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Top Song(s)
• Berlin - Take My Breath Away
• Falco - Rock Me Amadeus
• Madonna - Papa Don't Preach
• The Bangles - Walk Like an Egyptian
• The Pet Shop Boys - West End Girls
Top Film(s)
• Aliens
• Ferris Bueller's Day Off
• Stand by Me
• Platoon
• Castle in the Sky
Best Selling Book(s)
• The Light Fantastic - Terry Pratchett
• Speaker for the Dead - Orson Scott Card
• Redwall - Brian Jacques
• The Prince of Tides - Pat Conroy
• Love You Forever - Robert Munsch
Famous Deaths
• January 24 - L. Ron Hubbard, science fiction author, founder of Scientology
• February 1 – Ida Rhodes, mathematician, pioneer in computer programming
• February 1 - Alva Myrdal, Swedish sociologist, diplomat and leader of the disarmament movement (Nobel Peace Prize 1982)
• April 15 Sergei Anokhin, Soviet test pilot who set world records for gliding flights
• May 31 – James Rainwater, physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
• June 17 - Jozef Keuleers, Belgian worker's union leader
• July 24 – Fritz Albert Lipmann, German-born biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize
• August 31 - Urho Kekkonen, Finnish politician (8th President of Finland 1956-81)
• September 25 - Nikolay Nikolayevich Semyonov, Russian Chemist and Nobel Prize winner
• October 31 – Robert S. Mulliken, physicist and chemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Medical/Science/Technology
• NASA Voyager 2 space probe makes first encounter with Uranus.
• The Soviet Union launches the Mir space station.
• English epidemiologist David Barker proposes his fetal origins hypothesis.
• The first MS-DOS-based personal computer virus, Brain, starts to spread.
• IBM unveils the PC Convertible, the first laptop computer.
• Pixar is founded by John Lasseter along with Steve Jobs.
• Lawrence Paulson makes the first release of Isabelle (proof assistant).
• Lee Sallows introduces the alphamagic square.
• Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager make the first nonstop flight around the world without refueling.
• The first genetically-engineered vaccine, for hepatitis B, gains FDA approval.
Political
• January 20 – The first federal Martin Luther King Jr. Day, honoring Martin Luther King Jr., is observed.
• January 28 - President Ronald Reagan postpones State of the Union address to addresses the nation on the Challenger disaster.
• February 4 – President Reagan delivers his fifth State of the Union Address.
• February 19 – After waiting 37 years, the United States Senate approves a treaty outlawing genocide.
• February 27 – The United States Senate allows its debates to be televised on a trial basis.
• June 4 – Jonathan Pollard pleads guilty to espionage for selling top secret United States military intelligence to Israel.
• June 9 – The Rogers Commission Report is released on the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.
• October 1 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs the Goldwater–Nichols Act into law.
• October 9 - U.S. District Court Judge Harry E. Claiborne becomes the fifth federal official to be impeached.
• October 11 – Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet in Reykjavík, Iceland.
National
• January 24 – The Voyager 2 space probe makes its first encounter with Uranus.
• January 28 - Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrates 73 seconds after launch, killing the crew of seven astronauts.
• March 9 – United States Navy divers find the largely intact but heavily damaged crew compartment of the Space Shuttle Challenger.
• May 25 – Hands Across America: approximately 6.5 million people form a human chain from New York City to Long Beach, California.
• June 5–11 – Excedrin cyanide tampering crisis.
• July 5 – The Statue of Liberty is reopened to the public after an extensive refurbishing.
• August 6 – In Louisville, Kentucky, William J. Schroeder, the second artificial heart recipient, dies after 620 days.
• October 28 – The centennial of the Statue of Liberty's dedication is celebrated in New York Harbor.
• November 21 – Oliver North and his secretary, Fawn Hall, start shredding documents implicating them in selling weapons to Iran.
• December – The unemployment rate drops to 6.6%, the lowest since March 1980.
Worldwide
• January 20 – The United Kingdom and France announce plans to construct the Channel Tunnel.
• February 17 – The Single European Act is signed.
• March 8 – The Japanese Suisei probe flies by Halley's Comet, studying its UV hydrogen corona and solar wind.
• April 2 – A bomb explodes on a Trans World Airlines flight from Rome to Athens, killing 4 people.
• May 23 – Somali President Siad Barre is injured in a car accident in Mogadishu and taken to Saudi Arabia for treatment.
• June 12 – South Africa declares a nationwide state of emergency.
• August 21 – The Lake Nyos disaster, a limnic eruption, occurs in Cameroon, killing nearly 2,000 people.
• September 7 - Desmond Tutu becomes the first black Anglican Church bishop in South Africa.
• October 29 – British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher officially opens the M25 Motorway, which encircles Greater London.
• December 7 – A magnitude 5.7 earthquake destroys most of the Bulgarian town of Strajica, killing 2 people.