| 20th January 1987 | Terry Waite, the special envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury in Lebanon, is kidnapped in Beirut. He is eventually released in November 1991. |
| 11th February 1987 | British Airways is privatised and listed on the London Stock Exchange. |
| 23rd February 1987 | Supernova 1987A, the first "naked-eye" supernova since 1604, is observed. |
| 6th March 1987 | A cross-channel ferry capsizes outside the harbour off Zeebrugge in Belgium; 180 passengers drown. |
| 19th April 1987 | “The Simpsons” cartoon first appears on The Tracy Ullman Show. |
| 28th May 1987 | 19 year-old West German pilot Mathias Rust evades Soviet air defences and lands a private plane on the Red Square in Moscow. He is immediately detained and subsequently released on 3rd August, 1988. |
| 11th June 1987 | Margaret Thatcher remains Prime Minister, winning the general election for the third time. |
| 22nd June 1987 | Fred Astaire, American actor and dancer (b. 1899) dies from pneumonia. |
| 3rd July 1987 | Greater Manchester Police recover the body of 16-year-old Pauline Reade from Saddleworth Moor, after killers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley finally give information on her whereabouts. It is almost twenty-four years to the day since Pauline was last seen alive. |
| 25th July 1987 | The East Lancashire Railway, a heritage railway in the North West of England, is opened between Bury and Ramsbottom. |
| 27th July 1987 | Australian singer and former “Neighbours” actress Kylie Minogue releases her first hit, a remake of Little Eva's “The Loco-Motion“. |
| 19th August 1987 | Hungerford Massacre: Michael Ryan kills sixteen people with an assault rifle before committing suicide. |
| 15-16th October 1987 | The Great Storm of 1987: Hurricane-force winds hit much of South England, killing twenty-three people. |
| 19th October 1987 | Black Monday: Stock market levels fall sharply on Wall Street and around the world. |
| 23rd October 1987 | Champion jockey Lester Piggott, holder of an OBE, is jailed for three years after being convicted of tax evasion. |
| 8th November 1987 | Eleven people are killed by a Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb at a Remembrance Day service at Enniskillen. |
| 18th November 1987 | The King's Cross fire on the London Underground kills thirty-one people. |
| 1st December 1987 | Construction of the Channel Tunnel is initiated. |