Watchful Eyes Of A Silhouette: Major Events During My Birth Year

Monday, December 28, 2009

Major Events During My Birth Year

January 1 - Brunei becomes a fully independent state.
January 7 - Brunei becomes the 6th member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
January 10 - The United States and the Vatican establish full diplomatic relations.

January 24 - The Apple Macintosh is introduced.

February 1 - Medicare comes into effect in Australia.

February 3 - Dr. 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.
February 7 - Astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart make the first untethered space walk.
February 13 - Konstantin Chernenko succeeds the late Yuri Andropov as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
February 28 - Michael Jackson won a record eight Grammy Awards.
February 29 - Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau announce his retirement.

March 5 - Iran accuses Iraq of using chemical weapons; the United Nations condemns their use on March 30.
March 16 - The CIA station chief in Beirut, William Francis Buckley, is kidnapped by Islamic Jihad and later dies in captivity.
March 22 - Teachers at the McMartin preschool in Manhattan Beach, California are charged with Satanic ritual abuse of the schoolchildren (the charges are later dropped as completely unfounded).
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.

April 4 - U.S. President Ronald Reagan calls for an international ban on chemical weapons.
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 19 - Advance Australia Fair is proclaimed as Australia's national anthem, and green and gold as the national colours.
April 25 - The term of Sultan Ahmad Shah as the 7th Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia ends.
April 26 - Sultan Iskandar, Sultan of Johor, becomes the 8th Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia.

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 longest game in Major League Baseball history begins at 7:30 PM between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Chicago White Sox. The game is played over the course of 2 days, lasting 25 innings, with a total time of 8 hours and 6 minutes.
May 11 - A transit of Earth from Mars takes place.
May 14 - The one dollar coin is introduced in Australia.
May 23 - Methane gas explosion at Abbeystead water treatment works in Lancashire, England kills 16 people.
May 27 - An overnight flash flood rages through neighborhoods in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Nearly 15 inches of rain falls in some areas over a four-hour period. 14 persons are killed.
May 31 - Mecklenburg Correctional Center - 6 inmates - including James and Linwood Briley escape from a death row facility, the first and only occasion this has ever happened in the US.

June 5 - The Indian government begins Operation Blue Star, the planned attack on the Golden Tempel in Amritsar.
June 6 - Indian troops storm the Golden Temple at Amritsar, the Sikhs' holiest shrine, killing an estimated 2,000 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 22 - The official name of the Turkish city Urfa is changed into Sanliurfa.
June 22 - Virgin Atlantic Airways makes its inaugural flight.
June 28 - Richard Ramirez, aka the "Night Stalker," murders his first confirmed victim.
June 30 - John Napier Turner become Canada's 17th Prime Minister.

July 14 - New Zealand Prime Minister Robert Muldoon calls a snap election and is heavily defeated by opposition Labour leader David Lange.
July 18 - Beverly Lynn Burns becomes the first woman Boeing 747 captain in the world.
July 18 - In San Ysidro, California, 41-year-old James Oliver Huberty sprays a McDonald's restaurant with gunfire, killing 21 people before being shot and killed.
July 25 - Salyut 7: Cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the first woman to perform a space walk.

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 28 - Joseph Fritzl drugs and incarcerates his daughter Elisabeth in secret cellar, in Amstetten, Austria; she was released only after 24 years of sexual abuse and mental ordeal.
August 30 - STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery takes off on its maiden voyage.

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 Sandinista Front wins the Nicaraguan general elections.
September 5 - The Space Shuttle Discovery lands after its maiden voyage.
September 5 - Western Australia becomes the last Australian state to abolish capital punishment.
September 18 - Joe Kittinger becomes the first person to cross the Atlantic, solo, in a hot air balloon.
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.

October 4 - Tim Macartney-Snape and Greg Mortimer become the first Australians to summit Mount Everest.
October 11 – Aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan becomes the first American woman to perform a space walk.
October 19 - Polish secret police kidnap Jerzy Popieluszko Catholic priest who supports the Solidarity movement. His dead body is found in a reservoir 11 days later on October 30.
October 23 -The world learns from moving BBC News TV reports that a famine is plaguing Ethiopia where thousands of people have already died of starvation due to a famine and as many as 10,000,000 more lives are at risk.
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. Rajiv Gandhi becomes prime minister of India.

November 2 – Capital punishment: Velma Barfield becomes the first woman executed in the United States since 1962, in Raleigh, North Carolina.

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 – Band Aid records the charity single Do They Know It's Christmas? to raise money to combat the famine in Ethiopia. The all-British act, led by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure, includes George Michael, Bono, Phil Young and David Bowie as well as the members of bands including Status Quo, Spandau Ballet and Bananarama.

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 30 – The Tamil Tigers begin the purge of the Sinhalese from North and East Sri Lanka; 127 are killed.

December – A peace agreement between Kenya and Somalia is signed in the Egyptian capital Cairo. With this agreement, in which Somalia officially renounces its historical territorial claims, relations between the two countries began to improve.

December 3 – Bhopal Disaster: A methyl isocyanate leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India, kills more than 8,000 people outright and injures over half a million (with more later dying from their injuries the death toll is now 23,000+) in the worst industrial disaster in history.