February 23- Failed coup d'état in Spain.
February 24- A 6.7 earthquake hits Athens, Corinth and the nearby towns of Loutraki, Kiato and Xylokastro.
March 30- U.S. President Ronald Reagan is shot in the chest. Two police officers and Press Secretary James Brady are also wounded.
April 12- Space Shuttle Columbia (John Young, Robert Crippen) launches on the first shuttle mission.
May 13- Pope John Paul II is shot and nearly killed.
May 30- Bangladesh President Ziaur Rahman is assassinated.
June 5- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that 5 homosexual men in Los Angeles, California have a rare form of pneumonia. The first sign of the bloodborne pathogen, AIDS.
June 6- Seven coaches of an overcrowded passenger train fall off the tracks into the River Kosi in Bihar, India.
June 12- Major League Baseball goes on strike.
August 7- The Washington Star newspaper closes after 128 years of publication.
August 12- The first IBM PC with a 4.77 MHz Intel processor is released.
September 10- Picasso's painting "Guernica" is moved from New York to Madrid.
September 20- Belize, the United Kingdom's last colony on the American mainland, becomes independent.
October 6- Anwar Sadat is assassinated during a parade.
October 27- A Soviet submarine runs aground oustide the Karlskrona, Sweden military base.
November 1- Antigua and Barbuda gain independence from the United Kingdom.
November 23- Ronald Reagan signs the top secret National Security Decision Directive 17, giving the CIA the authority to recruit and support Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
December 20- The Penlee lifeboat disaster occurs off the coast of South-West Cornwall, England.
December 31 - Coup d'état in Ghana.
January 13 (1982, prior to Feb. 4th)- Shortly after takeoff, Air Florida Flight 90 crashes into Washington, D.C.'s 14th Street Bridge and falls into the Potomac River.
January 17- On "Cold Sunday", unprecedentedly cold air swept down from Canada and plunged temperatures across much of the United States far below existing all-time record lows.
1981 (1 Water Year / 7 Metal 9-Year Cycle / 9 Fire 81-Year Cycle)