WHAT ALL HAPPENED JANUARY TO SEPTEMBER 1983
Find out what all happened January to September 1983

The first United States Football League game is played. (6. March 1983)

The Church Street bombing in the South African capital Pretoria. The bombing killed 19 and wounded 217. (20. May 1983)

Lebanon, Israel, and the United States sign an agreement on Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. (17. May 1983)

Gimli Glider: Air Canada Flight 143 runs out of fuel and makes a deadstick landing at Gimli, Manitoba. (23. July 1983)

Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis is awarded the Lenin Peace Prize. (1. May 1983)

United American Bank of Knoxville, Tennessee collapses. Its president, Jake Butcher, is later convicted of fraud. (14. February 1983)

Soviet military officer Stanislav Petrov averts a likely worldwide nuclear war by correctly identifying a report of an incoming nuclear missile as a computer error and not an American first strike. (26. September 1983)

Saint Kitts and Nevis gains its independence. (19. September 1983)

Richard Stallman announces the GNU project to develop a free Unix-like operating system. (27. September 1983)

Gerrie Coetzee of South Africa becomes the first African boxing world heavyweight champion. (23. September 1983)

Cold War: Samantha Smith, a U.S. schoolgirl, flies to the Soviet Union at the invitation of Secretary General Yuri Andropov. (7. July 1983)

13 Sri Lanka Army soldiers are killed after a deadly ambush by the militant Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. (23. July 1983)

Maze Prison escape: 38 republican prisoners, armed with 6 handguns, hijack a prison meals lorry and smash their way out of the Maze prison. It is the largest prison escape since WWII and in British history. (25. September 1983)

Space Shuttle program: STS-7, Astronaut Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space. (18. June 1983)

Cold War: Korean Air Flight 007 is shot down by a Soviet Union jet fighter when the commercial aircraft enters Soviet airspace. All 269 on board die, including Congressman Lawrence McDonald. (1. September 1983)

The Soviet Union admits to shooting down Korean Air Flight KAL-007, stating that the pilots did not know it was a civilian aircraft when it violated Soviet airspace. (6. September 1983)

The first three-dimensional reconstruction of a human head in a CT is published. (19. July 1983)

Black July: 18 Tamil political prisoners at the Welikada high security prison in Colombo are massacred by Sinhalese prisoners, the second such massacre in two days. (27. July 1983)

Thirteen people die and one is seriously injured in the Wah Mee massacre in Seattle, Washington. It is said to be the largest robbery-motivated mass-murder in U.S. history. (18. February 1983)

The notorious Broadway flop Moose Murders opens and closes on the same night at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre. (22. February 1983)