1980's

2/23/16

Year: 1983

• In Hawaii the Pu’u O’o vent of the Kilauea volcano lit up the skies for the first time and began a state of almost constant eruption.
• President Reagan announced he was nominating Elizabeth Dole to succeed Drew Lewis as secretary of transportation. Dole became the first woman to head a Cabinet department in Reagan's administration, and the first to head the DOT. She was sworn into office by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman to serve on the US Supreme Court.

• Cosmos 1402, a Russian nuclear powered satellite launched in 1982, fell into the Indian Ocean.
• The Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) space probe, sponsored by the United Kingdom, the US, and the Netherlands, was launched. It studied infrared radiation from across the cosmos and exposed stars as they were born from clouds of gas and dust.
• Former Nazi Gestapo official Klaus Barbie, expelled from Bolivia, was brought to trial in Lyon, France. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
• Iran opened an invasion in the southeast of Iraq. 
• Champion thoroughbred Shergar was kidnapped in Ireland and never found. Lloyds of London paid $10.6 million insurance.

• The Americus and Altair fishing boats sank in the Bering Sea and 14 fishermen from Anacortes, Washington, died. 
• A US congressional commission, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, released a report condemning the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II as a "grave injustice."
• Michael Jackson's "Thriller" album went to #1 and stayed #1 for 37 weeks.

• The last episode of M*A*S*H was shown. A record 125 million made MASH the most watched TV show.

• President Reagan called the USSR an "Evil Empire."
• President Reagan first proposed development of technology to intercept enemy missiles -- a proposal that came to be known as the Strategic Defense Initiative, as well as "Star Wars." 
• Dr. Barney Clark, recipient of a permanent artificial heart, died at the University of Utah Medical Center after 112 days with the device.
• Tens of thousands of anti-nuke demonstrators linked arms in 14-mile human chain spanning three defense installations in rural England, including the Greenham Common US Air Base.

• Martin Cooper, Motorola project manager, demonstrated the 1st mobile phone, the DynaTAC 8000x. It was designed by Rudy Krolopp. The 2½ pound cell phone was soon made available for $3,995.

• The space shuttle Challenger roared into orbit on its maiden voyage and the first US female into space was Sally Ride.

• France threw out 47 Soviet diplomats accusing them of espionage.
• Specialist Story Musgrave and Don Peterson took the first US space walk in almost a decade as they worked in the open cargo bay of Challenger for nearly four hours.
• Alice Walker won a Pulitzer Prize for "The Color Purple."
• At the US Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, 63 people, including 17 Americans, were killed by a suicide bomber. In 1996 sixteen Islamic militants were ordered to stand trial by a military court in Lebanon. Hezbollah leader Imad Mughniyah was suspected of involvement. CIA agent Robert Ames was among those killed. 
• Soviet leader Yuri V. Andropov invited Samantha Smith to visit his country after receiving a letter in which the Manchester, Maine, schoolgirl expressed fears about nuclear war.

• Nolan Ryan became the strikeout king (3,509), passing Walter Johnson.
• The nuclear powered aircraft carrier Enterprise ran aground in SF Bay and was stick for over 5 hours yards from her berth at the Alameda Naval air Station.
• The last episode of the TV sitcom "Laverne & Shirley" aired on ABC-TV.

• The US Senate passed the Simpson-Mazzoli bill for immigration reform. It offered millions of illegal aliens legal status under an amnesty program. 
• "Return of the Jedi" (Star Wars 3) was released. 

• The US space probe Pioneer 10, launched in 1972, became the first spacecraft to leave the solar system as it crossed the orbit of Neptune.
• A 100-foot span of the Mianus River Bridge, part of Interstate 95 in Connecticut, collapsed without warning in the middle of the night, leaving 3 dead and three injured.
• Japan’s Nissan began to produce trucks in the US. Nissan became the first foreign carmaker in America when it opened an assembly plant in Smyrna, Tennessee.
• The first nonhuman primate, a baboon, was conceived in a lab dish in San Antonio, Texas.
• Samantha Druce earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records as the youngest person to swim the English Channel. She completed the crossing in 15 hours 26 minutes at the age of 12 years 118 days.
• Lieutenant Colonel Guion S. Bluford Jr. became the first black American astronaut to travel in space, blasting off aboard the Challenger.
• The KAL flight 007 was downed by a Soviet jet fighter after the airliner entered Soviet airspace. 269 people were killed aboard the Korean Air Lines Boeing 747 including sixty-one Americans, among them Georgia Representative Larry McDonald. The order was given by Soviet General Anatoly Kornukov who held that the plane was part of a hostile US operation. 
• The Soviet Union's early warning system wrongly signaled the launch of a US Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile. Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov, in charge of the system, decided the alarm was false and did not launch a retaliatory strike. Because of military secrecy and international policy, Petrov's actions were kept secret until 1998. In 2004 the San-Francisco-based Association of World Citizens presented Petrov a World Citizen Award.
• The US Senate established the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday as the 3rd Monday in January each year. Dr. King was born on January 15, 1929. 
• A truck filled with explosives, driven by a Moslem suicide terrorist, crashed into the US Marine barracks near the Beirut International Airport in Lebanon. The bomb killed 241 Marines and sailors and injured 80. Almost simultaneously, a similar incident occurred at French military headquarters, where 58 died and 15 were injured. 
• Some 1,800 US Marines and Rangers, assisted by 300 soldiers from six Caribbean nations, invaded Grenada at the order of President Reagan, who said the action was needed to protect US citizens there. Protection for the American students at St. George’s Medical School was a pretext for the invasion. 45 Grenadians were killed along with 29 Cubans and 19 Americans. 
• In November, a bomb exploded on the 2nd floor of the Capitol, causing heavy damage but no injuries. A caller said the bomb was an action against US aggression in Grenada and Lebanon. 

3/1/16
Year: 1980

• The Federal Hourly Minimum Wage was set at $3.10 an hour.
• Indira Gandhi's Congress Party won elections in India.
• Some 60,000 US oil refinery workers went on nationwide strike for the first time in 11 years. No major disruptions were reported in the walkout.
• Honda announced that it would build Japan's first US passenger-car assembly plant in Ohio. 
• President Jimmy Carter announced the US boycott of Olympics in Moscow. President Carter announced to the U.S. Olympic Team that they would not participate in the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow as a boycott against Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. 
• President Jimmy Carter made his State of the Union address. His new American policy came to be known as the “Carter Doctrine." It was a pledge to defend US interests in the Persian Gulf, using military force if necessary.

• A US-Mexico Extradition Treaty, signed by President Carter in 1978, went into effect. It  allowed Mexico to refuse extradition of suspects facing the death penalty in the US.
• Six US diplomats who had avoided being taken hostage at their embassy in Tehran flew out of Iran with the help of Canadian diplomats. 
• San Francisco Mayor Diane Feinstein signed a Friendship City agreement with Zhao Xingzhi, vice mayor of Shanghai. It was the first of its kind between an American city and the People's Republic of China.
• The opening ceremonies were held in Lake Placid, New York, for the 13th Winter Olympics. These winter games were the first ever for a Chinese team.
• The Solar Max satellite was launched by NASA to monitor the sun and its flares at an orbit of  some 400 miles above Earth.
• In a stunning upset, the U.S. Olympic hockey team defeated the Soviets at Lake Placid, New York, 4-3. The US team went on to win the gold medal beating Finland 4-2.

• President Carter signed a law that renamed the Arctic National Wildlife Range to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and more than doubled its size. The law directed the Interior Department to assess oil potential in 1.5 million acres of the coastal plain. A ban was put on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
• The first implantable cardioconverter defibrillator (ICD) was implanted at John Hopkins Hospital by Dr. Levi Watkins.
• The submarine Nautilus, the world’s first atomic ship, was decommissioned at the Mare Island Shipyard in Vallejo, California.
• In Laos US Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Richard L. "Dick" Etchberger used an M-16 and a radio to call in air strikes and single-handedly held off the attackers until helicopters arrived at Lima site 85. After climbing into the chopper behind the others, Etchberger was fatally wounded when enemy fire struck the aircraft. The others in the helicopter made it to safety. In 2010 President Barack Obama posthumously recognized Etchberger for service "beyond the call of duty" by giving him the nation's highest military award, the Medal of Honor.

• A Polish airliner crashed while making an emergency landing near Warsaw, killing all 87 people aboard, including 22 members of a U.S. amateur boxing team.
• The US appealed to the International Court of Justice on hostages in Iran.
• Mount St. Helens, dormant for 123 years, erupted with ash and steam. A crater formed at the summit and the north flank began to bulge.

• 3-M introduced Post-It Notes.
• The US broke relations with Iran during the hostage crises. President Carter ordered all Iranian diplomats expelled from the US and prohibited any further exports to the nation. President Carter signed Executive Order 12205 for economic sanctions against Iran.
• NASA’s Viking 2 Mars Lander ended communications.
• "Grease" closed at Broadhurst Theater in NYC after 3,388 performances.
• Arthur Ashe retired from professional tennis following quadruple bypass surgery. He contracted the HIV virus from a blood transfusion after a second bypass operation in 1983.

• At the Boston Marathon, Rosie Ruiz was the first woman to cross the finish line; but she was disqualified as a fraud when officials discovered she had jumped into the race about a mile from the finish. 
• An American assault team held 44 Iranians hostage for about 3 hours when their bus stumbled upon the remote desert site. The failed operation was commanded by Colonel Charles Beckwith, founder of the US Delta Force. The mission resulted in the deaths of 8 US servicemen. The US hostage rescue failed when a plane collided with a helicopter in Iran. 
• Juliana Z, Queen of the Netherlands, abdicated. Beatrix Wilhelmina Armgard, was crowned queen of Netherlands.
• Commodore president Jack Tramiel ordered the development of a computer that could sell for under $300 US. What had been an oversupply of parts became the VIC-20.
• In Florida 35 motorists were killed when a Liberian-flagged freighter rammed the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay. The freighter MV Summit Venture collided with a pier (support column) during a blinding thunderstorm, sending over 1200 feet of the bridge plummeting into Tampa Bay. The collision caused six cars, a truck, and a Greyhound bus to fall 150 feet into the water.
• The $22 million Star Wars sequel "Empire Strikes Back" premiered.

• Ensign Jean Marie Butler became the first woman to graduate from a U.S. service academy as she accepted her degree and commission from the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut.
• The computer game Pac-Man was first released in Japan. Pac-Man, with its characters: Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde, epitomized the arcade games of the 1980s.
• The movie "The Shining" based on the book by Stephen King, premiered in theaters.
• Iran rejected a call by the World Court in The Hague to release the American hostages.
• Larry Bird beat out Magic Johnson for NBA rookie of year.
• Ted Turner's Cable News Network (CNN), providing round-the-clock TV newscasts, made its debut as television's first all-news service, vowing to stay on the air until the world ends. James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader, identified the station: "This is CNN."
• The Soviet Union announced a partial withdrawal of its forces from Afghanistan.
• "O Canada" was proclaimed the national anthem of Canada.
• President Jimmy Carter reinstated draft registration for males 18 years of age. A US Federal court voided the Selective Service Act as it didn’t include women. The issue was resolved on June 25, 1981, when the Supreme Court ruled in Rostker v. Goldberg that “that Congress acted well within its constitutional authority when it authorized the registration of men, and not women."
• American hostage Richard I. Queen, freed by Iran after eight months of captivity because of poor health, left Tehran for Switzerland.
• In Australia Lindy Chamberlain’s 9-week baby, Azaria, was allegedly dragged away from a family campsite at Uluru, or Ayers Rock, by a dingo. The body was never found and Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton and ex-husband Michael Chamberlain were both convicted for the death but later exonerated in a case which made global headlines. She was released after 4 years and the Meryl Streep film "A Cry in the Dark" was based on her story. In 2012 a 4th coroner inquest ruled that a dingo was responsible for the infant’s death.
• Reinhold Messner of Italy became the 1st to solo ascent Mt. Everest.
•  California state officials place all of Santa Clara Valley under quarantine due to the Mediterranean fruit fly invasion.
• Some 520 people were forced to abandon the cruise ship “Prisendam" in the Gulf of Alaska after the Dutch luxury liner caught fire—no deaths or serious injury resulted. The ship capsized and sank a week later.
• David H. Barnett, former CIA agent, was indicted. He pleaded guilty to spying for the Soviet Union from 1976-1979 while based in Indonesia. He admitted to exposing the identities of 30 US agents.
• In November, Ronald Reagan was elected the 40th president of the United States.
• An estimated 83 million TV viewers tuned in to the CBS prime-time soap opera "Dallas" to find out "who shot J.R." 
• Sugar Ray Leonard regained the World Boxing Council welterweight championship when Roberto Duran abruptly quit in the eighth round at the Louisiana Superdome. 
• John Lennon, musician and one of the Beatles, was shot and killed by Mark David Chapman outside his New York City apartment building. Chapman was a schizophrenic with the delusion that he himself was John. 
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