November 19 - A series of explosions at the PEMEX petroleum storage facility at San Juan Ixhuatepec in Mexico City ignites a major fire and kills about 500 people.
December 3 - Bhopal Disaster: A methyl isocyanate leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India, kills more than 2,000 people outright and injures anywhere from 150,000 to 600,000 others (some 6,000 of whom would later die from their injuries) in one of the worst industrial disasters in history.
George Orwell's dystopian satire Nineteen Eighty-Four about a future totalitarian society was set in this year. The date was chosen by transposing 1948, the year in which Orwell wrote the book. Nineteen Eighty-Four was used as an imaginary year in the future by others as well, much like 1999 and 2001 were.