The Danube–Black Sea Canal is opened, in a ceremony attended by the Ceaușescus. It had been under construction since the 1950s.

The Danube–Black Sea Canal is a navigable canal in Romania, which runs from Cernavodă on the Danube river, via two branches, to Constanța and Năvodari on the Black Sea. Administered from Agigea, it is an important part of the waterway link between the North Sea and the Black Sea via the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal. The main branch of the canal, with a length of 64.4 km (40.0 mi), which connects the Port of Cernavodă with the Port of Constanța, was built in 1976–1984, while the northern branch, known as the Poarta Albă–Midia Năvodari Canal, with a length of 31.2 km (19.4 mi), connecting Poarta Albă and the Port of Midia, was built between 1983 and 1987.

Nicolae Ceaușescu was a Romanian politician and dictator who was the second and last communist leader of Romania, serving as the general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 until his execution in 1989. He was the country's head of state from 1967 to 1989, serving as President of the State Council from 1967 and as the first president from 1974. Ceaușescu was overthrown and executed in the Romanian Revolution on 25 December 1989 along with his wife Elena Ceaușescu, as part of a series of anti-communist uprisings in Eastern Europe that year.