Unix Timestamp: 479088000
Friday, March 8. 1985, 12:00:00 AM UTC

Mohammed Al Fayed buys the London-based department store company Harrods.

A Beirut car bomb, planted in an attempt to assassinate Islamic cleric Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, kills more than eighty people, injuring two hundred.

Mikhail Gorbachev becomes General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and "de facto" leader of the Soviet Union.