| 1983–1989 | UK [television] | The comedy Blackadder is shown on British television.Written by Richard Curtis and Ben Elton, it consists of four main series set in different historical periods – the Middle Ages, the Elizabethan Age, the Regency Period, and the First World War – and stars Rowan Atkinson as Edmund Blackadder. |
| 1984–1994 | UK [television] | Spitting Image, a programme satirizing contemporary politics using puppets created by Peter Fluck and Roger Law, is shown on British television. |
| 1987 | USA [statistics and demography] | Women own 30% of US businesses. |
| 1987 | world [statistics and demography] | The number of divorces (as percentage of marriages contracted): Australia, 34; Belgium, 31; Canada, 43; Czechoslovakia, 32; Denmark, 44; Finland, 38; France, 31; West Germany, 30; Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 41; Greece, 13; Netherlands, 28; Italy, 8; Japan, 22; Norway, 40; Sweden, 44; USA, 48. |
| 1987 | UK [women's rights] | The British House of Commons is made up of 41 women and 609 men. |
| 1987 | world [astronomy] | Objects the size of planets are found orbiting the stars Gamma Cephei and Epsilon Eridani. |
| 1987 | USA [cinema and film] | Income from video rental in the USA reaches twice the level of box-office receipts. |
| 1987 | world [communications] | As prices drop and the technology develops to improve the speed of transmission, fax machines become an established feature in offices. |
| 1987 | UK [crime and punishment] | In Britain, the first suspect to be convicted by evidence derived from genetic fingerprinting is convicted of two murders. |
| 1987 | Canada, world [ecology] | At a conference in Montreal, Canada, an international agreement, the Montreal Protocol, is reached to limit the use of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by 50% by the end of the century; the agreement is later condemned by environmentalists as ‘too little, too late’. |
| 1987 | USA [family planning] | The case of Baby M, the child of a surrogate birth agreement in the USA, raises ethical issues when her custody is contested by her natural mother Mary Beth Whitehead and the couple who paid for the surrogacy, William and Elizabeth Stern. On 31 March, the New Jersey judge rules that Whitehead has no parental rights. Surrogacy, not covered by existing laws, is becoming increasingly common. Full custody of the baby is given to William Stern. |
| 1987 | South Africa [family planning] | Pat Anthony of Northern Transvaal in South Africa becomes the first surrogate grandmother, giving birth to her daughter's triplets. |
| 1987 | Europe, USA [clothing and fashion] | The miniskirt reappears in the fashion world. |
| 1987 | USA [fiction] | The US writer Toni Morrison publishes her novel Beloved, which wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988. |
| 1987 | UK [houses] | House prices in Britain rise exponentially, particularly in the south, with a house in London, England, costing more than five times the owner's salary. |
| 1987 | USA [everyday life] | The average monthly income spent on childcare in the USA is 6.6%. Those living in poverty spend 25% of their income on childcare. |
| 1987 | Europe [popular music] | Satellite television channel MTV is launched in Europe, with the video of Dire Straits' ‘Money For Nothing’. |
| 1987 | UK [taxation] | The Conservative government in Britain introduces Personal Equity Plans (PEPs), a scheme for tax-free share investment. |
| 1987 | UK [technology] | Consumer electronics companies Seiko and Ferguson jointly launch a colour pocket television in the UK; it has a 6.25-cm/2.5-in LCD screen and costs £250. |
| 1987–1993 | UK [television] | French and Saunders, a comic sketch series starring comedians Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, is shown on British television. |
| 6 January 1987 | Portugal [treaties] | The Portuguese Council of State agrees to restore Macau to China before 2000. On 13 April, Portugal signs an agreement to return Macau in 1999. |
| 16 January 1987 | USA [family planning] | KRON television in San Francisco, California, shows the first advertisements promoting the use of condoms for safe sex. |
| 5 February 1987 | Middle East [Iran–Iraq War (1980–88)] | Iran launches a missile attack on Baghdad, capital of its opponent in the Iran–Iraq war. On 19 February, a truce is agreed in the ‘war of cities’, in which both sides have inflicted damage on heavily populated areas. |
| 23 February 1987 | USA [births and deaths] | Andy Warhol, US artist and film-maker, a leading exponent of Pop Art in the 1960s, dies in New York City (59). |
| 23 February 1987 | world [astronomy] | Astronomers around the world observe a spectacular supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud, the galaxy closest to ours, when a star (SN1987A) suddenly becomes a thousand times brighter than our own Sun. It is the first supernova visible to the naked eye since 1604. |
| 7 March 1987 | India [cricket] | Sunil Gavaskar of India, playing in his 124th Test cricket match, against Pakistan in Ahmedabad, India, becomes the first batsman to score 10,000 Test runs. |
| 19 March 1987 | USA [sex and sexuality] | The popular TV evangelist Rev Jim Bakker admits to an extramarital sexual escapade, beginning the decline of his successful ministry. |
| 23 March 1987 | Japan, UK [companies and organizations] | The Japanese electronics company Sony introduces the DAT (Digital Audio Tape) recorder in the British market for professional use. |
| 25 March 1987 | Belgium [banking and finance] | The Belgian government mints ECU coins: these are legal tender in Belgium. |
| 8 April 1987 | Paraguay [law and government] | The state of siege in Paraguay, in force since 1947, is finally allowed to lapse by the administration of General Alfredo Stroessner. |
| 11 April 1987 | Italy [births and deaths] | Primo Levi, Italian Jewish writer and chemist who wrote an account of his survival in a Nazi concentration camp, dies in Turin, Italy (67). |
| 11 June 1987 | UK [elections] | Margaret Thatcher leads the Conservative Party to a third consecutive win in the British general elections. |
| 22 June 1987 | USA [births and deaths] | Fred Astaire, US dancer who starred in many musical comedies with Ginger Rogers, dies in Los Angeles, California (88). |
| 1 July 1987 | Europe [international organizations] | Members of the European Community complete ratification of the Single European Act. It comes into force on 1 July, with the aim of starting the creation of a single market in Europe by 1993. It also introduces qualified majority voting in the European Council of Ministers. |
| 11 July 1987 | world [statistics and demography] | The world population reaches 5 billion – double that of 1950. |
| 1 August 1987 | UK [television] | The first advertisements for condoms appear on British television. |
| 16 August 1987 | USA [musical performers] | Fifty thousand people gather in Memphis, Tennessee, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley. |
| 17 August 1987 | Germany [births and deaths] | Rudolf Hess, German Nazi leader and deputy of Adolf Hitler, dies in Spandau prison in West Berlin, West Germany, where he had remained imprisoned since World War II (93). |
| 19 August 1987 | Zimbabwe [law and government] | Zimbabwe's House of Assembly agrees a change to the constitution, abolishing the 20 seats reserved for whites under the 1979 Lancaster House Agreement. |
| 1 September 1987 | Belgium [public health] | Belgium becomes the first country to introduce a national smoking ban in all public buildings. |
| 6 October 1987 | Fiji [law and government] | Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka declares the Fiji Islands a republic, formally severing its legal ties with Britain. |
| 19 October 1987 | USA [banking and finance] | The New York Dow Jones Industrial Average falls 508.32 points (23%) on ‘Black Monday’, precipitating large falls in stock prices across the world. |
| November 1987 | UK, France [railways] | Construction of the Channel Tunnel between England and France begins; there are to be two tunnels, each 7.6 m/25 ft wide and 49.4 km/30.7 mi long. |
| 12 November 1987 | USSR [law and government] | Boris Yeltsin is dismissed as chief of the Moscow Communist Party after he criticizes the slow pace of reforms. |
| 7 December - 10 December 1987 | USA, USSR [diplomacy] | At a US–Soviet summit in Washington, DC, US president Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev agree to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear forces. |
