Drought combined with civil war and government policies caused a major famine in Ethiopia that killed several hundred thousand to a million people and prompted the Live Aid relief effort.
A team at the Pasteur Institute including Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier reports the virus later named HIV, the cause of AIDS.
ARPANET officially switches to the TCP/IP protocol suite, often regarded as the birth of the modern Internet.
A 26-year armed conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) ends in the LTTE's defeat.
Hundreds of thousands of people flee Vietnam by sea after 1975; many die at sea and others are resettled, mostly in Western countries.
A multi-sided civil war devastates Lebanon for fifteen years, with intervention by Syria, Israel and other foreign forces.
Following Khmer Rouge border attacks, Vietnam invades Cambodia, takes Phnom Penh on 7 January 1979 and overthrows the Khmer Rouge; Vietnamese troops remain until 1989.
Saddam Hussein's Iraq invades Iran, beginning an eight-year war of attrition that kills hundreds of thousands.