Important Historical Events of the year 1983, Year 1983 in History
List of 1983 Major News Events in History, Most Important Historical Events in 1983
What happened in the year 1983?
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| January 1, 1983 | The ARPANET officially changes to using TCP/IP, the Internet Protocol, effectively creating the Internet. |
| January 16, 1983 | Turkish Airlines Flight 158 crashes at Ankara Esenboğa Airport in Ankara, Turkey, killing 47 and injuring 20. |
| January 18, 1983 | The International Olympic Committee restores Jim Thorpe's Olympic medals to his family. |
| January 19, 1983 | Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie is arrested in Bolivia. |
| January 19, 1983 | The Apple Lisa, the first commercial personal computer from Apple Computer to have a graphical user interface and a computer mouse, is announced. |
| January 27, 1983 | The pilot shaft of the Seikan Tunnel, the world's longest sub-aqueous tunnel (53.85 km) between the Japanese islands of Honshū and Hokkaidō, breaks through. |
| January 29, 1983 | Singapore cable car crash: Panamanian-registered oil rig, Eniwetok, strikes the cables of the Singapore Cable Car system linking the mainland and Sentosa Island, causing two cabins to fall into the water and killing seven people and leaving thirteen others trapped for hours. |
| February 8, 1983 | The Melbourne dust storm hits Australia's second largest city. The result of the worst drought on record and a day of severe weather conditions, a 320 metres (1,050 ft) deep dust cloud envelops the city, turning day to night. |
| February 8, 1983 | Irish race horse Shergar is stolen by gunmen. |
| February 12, 1983 | One hundred women protest in Lahore, Pakistan against military dictator Zia-ul-Haq's proposed Law of Evidence. The women were tear-gassed, baton-charged and thrown into lock-up. The women were successful in repealing the law. |
| February 13, 1983 | A cinema fire in Turin, Italy, kills 64 people. |
| February 14, 1983 | United American Bank of Knoxville, Tennessee collapses. Its president, Jake Butcher, is later convicted of fraud. |
| February 16, 1983 | The Ash Wednesday bushfires in Victoria and South Australia kill 75. |
| February 18, 1983 | Thirteen people die and one is seriously injured in the Wah Mee massacre in Seattle. It is said to be the largest robbery-motivated mass-murder in U.S. history. |
| February 22, 1983 | The notorious Broadway flop Moose Murders opens and closes on the same night at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre. |
| February 23, 1983 | The United States Environmental Protection Agency announces its intent to buy out and evacuate the dioxin-contaminated community of Times Beach, Missouri. |
| February 24, 1983 | A special commission of the United States Congress condemns the Japanese American internment during World War II. |
| February 28, 1983 | The final episode of M*A*S*H airs, with almost 106 million viewers. It still holds the record for the highest viewership of a season finale. |
| March 2, 1983 | Compact discs and players are released for the first time in the United States and other markets. They had previously been available only in Japan. |
| March 8, 1983 | Cold War: While addressing a convention of Evangelicals, U.S. President Ronald Reagan labels the Soviet Union an "evil empire". |
| March 11, 1983 | Bob Hawke is appointed Prime Minister of Australia. |
| March 21, 1983 | The first cases of the 1983 West Bank fainting epidemic begin; Israelis and Palestinians accuse each other of poison gas, but the cause is later determined mostly to be psychosomatic. |
| March 23, 1983 | Strategic Defense Initiative: President Ronald Reagan makes his initial proposal to develop technology to intercept enemy missiles. |
| April 4, 1983 | Space Shuttle program: Space Shuttle Challenger makes its maiden voyage into space on STS-6. |
| April 7, 1983 | During STS-6, astronauts Story Musgrave and Don Peterson perform the first Space Shuttle spacewalk. |
| April 12, 1983 | Harold Washington is elected as the first black mayor of Chicago. |
| April 25, 1983 | Cold War: American schoolgirl Samantha Smith is invited to visit the Soviet Union by its leader Yuri Andropov after he read her letter in which she expressed fears about nuclear war. |
| April 25, 1983 | Pioneer 10 travels beyond Pluto's orbit. |
| May 6, 1983 | The Hitler Diaries are revealed as a hoax after being examined by new experts. |
| May 17, 1983 | The U.S. Department of Energy declassifies documents showing world's largest mercury pollution event in Oak Ridge, Tennessee (ultimately found to be 4.2 million pounds |
| May 17, 1983 | Lebanon, Israel, and the United States sign an agreement on Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. |
| May 20, 1983 | First publications of the discovery of the HIV virus that causes AIDS in the journal Science by a team of French scientists including Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, Jean-Claude Chermann, and Luc Montagnier. |
| May 20, 1983 | Church Street bombing: A car bomb planted by Umkhonto we Sizwe explodes on Church Street in South Africa's capital, Pretoria, killing 19 people and injuring 217 others. |
| May 26, 1983 | The 7.8 Mw Sea of Japan earthquake shakes northern Honshu with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe). A destructive tsunami is generated that leaves about 100 people dead. |
| June 2, 1983 | After an emergency landing because of an in-flight fire, twenty-three passengers aboard Air Canada Flight 797 are killed when a flashover occurs as the plane's doors open. Because of this incident, numerous new safety regulations are put in place. |
| June 4, 1983 | Gordon Kahl, who killed two US Marshals in Medina, North Dakota on February 13, is killed in a shootout in Smithville, Arkansas, along with a local sheriff, after a four-month manhunt. |
| June 5, 1983 | More than 100 people are killed when the Russian river cruise ship Aleksandr Suvorov collides with a girder of the Ulyanovsk Railway Bridge. The collision caused a freight train to derail, further damaging the vessel, yet the ship remained afloat and was eventually restored and returned to service. |
| June 13, 1983 | Pioneer 10 becomes the first man-made object to leave the central Solar System when it passes beyond the orbit of Neptune. |
| June 18, 1983 | Space Shuttle program: STS-7, Astronaut Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space. |
| June 18, 1983 | Mona Mahmudnizhad, together with nine other women of the Baháʼí Faith, is sentenced to death and hanged in Shiraz, Iran over her religious beliefs. |
| July 1, 1983 | A North Korean Ilyushin Il-62M jet en route to Conakry Airport in Guinea crashes into the Fouta Djallon mountains in Guinea-Bissau, killing all 23 people on board. |
| July 1, 1983 | The Ministry of State Security is established as China's principal intelligence agency |
| July 7, 1983 | Cold War: Samantha Smith, a US schoolgirl, flies to the Soviet Union at the invitation of Secretary General Yuri Andropov. |
| July 11, 1983 | A TAME airline Boeing 737–200 crashes near Cuenca, Ecuador, killing all 119 passengers and crew on board. |
| July 14, 1983 | Mario Bros. is released in Japan, beginning the popular Super Mario Bros franchise.[35] |
| July 15, 1983 | An attack at Orly Airport in Paris is launched by Armenian militant organisation ASALA, leaving eight people dead and 55 injured. |
| July 16, 1983 | Sikorsky S-61 disaster: A helicopter crashes off the Isles of Scilly, causing 20 fatalities. |
| July 19, 1983 | The first three-dimensional reconstruction of a human head in a CT is published. |
| July 21, 1983 | The world's lowest temperature in an inhabited location is recorded at Vostok Station, Antarctica at −89.2 °C (−128.6 °F). |
| July 22, 1983 | Martial law in Poland is officially revoked. |
| July 23, 1983 | Thirteen Sri Lanka Army soldiers are killed after a deadly ambush by the militant Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. |
| July 23, 1983 | Gimli Glider: Air Canada Flight 143 runs out of fuel and makes a deadstick landing at Gimli, Manitoba. |
| July 24, 1983 | The Black July anti-Tamil riots begin in Sri Lanka, killing between 400 and 3,000. Black July is generally regarded as the beginning of the Sri Lankan Civil War. |
| July 24, 1983 | George Brett playing for the Kansas City Royals against the New York Yankees, has a game-winning home run nullified in the "Pine Tar Incident". |
| July 25, 1983 | Black July: Thirty-seven Tamil political prisoners at the Welikada high security prison in Colombo are massacred by the fellow Sinhalese prisoners. |
| July 27, 1983 | Black July: Eighteen Tamil political prisoners at the Welikada high security prison in Colombo are massacred by Sinhalese prisoners, the second such massacre in two days. |
| August 18, 1983 | Hurricane Alicia hits the Texas coast, killing 21 people and causing over US$1 billion in damage (1983 dollars). |
| August 21, 1983 | Philippine opposition leader Benigno Aquino Jr. is assassinated at Manila International Airport (now renamed Ninoy Aquino International Airport in his honor). |
| August 30, 1983 | Aeroflot Flight 5463 crashes into Dolan Mountain while approaching Almaty International Airport in present-day Kazakhstan, killing all 90 people on board. |
| September 1, 1983 | Cold War: Korean Air Lines Flight 007 is shot down by a Soviet Union jet fighter when the commercial aircraft enters Soviet airspace, killing all 269 on board, including Congressman Lawrence McDonald. |
| September 6, 1983 | The Soviet Union admits to shooting down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, stating that its operatives did not know that it was a civilian aircraft when it reportedly violated Soviet airspace. |
| September 12, 1983 | A Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford, Connecticut, United States, is robbed of approximately US$7 million by Los Macheteros. |
| September 12, 1983 | The USSR vetoes a United Nations Security Council Resolution deploring the Soviet destruction of Korean Air Lines Flight 007. |
| September 15, 1983 | Israeli premier Menachem Begin resigns. |
| September 17, 1983 | Vanessa Williams becomes the first black Miss America. |
| September 19, 1983 | Saint Kitts and Nevis gains its independence. |
| September 23, 1983 | Gulf Air Flight 771 is destroyed by a bomb, killing all 117 people on board. |
| September 25, 1983 | Thirty-eight IRA prisoners, armed with six handguns, hijack a prison meals lorry and smash their way out of the Maze Prison. |
| September 26, 1983 | Soviet Air Force officer Stanislav Petrov identifies a report of an incoming nuclear missile as a computer error and not an American first strike. |
| September 26, 1983 | Australia II wins the America's Cup, ending the New York Yacht Club's 132-year domination of the race. |
| October 4, 1983 | Richard Noble sets a new land speed record of 633.468 miles per hour (1,019.468 km/h) at the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. |
| October 9, 1983 | South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan survives an assassination attempt in Rangoon, Burma (present-day Yangon, Myanmar), but the blast kills 21 and injures 17 others. |
| October 12, 1983 | Japan's former Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei is found guilty of taking a $2 million bribe from the Lockheed Corporation, and is sentenced to four years in jail. |
| October 13, 1983 | Ameritech Mobile Communications launches the first US cellular network in Chicago. |
| October 21, 1983 | The metre is defined as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second. |
| October 22, 1983 | Two correctional officers are killed by inmates at the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois. The incident inspires the Supermax model of prisons. |
| October 23, 1983 | Lebanese Civil War: The U.S. Marines Corps barracks in Beirut is hit by a truck bomb, killing 241 U.S. military personnel. A French Army barracks in Lebanon is also hit that same morning, killing 58 troops. |
| October 25, 1983 | The United States and its Caribbean allies invade Grenada, six days after Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and several of his supporters are executed in a coup d'état. |
| October 30, 1983 | The first democratic elections in Argentina, after seven years of military rule, are held. |
| October 30, 1983 | A magnitude 6.6 earthquake in the Turkish provinces of Erzurum and Kars leaves approximately 1,340 people dead. |
| November 2, 1983 | U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs a bill creating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. |
| November 5, 1983 | The Byford Dolphin diving bell accident kills five and leaves one severely injured. |
| November 7, 1983 | United States Senate bombing: A bomb explodes inside the United States Capitol. No one is injured, but an estimated $250,000 in damage is caused. |
| November 7, 1983 | Cold War: The command post exercise Able Archer 83 begins, eventually leading to the Soviet Union to place air units in East Germany and Poland on alert, for fear that NATO was preparing for war[5] |
| November 8, 1983 | TAAG Angola Airlines Flight 462 crashes after takeoff from Lubango Airport killing all 130 people on board. UNITA claims to have shot down the aircraft, though this is disputed. |
| November 10, 1983 | Bill Gates introduces Windows 1.0. |
| November 15, 1983 | Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus declares independence; it is only recognized by Turkey. |
| November 17, 1983 | The Zapatista Army of National Liberation is founded in Mexico. |
| November 26, 1983 | Brink's-Mat robbery: In London, 6,800 gold bars worth nearly £26 million are stolen from the Brink's-Mat vault at Heathrow Airport. |
| November 27, 1983 | Avianca Flight 011: A Boeing 747 crashes near Madrid's Barajas Airport, killing 181. |
| December 4, 1983 | US Navy aircraft from USS John F. Kennedy and USS Independence attack Syrian missile sites in Lebanon in response to an F-14 being fired on by an SA-7. One A-6 Intruder and A-7 Corsair are shot down. One American pilot is killed, one is rescued, and one is captured. |
| December 5, 1983 | Dissolution of the Military Junta in Argentina. |
| December 7, 1983 | An Iberia Airlines Boeing 727 collides with an Aviaco DC-9 in dense fog while the two airliners are taxiing down the runway at Madrid–Barajas Airport, killing 93 people. |
| December 10, 1983 | Democracy is restored in Argentina with the inauguration of President Raúl Alfonsín. |
| December 17, 1983 | Provisional IRA members detonate a car bomb at Harrods Department Store in London. Three police officers and three civilians are killed. |
| December 19, 1983 | The original FIFA World Cup trophy, the Jules Rimet Trophy, is stolen from the headquarters of the Brazilian Football Confederation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. |
| December 27, 1983 | Pope John Paul II visits Mehmet Ali Ağca in Rebibbia's prison and personally forgives him for the 1981 attack on him in St. Peter's Square. |
| December 31, 1983 | The AT&T Bell System is broken up by the United States Government. |
| December 31, 1983 | Benjamin Ward is appointed New York City Police Department's first ever African American police commissioner. |
| December 31, 1983 | In Nigeria, a coup d'état led by Major General Muhammadu Buhari ends the Second Nigerian Republic. |