1983 Archives | HISTORY

Karen Carpenter, a singer who long suffered under the burden of the expectations that came with pop stardom, died on February 4, 1983, succumbing to heart failure brought on by her long, unpublicized struggle with anorexia.

Gunmen steal the champion Irish race horse Shergar from a stud farm owned by the Aga Khan in County Kildare, Ireland. The five-year-old thoroughbred stallion, named European horse of the year in 1981, was worth $13.5 million and commanded stud fees of approximately $100,000.

The notorious play "Moose Murders" bombs on Broadway, opening and closing at New York’s Eugene O'Neill Theater on the same night. In doing so, its name becomes synonymous for an abysmal theatrical flop.

On February 28, 1983, the celebrated sitcom M*A*S*H bows out after 11 seasons, airing a special two-and-a-half hour episode watched by 77 percent of the television viewing audience. It was the largest percentage ever to watch a single TV show up to that time.

Helmut Kohl, the interim chancellor of West Germany since the fall of Helmut Schmidt’s Social Democrat government in 1982, is elected German chancellor as his Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party is voted back into power.

Speaking to a convention of the National Association of Evangelicals in Florida on March 8, 1983, President Ronald Reagan publicly refers to the Soviet Union as an evil empire for the second time in his career. He had first used the phrase in a 1982 speech at the British House of Commons. Some considered Reagan’s use of the Star Wars film-inspired terminology to be brilliant democratic rhetoric. Others, including many within the international diplomatic community, denounced it as irresponsible bombast.

On March 22, 1983, the Pentagon awards a production contract worth more than $1 billion to AM General Corporation to develop 55,000 High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWV). Nicknamed the Humvee and designed to transport troops and cargo, the wide, rugged vehicles entered the spotlight when they were used by the American military during the 1989 invasion of Panama and the Persian Gulf War in the early 1990s.

In an address to the nation, President Ronald Reagan proposes that the United States embark on a program to develop antimissile technology that would make the country nearly impervious to attack by nuclear missiles. Reagan’s speech marked the beginning of what came to be known as the controversial Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).

On March 23, 1983, Barney Clark dies 112 days after becoming the world’s first recipient of a permanent artificial heart. The 61-year-old dentist spent the last four months of his life in a hospital bed at the University of Utah Medical Center in Salt Lake City, attached to a 350-pound console that pumped air in and out of the aluminum-and-plastic implant through a system of hoses.

On April 18, 1983, Joan Benoit wins her second Boston Marathon in the women’s division with a time of 2:22:43, shattering the record time by nearly three minutes. The following year, she went on to win the first-ever women’s marathon at the Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles and became the first person to win Boston as well as Olympic gold.

The U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, is almost completely destroyed by a car-bomb explosion that kills 63 people, including the suicide bomber and 17 Americans. The terrorist attack was carried out in protest of the U.S. military presence in Lebanon.

On April 26, 1983, the Soviet Union releases a letter that Russian leader Yuri Andropov wrote to Samantha Smith, an American fifth-grader from Manchester, Maine, inviting her to visit his country. Andropov’s letter came in response to a note Smith had sent him in December 1982, asking if the Soviets were planning to start a nuclear war. At the time, the United States and Soviet Union were Cold War enemies.

Irene Cara’s song “Flashdance (What a Feeling)”, from the Flashdance movie soundtrack, goes to the top of the U.S. pop charts on May 28, 1983.

After more than a decade in space, Pioneer 10, the world’s first outer-planetary probe, leaves the outer limits of the known solar system by crossing the orbit of Neptune, the system's then farthest planet. The next day, it radioed back its first scientific data on interstellar space.

On June 18, 1983,  the space shuttle Challenger is launched into space on its second mission. On board the shuttle is Dr. Sally K. Ride, who as a mission specialist, becomes the first American woman to travel into space.

Samantha Smith, an 11-year-old American girl, begins a two-week visit to the Soviet Union at the invitation of Soviet leader Yuri Andropov. Some American observers believed that Smith was merely being used by the Soviets for their own propaganda purposes, while others saw her visit as a positive step toward improving U.S.-Russian relations.

On August 5, 1983, the comedy Risky Business, starring Tom Cruise in a breakout performance, opens in U.S. theaters. In the film, Cruise played Joel Goodsen, a suburban Chicago teen who has a series of misadventures when his parents go out of town and leave him home alone. Written and directed by Paul Brickman, Risky Business featured a now-famous scene in which Cruise’s character dances around his house in a dress shirt and underwear to the accompaniment of Bob Seger's hit song “Old Time Rock and Roll.” The movie poster for Risky Business, which showed Cruise looking over a pair of black Ray-Ban sunglasses and a woman reclining on the hood of a Porsche, also became iconic. Following the success of Risky Business, Cruise went on to appear in a long list of hit films and emerge as one of Hollywood’s A-list actors.

U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Guion S. Bluford becomes the first African American to travel into space when the space shuttle Challenger lifts off on its third mission. It was the first night launch of a space shuttle, and many people stayed up late to watch the spacecraft roar up from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 2:32 a.m.

Soviet jet fighters intercept a Korean Airlines passenger flight in Russian airspace and shoot the plane down, killing 269 passengers and crew-members. The incident dramatically increased tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States.

On September 17, 1983, 20-year-old Vanessa Williams becomes the first Black woman to win the Miss America crown. Less than a year later, on July 23, 1984, Williams gave up her crown after nude photos of her surfaced. Despite the scandal, Williams later launched a successful singing and acting career, including a featured role on the television sitcom Ugly Betty.

The mutilated body of 13-year-old paperboy Danny Joe Eberle is found in his hometown of Bellevue, Nebraska. Eberle had been stabbed multiple times, bound with rope and tortured to death.

On October 7, 1983, Never Say Never Again opens in U.S. theaters, featuring Sean Connery in a reprise of his role as the British secret service agent James Bond—which he had last played in 1971. The film’s title referenced the fact that the Scottish-born actor had previously remarked that he would never play Agent 007 again.

A suicide bomber drives a truck packed with explosives into the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 U.S. military personnel. That same morning, 58 French soldiers were killed in their barracks two miles away in a separate suicide terrorist attack. The U.S. Marines were part of a multinational force sent to Lebanon in August 1982 to oversee the Palestinian withdrawal from Lebanon. From its inception, the mission was plagued with problems–and a mounting body count.

President Ronald Reagan, citing the threat posed to American nationals on the Caribbean nation of Grenada by that nation’s Marxist regime, orders U.S. forces to invade and secure their safety. There were approximately 1,000 Americans in Grenada at the time, many of them students at the island’s medical school. In little more than a week, Operation Urgent Fury succeeded in overthrowing Grenada’s government.

President Ronald Reagan signs a bill in the White House Rose Garden designating a federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., to be observed on the third Monday of January.

David Hendricks, a businessman traveling in Wisconsin, calls police in Bloomington, Illinois, to request that they check on his house and family. According to Hendricks, no one had answered the phone all weekend and he was worried. When the police and neighbors searched the home the next day, they found the mutilated bodies of Hendricks’ wife and three children, all of whom had been hacked to death with an ax and butcher knife.

The actor Al Pacino stars as a Cuban refugee who becomes a Miami crime boss in Scarface, which opens in theaters on December 9, 1983.

Residents of Earth receive a chilling early Christmas present on December 23, 1983, when a group of scientists including Carl Sagan releases a paper titled “Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions.” This publication introduces the concept of nuclear winter, a period of global cold and darkness that could result from a nuclear war.