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March 1981

Month of 1981 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

March 1981
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The following events occurred in March 1981:

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March 30, 1981: U.S. President Reagan shot and wounded by John Hinckley Jr.
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Hinckley
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Secretary Haig "in control"
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March 1, 1981 (Sunday)

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March 2, 1981 (Monday)

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March 3, 1981 (Tuesday)

March 4, 1981 (Wednesday)

  • Six days after he had come into possession of $1.2 million in cash that had fallen from an armored car, Joey Coyle was arrested at JFK International Airport, where he had been preparing to fly to Mexico City. Coyle was acquitted of theft less than a year later. He committed suicide on August 15, 1993, a month before the release of a film based on his story, Money for Nothing[11]
  • CBS Sports paid $48,000,000 for the rights to broadcast the NCAA men's basketball tournament for three years, outbidding the NBC network, which had built the popularity of the playoffs since 1969. Bryant Gumbel would later comment, "I thought, How weird. We make the tournament a big deal and basically give it away."[12]
  • Died: Yip Harburg, 84, American lyricist (Over the Rainbow), was killed in an auto accident
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March 5, 1981 (Thursday)

  • Continental Airlines Flight 72 was briefly hijacked by a man who had been fired the day before from his job at the Los Angeles International Airport. Victor Malasauskas brought a 9-mm automatic pistol with him after buying a seat in first-class on the flight bound from LAX to Phoenix. An alert flight attendant saw that he had a concealed weapon, and all but four passengers and two flight attendants were able to get off of the airplane before he realized that he had been spotted. The last of the hostages escaped later in the day.[13] Malasauskas, whose claim that he had a bomb turned out to be false, was later sentenced to 20 years in prison.[14]
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March 6, 1981 (Friday)

March 7, 1981 (Saturday)

  • John W. Hinckley Jr. was met at the airport in Denver by his parents, who followed the advice of his psychiatrist and barred him from returning home. The senior Hinckley would later testify, in what he would describe as "the greatest mistake of my life" that he gave his son "a couple of hundred dollars" and told him "O.K., you're on your own. Do whatever you want to." Twenty-three days later, the younger Hinckley carried out an assassination attempt against the President of the United States.[16]
  • Eugenia Charles, the Prime Minister of Dominica, announced the arrests of former Prime Minister Patrick John and Defence Force Commander Frederick Newton. Charles said that a coup had been planned for March 14, and she added "I would hope that death would be the penalty, but I can't say that for sure."[17]
  • Died:
    • Bosley Crowther, 75, American film critic for the New York Times
    • Hilde Krahwinkel Sperling, 72, American tennis player, French Open champion 1935-37
    • Chet Bitterman, 28, American missionary taken hostage in Colombia
    • Mel C. Yorda, 18, first person to ever be murdered at Disneyland
    • Kiril Kondrashin, 67, Soviet conductor who defected to the Netherlands in 1978
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March 8, 1981 (Sunday)

  • An accident at the Tsuruga Nuclear Power Plant in Japan led to the spill of thousands of gallons of radioactive wastewater. Fifty-six plant employees were exposed to radiation after being sent to mop up the leak. The incident was not revealed to the public until six weeks later, on April 21.[18]
  • In Argentina, an express train, that was bringing 800 passengers back from vacation, crashed into two derailed fuel tanker cars, killing 45 people and injuring 120. The "Firefly" express was returning to Buenos Aires from the seaside resort of Mar del Plata.[19]
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March 9, 1981 (Monday)

March 10, 1981 (Tuesday)

  • The eleven-year controversy over Roger Coleman began when the body of Wanda Fay McCoy was discovered in her home in Grundy, Virginia.[23] Coleman, her brother-in-law, was convicted of her rape and murder based on blood and hair evidence, as well as testimony from a cellmate, and sentenced to death. Coleman fought for a new trial and maintained his innocence all the way to his execution in the electric chair on May 21, 1992.[24] More than 13 years later, DNA testing confirmed that the pubic hairs found on the victim had indeed been those of Coleman, and that the blood found on his pants had been that of McCoy. "[25]
  • U.S. Patent No. 4,255,811 was issued to Dr. Roy L. Adler under the title "Key Control Block Cipher System" for a data encryption algorithm developed by him in 1974 while he was employed at IBM. Besides being applied in cryptography, the 128-bit encoding algorithm was also used in creating more secure keycard entry systems.[26]
  • Born: Samuel Eto'o, Cameroonian footballer; in Nkon
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March 11, 1981 (Wednesday)

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March 12, 1981 (Thursday)

  • Women, children and other inhabitants of the El Salvador village of El Junquillo (in the Morazan Department) were murdered on orders of Salvadoran Army Captain Carlos Medina Garay, at the conclusion of a nine-day long military operation against rebellious forces. The details of the massacre were brought out in an investigation more than a decade later by the "Commission on Truth", which had been created as part of a 1992 peace agreement.[29]
  • Timothy Hill, 13, disappeared in Atlanta, 10 days after his 15-year-old friend Joseph Bell had vanished, as the two became the latest victims of the murder of children in Atlanta. Hill's body would be found on March 30, and Bell's on April 19. They would prove to be the last of 23 African-American children (16 or younger) to be murdered in Atlanta over a nearly two-year period. Wayne Williams, who was suspected in the killings, was charged with and convicted of the murders of two adult victims.[30]

March 13, 1981 (Friday)

  • The first world speedcubing championship tournament, requiring participants to properly align the squares of a Rubik's Cube in the shortest amount of time, took place in Munich. Jury Fröschl won the first competition with a time of 38 seconds.[31]
  • The Colombian guerrilla organization M-19 kidnapped Martha Nieves Ochoa Vasquez, the sister of Medellin Cartel druglord Jorge Luis Ochoa. The rival Colombian traffickers formed a temporary alliance, which they called Muerte a Secuestradores, ("Death to Kidnappers") and announced the imminent execution of any guerrilla kidnappers. After being threatened with reprisals, M-19 released Martha Nieves unharmed several months later.

March 14, 1981 (Saturday)

  • The hijacking of Pakistan International Airlines Flight 326 ended, as gunmen freed more than 100 hostages who had been held captive on the jet for nearly two weeks. Three gunmen had seized the Boeing 720 jet during a flight from Karachi to Peshawar on March 2 and commandeered the jet to Kabul, and one passenger was murdered. Pakistan released 55 prisoners to secure the release of the hostages.[32]
  • DePaul University's basketball team, unbeaten and ranked No. 1 during most of the season, was upset by St. Joseph's University, 49-48, in the second round of the NCAA tournament.[33]
  • Nineteen residents of the Royal Beach Hotel in Chicago, a "skid row" apartment for transients, died in fire caused by faulty wiring.[34]

March 15, 1981 (Sunday)

  • Philip C. Testa, crime boss of the Philadelphia mob and nicknamed "The Chicken Man", was murdered by a car bomb as he attempted to walk into his home at 2117 Porter Street.[35]
  • Francis Hughes became the second inmate at Maze Prison to begin a hunger strike, joining fellow Provisional IRA member Bobby Sands in refusing food. Hughes would also become the second of the strikers to die, succumbing on May 12, one week after the death of Sands.[36]
  • Born: Young Buck (stage name for David D. Brown), American rapper; in Nashville
  • Died: René Clair, 82, French film director

March 16, 1981 (Monday)

March 17, 1981 (Tuesday)

March 18, 1981 (Wednesday)

  • The television show The Greatest American Hero premiered on ABC, starring William Katt as Ralph Hinkley, an ordinary teacher who was given super powers, but not the knowledge of how to control them. Less than two weeks later, after John W. Hinckley Jr. shot U.S. President Ronald Reagan, the character was renamed "Ralph Hanley" for episodes already filmed, and then "Mr. H." for the rest of the season. The show's theme song, Believe It or Not (sung by Joey Scarbury) became a hit single, rising to No. 2 on the Billboard Top 40.
  • Born: Fabian Cancellara, Swiss bicyclist and three time world champion on time trial (2006, 2007, 2008 Olympics, 2009); in Wohlen bei Bern

March 19, 1981 (Thursday)

  • Two workers died and four were injured after a test of the Space Shuttle Columbia, becoming the first of 16 deaths associated with the American space shuttle program. After a test-firing of the engines and the sounding of the "all clear", the group of six Rockwell International technicians had walked into a chamber of the shuttle, unaware that the area was filled primarily with nitrogen gas, and almost no oxygen. John Bjornstad died immediately, and Forrest Cole was taken off life support on April 1.[41] The Columbia itself would be destroyed on January 16, 2003 on its 28th mission, killing all seven of the astronauts on board.
  • Arkansas became the first state to require the teaching of "Creationism", as Governor Frank White signed into law Senate Resolution 590, "An act to require balanced treatment of creation-science and evolution-science in public schools". The act, challenged later in McLean v. Arkansas, had passed the state Senate 22-2 and the state House 69-18.[42]
  • Born: Kolo Touré, Ivorian footballer; in Bouake

March 20, 1981 (Friday)

March 21, 1981 (Saturday)

  • Michael Donald, a young African-American male who had been selected at random by a pair of racists, was kidnapped and murdered in Mobile, Alabama by James Llewelyn Knowles and Henry F. Hayes, two members of the United Klans of America who said later that they had been outraged when a mistrial had been declared in the trial of a black criminal defendant. Donald's mother sued the Klan organization and won a seven million dollar verdict, effectively bankrupting the white supremacist group.[45]

March 22, 1981 (Sunday)

March 23, 1981 (Monday)

  • The cost of mailing a letter in the United States went up 20%, as the price of a first-class stamp was increased from 15 cents to 18 cents. The price increase had taken effect the day before, when American post offices were closed.[47]
  • Died:
    • Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, 96, British military leader during World War II
    • Beatrice Tinsley, 40, British astronomer
    • Mike Hailwood, 40, British motorcyclist and ten time world motorcycle racing champion, in an auto accident

March 24, 1981 (Tuesday)

March 25, 1981 (Wednesday)

  • Tamil separatist leader Selvarajah Yogachandran, better known by his code name of "Kuttimani", carried out the largest robbery, to that time, in the history of Sri Lanka. In an operation planned jointly by his TELO organization and the Tamil Tigers, Kuttmani and his gunmen ambushed an armored truck that was taking cash from Neervely to Jaffna, killed its guards, and took 7,900,000 Sri Lankan rupees, worth roughly $400,000 at the time, to finance the rebel movement. Kuttmani and his henchmen became the subject of a massive manhunt, and were arrested eleven days later.
  • Popular YouTube Vlogger Casey Neistat is born.[50]

March 26, 1981 (Thursday)

March 27, 1981 (Friday)

  • Beginning at 8:00 in the morning, millions of workers in Poland, representing the majority of that nation's labor force, walked off of their jobs for four hours in a demonstration of support for the Solidarity movement. The employees then returned to their posts at noon.[53]
  • The United Mine Workers went on strike at 12:01 am, with 160,000 American coal miners walking off of their jobs.[54]
  • At 3:10 pm in Cocoa Beach, Florida, eleven construction workers were killed when the five story tall Harbour Cay Condominiums building collapsed. A bucket of wet concrete had slipped from a crane and fallen through the building's roof, and into the floors below.[55]
  • Goaltender Ron Loustel played in his sole NHL game, allowing 10 goals against, the most of any goalie who played only 1 NHL game.
  • Born: JJ Lin, Taiwan based R&B singer; as Lín Jùn Jié in Singapore
  • Died: Jüri Kukk, 41, Estonian professor of chemistry, died in a Soviet labor camp from effects of a hunger strike.

March 28, 1981 (Saturday)

March 29, 1981 (Sunday)

March 30, 1981 (Monday)

  • At 2:27 pm, U.S. President Ronald Reagan was shot and wounded as he walked out of the Washington Hilton hotel to his limousine. John Hinckley Jr. fired six shots from a Röhm RG-14 .22 caliber pistol, striking Press Secretary James Brady and Washington D.C. police officer Thomas Delahanty with the first two bullets, Secret Service Agent Tim McCarthy with the fourth, and the presidential limousine with the last two shots. The sixth bullet ricocheted off of the limo and struck Reagan in the underarm.[60] Reagan was rushed into surgery at 3:24 pm and remained in the hospital for two weeks.[61][62]
  • Indiana University won the 1981 NCAA men's basketball championship, defeating the University of North Carolina 63-50 after the NCAA elected against postponing the matchup. Virginia defeated L.S.U. 78-74 to win third place in the consolation game, which was discontinued after 1981. The Academy Awards, scheduled for the same night, were postponed to the next day.
  • Born: Park Ji-Sung, South Korean footballer; in Seoul
  • Died:

March 31, 1981 (Tuesday)

  • At 2:40 pm in Bangkok, Indonesian commandos successfully rescued all hostages on board the hijacked Garuda Indonesia Flight 206, after getting permission from Thailand authorities.[64]—2:40 pm in Bangkok
  • Chicago's Mayor Jane Byrne and her husband moved into the Cabrini–Green public housing project in an unprecedented demonstration of commitment to the needs of her lower income constituents. Byrne took up residence in Apartment 402 at 1160 Sedgewick Road for several months.[65]
  • Died:
    • Enid Bagnold, 91, British author, playwright and socialite [66]
    • Frank Tieri, 77, former boss of New York City's Genovese crime family and the first mobster to be convicted under the RICO Act, died two months after being found guilty of extortion and racketeering. Tieri, already using bottled oxygen and a wheelchair, was admitted to New York's Mount Sinai Hospital after his illness worsened in prison.

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