January 9 – Van Halen releases their sixth studio album 1984 (MCMLXXXIV), which debuts at number 2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, and will go to sell over 10 million copies in the United States.
March 23 – General Rahimuddin Khan becomes the first man in Pakistan's history to rule over two of its provinces, after becoming interim Governor of Sindh.
April 12 – Palestinian gunmen take Israeli bus number 300 hostage. Israeli special forces storm the bus, freeing the hostages (one hostage, two hijackers killed).
May 13 – Severomorsk Disaster: an explosion at the Soviets' Severomorsk Naval Base destroys two-thirds of all the missiles stockpiled for the Soviets' Northern Fleet. The blast also destroys workshops needed to maintain the missiles as well as hundreds of technicians. Western military experts called it the worst naval disaster the Soviet Navy has suffered since WWII.
May 14 – The one-dollar coin is introduced in Australia.
May 23 – A methane gas explosion at Abbeystead water treatment works in Lancashire, UK, kills 16 people.
June 8 – A F5 tornado nearly destroys the town of Barneveld, Wisconsin, killing nine people, injuring nearly 200, and causing over $25,000,000 in damage.
August 11 – Barefoot South African runner Zola Budd and Mary Decker of the U.S. collide in the Olympic 3,000 meters final, neither finishing as medallists.[15]
November 11 – The Louisiana World Exposition, also known as The 1984 World's Fair, and also the New Orleans World's Fair, and, to the locals, simply as "The Fair" or "Expo 84", closes.
December 1 – A peace agreement between Kenya and Somalia is signed in the Egyptian capital Cairo. With this agreement, in which Somalia officially renounces its historical territorial claims, relations between the two countries begin to improve.
December 3 – Bhopal disaster: A methyl isocyanate leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India, kills more than 8,000 people outright and injures over half a million (with more later dying from their injuries the death toll reaches 23,000+) in the worst industrial disaster in history.
1983–85 famine in Ethiopia intensifies with renewed drought by mid-year, killing a million people by the end of this year.
Crack cocaine, a smokeable form of the drug, is first introduced into Los Angeles and soon spreads across the United States in what becomes known as the crack epidemic.
Background notes, Brunei Darussalam. U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs, Office of Public Communication, Editorial Division. 1985. p.6.
"United States-Vatican Diplomatic Relations: The Past and The Future". The Ambassadors REVIEW. Council of American Ambassadors. Spring 2001. Archived from the original on October 25, 2012. Retrieved November 17, 2011. On January 10, 1984, when President Reagan announced the establishment of formal diplomatic relations with the Holy See, he appointed William A. Wilson, who had been serving as his personal representative to the Pope, as the first US Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Holy See.
