1981 жылдың шілдесіндегі оқиғалар

Month of 1981

The following events occurred in July 1981:

Typhoon Kelly struck the Philippines and killed more than 150 people in and around Legaspi City. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers walked out on strike at midnight. Mail delivery would be halted for six weeks, finally resuming on August 11. Eastern Airlines Flight 984 was scheduled to depart Guatemala City for Miami at 3:30 pm, but mechanical problems delayed the takeoff. As baggage was being prepared for loading on the Boeing 727, a time bomb exploded inside one of the suitcases at 4:15, when the jet would have been in flight over the Caribbean. Andrija Artukovic, Nazi collaborator who had served as the Minister of the Interior for the Independent State of Croatia before taking up residence at Seal Beach, California, was ordered deported to Yugoslavia to stand trial for war crimes. Four bodies were found in a home at 8763 Wonderland Avenue in the hills above Los Angeles, along with a seriously injured woman. All five had been bludgeoned with a steel pipe. Neighbors had heard screams earlier in the morning, but nobody called the police until 12 hours later. Pornographic movie star John Holmes and nightclub owner Eddie Nash were both indicted for the killings; both were acquitted.

The United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously that then President Jimmy Carter had acted within his authority in ending the Iran hostage crisis when he agreed in the Algiers Accords to release frozen Iranian assets no later than July 19, in return for the release of 52 American hostages from Iran. The decision, made only 8 days after the Court heard arguments, cleared the way for $2.3 billion to be transferred from U. S. banks to Iran. Earlier on the same day, eight of the former hostages sued Iran in federal court, seeking $5,000,000 apiece, despite a waiver of the right to sue as part of the same accords.

Kenji Urada, an employee at the automated Kawasaki Heavy Industries factory, became what was reported as the first person to be killed by a robot. However, an American worker, Robert Williams of the Ford Motor Company plant in Flat Rock, Michigan, had been killed by a robot two years earlier, on January 25, 1979. After losing the first set, 4–6, to Björn Borg, John McEnroe won the men's singles championship at Wimbledon with three straight sets (7 6, 7–6 and 6 4), but not without outraging his hosts at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club by his outbursts against the officials.

On trial in Los Angeles under accusation of being the Hillside Strangler, Kenneth Bianchi took the witness stand in his own defense. After initially denying his involvement in the slayings of ten young women, Bianchi unexpectedly began a detailed confession and calmly described each of the murders in detail.

The Israel Defense Forces began a regular bombardment of Palestine Liberation Organization strongholds in Lebanon. The siege escalated after the Palestinian guerillas began shelling Israeli settlements. Until a July 24 ceasefire, 450 Palestinians and Lebanese, and 6 Israelis, died. Ken Rex McElroy was murdered in Skidmore, Missouri by several unknown gunmen as a group of 60 people, frustrated with McElroy's continued violations of the law, gathered. The example of vigilante justice would later be recounted in books and a made for TV movie. The Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, cult leader from India, purchased a 39 square miles (101 km2) ranch near Antelope, Oregon and named the haven Rajneeshpuram.

Rioting in the UK reached its height, with thousands of people fighting with police in cities across England. In addition to London, violence flared in Liverpool, Birmingham, Sheffield, Nottingham, Hull, Manchester, Preston and Newcastle upon Tyne. The Writers Guild of America ended its 13 week strike, which had begun on March 2.

Three days of torrential rains began in China's Sichuan Province, with up to raising the level of the Yangtze River and its tributaries as much as 16.5 feet (5 m). Initial reports from the Xinhua news agency reported 3,000 deaths and 100,000 injuries. The official numbers would be revised two weeks later, but the toll was still high, with 753 dead, 558 missing, 28,140 injured and 1.5 million people left homeless.

Aspartame, the artificial sweetener marketed as NutraSweet, was approved for sale in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration. Initially, the product was cleared only for use at home, but would later be approved as a food additive.

Mahathir Mohamad was sworn in as the fourth Prime Minister of Malaysia. Mahathir would serve for 22 years, retiring in 2003. Died: Harry Chapin, 38, folk singer and hunger activist, was killed in a car wreck near Jericho, New York on the Long Island Expressway. Chapin had shifted lanes into the path of a Rickel Home Centers truck, which was unable to avoid a collision with his car, and died of a ruptured aneurysm caused by the impact. A jury later found Chapin to be 40% at fault in the accident, with the driver primarily liable, and awarded $7,200,000 to his widow.

The Nissan Motor Company announced that it was phasing out the name "Datsun" for its cars and trucks sold outside Japan. More than 300 people were killed and 800 injured when aircraft from Israel bombed a residential area in West Beirut, where the headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon was based. Ten apartment buildings were destroyed. Most of the victims were civilians. The collapse of a hotel walkway killed 114 people at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri. At 7:05 pm, a fourth floor walk at the hotel broke from its moorings and dropped onto a second floor walk directly below, and then both structures fell into the hotel lobby. All three areas were crowded with people who had gathered for a dance. In addition to the 114 who died, 185 more were injured. Ultimately, the disaster was traced to a flaw in design and construction. While the original plan had been for the two walkways to hang separately, nuts and bolts intended to bear the weight of the fourth floor were holding the weight of both. The failure of a single nut under the stress led to the chain reaction.

Jack Henry Abbott, a convicted murderer turned author of the bestseller In the Belly of the Beast, had been paroled in June with the influence of author Norman Mailer. Abbott and two friends walked into a Manhattan cafe called Binibon, where he got into an argument with Richard Adan over use of a restroom. Abbott stabbed Adan to death and then fled the scene. Ironically, Abbott's return to crime took place as the praise of his book was being printed in that Sunday's New York Times Book Review. Abbott would be captured two months later, convicted of the murder, and spend the rest of his life in prison until hanging himself in 2002.

The existence of the "Farewell Dossier", 4,000 pages of Soviet documents that had been supplied to France by former KGB Colonel Vladimir Vetrov (whose code name was "Farewell") was revealed to U. S. President Ronald Reagan by French President François Mitterrand at the summit of Western leaders in Ottawa. The material showed that the Soviets had, after years of infiltration, been stealing American technological research and development. While other advisers to the National Security Council were looking for ways to stop the leaks, Gus Weiss proposed the idea of creating defective technology and allowing it to be stolen. The first trial was for computer programs which, months after being applied to operate the Siberian gas pipeline, began to fail. (A critic notes that the USSR did not have computer managed gas pipelines in the 1980s and that claim is highly improbable.) The existence of the Farewell Dossier would remain a secret until 1997.

David Allen Kirwan, a 24 year old tourist at Yellowstone National Park, jumped into the alkaline (pH 9) and scalding Celestine Pool to save his dog. The dog died within moments and its body dissolved in the hot spring. Kirwan, burned over his entire body, was airlifted to Salt Lake City and died the next day. Martina Navratilova became an American citizen at a ceremony in Los Angeles. Until then, the women's tennis star, who had defected from Czechoslovakia, had lived in fear that she would be kidnapped and returned for trial. Died: Lou Peters, Cadillac dealer from Lodi, California, whose cooperation with the FBI led to the conviction of organized crime leader Joe Bonanno earlier in the year. The Bureau named the Louis E. Peters Memorial Service Award in his honor.

Tohui the Panda was born in Chapultepec Zoo in Mexico City, the first giant panda ever to be born and survive in captivity outside of China. Tohui was the second child of Ying Ying, who accidentally crushed her first one. The U. S. Postal Service, the American Postal Workers Union and the National Association of Letter Carriers reached a $4.8 billion agreement and averted the threatened walkout of 500,000 post office employees. The prior contract had expired at 12:01 the day before, but workers remained on the job as negotiations continued.

FTC Commissioner Michael Pertschuk announced the most comprehensive regulations ever applied to the American funeral industry, ending deceptive practices after a nearly ten year study. Among the changes were a requirement for funeral homes to itemize their prices, and a prohibition against a common practice of requiring the bereaved to buy a casket even for a cremation. Mehmet Ali Agca was sentenced to life imprisonment for his attempt to assassinate Pope John Paul II on May 13.