarters near Tunis.
October 3 – The first flight of Space Shuttle Atlantis.
October 4 – The Free Software Foundation is founded in Massachusetts, USA.
October 7 – The cruise ship Achille Lauro is hijacked in the Mediterranean Sea by 4 heavily armed Palestinian terrorists. One passenger, American Leon Klinghoffer, is killed.
October 18 – The Nintendo Entertainment System, including the Super Mario Bros. pack-in game is released.

[edit] November

November 5 – Mark Kaylor defeats Errol Christie to become the middleweight boxing champion, after the two brawl in front of the cameras at the weigh-in.
November 12 – A total solar eclipse occurs over Antarctica at 14:11:22 UTC.
November 13 – Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupts, killing an estimated 23,000 people, including 21,000 killed by lahars in the town of Armero, Colombia.
November 18 – The comic strip Calvin and Hobbes debuts in 35 newspapers.
November 19 – Cold War: In Geneva, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet for the first time.
November 20 – Microsoft Corporation releases the first version of Windows, Windows 1.0.
November 23 – EgyptAir Flight 648 is hijacked by the Abu Nidal group and flown to Malta, where Egyptian commandos storm the plane; 60 are killed by gunfire and explosions.
November 25 – “Aeroflot” Antonov AN-12 cargo airplane in route from Cuito Cuanavale to Luanda was shot down by South African Special Forces and crashed approximately 43 km of Menongue, the provincial center of the Cuando Cubango province, Angola, killing 8 crew members and 13 passengers on board.
November 26 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan sells the rights to his autobiography to Random House for a record US$3 million.
November 29 – Gerard Hoarau, exiled political leader from the Seychelles, is assassinated in London.

[edit] December

December 1
- Ibero-American States Organization for Education, Science and Culture (Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos para la Educación la Ciencia y la Cultura) (OEI) created.
- The Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable are released for sale to the public.
December 8 – South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) established.
December 12 – Arrow Air Flight 1285, a Douglas DC-8, crashes after takeoff in Gander, Newfoundland, killing 256, 248 of whom were U.S. servicemen returning to Fort Campbell, Kentucky from overseeing a peacekeeping force in Sinai.
December 16 – In New York City, Mafia bosses Paul Castellano and Thomas Bilotti are shot dead in front of Spark's Steak House, making hit organizer John Gotti the leader of the powerful Gambino organized crime family.
December 24 – Right wing extremist David Lewis Rice murders civil rights attorney Charles Goldmark as well as Goldmark's wife and 2 children in Seattle. Rice suspected the family of being Jewish and Communist and claimed his dedication to the Christian Identity movement drove him to the crime.
December 27
- Rome and Vienna airport attacks: Abu Nidal terrorists open fire in the airports of Rome and Vienna, leaving 18 dead and 120 injured.
- American naturalist Dian Fossey is found murdered in Rwanda.

[edit] Date unknown

The Australian state of Victoria celebrates its 150th anniversary.
Harold Kroto, Robert Curl and Richard Smalley discover C₆₀, soon followed by their discovery of fullerenes.
The GNU Manifesto is first written by Richard Stallman.
Western Sahara is admitted to the Organization of African Unity; Morocco, which claims Western Sahara, leaves in protest.
Solarquest, the space age real estate game, is first published by Golden.
Norma Phillips Thornworth is elected president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
ATI Technologies is founded.
NeXT is founded by Steve Jobs after he resigns from Apple Computer.
The Tommy Hilfiger brand is established.
The computer game Tetris is released.
DNA is first used in a criminal case.^[9]
Greenland leaves the European Union.
Multiple cases of espionage in the United States prompt the media to label this "The Year of the Spy".
Africa has a population growth – 3.2% per year.
The Asian tiger mosquito, an invasive species, is first found in Houston, Texas.
The Famine in Ethiopia continues; USA for Africa ("We Are the World") and Live Aid raise funds for famine relief.

[edit] World population

World population
	1985	1980		1990
World	4,830,979,000	4,434,682,000	396,297,000	5,263,593,000	432,614,000
Africa	541,814,000	469,618,000	72,196,000	622,443,000	80,629,000
Asia	2,887,552,000	2,632,335,000	255,217,000	3,167,807,000	280,255,000
Europe	706,009,000	692,431,000	13,578,000	721,582,000	15,573,000
Latin America	401,469,000	361,401,000	40,068,000	441,525,000	40,056,000
Northern America	269,456,000	256,068,000	13,388,000	283,549,000	14,093,000
Oceania	24,678,000	22,828,000	1,850,000	26,687,000	2,009,000