1986 Calendar
What Happened In Year 1986?
- January 1, 1986 – Aruba becomes independent of Curaçao, though it remains in free association with the Netherlands.
- January 19, 1986 – The first computer virus released into the wild is a boot sector virus dubbed (c)Brain, created by the Farooq Alvi Brothers in Lahore, Pakistan, reportedly to deter piracy of the software they had written.
- January 20, 1986 – Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is celebrated as a federal holiday for the first time.
- February 1, 1986 – New Year’s Day in Chinese calendar. Start of the year of the Fire Tiger in Chinese astrology.
- March 4, 1986 – The Soviet Vega 1 begins returning images of Halley’s Comet and the first images of its nucleus.
- April 14, 1986 – In retaliation for the April 5 bombing in West Berlin that killed two U.S. servicemen, U.S. president Ronald Reagan orders major bombing raids against Libya, killing 60 people.
- April 26, 1986 – A nuclear reactor accident occurs at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Soviet Union (now Ukraine), creating the world’s worst nuclear disaster.
- April 28, 1986 – The United States Navy aircraft carrier USS Enterprise becomes the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to transit the Suez Canal, navigating from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea to relieve the USS Coral Sea.
- August 6, 1986 – A low-pressure system that redeveloped off the New South Wales coast dumps a record 328 millimeters (13 inches) of rain in a day on Sydney.
- August 21, 1986 – Carbon dioxide gas erupts from volcanic Lake Nyos in Cameroon, killing up to 1,800 people within a 20-kilometer range.
- September 7, 1986 – Gen. Augusto Pinochet, president of Chile, escapes attempted assassination.
- September 30, 1986 – Mordechai Vanunu, who revealed details of Israel’s covert nuclear program to British media, is kidnapped in Rome, Italy by the Israeli Mossad.
- October 5, 1986 – Israeli secret nuclear weapons are revealed. The British newspaper The Sunday Times runs Mordechai Vanunu’s story on its front page under the headline: “Revealed — the secrets of Israel’s nuclear arsenal”.
- October 29, 1986 – British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher opens the last stretch of the M25 motorway.
- November 3, 1986 – Iran-Contra Affair: The Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa reports that the United States has been secretly selling weapons to Iran in order to secure the release of seven American hostages held by pro-Iranian groups in Lebanon.
- November 21, 1986 – Iran-Contra Affair: National Security Council member Oliver North and his secretary start to shred documents implicating them in the sale of weapons to Iran and channeling the proceeds to help fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
- November 22, 1986 – Mike Tyson defeats Trevor Berbick to become youngest Heavyweight champion in boxing history.
- November 25, 1986 – Iran Contra Affair: US Attorney General Edwin Meese announces that profits from covert weapons sales to Iran were illegally diverted to the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
- December 31, 1986 – A fire at the Dupont Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, kills 97 and injures 140.
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