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July 1981

Month of 1981 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

July 1981
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The following events occurred in July 1981:

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July 17, 1981: 114 killed in Hyatt Regency Hotel collapse in Kansas City
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July 29, 1981: Prince Charles marries Diana Spencer in British royal wedding
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July 16, 1981: Mahathir Mohamad becomes the Prime Minister of Malaysia
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July 27, 1981: Microsoft buys the secret to its success
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July 1, 1981 (Wednesday)

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July 2, 1981 (Thursday)

  • The United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously that then-President Jimmy Carter had acted within his authority in ending the Iran hostage crisis when he agreed in the Algiers Accords to release frozen Iranian assets no later than July 19, in return for the release of 52 American hostages from Iran. The decision, made only 8 days after the Court heard arguments, cleared the way for $2.3 billion to be transferred from U.S. banks to Iran. Earlier on the same day, eight of the former hostages sued Iran in federal court, seeking $5,000,000 apiece, despite a waiver of the right to sue as part of the same accords.[9]
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July 3, 1981 (Friday)

July 4, 1981 (Saturday)

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July 5, 1981 (Sunday)

  • After initial doubts about whether his Likud party had been defeated by the Labor Party of Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Menachem Begin was able to declare victory in the closest election in the history of Israel. Under the Israeli system of government, representation in Parliament was based upon the proportion of the overall balloting. With 718,941 votes, Likud had 37.1% for 48 seats, while the 708,356 for Labour was 36.6% for 47 seats, giving Begin the right to assemble the coalition in the 120-seat Knesset.[20][21]
  • Rajan Mahadevan recited pi to 31,811 digits before an audience in Mangalore. The event took 3 hours and 49 minutes, including a total of 26 minutes of breaks, and was sponsored by the local Lions Club International, Lion Seva Mandir.[22] The record would stand until 1987, when Hideaki Tomoyoni repeated the first 40,000 digits.[23]
  • Died:
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July 6, 1981 (Monday)

  • On trial in Los Angeles under accusation of being the Hillside Strangler, Kenneth Bianchi took the witness stand in his own defense. After initially denying his involvement in the slayings of ten young women, Bianchi unexpectedly began a detailed confession and calmly described each of the murders in detail.[24][25]

July 7, 1981 (Tuesday)

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July 8, 1981 (Wednesday)

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July 9, 1981 (Thursday)

July 10, 1981 (Friday)

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July 11, 1981 (Saturday)

July 12, 1981 (Sunday)

  • Three days of torrential rains began in China's Sichuan Province, with up to 18.8 inches (480 mm) raising the level of the Yangtze River and its tributaries as much as 16.5 feet (5.0 m). Initial reports from the Xinhua news agency reported 3,000 deaths and 100,000 injuries.[39] The official numbers would be revised two weeks later, but the toll was still high, with 753 dead, 558 missing, 28,140 injured and 1.5 million people left homeless.[40]

July 13, 1981 (Monday)

July 14, 1981 (Tuesday)

July 15, 1981 (Wednesday)

July 16, 1981 (Thursday)

July 17, 1981 (Friday)

July 18, 1981 (Saturday)

  • Jack Henry Abbott, a convicted murderer turned author of the bestseller In the Belly of the Beast, had been paroled in June with the influence of author Norman Mailer. Abbott and two friends walked into a Manhattan cafe called Binibon, where he got into an argument with Richard Adan over use of a restroom. Abbott stabbed Adan to death and then fled the scene. Ironically, Abbott's return to crime took place as the praise of his book was being printed in that Sunday's New York Times Book Review.[58] Abbott would be captured two months later, convicted of the murder, and spend the rest of his life in prison until hanging himself in 2002.[59]

July 19, 1981 (Sunday)

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Presidents Mitterrand and Reagan
  • The existence of the "Farewell Dossier", 4,000 pages of Soviet documents that had been supplied to France by former KGB Colonel Vladimir Vetrov (whose code name was "Farewell") was revealed to U.S. President Ronald Reagan by French President François Mitterrand at the summit of Western leaders in Ottawa. The material showed that the Soviets had, after years of infiltration, been stealing American technological research and development. While other advisers to the National Security Council were looking for ways to stop the leaks, Gus Weiss proposed the idea of creating defective technology and allowing it to be stolen. The first trial was for computer programs which, months after being applied to operate the Siberian gas pipeline, began to fail. (A critic notes that the USSR did not have computer-managed gas pipelines in the 1980s and that claim is highly improbable.) The existence of the Farewell Dossier would remain a secret until 1997.[60]

July 20, 1981 (Monday)

  • David Alan Kirwan, a 24-year-old tourist at Yellowstone National Park, jumped into the alkaline (pH 9) and scalding (202 °F (94 °C)) Celestine Pool to save his friend's dog. The dog died within moments and its body dissolved in the hot spring. Kirwan, blinded and burned over his entire body, was airlifted to Salt Lake City and died the next day.[61][62][63][64][65]
  • Martina Navratilova became an American citizen at a ceremony in Los Angeles. Until then, the women's tennis star, who had defected from Czechoslovakia, had lived in fear that she would be kidnapped and returned for trial.[66]
  • Died: Lou Peters, Cadillac dealer from Lodi, California, whose cooperation with the FBI led to the conviction of organized crime leader Joe Bonanno earlier in the year. The Bureau named the Louis E. Peters Memorial Service Award in his honor.[67]

July 21, 1981 (Tuesday)

July 22, 1981 (Wednesday)

  • FTC Commissioner Michael Pertschuk announced the most comprehensive regulations ever applied to the American funeral industry, ending deceptive practices after a nearly ten-year study. Among the changes were a requirement for funeral homes to itemize their prices, and a prohibition against a common practice of requiring the bereaved to buy a casket even for a cremation.[70]
  • Mehmet Ali Agca was sentenced to life imprisonment for his attempt to assassinate Pope John Paul II on May 13.[71]

July 23, 1981 (Thursday)

July 24, 1981 (Friday)

July 25, 1981 (Saturday)

July 26, 1981 (Sunday)

  • After six years, the FBI brought "Operation Donnie Brasco" to an end. Undercover agent Joseph D. Pistone had infiltrated the Bonanno crime family starting in 1975, using the alias Donnie Brasco and gathering evidence for the Bureau. When the family's boss, Dominic Napolitano, asked Pistone to carry out a hit against Bruno Indelicato, his FBI handlers decided that Pistone/Brasco would be discovered. Only after Pistone's assignment ended did FBI agents inform Napolitano that his trusted aide had been an informant. Napolitano would be killed by the Bonanno mob on August 17 for making the mistake.[86]
  • Swelled by a downpour that had happened hours earlier and far upriver, the Tanque Verde Falls in Arizona was the site of a flash flood that killed eight people without warning.[87]
  • Born: Maicon (Maicon Douglas Sisenando), Brazilian soccer football player, in Novo Hamburgo

July 27, 1981 (Monday)

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John Walsh
  • Adam Walsh, age 6, was kidnapped from a Sears store in Hollywood, Florida, and murdered. His father, hotel executive John Walsh, became an activist for missing children and for crime prevention, and would later become host for the television program America's Most Wanted.[88][89][90] Serial killer Ottis Toole, who confessed to the crime in 1983 and then recanted, died in 1996. Investigators concluded in 2008 that Toole had been the perpetrator and closed the case.[91]
  • Rod Brock, owner of Seattle Computer Products and of the 86-DOS disk operating system designed by one of its former employees (Tim Paterson), sold all rights to the program to Microsoft for $50,000. Renamed MS-DOS, the system earned Microsoft billions of dollars.[92]
  • In a nationally televised speech, President Reagan explained, in simple terms, his proposal for the largest tax cut in U.S. history, and asked for the public to "contact your Senators and Congressmen. Tell them of your support for this bipartisan proposal."[93] Americans followed suit, and two days later, the bill passed the House 238–195, and the Senate 89–11.[94][95][96]
  • Betty Danielowski of Minnesota and her 9-year old nephew slipped from a rock and fell into Upper McDonald Creek in Glacier National Park in the U.S. state of Montana, and her husband Donald Danielowski jumped in to save them both, and the couple both drowned in the swift current. The child was saved by his father.[97] The Danielowski's deaths were the second and third in less than a week in the same creek.[98] Five days earlier, on July 22, a 7-year old child, Kevin Dolack of Glenview, Illinois, died after falling into the creek upstream.[99][100]
  • The perigee of the Moon, its shortest distance from the Earth, coincided with the week that the Earth, Moon and Sun were aligned. During the total solar eclipse that happened on Friday, July 31, the Moon occluded more of the view of the Sun than usually occurs during an eclipse.
  • Born: Li Xiaopeng, Chinese gymnast, 4-time Olympic gold medalist, world championships in vault (1999, 2002, 2003) and parallel bars (1998, 2002, 2006), in Changsha[101]
  • Died:

July 28, 1981 (Tuesday)

July 29, 1981 (Wednesday)

July 30, 1981 (Thursday)

July 31, 1981 (Friday)

  • A total solar eclipse was visible over much of northern Asia, from Turkey to the Soviet Union and much of Mongolia, China and Japan. Because the Moon had made its closest approach to Earth only four days earlier, the diameter of the Moon as it occluded the view of the Sun was greater than would normally have been seen.
  • The end of the 1981 Major League Baseball strike was announced in New York by federal mediator Kenneth Moffett, after major league owners and players came to an agreement. The All-Star game, set for August 9 in Cleveland, would mark the return of baseball, and regularly scheduled games would resume on August 10.[122]
  • Died:

References

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