Live Aid, an all-day concert for famine relief in Africa, is held simultaneously in London and Philadelphia

US artist Christo tightly binds Paris's Pont Neuf in fabric, as one of his international series of wrapped iconic buildings

The first Oprah Winfrey Show is broadcast in the USA, beginning a very long open-ended series

Milton Obote, toppled in a bloodless Uganda coup, escapes to Zambia

Seven groups of Afghan mujaheddin form a united front against the Soviet army

Antiguan author Jamaica Kincaid publishes her first novel, Annie John

French racing driver Alain Prost wins the first of his four Formula One titles

Ayers Rock is returned to the Mutitjulu people and given its Aboriginal name, Uluru

The Human Genome Project begins in the US Department of Energy, with the aim of sequencing the whole of human DNA

Julius Nyerere, long-serving president of Tanzania, relinquishes power voluntarily

22-year-old Gary Kasparov defeats Anatoly Karpov and becomes the youngest-ever world champion in chess

Britain's Margaret Thatcher and Ireland's Garret FitzGerald sign an Anglo-Irish Agreement to tackle shared problems

British Rasta poet Benjamin Zephaniah publishes his second collection as The Dread Affair

Harold Macmillan dies and is buried in the churchyard of St Giles in Horsted Keynes

Hirox, a lens company in Tokyo, launches the first digital microscope

The US Space shuttle Challenger explodes with seven on board less than two minutes after lift-off

The guerrilla leader Yoweri Museveni takes Kampala and becomes president of Uganda