March 15 – Vice-president José Sarney, upon becoming vice president, assumes the duties of president of Brazil, as the new president Tancredo Neves had become severely ill the day before. Sarney would later become Brazil's first civilian president in 21 years, upon Neves' death on April 21.[24]
March 16 – Lebanon hostage crisis: US journalist Terry Anderson is taken hostage in Beirut; he remains a prisoner until December 4, 1991.[25]
April 23 – Coca-Cola changes its formula and releases New Coke. The response is overwhelmingly negative and the original formula is back on the market in less than three months.
May 5 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan joins West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl for a controversial funeral service at a cemetery in Bitburg, West Germany, which includes the graves of 59 elite S.S. troops from World War II.[33]
May 9 – The 3rd total Victory Day Parade (the first being in 1945 and the next in 1965) is held on Red Square in Moscow in the Soviet Union. It features T-34-85 tanks, veterans of World War II from Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, and is the first parade to be held during the reign of Mikhail Gorbachev.
June 23 – Air India Flight 182, a Boeing 747, is blown up by a terrorist bomb 31,000 feet (9,500 m) above the Atlantic Ocean, south of Ireland, on a Montreal–London–Delhi flight, killing all 329 aboard.[44]
October 16 – The Finnish dry cargo ship MS Hanna-Marjut, on its way from Mariehamn to Naantali, sinks in hard sea on the open water of Kihti between the Kökar and Sottunga islands of Åland, leading to the drowning of four people.[57][58]
November 20 – Microsoft Corporation releases the first U.S. release of Windows 1.0, as version 1.01.[60] International support comes with the release of Windows 1.02 in Europe in May 1986.[61]
The Organization of Ibero-American States for Education, Science and Culture (Spanish: Organización e Estados Iberoamericanos para la Educación la Ciencia y la Cultura; OEI) is created.
December 11 – Hugh Scrutton is killed outside his Sacramento, California, computer rental store by a Unabomber explosive, becoming the first fatality of the bombing campaign.
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