Historical Events in 1983

Events 1 - 200 of 640

"Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)"

Jan 4 Eurythmics release their breakthrough second studio album "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)"

Jan 4 US Football League holds its 1st player draft

Guatemala Arms Embargo Ends

Jan 7 President Reagan ends US arms embargo against Guatemala

Thatcher Visits Falklands

Jan 9 British PM Margaret Thatcher visits Falkland Islands

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher

Jan 10 NY Supreme Court issues a preliminary injunction barring NY Yankees from playing season-opening series against Tigers in Denver

Martin Yankee Manager

Jan 11 Billy Martin named NY Yankee manager for 3rd time

Baseball Player and Manager Billy Martin

Jan 11 Edmonton’s Pat Hughes sets NHL record for the fastest 2 shorthanded goals by one player at just 25 seconds apart in a 7-5 win at St. Louis; first player to break a Wayne Gretzky record

Dione Scores Hat-trick

Jan 11 LA Kings' center Marcel Dionne picks up his 24th NHL career hat-trick and adds 3 assists for 6 points in a 9-7 win at Washington; Kings' first road win after 8 straight losses

Baseball Hall of Fame

Jan 12 Brooks Robinson and Juan Marichal elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame

Baseball Hall of Fame Pitcher Juan Marichal

Jan 12 NCAA creates football Kickoff Classic to begin in August
Jan 12 Quebec Nordiques play 230th NHL game without being shut out

AMA Urges Boxing Ban

Jan 13 AMA urges ban on boxing, cites Muhammad Ali's deteriorating condition

Heavyweight Boxing Champion Muhammad Ali

Jan 15 Dutch political party DS'70 disbands
Jan 15 Javed Miandad & Mudassar Nazar make 451 stand v India
Jan 15 Thom Syles keeps a life saver intact in his mouth for over 7 hours

Wallace's Record Fourth Term

Jan 17 Alabama Governor George Wallace, becomes governor for a record 4th time

Governor of Alabama and Segregationist George Wallace

Jan 17 Nigeria expels 2 million illegal aliens, mostly Ghanaians
Jan 18 Dick Motta becomes the 5th NBA coach to record 600 wins as his Dallas Mavericks defeat the Golden State Warriors, 112-102 in Oakland, California

Thorpe's Olympic Medals Restored

Jan 18 IOC restores Jim Thorpe's Olympic medals (Pentathlon & Decathlon victories) 70 years after they were taken from him for being paid $25 in semi-pro baseball

DeMeo Found Murdered

Jan 20 American gangster Roy DeMeo is found murdered in his car trunk after disappearing a few days earlier

Jan 21 Bollingen Prize for poetry awarded to Anthony E Hecht
Jan 21 First supertitles for a live opera performance: "Elektra" at Canadian Opera Company, English titles by Sonya Friedman
Jan 21 President Reagan certifies El Salvador human-rights abuses have decreased making country eligible for US military aid
Jan 22 2nd flight readiness firing of Challenger's main engines; 22 seconds
Jan 22 Houston is 1st NBA team to be held scoreless in an overtime Portland Trail Blazers out score them 17-0 & win 113-96
Jan 23 Cerebral Palsy telethon raises $14.7 million

Lendl Wins Back-to Back Titles

Jan 23 Ivan Lendl scores a 6–4, 6-4, 6–2 win over American John McEnroe to claim back-to-back ATP Masters Grand Prix tennis titles at Madison Square Garden, NYC

Tennis Player and Eight-Time Major Champion Ivan Lendl

Jan 23 Russian radioactive satellite falls into Indian Ocean
Jan 23 Schone skates ladies world record 5 km (7:40.97)

The A-Team

Jan 23 TV series "The A-Team" with George Peppard and Mr T premieres on NBC

Jan 25 China's supreme court commutes Chiang Ch'ing's death sentence to life
Jan 25 Infrared telescope satellite launched into polar orbit
Jan 26 Dutch British infrared satellite IRAS launched from California

Klaus Barbie Arrested

Jan 26 Nazi Gestapo war criminal Klaus Barbie arrested in Bolivia

Jan 27 Pilot tunnel breaks through under the Tsugaru Strait, for Seikan Tunnel project to connect Honshu and Hokkaido, Japan, by rail
Jan 29 "Down Under" by Men At Work hits #1 on UK pop chart
Jan 30 Hilbert van Thumb becomes European skating champ
Jan 30 Super Bowl XVII, Rose Bowl, Pasadena, CA: Washington Redskins beat Miami Dolphins, 27-17; MVP: John Riggins, Washington, RB
Jan 31 In an effort to reduce driving deaths, a new law in UK requires drivers and front-seat passengers to wear seatbelts
Feb 1 USSR performs underground nuclear test
Feb 2 CBS' premiere of fact based WW2 drama "The Scarlet and the Black", based on the life of Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty

Bernardin Made Cardinal

Feb 2 Chicago Archbishop Joseph Bernardin is among 18 new cardinals named by Pope John Paul II

Feb 4 Jose Happart becomes mayor of Voeren Belgium
Feb 5 Former Nazi Gestapo official Klaus Barbie extradited to France from Bolivia to stand trial
Feb 7 "José Cuervo" single released by Shelly West (Billboard Song of the Year 1983)
Feb 7 Elizabeth Dole is sworn in as the 1st US female secretary of transportation

Ariel Sharon Resigns

Feb 8 Ariel Sharon resigns from Israeli government after an inquiry shows he was indirectly responsible for the killings of hundreds of people in 1982

General and Prime Minister of Israel Ariel Sharon

Mantel to Sever Casino Ties

Feb 8 Baseball orders Mickey Mantle to sever ties with Claridge Casino

Feb 8 Eric Peters sets transatlantic sailboat record (E-W)-46 days
Feb 8 Prize stallion and Derby winner Shergar kidnapped in Ireland, never to be found causing Lloyd's of London to payout $10.6 million insurance
Feb 8 Tina Howe's play "Painting Churches" premieres in NYC
Feb 9 Belgium buys 44 F-16s
Feb 10 Anglican synod vote 338-100 against unilateral UK nuclear disarmament

"Weird Al" Yankovic

Feb 11 "Weird Al" Yankovic records "Ricky" & "Buckingham Blues" to complete his debut LP, at Scotti Brothers Studio in Santa Monica, California

Feb 11 4th largest snowfall in NYC history (18"(46 cm))

Total Eclipse of the Heart

Feb 11 Single "Total Eclipse of the Heart" sung by Bonnie Tyler and composed by Jim Steinman is released

Singer-Songwriter and Record Producer Jim Steinman

Feb 16 The Ash Wednesday bushfires in Victoria and South Australia claim the lives of 75 people in one of Australia's worst ever fires
Feb 17 Bob Bourne fails on 8th Islander penalty shot
Feb 17 Netherlands adopts constitution
Feb 17 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
Feb 18 Indiana Pacers lose, 121-94 in Milwaukee; begin a 28 NBA game losing streak on the road
Feb 18 Right wing Lanny McDonald becomes the first player in NHL franchise Calgary Flames' history to score 50 goals in a season in a 5-1 loss to Buffalo Sabres

Sports History

Feb 19 Fernando Valenzuela wins his salary arbitration of $1 million

Baseball Hall of Fame Pitcher Fernando Valenzuela

Feb 19 Vladimir Salnikov (USSR) sets 400 m free style swimming record

Daytona 500

Feb 20 25th Daytona 500: 3rd win in the event for Cale Yarborough; first time an in-car camera goes into victory lane before a national CBS Sports audience

Feb 20 Japan launches Tenma satellite to study x-rays (450/570 km)
Feb 20 Roland Liboton becomes world champ cross-country cycling
Feb 21 Donald Davis runs 1 mile backwards in 6 m 7.1 s
Feb 21 NBA San Diego Clippers begin a 29 game road losing streak

Election of Interest

Feb 22 Harold Washington wins Chicago's Democratic mayoral primary

1st African American Mayor of Chicago Harold Washington

Feb 22 Hindus kill 3000 Muslims in Assam, India
Feb 22 Vladimir Salnikov (USSR) sets 1500m free style swimming record
Feb 23 25th Grammy Awards: "Roxanna"and "Toto IV"; Men at Work win
Feb 23 The Spanish Socialist government of Felipe González and Miguel Boyer nationalizes Rumasa, a holding of José María Ruiz Mateos
Feb 23 The United States Environmental Protection Agency announces its intent to buy out and evacuate the dioxin-contaminated community of Times Beach, Missouri
Feb 23 USFL New Jersey Generals sign Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker to a then massive 3 year, $5 million deal
Feb 24 A special commission of the U.S. Congress releases a report that condemns the practice of Japanese internment during World War II.
Feb 24 Dow Jones closes above 1100 mark for 1st time
Feb 24 USSR performs underground nuclear test

Thriller

Feb 26 Michael Jackson's "Thriller" album goes #1 and stays #1 for 37 weeks

Feb 26 Shortwave pirate Radio USA (Wellsville, NY) begins transmission
Feb 27 Eamonn Coghlan of Ireland set indoor mile record of 3:49.78

Final Episode of "MAS*H"

Feb 28 Final TV episode of "M*A*S*H", a 2-hour special directed by series star Alan Alda titled "Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen", airs (CBS); record 125 million watch in the US

War

Feb 28 U2 release their third studio album "War" featuring protest song "Sunday Bloody Sunday", their 1st No. 1 UK album

Mar 1 Alpine skier Tamara McKinney becomes the first American woman to top the overall World Cup standings with 225 points
Mar 1 Tornado tears through Los Angeles, injuring 33 people
Mar 2 Compact Disc recordings developed by Phillips & Sony introduced
Mar 2 USSR performs underground nuclear test
Mar 3 Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw is admitted to hospital for surgery to repair his throwing arm under the alias 'Tom Brady'
Mar 4 U.S. Public Health Service's publishes its guidelines for blood donors and AIDS

Election of Interest

Mar 5 Australian Labor leader Bob Hawke defeats sitting Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser in a general election

23rd Prime Minister of Australia Bob Hawke

Prime Minister of Australia Malcolm Fraser

Election of Interest

Mar 6 Helmut Kohl's CDU/CSU wins West German parliament elections

Mar 6 In New Bedford, Massachusetts, woman charges she was gang-raped atop a pool table
Mar 6 US Football League begins its 1st season
Mar 7 TNN (The Nashville Network) begins on Cable TV
Mar 8 House Foreign Affairs Com endorses nuclear weapons freeze with USSR
Mar 8 IBM releases PC DOS version 2.0
Mar 8 President Reagan 1st known use of term "Evil Empire" (about the USSR) in speech in Florida
Mar 9 Caryl Churchill's "Fen" premieres in London
Mar 9 Zimbabwe opposition leader Joshua Nkomo flees to Botswana

Baseball Hall of Fame

Mar 10 Former Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers manager Walter Alston is elected to Baseball Hall of Fame

Sports History

Mar 11 Ice Dance Championship at Helsinki, Finland won by Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean (Great Britain)

Mar 11 Ice Pairs Championship at Helsinki won by Valova & Vasiliev (Soviet Union)
Mar 12 Don Ritchie runs world record 50 mile (4:51:49)
Mar 13 1st USFL overtime game-Birmingham Stallions beat Oakld Invaders 20-14
Mar 14 OPEC cut oil prices for 1st time in 23 years
Mar 15 Karnataka beat Bombay on 1st innings to win cricket Ranji Trophy
Mar 16 Smallest crowd of 1,814 attend NBA Cavaliers vs. NY Nets game at Cleveland Coliseum

NBA History

Mar 17 70th hat trick in NHL New York Islander franchise history, scored by Mike Bossy

Sports History

Mar 20 In a clash of tennis legends, Martina Navratilova outclasses Chris Evert Lloyd 6-2, 6-0 to win her first of 5 straight WTA Tour Championships at Madison Square Garden, NYC

Mar 21 Only known typo on Time Magazine cover (control=contol), all recalled
Mar 22 Chaim Herzog elected Israeli president
Mar 23 US President Ronald Reagan introduces Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars")
Mar 25 Christa Rothenburger skates world record 500 m ladies (39.69 sec)

Music History

Mar 25 Motown 25, a concert celebrating the anniversary of Motown records is taped for broadcast at the Civic Auditorium in Pasadena, California; performers include: The Miracles; The Temptations; The Four Tops; Diana Ross and the Supremes; The Jackson 5; and Michael Jackson, who unveils his "moonwalk" dance move

Mar 25 Pavel Pegov skates world record 1000m (1:12.58)
Mar 26 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site

Boxing Title Fight

Mar 27 Larry Holmes beats Lucien Rodriguez in 12 for heavyweight boxing title

Film & TV History

Mar 27 Neil Simon's "Brighton Beach Memoirs" premieres in NYC

Mar 30 New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) begins trading in crude oil future
Mar 30 Ray Cooney's "Run for your Wives" premieres in London
Mar 30 USSR performs nuclear test at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in northeast Kazakhstan

Film & TV History

Mar 31 "Monty Python's The Meaning of Life," is released in the US

Mar 31 Marsha Norman's "'night, Mother" premieres in NYC
Mar 31 Popayán Earthquake (5.5 Mw Depth) in Colombia kills 267 people, injuring some 7,500
Apr 1 Anti-nuclear demonstrators link arms in 14-mile human chain in England
Apr 1 Iraq increases missile attacks on Iran
Apr 2 New York Islanders right wing Mike Bossy scores in a 6-3 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins to become the first player in NHL history to score 60 goals in 3 consecutive seasons

Golf Major

Apr 3 Nabisco Dinah Shore Women's Golf, Mission Hills CC: In strong winds, Amy Alcott wins by 2 strokes ahead of Kathy Whitworth and Beth Daniel; first year tournament regarded as a major title

Apr 4 6th NASA Space Shuttle Mission: Challenger 1 launches
Apr 5 France throws out 47 Soviet diplomats

Sports History

Apr 5 NY Met Tom Seaver's sets record 14th NL Opening Day assignment

Baseball Hall of Fame Pitcher Tom Seaver

Apr 7 Oldest human skeleton, aged 80,000 years, discovered in Egypt
Apr 7 STS-6 specialist Story Musgrave & Don Peterson perform the 1st STS spacewalk
Apr 7 WIBC Championship Tournament in Las Vegas, attracts 75,480 women bowlers for 83-day event

Statue of Liberty

Apr 8 In front of a live audience of 20 tourists, David Copperfield makes the Statue of Liberty disappear

Apr 9 6th NASA Space Shuttle Mission: Challenger 1 returns to Earth
Apr 9 David Bowie's single "Let's Dance" becomes his 1st song to hit No. 1 in both the US and the UK

Sports History

Apr 10 Baltimore's Eddie Murray hits his 1,000 career hit

Apr 10 Jordan king Hussein ceases negotiations with PLO

Academy Awards

Apr 11 55th Academy Awards: "Gandhi", Ben Kingsley & Meryl Streep win

Apr 11 In the first 'supergrass' trial in Northern Ireland, fourteen Ulster Volunteer Force members are jailed for a total of two hundred years
Apr 11 NASA launches RCA-F
Apr 12 Harold Washington elected Chicago's 1st black mayor
Apr 12 USSR performs nuclear test at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in northeast Kazakhstan
Apr 13 Undefeated middleweight boxer Tony Ayala gets 35 years on sex assault
Apr 13 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site

Music History

Apr 14 EMI America Records releases David Bowie's 15th studio album, "Let's Dance"; co-produced by Bowie and Nile Rodgers, it becomes his biggest commercial success with sales of nearly 11 million units, topping the charts in 9 countries, and introduces guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan to a larger audience

Musician and Singer-Songwriter Stevie Ray Vaughan

Apr 14 NY Islanders tie own record with 2 shorthanded playoff goals (vs NY Rangers)
Apr 14 US President Ronald Reagan signs $165 billion Social Security rescue
Apr 15 Tokyo Disneyland opens

Baseball Record

Apr 16 Steve Garvey sets NL record by playing in 1,118 consecutive games

Apr 17 1st National Coin Week begins
Apr 17 Grete Waltz runs female world record marathon (2:25:29)
Apr 17 In Warsaw, police route 1,000 Solidarity supporters
Apr 17 India entered space age launching SLV-3 rocket

Baseball Record

Apr 17 Nolan Ryan strikes out his 3,500th batter

Apr 17 NY Islanders tie NHL record with 3 shorthanded playoff goals vs NY Rangers
Apr 18 A lone suicide bomber kills 63, at US Embassy in Lebanon
Apr 18 KMO-AM in Tacoma Wash changes call letters to KAMT (now KKMO)

Event of Interest

Apr 18 Pulitzer Prize awarded to Alice Walker for the novel "The Color Purple"

Apr 19 France performs nuclear test
Apr 20 President Reagan signs a $165B bail out for Social Security
Apr 20 Soyuz T-8 launched; mission aborted when capsule fails to dock (lands 2 days later)
Apr 21 1 pound coin introduced in United Kingdom
Apr 22 Great Britain performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
Apr 22 Soyuz T-8 returns to Earth
Apr 22 Start of 1st Sri Lanka-Australia Test Cricket match (at Kandy)
Apr 22 Stern mag announces major historical find-discovery of 60 volume personal diaries written by Adolf Hitler (turned out to be a hoax)
Apr 23 David Hookes scores his only Test Cricket century, 143* v Sri Lanka
Apr 24 Austrian socialist party loses parliamentary election
Apr 25 "Nightline" expands from ½ hour to a full hour
Apr 25 France performs nuclear test at Mururoa atoll
Apr 25 NASA space probe Pioneer 10 travels beyond Pluto's orbit