1981

Centuries: Year in Review 20th Century

19th century - 20th century - 21st century

Decades: 1890s - 1900s - 1910s - 1920s - 1930s - 1940s - 1950s - 1960s - 1970s - 1980s - 1990s - 2000s

1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986

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Births

Deaths

• October 16 - [Moshe Dayan]?, Israeli general

Events

• February 11 - Polish Prime Minister [Jozef Pinkowski]? replaced by [Wojciech Jaruzelski]?.
• April 12 - Columbia 1 mission, first launch of a Space Shuttle
• Ronald Reagan succeeds Jimmy Carter as President of the United States of America
• December 13 - Wojciech Jaruzelski declares the state of martial law in Poland to prevent dismantling of the communist system by Solidarity

Nobel Prizes

• Physics - [Nicolaas Bloembergen]?, [Arthur Leonard Schawlow]?, [Kai M. Siegbahn]?
• Chemistry - [Kenichi Fukui]?, [Roald Hoffmann]?
• Medicine - [Roger W Sperry]?, [David H Hubel]?, [Torsten N Wiesel]?
• Literature - Elias Canetti
• Peace - [[The Office of the United Nations [High Commissioner For Refugees]?.
• Economics - James Tobin

Computing

• ZX81 launched, probably the start of the 1980s home computing phenomenon.