1981 жылғы маңызды оқиғалар

Month of 1981

The following events occurred in June 1981:

Wayne Williams, 23, was taken into custody by the FBI, at his home at 1817 Penelope Road N. W. in Atlanta. Though not arrested, Williams was questioned for almost 12 hours by agents investigating the "Atlanta child murders" of 28 young people, most of them children. Released the next morning, Williams was questioned by reporters and his name became known worldwide. He remained free, though under surveillance, until his arrest on June 21, when he was charged with the murder of 27 year old Nathaniel Cater. Died: Carleton S. Coon, 76, American anthropologist and archaeologist

James Earl Ray, who committed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., was stabbed 22 times by four of his fellow inmates at the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary near Petros, Tennessee. Ray survived the murder attempt, and went on for many years before dying on April 23, 1998, thirty years after the King assassination. Although Ray refused to identify the attackers, three African American prisoners were later convicted of the attempt and had at least 20 years added to their prison sentences.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 5 homosexual men in Los Angeles, California have a rare form of pneumonia seen only in patients with weakened immune systems (the first recognized cases of AIDS).

Hundreds of train passengers were killed when seven cars of an overcrowded train fell off the tracks into the Bagmati River in India's Bihar state. Although initial estimates placed the death toll as high as 3,000 people, the figure would later be revised to about 800. The train had been en route from Banmankhi to Samastipur, carrying passengers inside and on the roofs of its cars, and the engineer reported that he had stopped on the bridge after seeing a cow on the tracks. At the same time, heavy winds tipped the cars, five of which were swept downriver.

Iran's President, Abulhassan Banisadr made a speech at the Iranian Air Force base in Shiraz, exhorting officers and airmen to "resistance of dictatorship". The speech outraged Iran's de facto leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, who removed Banisadr from command of the armed forces two days later. Banisadr went into hiding on June 12 as opponents called for his execution, finally escaping to France on July 29. Many of his supporters were arrested and executed in the months that followed the critical speech. By a vote of 4–2, the council of the city of Morton Grove, Illinois, passed ordinance No. 81 11, prohibiting the possession of handguns within city limits, and for residents to turn in their weapons to police

A 6.8 earthquake struck Iran's Kerman province at 10:56 am local time, destroying the town of Golbaf and killing 1,027 people. 1981 Irish general election: The political party Fianna Fáil, led by Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Charles Haughey, lost its majority in the 166 seat Dáil Éireann. The Fine Gael assembled a coalition, and its leader, Garret FitzGerald, was elected the new Taoiseach by the Dáil on June 30, beating Haughey by a thin 81 78 margin.

The California Medfly Crisis began with a mistake made in the implementation of sterile insect technique, a means of controlling insect populations by releasing sterile bugs to mix with fertile ones of the same species during breeding season, thereby lowering the number of new larvae. When an infestation of millions of the Mediterranean fruit flies began destroying crops throughout the state, the California Department of Food and Agriculture discovered that the flies released on June 14 weren't sterile, and that the effort to reduce the population had inadvertently increased it. Voters in Switzerland, where women were not allowed to vote in national elections until 1971, approved an equal rights amendment to that nation's Constitution.

The State of Oklahoma forgot to execute convicted murderer James William White, who had been sentenced to die by lethal injection, in what would have been the first use in the United States of that form of capital punishment. A reporter from the UPI made a phone call to Oklahoma's Court of Criminal Appeals the next day to inquire about White's status. The Court discovered that nobody had filed an appeal required by state law, and that the state corrections department had incorrectly listed White's sentence as 999 years rather than death. In an 8–1 decision, the United States Supreme Court held in the case of Rhodes v. Chapman (452 U. S. 337) that the placing of two prison inmates in a cell designed for one was not a violation of the Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment, as long as overall conditions at the prison were adequate. The Court reversed rulings at the district and appellate court level in a class action lawsuit brought by inmates of the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio.

France's Socialist Party won control of the 491 member Assemblée nationale in an election, more than doubling its number of seats from 117 to 285 for a majority. After 23 years in power, the coalition of Conservative parties dropped its share from 274 to 147. Pierre Mauroy, who had formed an interim government while elections were being held, was appointed Prime Minister of France by President François Mitterrand. In the deadliest accident to ever happen at Washington State's Mount Rainier National Park, 10 mountain climbers and their guide were killed when tons of ice fell without warning, sweeping them into a 100 foot deep crevasse, and burying them under 70 feet of ice. That afternoon, in the worst accident to ever happen at Oregon's Mount Hood, five mountain climbers were killed when a group of 16, linked by ropes for safety during their descent, fell 2,500 feet down the side of the mountain. The South African police claimed to have arrested eight leaders of the South African Youth Revolutionary Council. Born: Simon Delestre, French equestrian ranked thirty sixth on the FEI Rolex Ranking List, in Metz.

On the opening day of the Wimbledon tennis tournament, American John McEnroe, ranked #2 in the world, stunned the crowd with an unprecedented display of temper. Beginning with the 12th game his first round match against Tom Gullikson, McEnroe began berating the umpire, Edward James, when calls went against him. In the 9th game of the second set, McEnroe shouted to James "You can't be serious! You are an incompetent fool, an offense against the world!" McEnroe's antics continued all the way to his victory in the championship match. One day after Iran's Parliament, the Majlis, voted 177–1 in favor of a resolution finding President Abolhassan Banisadr incompetent to hold office, the Ayatollah Khomeini, de facto leader of Iran, dismissed him. "I did not want today to happen," Khomeini wrote in a published declaration addressed to Banisadr, "but you did not listen to my advice. You did not stop your interest in these corrupt and criminal groups and they drew you to your destruction " The President was replaced by a triumvirate consisting of Ayatollahs Mohammed Beheshti and Hashemi Rafsanjani, and Prime Minister Mohammed Ali Rajai.

The phenomenon of Our Lady of Međugorje was first reported when six young people in Yugoslavia claimed to have seen an apparition of The Virgin Mary. Ivanka Ivankovic, who allegedly saw it first, was joined by her sister Vicka Ivankovic, Mirjana and Ivan Dragicevic, Marija Pavlovic and Jakov Colo. Although the local Catholic bishop, Pavo Zanic, felt that the apparitions had been "a case of collective hallucination", Pope John Paul II approved pilgrimages to the area in 1986, and tens of thousands of believers have visited Međugorje (now part of Bosnia and Herzegovina) since then. Soldiers in the army of Uganda killed 86 people, mostly women and children, in a massacre at the city of Arua. Died: Paul Butler, 89, multimillionaire who founded Butler Aviation Company and who was largely responsible for the creation of Oak Brook, Illinois. Butler, whose net worth was estimated at between 50 and 125 million dollars, was struck by a car while standing in the street in front of his home to take photographs.

Hua Guofeng formally resigned as Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, the position that he had held since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. The film Stripes, starring Bill Murray and Harold Ramis, premiered in the United States, before being shown worldwide.

Hu Yaobang was elected as Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, to succeed Hua Guofeng. After the position of Chairman was abolished the following year, Hu continued as General Secretary, until he was dismissed on January 16, 1987, and replaced by Zhao Ziyang.

In the closest election in Israel's history, Menachem Begin's Likud Party won 48 seats, and the Labor Party led by Shimon Peres had 47, with neither holding a majority in the 120 seat Knesset. Likud eventually negotiated a coalition with the National Religious Party (6), Agudat Israel (4) and TAMI (3) to reach 61 seats. Eight former guards of the Majdanek concentration camp were convicted of war crimes by a West German court, bringing to an end a trial that had begun on November 24, 1974.