WHAT ALL HAPPENED FEBRUARY TO OCTOBER 1986
Find out what all happened February to October 1986

The Soviet liner MS Mikhail Lermontov runs aground in the Marlborough Sounds, New Zealand. (16. February 1986)

The United States launches Operation El Dorado Canyon, its bombing raids against Libyan targets in response to a bombing in West Germany that killed two U.S. servicemen. (15. April 1986)

Hotel New World Disaster: Thirty-three people die when the Hotel New World in Singapore collapses. (15. March 1986)

A car bomb explodes at Russell Street Police HQ in Melbourne, killing 1 police officer and injuring 21 people. (27. March 1986)

Mordechai Vanunu, who revealed details of Israel's covert nuclear program to British media, is kidnapped in Rome, Italy by the Israeli Mossad. (30. September 1986)

The Firearm Owners Protection Act is signed into law by U.S. President Ronald Reagan. (19. May 1986)

The Soviet Vega 1 begins returning images of Halley's Comet and the first images of its nucleus. (4. March 1986)

Davis Phinney becomes the first American cyclist to win a road stage of the Tour de France. (6. July 1986)

Twenty-eight years of one-family rule end in Haiti, when President Jean-Claude Duvalier flees the Caribbean nation. (7. February 1986)

In Edmond, Oklahoma, U.S. Postal employee Patrick Sherrill guns down 14 of his co-workers and then commits suicide. (20. August 1986)

A nuclear reactor accident occurs at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Soviet Union (now Ukraine), creating the world's worst nuclear disaster. Reactor No. 4 with its enclosing sarcophagus. (26. April 1986)

Mswati III is crowned King of Swaziland, succeeding his father Sobhuza II. (25. April 1986)

A tornado is broadcast live on KARE television in Minnesota when the station's helicopter pilot makes a chance encounter. (18. July 1986)

An earthquake measuring 7.5 on the Richter Scale strikes San Salvador, El Salvador, killing an estimated 1,500 people. (10. October 1986)

Canadian Patrick Morrow becomes the first person to climb each of the Seven Summits. (7. May 1986)

Pan Am Flight 73 with 358 people on board is hijacked at Karachi International Airport. (5. September 1986)

Alabama governor George Wallace, a former segregationist most widely known for the "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door", announces that he will not seek a fifth four-year term and will retire from public life upon the end of his term in January 1987. (2. April 1986)

A low-pressure system that redeveloped off the New South Wales coast dumps a record 328 millimeters (13 inches) of rain in a day on Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. (6. August 1986)

The Loscoe gas explosion leads to new UK laws on landfill gas migration and gas protection on landfill sites. (24. March 1986)

The City of Prypiat as well as the surrounding areas are evacuated due to Chernobyl Disaster (27. April 1986)