May 7, 1981 (Thursday)
- Stand-up comedian Jerry Seinfeld, of Massapequa, New York, performed for a national audience for the first time, introduced by Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. His routine, taped in the evening, aired an hour into that night's show. Seinfeld's national television debut had been in 1980 on three shows of the TV comedy Benson.
- A school bus accident in Surakarta, Indonesia, killed 31 people, mostly children, when the driver ignored a signal at a railroad crossing.
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