February 17 - US Lieutenant Colonel William Higgins , serving with a United Nations group monitoring a truce in southern Lebanon is kidnapped (captors later kill him)
February 21 - On his own televangelism program being taped in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Jimmy Swaggart confesses that he is guilty of an unspecified sin and will be temporarily leaving the pulpit. The "unspecified sin" was an affair with a prostitute.
June 28 - Four workers asphyxiated at a metal-plating plant in Auburn, Indiana, in the worst confined-space industrial accident in US history. A fifth victim died two days later.
August 28 - A fire destroys part of Chiado quarter, in Lisbon's historical center.
September
September 1- Acacia pycnantha proclamed Australia's national floral emblem
September 3- Federal referendums on 4-year terms, recognition of local Government + other issues is defeated (Aus)
September 5 - With US$2 billion in federal aid, the Robert M. Bass Group agrees to buy the United States's largest thrift, American Savings and Loan Association
October 11 - Girls are allowed to study at Magdalene College, Cambridge, for the first time. Male students wear black armbands and the porter flies a black flag
October 28 - Abortion: 48 hours after announcing it was abandoning RU-486, French manufacturer Roussel Uclaf states that it would resume distribution of the drug, bowing to pressure from the government of France
November 11 - In Sacramento, California, police find a body buried in the lawn of 60-year-old boardinghouse landlady Dorothea Puente (seven bodies were eventually found and Puente was convicted of three murders and sentenced to life in prison)
January 16 - Sports commentator Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder is fired by CBS a day after publicly stating that African Americans had been bred to produce stronger offspring during slavery.
International Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims / Dr. Inge Kemp Genefke , José Lutzenberger , John F. Charlewood Turner and Sahabat Alam Malaysia / Mohamed Idris , Harrison Ngau , the Penan people.
