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Top Song(s)
• USA For Africa - We Are the World
• A-Ha - Take On Me
• Foreigner - I Want to Know What Love Is
• Tears For Fears - Shout
• Lionel Richie - Say You, Say Me
Top Film(s)
• Back to the Future
• Come and See
• The Breakfast Club
• Ran
• The Goonies
Best Selling Book(s)
• The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
• Ender’s Game - Orson Scott Card
• Perfume: The Story of a Murderer - Patrick Suskind
• Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry
• Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel García Márquez
Famous Deaths
• January 11 – Sir William McKell, 12th Governor-General of Australia
• March 3 – Iosif Shklovsky, Soviet astronomer and astrophysicist
• April 21 - Tancredo Neves, Brazilian elected president and former Prime Minister
• May 10 - Tahar Ben Ammar, Tunisian politician, 8th Prime Minister of Tunisia
• June 30 – Haruo Remeliik, Palauan politician, 1st President of Palau
• August 6 - Forbes Burnham, Guyanese political leader, 2nd President of Guyana
• September 6 – Rodney Robert Porter, English biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize
• September 30 - Charles Richter, American seismologist and physicist, creator of the Richter magnitude scale
• October 5 – Abdus Sattar, Bangladeshi statesman, 8th President of Bangladesh
• December 15 - Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, 1st Prime Minister of Mauritius
Medical/Science/Technology
• Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launches Sakigake, Japan's first interplanetary spacecraft.
• The fullerene Buckminsterfullerene (C60) is first intentionally prepared.
• The GNU Manifesto, written by Richard Stallman, is first published.
• Microsoft Windows operating system released.
• Scientists of the British Antarctic Survey announce discovery of the ozone hole.
• Portugal joins the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
• Artificial heart patient William J. Schroeder becomes the first such patient to leave hospital.
• Joshua Silver develops an adjustable corrective lens.
• German surgeon Erich Muhe performs the first laparoscopic cholecystectomy.
• The first British mobile phone calls are made.
Political
• January 1 - US's 1st mandatory seat belt law goes into effect (NY).
• January 20 - President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H. W. Bush are privately sworn in for a second term in office.
• February 6 – President Reagan delivers his fourth State of the Union Address to the Congress.
• March 4 – The Food and Drug Administration approves a blood test for AIDS.
• March 29 - Christos Sartzetakis elected President of Greece.
• May 5 – President Ronald Reagan joins West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl for a in Bitburg, Germany.
• June 4 - Supreme Court strikes down Alabama "moment of silence" law.
• July 19 – VP George H. W. Bush announces that Christa McAuliffe will become the 1st school teacher aboard Space Shuttle Challenger.
• November 19 – In Geneva, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet for the first time.
• November 26 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan sells the rights to his autobiography to Random House for a record US$3,000,000.
National
• February 5 – Australia cancels its involvement in United States-led MX missile tests.
• February 9 – U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena is kidnapped and murdered in Mexico.
• April 7 – National Geographic Explorer debuts on Nickelodeon.
• April 23 – Coca-Cola changes its recipe and releases New Coke.
• May 11 – The FBI brings charges against the suspected heads of the five Mafia families in New York City.
• May 31 – Forty-one tornadoes hit in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Ontario, killing 76 people.
• July 3 – Back to the Future opens in American theaters and becomes the highest-grossing film of 1985 in the United States.
• August 28 – The first smoking ban for restaurants in the United States is passed in Aspen, Colorado.
• September 2 – Hurricane Elena makes landfall on the U.S. Gulf Coast after reaching Category 3 status.
• October 4 – The Free Software Foundation is founded in Massachusetts.
Worldwide
• January 27 – The Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) is formed, in Tehran.
• February 4 – The border between Gibraltar and Spain reopens for the first time since Francisco Franco closed it in 1969.
• April 15 – South Africa ends its ban on interracial marriages.
• May 16 – Scientists of the British Antarctic Survey announce the discovery of the ozone hole.
• June 20 – 1985 Nepal bombings: A series of bomb blasts occurs in Kathmandu and other cities of Nepal.
• August 14 – The Accomarca massacre takes place in Ayacucho, Peru.
• September 19 – An 8.0 Mw earthquake strikes Mexico City, killing between 5,000 and 45,000 people and injuring 30,000 more.
• October 25 – Emirates Airlines is established in Dubai and makes its first flight, to Karachi, Pakistan.
• November 13 – The Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupts, killing an estimated 23,000 people, in the town of Armero, Colombia.
• December 27 - Abu Nidal terrorists open fire in the airports of Rome and Vienna, leaving 18 dead and 120 injured.