1981
Ronald Reagan becomes 40th president of the USA • France abolishes the death penalty (and with it, the guillotine) • Egyptian President Anwar Sadat assassinated • Space Shuttle ‘Colombia’ launched • Britain’s last American mainland colony, Belize, gains independence • AIDS virus identified • Britain’s Prince Charles marries Lady Diana Spencer • Helmut Newton – Sie kommen! ("They're coming!", photographic diptych; published in French Vogue, November)
1982
Falklands War: Argentina invades the Falkland Islands; Britain sends task force and gains swift victory • Death of President Brezhnev (USSR); Yuri Andropov succeeds him • Israel invades Lebanon, beginning First Lebanon War • First artificial human heart implanted, in Utah • Film: Blade Runner • Michael Jackson (US) releases album Thriller
1983
Soviets shoot down a Korean Airlines flight for invasion of air space; 269 passengers killed, including 81 South Koreans and 61 Americans • President Regan announces defensive ‘Star Wars’ program • Christo (Bulg/US) and Jeanne-Claude (Fr/US) unveil Surrounded Islands in Miami’s Biscayne Bay, using 6.5 million sq ft of floating pink fabric
1984
Ethiopian famine claims around one million lives • Indian PM Indira Ghandi assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards, shortly after ordering a raid on a temple in Amritsar • IRA bomb Conservative Party conference: five die, 34 injured • Apple computers launch the Macintosh • Milan Kundera (Czech) publishes The Unbearable Lightness of Being
1985
Mikhail Gorbachev becomes Soviet leader • Mexico City earthquake claims around 10,000 lives; leaves tens of thousands homeless • British scientist Dr Joe Farman identifies ozone hole over Antarctica • Boris Becker (Ger), aged 17, becomes youngest ever men’s Wimbledon champion • Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Colomb): Love in the Time of Cholera

Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez ([1] 6 March 1927 – 17 April 2014) was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo [ˈɡaβo] or Gabito [ɡaˈβito] throughout Latin America. Considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century and one of the best in the Spanish language, he was awarded the 1972 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature.[2] He pursued a self-directed education that resulted in his leaving law school for a career in journalism.
1981
23 January
Composer Samuel Barber dies from cancer in New York, aged 70.

11 May
Cats (Andrew Lloyd Webber) – London production opened at the New London Theatre on May 11.