July 4, 1981 (Saturday)
- 1981 Wimbledon Championships – Men's Singles: After losing the first set, 4-6, to Björn Borg, John McEnroe won the finals with three straight sets (7-6, 7-6 and 6-4), but not without outraging his hosts at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club by his outbursts against the officials.
- Kenji Urada, an employee at the automated Kawasaki Heavy Industries factory, became what was reported as the first person to be killed by a robot. However, an American worker Robert Williams of the Ford Motor Company plant in Flat Rock, Michigan, had been killed by a robot two years earlier, on January 25, 1979.
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Famous quotes containing the word july:
“...there was the annual Fourth of July picketing at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. ...I thought it was ridiculous to have to go there in a skirt. But I did it anyway because it was something that might possibly have an effect. I remember walking around in my little white blouse and skirt and tourists standing there eating their ice cream cones and watching us like the zoo had opened.”
—Martha Shelley, U.S. author and social activist. As quoted in Making History, part 3, by Eric Marcus (1992)