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Iraq invades Iran
The Iran–Iraq War, also known as the Imposed War began when Iraq invaded Iran, launching a simultaneous invasion by air and land into Iranian territory on 22 September 1980 -
Martial Law declared in Poland
Martial law in Poland refers to the period of time from December 13, 1981 to July 22, 1983, when the authoritarian government of the People's Republic of Poland drastically restricted normal life by introducing martial law in an attempt to crush political opposition to it. Thousands of opposition activists were interned without charge and as many as 100 people were killed. Although martial law was lifted in 1983, many of the political prison -
Israel invades Lebanon
The 1982 Lebanon War , called Operation Peace for Galilee by Israel, and later known in Israel as the Lebanon War and First Lebanon War, began on 6 June 1982, when the Israel Defense Forces invaded southern Lebanon. The Government of Israel decided to launch the military operation after numerous PLO provocations including the attempted assassination of Israel’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, Shlomo Argov, allegedly by the Abu Nidal Organization. -
Argentian forces surrender; Falklands War ends
The Falklands War, was fought in 1982 between Argentina and the United Kingdom (UK) over the disputed Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. The Falkland Islands consist of two large and many small islands in the South Atlantic Ocean east of Argentina; their name and sovereignty over them have long been disputed. -
European Spacelab goes into orbit
Spacelab
Ulrich Walter aboard Spacelab mission D-2 in 1993
A modular, reusable scientific laboratory, built by the European Space Agency (ESA), and carried into orbit on numerous missions between 1983 and 1998, by the Space Shuttle. Scientists from about a dozen nations used it to conduct research on a wide variety of subjects under conditions of microgravity. -
Britain agrees to hand over Hong Kong to China
The transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to the People's Republic of China, referred to as the Return by Chinese and the Handover by British press, took place on 1 July 1997. The event marked the end of British rule, and the transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong to Chinese rule. -
Toxic Gas leak in Bhopal, India, kills and injures thousands
The Bhopal disaster (also referred to as the Bhopal gas tragedy) is the world's worst industrial catastrophe. It occurred on the night of December 2–3, 1984 at the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India. A leak of methyl isocyanate gas and other chemicals from the plant resulted in the exposure of hundreds of thousands of people. Estimates vary on the death toll. -
Major Nuclear accident occurs at Chernobyl, Soviet Union
The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident of catastrophic proportions that occurred on 26 April 1986, at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine (then in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, part of the Soviet Union). It is considered the worst nuclear power plant accident in history and is the only level 7 event on the International Nuclear Event Scale -
Iran-Iraq ceasefire ends eight years of war
The war came at a great cost in lives and economic damage - half a million Iraqi and Iranian soldiers as well as civilians are believed to have died in the war with many more injured and wounded - but brought neither reparations nor change in borders. The conflict is often compared to World War I,[20] in that the tactics used closely mirrored those of that conflict, including large scale trench warfare, manned machine-gun posts, bayonet charges, use of barbed wire across trenches, human wave at -
Berlin Wall demolished
The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete wall[, which circumscribed a wide area (later known as the "death strip") that contained anti-vehicle trenches, "fakir beds" and other defenses. The Soviet-dominated Eastern Bloc officially claimed