What Day of the Week

1981 Calendar

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•  February 5, 1981 – New Year’s Day in Chinese calendar. Start of the year of the Metal Rooster in Chinese astrology.
•  February 24, 1981 – An earthquake registering 6.7 on the Richter scale hits Athens, killing 16 people and destroying buildings in several towns west of the city.
•  March 27, 1981 – The Solidarity movement in Poland stages a warning strike, in which at least 12 million Poles walk off their jobs for four hours.
•  April 26, 1981 – Dr. Michael R. Harrison of the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center performs the world’s first human open fetal surgery.
•  May 5, 1981 – Bobby Sands dies in the Long Kesh prison hospital after 66 days of hunger-striking, aged 27.
•  June 6, 1981 – Bihar train disaster A passenger train travelling between Mansi and Saharsa, India, jumps the tracks at a bridge crossing the Bagmati river. The government places the official death toll at 268 plus another 300 missing; however, it is generally believed that the actual figure is closer to 1,000 killed.
•  June 11, 1981 – A Richter Scale 6.9 magnitude earthquake at Golbaf, Iran, kills at least 2,000.
•  August 3, 1981 – Senegalese opposition parties, under the leadership of Mamadou Dia, launch the Antiimperialist Action Front-Suxxali Reew Mi.
•  August 30, 1981 – President Mohammad-Ali Rajai and Prime Minister Mohammad-Javad Bahonar of Iran are assassinated in a bombing committed by the People’s Mujahedin of Iran.
•  December 30, 1981 – In the 39th game of his 3rd NHL season Wayne Gretzky scores 5 goals giving him 50 on the year setting a new NHL record previously held by Maurice Richard and Mike Bossy who earlier had each scored 50 goals in 50 games.

•  January 20, 1981 – Brendan Fevola, Australian Rules Football Player
•  May 26, 1981 – Isaac Slade, American musician (The Fray)
•  July 2, 1981 – Carlos Rogers, American football player
•  July 7, 1981 – Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Indian cricketer
•  July 24, 1981 – Mark Robinson, English footballer
•  August 16, 1981 – Roque Santa Cruz, Paraguayan footballer
•  August 29, 1981 – Geneviève Jeanson, French Canadian cyclist
•  September 17, 1981 – Bakari Koné, Ivorian footballer
•  September 27, 1981 – Sophie Crumb, American comics artist
•  November 20, 1981 – Kimberley Walsh, English singer (Girls Aloud)