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| | | | World History timeline |
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| 1979 |
| | | Britain agrees to fund the purchase of land of British farmers in Southern Rhodesia willing to sell, for a much-needed land distribution programme | |
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| 1979 |
| | | The Global Commission for the Eradication of Smallpox announces that the world is free of the disease | |
|  | White doctor vaccinating 800 Zulus
Wellcome Library, London
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| 1980 |
| | | The small firm of Microsoft wins the contract to provide the operating system of the IBM personal computer | |
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| 1980 |
| | | The USA ends all aid to Nicaragua and provides funds to train and equip the Contras in neighbouring Honduras | |
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| 1980 |
| | | Archbishop Oscar Romero, an exponent of liberation theology, is killed as he celebrates Mass in San Salvador | |
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| 1980 |
| | | Italian academic Umberto Eco publishes The Name of the Rose, a medieval murder mystery | |
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| 1980 |
| | | The threat of a hunger strike persuades the British government to authorize S4C (Sianel Pedwar Cymru), a television channel broadcasting in Welsh | |
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| 1980 |
| | | A US helicopter mission fails disastrously in its attempt to rescue the embassy hostages in Tehran | |
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| 1980 |
| | | US author Sam Shepard's play True West has its premiere in New York | |
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| 1980 |
| | | Rhodesia becomes independent, taking the name Zimbabwe, with Robert Mugabe as prime minister | |
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| 1980 |
| | | A coup in Uganda brings Milton Obote back into power, and he is confirmed as president in a subsequent general election | |
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| 1980 |
| | | The song O Canada, exacty a century old, is officially adopted as the country's national anthem | |
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| 1980 |
| | | Electrician Lech Walesa emerges as the leader of a strike in the Gdansk shipyard in Poland | |
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| 1980 |
| | | The Charter of Rights and Freedoms secures new aspects of Canada's national identity | |
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| 1980 |
| | | The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerges in India from previous Hindu nationalist groups and soon acquires a large following | |
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| 1980 |
| | | US basketball champion Magic Johnson begins 12 years with the Los Angeles Lakers | |
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| 1980 |
| | | Martin Scorsese directs Robert de Niro in Raging Bull | |
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| 1980 |
| | | US choreographer Mark Morris founds his own company, the Mark Morris Dance Group, based in New York | |
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| 1980 |
| | | A trade union, Solidarnośc (Solidarity), is formed by strikers in the Gdansk shipyard in Poland | |
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| 1980 |
| | | Lech Walesa is elected chairman of the newly formed Polish trade union movement Solidarnośc (Solidarity) | |
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| 1980 |
| | | Saddam Hussein invades Iran, beginning an 8-year war that will bring massive human cost | |
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| 1980 |
| | | Republican Ronald Reagan wins the US presidential election against the incumbent Jimmy Carter | |
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| 1980 |
| | | Beatle John Lennon is murdered by a psychopath on the steps of his and Yoko Ono's apartment block in New York | |
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| 1981 |
| | | Iran releases the US embassy hostages immediately after the end of Jimmy Carter's presidency | |
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| 1981 |
| | | The SDP hives off from Britain's Labour party – and seven years later merges with the Liberals to form the Liberal Democrats | |
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| 1981 |
| | | Rebels storm the Spanish parliament in Madrid and briefly hold the members hostage, in a military coup that fails | |
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| 1981 |
| | | The Kremlin appoints a general, Wojciech Jaruzelski, as prime minister of Poland | |
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| 1981 |
| | | Henry and Jane Fonda, father and daughter, star with Katherine Hepburn in On Golden Pond | |
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| 1981 |
| | | Sandra Day O'Connor becomes the first woman appointed to the US Supreme Court | |
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| 1981 |
| | | Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan share a common economic viewpoint, following the policy known as monetarism | |
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| 1981 |
| | | President Reagan is shot outside a hotel in Washington by John W. Hinckley Jr, but survives | |
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| 1981 |
| | | Veteran Communist leader Deng Xiaoping secures his position as the real power in China's government | |
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| 1981 |
| | | War Music is the first instalment of Christopher Logue's version of the Iliad | |
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| 1981 |
| | | Francçois Mitterrand defeats Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in the French presidential election | |
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| 1981 |
| | | Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children uses the moment of India's independence to launch an adventure in magic realism | |
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| 1981 |
| | | Australian entrepreneur Rupert Murdoch buys Britain's establishment newspaper, The Times, and its related titles | |
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