September 5, 1981 (Saturday)
- Pope Shenuda III, head of the Coptic Christian Church of Egypt, was deposed from his job by President Anwar Sadat, who charged that Muslim and Christian extremists were conspiring to overthrow the government. Three years after Sadat's assassination, Shenuda, who had been exiled to the monastery of Saint Bishoi, was allowed by President Hosni Mubarak to return to Cairo.
- John Barnes, who would become England's greatest black soccer football player, made his professional debut at age 17, playing for the last 15 minutes of Watford F.C.'s game against Oldham Athletic.
- In the largest jailbreak from a Communist nation, 154 inmates escaped from a jail in Bydgoszcz, Poland. The mass breakout happened after prisoners rioted after a 17-year old burglary suspect had been shot during an attempted escape.
Read more about this topic: September 1981
Famous quotes containing the word september:
“Any one who knows what the worth of family affection is among the lower classes, and who has seen the array of little portraits stuck over a labourer’s fireplace ... will perhaps feel with me that in counteracting the tendencies, social and industrial, which every day are sapping the healthier family affections, the sixpenny photograph is doing more for the poor than all the philanthropists in the world.”
—Macmillan’s Magazine (London, September 1871)