About the day » Thursday January 15, 1981Calender converter

• Robert Houtveen, Barneveld (GE, NLD) († 1999)
• Jurgen van de wiele, Dendermonde, België († 2000)
• Elisabeth Maria Margaretha(Lisette) Groen in 't Wout, Alphen aan de Rijn

• Antonius Johannes Kogelman (72)
• Adrianus Ludovicus Jacobs (88), Tilburg,, Noord-Brabant, Nederland
• Antje de Vries (88), Hardegarijp
• Arij Post (88), Schiedam
• Arij Post (88), Schiedam
• Anna Margaretha van Rhijn (90), De Bilt
• Adrianus van Leijsen (79), Oosterhout, Noord-Brabant, Nederland
• Auguste Ekrut (72), Brunssum
• Adrianus Leonardus Kortenbach (88), Loosduinen
• Astrid Bergitte Stephansen (83), Akershus, Norge

• 1980 » Matt Holliday, American baseball player
• 1981 » Dylan Armstrong, Canadian shot putter and hammer thrower
• 1981 » El Hadji Diouf, Senegalese football player
• 1981 » Pitbull, American rapper and producer
• 1981 » Sean Lamont, Scottish rugby player
• 1981 » Vanessa Henke, German tennis player
• 1982 » Ari Pulkkinen, Finnish pianist and composer
• 1982 » Armando Galarraga, Venezuelan baseball player
• 1982 » Benjamin Agosto, American skater
• 1982 » Brett Lebda, American ice hockey player

• 1973 » Coleman Francis, American actor, director, and producer (b. 1919)
• 1973 » Ivan Petrovsky, Russian mathematician and academic (b. 1901)
• 1974 » Harold D. Cooley, American lawyer and politician (b. 1897)
• 1981 » Graham Whitehead, English race car driver (b. 1922)
• 1982 » Red Smith, American journalist (b. 1905)
• 1983 » Armin Öpik, Estonian-Australian paleontologist and geologist (b. 1898)
• 1983 » Shepperd Strudwick, American actor (b. 1907)
• 1984 » Fazıl Küçük, Cypriot journalist and politician (b. 1906)
• 1987 » Ray Bolger, American actor, singer, and dancer (b. 1904)
• 1988 » Seán MacBride, Irish republican activist and politician, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1904)

• Koningin Beatrix (Huis van Oranje-Nassau) was from April 30, 1980 till April 30, 2013 sovereign of the Netherlands (also known as Koninkrijk der Nederlanden)
• In The Netherlands , there was from Monday, December 19, 1977 to Friday, September 11, 1981 the cabinet Van Agt I, with Mr. A.A.M. van Agt (CDA/KVP) as prime minister.
• In The Netherlands , there was from Friday, September 11, 1981 to Saturday, May 29, 1982 the cabinet Van Agt II, with Mr. A.A.M. van Agt (CDA) as prime minister.
• The Netherlands had about 14.2 million citizens.
• January 1 » Greece is admitted into the European Community.
• May 12 » Francis Hughes, Provisional IRA hunger striker, dies in the Maze Prison, Northern Ireland.
• May 13 » Mehmet Ali Ağca attempts to assassinate Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Square in Rome. The Pope is rushed to the Agostino Gemelli University Polyclinic to undergo emergency surgery and survives.
• September 15 » The John Bull becomes the oldest operable steam locomotive in the world when the Smithsonian Institution operates it under its own power outside Washington, D.C.
• November 11 » Antigua and Barbuda joins the United Nations.
• December 1 » Inex-Adria Aviopromet Flight 1308, a McDonnell Douglas MD-80, crashes in Corsica, killing all 180 people on board.

The temperature on January 15, 1981 was between -0.9 °C and 4.3 °C and averaged 1.0 °C. There was 7.8 mm of rain during 4.9 hours. There was 1.2 hours of sunshine (15%). The partly or heavily clouded was. The average windspeed was 3 Bft (moderate breeze) and was prevailing from the west-northwest.