December 31, 1981 (Thursday)
- Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings led a coup d'état for the second time in Ghana, removing President Hilla Limann. Rawlings went on the air on Ghanaian radio at 11:00 am to announce that the Provisional National Defence Council would lead the nation until order could be restored.
- Cable News Network 2, later called CNN Headline News and now HLN, first appeared on American cable television.
- Born: Francisco Garcia, first Dominican Republic NBA player, in Santo Domingo
- Died: J.W. Milam, 61, who had murdered teenage African-American Emmett Till in 1955, was acquitted of kidnapping and murder by an all-White jury, then boasted about it in an article for Look Magazine.
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Famous quotes containing the word december:
“For I have lost the race I never ran,
A rathe December blights my lagging May;”
—Hartley Coleridge (1796–1849)