March 31 - New Jersey Supreme Court rules that coma patient Karen Anne Quinlan could be disconnected from her respirator. She remains comatose and dies in 1985
April 5 - Large crowds lay wreaths at Beijing's Monument of the Martyrs in commemoration of the death of Premier Zhou Enlai. Poems against the Gang of Four are also displayed. This was followed by a police crackdown and became known as the Tiananmen Incident.
June 27 - Palestinian extremists hijack an Air France plane in Greece with 246 passengers and 12 crew. They take it to Entebbe, Uganda, where Israeli commandos storms it on July 4
July 4 - Israeli airborne commandos free 103 hostages being held by Palestinian hijackers of an Air France plane at Uganda's Entebbe Airport; one Israeli and several Ugandan soldiers are killed in raid.
July 7 - German left-wing terrorists Monika Berberich , Gabriella Rollnick , Juliane Plambeck and Inge Viett escape from Lehrterstrasse maximum security prison in West Berlin
July 28 - Earthquake flattens Tangshan, China , killing 242,769 people, and 164,851 people are heavily injured
July 29 - In New York City, the "Son of Sam" pulls a gun from a paper bag killing one and seriously wounding another in the first of a series of attacks that terrorized the city for the next year.
August 2 - A gunman murders Andrea Wilborn and Stan Farr, and injures Priscilla Davis and Gus Gavrel in an incident at Priscilla's Mansion at Mockingbird Lane in Fort Worth, Texas. T. Cullen Davis, Priscilla's husband and one of the richest men in Texas, was tried and found innocent for Andrea's murder. He was later found innocent of a plot to kill several people, including Priscilla and a judge, and a wrongful death lawsuit. Cullen went broke afterwards
March 22 - Filming begins on George Lucas' Star Wars science fiction film. In one of the best business decisions in film history, Lucas cuts his directing fee by $500,000 to gain ownership of merchandising and sequel rights
April 24 - Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels makes on on-air offer to pay the Beatles $3000 to reunite on the show. Lennon and McCartney were apparently watching the show together in New York and considered walking down to the studio to accept the check.
