John W. Hinckley, Jr., who on March 30th, 1981, shot President Ronald Reagan and three others outside a Washington, D.C., hotel, was found not guilty of attempted murder by reason of insanity.

A communications problem occurred in New Zealand after a rat chewed through an important fiber optics cable shutting down the country's internet and mobile phone services for about five hours. The problems were exacerbated when a workman in another part of the country damaged another main cable by accident at the same time as the rat incident.