January 18, 1981 (Sunday)
- BASE jumping was founded by Phil Smith and Phil Mayfield as they jumped off of the 72nd floor of the Texas Commerce Tower in Houston and parachuted to the ground, after having jumped from an antenna, a bridge and a cliff.
- New Cross Fire: At Deptford, a mostly black neighborhood in London, thirteen young black British persons died in a fire during a 16th birthday party for one of the victims, Yvonne Ruddock. The fire, believed by many in the black community to have been set by racists, was cited as a factor in the 1981 Brixton riot three months later.
Read more about this topic: January 1981
Famous quotes containing the word january:
“Here lies interred in the eternity of the past, from whence there is no resurrection for the days—whatever there may be for the dust—the thirty-third year of an ill-spent life, which, after a lingering disease of many months sank into a lethargy, and expired, January 22d, 1821, A.D. leaving a successor inconsolable for the very loss which occasioned its existence.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)