1980

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Table of contents

1 Events

1.1 January-February
1.2 March-April
1.3 May-October
1.4 November

2 Year in topic
3 Births
4 Deaths

4.5 January-April
4.6 May-December

5 Nobel Prizes

Events

January 1 - Changes to the Swedish Act of Succession creates Victoria of Sweden, Crown Princess over her younger brother
January 5 - Hewlett-Packard announces release of its first personal computer
January 7 - President Jimmy Carter authorizes legislation giving $1.5 billion in loans to bail out Chrysler Corporation.
January 11 - Nigel Short, 14 years old, is the youngest chess player to be awarded the degree of International Master.
January 22 - Andrei Sakharov is arrested in Moscow
January 26 - Israel and Egypt establish diplomatic relations
February 2 - Abscam: Reports surface that FBI personnel were targeting members of the United States Congress in a sting operation.
February 4 - Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini names Abolhassan Banisadr as president of Iran
February 23 - Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini states that Iran's parliament would decide the fate of the American embassy hostages.

March 3 - Pierre Trudeau returns to office as Prime Minister of Canada.
March 14 - In Poland, a plane crashes during an emergency landing near Warsaw killing a 14-man American boxing team and 73 others.
March 18 - In Russia, a Vostok rocket explodes on its launch pad during a fueling operation killing 50.
March 21 - President Jimmy Carter announces that the United States will boycott the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow
March 24 - Archbishop Oscar Romero is killed by gunmen while celebrating Mass in San Salvador.
April 7 - The United States severs diplomatic relations with Iran and imposes economic sanctions following the taking of American hostages on November 4, 1979.
April 25 - A commando mission in Iran to rescue American embassy hostages is aborted after mechanical problems ground the rescue helicopters. Eight United States troops were killed in a mid-air collision during the failed operation.
April 30 - Accession of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands

May 9 - In Florida, a Liberian freighter named the Summit Venture hits the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay sending 35 people (most of whom were in a bus) to a watery death as a 1,400-foot section of the bridge collapsed.
May 18 - Mount St. Helens erupts in Washington killing 57 and causing US$ 3 billion in damage.
May 24 - The International Court of Justice calls for the release U.S. embassy hostages in Tehran.
July 17 - Saddam Hussein is selected president of Iraq, replacing Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr.
July 30 - Vanuatu gains independence.
August 25 - Microsoft announces their version of UNIX, Xenix
September 5 - The St. Gothard Tunnel opens in Switzerland as the world's longest highway tunnel at 10.14 miles (16.32 km) stretching from Goschenen to Airolo.
September 22 - The command council of Iraq ordered its army to "deliver its fatal blow on Iranian military targets," initiating the Iran-Iraq War.
October 30 - El Salvador and Honduras sign a peace treaty to put the border dispute fought over in 1969's Football War before the International Court of Justice.

November 4 - U.S. presidential election, 1980: Republican challenger Ronald Reagan defeats incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter by a wide margin.
November 12 - Voyager program: The NASA space probe Voyager I makes its closest aproach to Saturn when it flies within 77,000 miles of the planet's cloud-tops and sends the first high resolution images of the world back to scientists on Earth.
November 21 - A fire at the MGM Grand Hotel-Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada kills 87 people.
November 23 - A series of earthquakes in southern Italy kills approximately 4,800 people.
Summer Olympic Games in Moscow USSR
War begins between Iran and Iraq
Invasion of Afghanistan by USSR
NEC created the first successful digital signal processor, the NEC µPD7710
Comedian Richard Pryor gets badly burned trying to freebase cocaine
SCART plug was made mandatory to all televisions sold in France.