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| | | | World History timeline |
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| 1985 |
| | | President Reagan's administration breaks a US embargo with secret arms sales to Iran in return for assistance in the release of US hostages in Lebanon | |
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| 1985 |
| | | US author Don DeLillo publishes a novel of weird disasters, White Noise | |
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| 1985 |
| | | Oliver North arranges for clandestine money from Iran to provide illegal support for the Nicaraguan Contras | |
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| 1985 |
| | | 17-year-old German tennis-player Boris Becker becomes the youngest ever to win the men's singles at Wimbledon | |
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| 1985 |
| | | Gabriel García Márquez publishes Love in a Time of Cholera, a novel about love rekindled after five decades | |
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| 1985 |
| | | French agents blow up Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour | |
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| 1985 |
| | | Live Aid, an all-day concert for famine relief in Africa, is held simultaneously in London and Philadelphia | |
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| 1985 |
| | | US artist Christo tightly binds Paris's Pont Neuf in fabric, as one of his international series of wrapped iconic buildings | |
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| 1985 |
| | | The first Oprah Winfrey Show is broadcast in the USA, beginning a very long open-ended series | |
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| 1985 |
| | | Milton Obote, toppled in a bloodless Uganda coup, escapes to Zambia | |
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| 1985 |
| | | Seven groups of Afghan mujaheddin form a united front against the Soviet army | |
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| 1985 |
| | | Antiguan author Jamaica Kincaid publishes her first novel, Annie John | |
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| 1985 |
| | | French racing driver Alain Prost wins the first of his four Formula One titles | |
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| 1985 |
| | | Ayers Rock is returned to the Mutitjulu people and given its Aboriginal name, Uluru | |
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| 1985 |
| | | The Human Genome Project begins in the US Department of Energy, with the aim of sequencing the whole of human DNA | |
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| 1985 |
| | | Julius Nyerere, long-serving president of Tanzania, relinquishes power voluntarily | |
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| 1985 |
| | | 22-year-old Gary Kasparov defeats Anatoly Karpov and becomes the youngest-ever world champion in chess | |
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| 1985 |
| | | Britain's Margaret Thatcher and Ireland's Garret FitzGerald sign an Anglo-Irish Agreement to tackle shared problems | |
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| 1985 |
| | | British Rasta poet Benjamin Zephaniah publishes his second collection as The Dread Affair | |
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| 1986 |
| | | The US Space shuttle Challenger explodes with seven on board less than two minutes after lift-off | |
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| 1986 |
| | | The guerrilla leader Yoweri Museveni takes Kampala and becomes president of Uganda | |
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| 1986 |
| | | Baby Doc Duvalier escapes from Haiti in a US airforce jet and goes into exile in France | |
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| 1986 |
| | | Corazón Aquino, widow of the assassinated Benigno Aquino, stands against Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines presidential election | |
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| 1986 |
| | | The Soviets launch the first module (the living quarters) of their Mir Space Station | |
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| 1986 |
| | | After attempting to rig the presidential election to defeat Corazón Aquino, Ferdinand Marcos flees from the Philippines to exile in Hawaii | |
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| 1986 |
| | | Swedish prime minister Olof Palme is killed in a Stockholm street in an unsolved murder | |
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| 1986 |
| | | Simultaneous acts passed in Canberra and Westminster give Australia full judicial independence, ending appeals to the UK Privy Council | |
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| 1986 |
| | | The drug AZT (azidothymidine) offers hope as a way of inhibiting the progression from HIV to AIDS | |
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| 1986 |
| | | President Reagan launches an air strike against Libya, accusing Gaddafi of involvement in international terrorism | |
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| 1986 |
| | | Tony Cragg's Raleigh is unveiled outside the Tate Gallery in his home town of Liverpool | |
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| 1986 |
| | | Western nations finally impose sanctions on South Africa in response to apartheid | |
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| 1986 |
| | | A Soviet nuclear power station explodes at Chernobyl, scattering radioactive material over a wide area | |
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| 1986 |
| | | The Rwandan Patriotic Front is formed, by a group of exiles, to bring about the downfall of Habyarimana's regime in Rwanda | |
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| 1986 |
| | | Harrison Birtwistle's second opera, The Mask of Orpheus, brings him an international reputation | |
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| 1986 |
| | | Desmond Tutu is the first black African to be archbishop of Cape Town | |
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| 1986 |
| | | Argentina wins the World Cup quarter final against England with help from Maradona and 'the hand of God' | |
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