1983The year 1983 saw both the official beginning of the Internet and the first mobile cellular telephone call. January 1 – The migration of the ARPANET to TCP/IP is officially completed (this is considered to be the beginning of the true Internet). January 24 – Twenty-five members of the Red Brigades are sentenced to life imprisonment for the 1978 murder of Italian politician Aldo Moro. January 25 High-ranking Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie is arrested in Bolivia.
19981998 was designated as the International Year of the Ocean. January 6 – The Lunar Prospector spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently shadowed craters near the Moon's poles. January 11 – Over 100 people are killed in the Sidi-Hamed massacre in Algeria. January 12 – Nineteen European nations agree to forbid human cloning. January 17 – The Drudge Report breaks the story about U.S.
1984January 1 – The Bornean Sultanate of Brunei gains full independence from the United Kingdom, having become a British protectorate in 1888. January 7 – Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). January 9 – Van Halen releases their sixth studio album 1984 (MCMLXXXIV), which debuted at number 2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, and went on to sell over 10 million copies in the United States. January 10 The United States and the Vatican (Holy See) restore full diplomatic relations.
19881988 was a crucial year in the early history of the Internet—it was the year of the first well-known computer virus, the 1988 Internet worm. The first permanent intercontinental Internet link was made between the United States (NSFNET) and Europe (Nordunet) as well as the first Internet-based chat protocol, Internet Relay Chat. The concept of the World Wide Web was first discussed at CERN in 1988. The Soviet Union began its major deconstructing towards a mixed economy at the beginning of 1988 and began its gradual dissolution.
1994The year 1994 was designated as the "International Year of the Family" and the "International Year of Sport and the Olympic Ideal" by the United Nations. In Line Islands and Phoenix Islands, this year has only 364 days as Saturday, December 31 was skipped when 1995 began after Friday, December 30. That means aligning the rest of Kiribati within its capital Tarawa by redrawing the international date line on its territorial boundaries. January 1 – The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is established.
