August 1982

1982

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The following events occurred in August 1982:

August 1, 1982 (Sunday)

• An attempt to overthrow Kenya's President Daniel Arap Moi failed, though not before Kenya Air Force private Hezekiah Ochuka led rebels in seizing several air bases and the headquarters of the government radio station. Private Ochuka, who had aspirations of becoming "the next president of Kenya", accepted a proposal by Joseph Ogidi Obuon and Pancras Oteyo Okumu to recruit soldiers for the coup to replace the Moi government with a People Redemption's Council. At 3:00 a.m., Eastleigh Air Base near Nairobi was seized, and by 6:00, Ochuka and Oteyo had seized the Voice of Kenya radio station. The fighting in the failed coup killed more than 100 soldiers and almost 200 civilians.. Private Ochuka, Walter Odira Ojode, Corporal Brawell Injeni Njereman, Corporal Walter Odira Ojode and Pancras Okumuwere would all be convicted of treason and executed by hanging.
• Born: Caroline Shaw, American classical music composer, and winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize and two Grammy Awards; in Greenville, North Carolina

August 2, 1982 (Monday)

• The Helsinki Metro, the first rapid transit system in Finland, opened to the general public.

August 3, 1982 (Tuesday)

• The Apaneca Pact was signed at Apaneca in El Salvador between representatives of the Salvadoran government and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrilla rebels to establish the "Government of National Unity".
• The Christian advocacy and hunger relief organization Bread for the World was incorporated in the District of Columbia by Arthur Simon.
• The summit of Estonia's Tartu Ülikool 350, at 20,531 feet (6,258 m) the highest un-ascended mountain in the Soviet Union, was reached for the first time, as six mountaineers scaled the mountain as part of celebrations of the 350th anniversary of the University of Tartu.

August 4, 1982 (Wednesday)

• The United Nations Security Council voted to censure Israel because its troops were still in Lebanon.
• Amy Chikaraishi, a 31-year-old woman from Glenview, Illinois gave birth to quintuplets, four girls and one boy, at Lutheran General Hospital in Chicago, after having taken a fertility drug.

August 5, 1982 (Thursday)

• Australian aviator and entrepreneur Dick Smith began an attempt at the first solo helicopter flight around the world. Departing from Dallas, Texas and the U.S. in his Bell 206L-1 LongRanger II, the Spirit of Texas, Smith would complete the achievement, landing at Dallas on July 22, 1983 after traveling more than 26,000 miles (42,000 km), with 56 sops for refueling.
• Died:
  • Sir John Charnley, 70, English orthopedic surgeon and pioneer of the hip replacement operation.
  • Bushy Graham (ring name for Angelo Gerraci), 77, Italian-born American boxer who held the world bantamweight championship for seven months in 1928 and 1929

August 6, 1982 (Friday)

• The film Pink Floyd – The Wall, based on the 1979 Pink Floyd studio album The Wall, premiered in the United Kingdom, and opened the on August 13 in North American theaters.
• Born: Benjamin Bronfman, American businessman and rap artist, co-founder of the direct air capture Global Thermostat and Grammy Award winner; in New York City as the son of Edgar Bronfman Jr. and Sherry Brewer Bronfman.
• Died: S. K. Pottekkatt, 69 Indian Malayalam language writer of almost 60 books, including 10 novels and 18 nonfiction travel accounts

August 7, 1982 (Saturday)

• Italian Prime Minister Giovanni Spadolini resigned after seven ministers from the Socialist Party had quit the cabinet.

• Belisario Betancur took office as the new President of Colombia
• In an all-star game of soccer football, organized by FIFA as a charity benefit for UNICEF and played in the U.S. before a crowd of 76,891 people at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, the European All-Stars defeated "Rest of the World All-Stars"
• Died: Jill Banner, 35, American actress whoportrayed Virginia, the eponymous "spider baby" in the comedy horror film Spider Baby (1967), was fatally injured when her car was hit by a truck.

August 8, 1982 (Sunday)

• The first elections for the new, 61-seat Corsican Assembly as the island of Corsica attained autonomy within France. A coalition of the Union for French Democracy, Rally for the Republic and Bonapartist political parties won 19 seats, with the other 42 seats divided among 14 other parties. Prosper Alfonsi was elected as the first president of the Corsican Assembly.
• Born: Fahadh Faasil, Indian film actor; in Alappuzha, Kerala state

August 9, 1982 (Monday)

• Terrorists, later identified as being from the Abu Nidal Organization terrorist group killed six people and injured 22 others in an attack on the Chez Jo Goldenberg restaurant on Rue des Rosiers in Paris. The two assailants, who had targeted the business, known for its Jewish cuisine and began by throwing a grenade into the dining room, then firing submachine guns at random individuals. Although Abu Nidal had been suspected, identification of the actual perpertrators would not happen until 32 years later in 2015.
• A mass shooting killed six people and injured three others in Grand Prairie, Texas when a disgruntled employee of Western Transportation & Storage Company entered the company warehouse with a semi-automatic rifle, and two handguns, killed employees there, and then drove to the Jewel-T warehouse and killed others, before fleeing the scene and dying in a police shootout.
• August 9, 1982, had been the planned day for the landing of American astronauts on Mars, based on a project that had been approved by NASA, but then canceled along with other space missions because of budget cuts. The plan conceived was an opportune launch time of November 12, 1981, arrival on Mars for 10-week mission, a flyby of Venus on February 28, 1983, and a return to Earth on August 14, 1983.
• The CNN2 cable television news channel and companion to Cable News Network was renamed Headline News (HLN) more than seven months after its debut.
• The first International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples was observed with the convening of the first meeting of the UN's Working Group on Indigenous Populations.
• Born: Tyson Gay, American sprinter and world champion 2006 and 2007 in the 100 meter dash, and 2007 champion in the 200m; in Lexington, Kentucky
• Died: Alexandre Alexeieff, 81. Russian expatriate filmmaker and illustrator, co-inventor of the pinscreen animation technique in the 1930s

August 10, 1982 (Tuesday)

• In the first use of the electric chair in the U.S. state of Virginia since the reinstatement of the death penalty, the execution of convicted murderer Frank J. Coppola was mishandled. As Coppola was being put to death at the Virginia State Penitentiary in Richmond, his head and his leg caught fire.
• In Spain, the newest Statute of Autonomy granted self-government, within the Kingdom of Spain, to residents of Aragon, Castilla-La Mancha, the Canary Islands, and Navarre.
• Born: Shaun Murphy, English snooker player and winner of the 2005 World Championship; in Harlow, Essex

August 11, 1982 (Wednesday)

• Pan Am Flight 830, which originated in Tokyo on a flight to Los Angeles, was flying at an altitude of 36,000 feet (11,000 m) with 270 passengers and 15 crew when a terrorist bomb exploded under one of the passenger seats. While the 16-year-old passenger sitting above the bomb was killed, and 16 other passengers ended, the crew, led by pilot Skipper O'Halloran, was able to make an emergency landing in Honolulu.
• Died:
  • Tom Drake, 64, American film actor known for Meet Me in St. Louis in 1944 and The Green Years (1946), died of lung cancer.
  • Paolo Giaconne, 53, Italian forensic pathologist and university professor, was murdered by the Sicilian Mafia

August 12, 1982 (Thursday)

• Mexico announced that it would be unable to pay its large foreign debt, triggering a debt crisis that soon spread throughout Latin America.
• Died:

  

  Henry Fonda

  • Henry Fonda, 77, American film actor
  • Salvador Sánchez, 23, Mexican professional boxer who wasfeatherweight champion from 1980 until 1982 for both the World Boxing Council (WBC) and The Ringwas killed in a single-vehicle car accident, when he crashed his sports car along Mexico's federal highway.

August 13, 1982 (Friday)

• In Hong Kong, health warnings on cigarette packets became mandatory.
• Born: Sarah Huckabee Sanders, American politician consultant, White House Press Secretary 2017-2019, and Governor of Arkansas since 2023; in Little Rock, Arkansas
• Died: Joe E. Ross, 68, American actor, comedian, and voice actor for animation, he portrayed the police officer Gunther Toody in the sitcom Car 54, Where Are You? and the police sergeant Flint in Hong Kong Phooey,heart attack while performing in a clubhouse

August 14, 1982 (Saturday)

• An accident at the Sukhumi-Babusheri Airport in the Soviet Union's Georgia SSR killed all 11 people on a Let L-410 jet that was cleared to taxi to a runway for departure on a flight to Kutaisi. At the same time, an Aeroflot Tu-134 with 82 people aboard was cleared for takeoff from another runway which the smaller jet was crossing, while the Tu-134 was accelerating past 120 miles per hour (190 km/h). The captain of the Tu-134 swerve to avoid the collision and the passengers and crew escaped injury, but the right wing of the Tu-134 "cut through the L-410 at the level of the windows" and killed everyone on the smaller plane.
• In Nicaragua, the crash of a Fuerza Aerea Sandinista airplane on takeoff from Managua killed 20 of the 22 people on board.
• Died: Patrick Magee, 60, Irish actor, he created the role of the Marquis de Sade in the original stage and screen productions of Marat/Sade, died from a heart attack

August 15, 1982 (Sunday)

• Died:
  • Ernie Bushmiller, 76, American cartoonist, creator of the comic strip character Nancy, he had previously taken over the older comic strip Fritzi Ritz
  • Hugo Theorell, 79, Swedish scientist who received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1955 for discovering oxidoreductase enzymes and their effects
  • Maurice Gallay, 79, French footballer; he played as a defender for Olympique de Marseille and the French national team in the 1920s, he helped the OM team to win back-to-back Coupe de France titles in 1926 and 1927

August 16, 1982 (Monday)

• The Palestinian autonomy talks that had been conducted since 1979 between Egypt and Israel for the creation of self-government for the Palestinian residents of Israel were permanently ended when the Egyptian government declined to renew negotiations until Israel withdrew from Lebanon.
• In Spain, the autonomous province of Castilla–La Mancha was created for the first self-government there since the demise of the Crown of Castile.
• Born: Stefan Maierhofer, Austrian soccer football player and manager with 19 caps as a striker for the Austria national team; in Gablitz

August 17, 1982 (Tuesday)

• The first compact discs (CDs) were produced in Germany.

August 18, 1982 (Wednesday)

• At Bangkok in Thailand, the "Royal Lao Democratic Government" was established as a government-in-exile by anti-Communist leaders of the Lao National Liberation Front. The Royal Lao leaders established control over some of the southern provinces of Laos with the military aid from the People's Republic of China

August 19, 1982 (Thursday)

10-kopeck stamp of L.M. Popov, S.E. Savitskaya and A.A. Serebov

• Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the second woman to be launched into space, traveling aboard Soyuz T-7, with two other cosmonauts, Leonid Popov and Aleksandr Serebrov, to the Salyut 7 space station. Savitskaya's flight came more than 20 years after the launch of Valentina Tereshkova on Vostok 6 on June 6, 1963. The trio returned to Earth on August 27.
• A supernova in the galaxy NGC 521, SN 1982O, was observed from Earth for the first time by astronomer Miklós Lovas at least 224 million years after it had happened.

August 20, 1982 (Friday)

• As the Lebanese Civil War contined, a multinational force landed in Beirut to oversee the withdrawal of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) from Lebanon.
• Died:

August 21, 1982 (Saturday)

• Died: Sobhuza II, 83, King of Swaziland (reigned 1899-1906, 1968-1982),

August 22, 1982 (Sunday)

• The El Calabozo massacre of more than 200 civilians, and possibly as many as 300, incuding women and children, was completed by a battalion of the Army of El Salvador.

August 23, 1982 (Monday)

• Bachir Gemayel, commander of the Lebanese Forces, was elected as President of Lebanon after being the only candidate who was willing to govern the war-torn nation. He would be assassinated on September 14 before he was scheduled to take office.
• Died:
  • Stanford Moore, 68, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate.
  • Alberto Cavalcanti, 85, Brazilian film director, producer, and set designer director of propaganda films for the Ealing Studios during the 1940s,

August 24, 1982 (Tuesday)

• The General People's Congress was established as a political party in the Yemen Arab Republic (North Yemen) by President Ali Abdullah Saleh. After the reunification of Yemen in 1990, the GPC would become the ruling political party and would continue to control the Yemeni government from 1993 onward.

August 25, 1982 (Wednesday)

• Died: Hans van Tongeren, 27, Dutch actor who portrayed the suicidal motocrosser "Rien" in his debut film Spetters (1980) committed suicide

August 26, 1982 (Thursday)

• The world's leading manufacturer of asbestos, the Johns Manville Corporation filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and reorganization after losing the first of many personal injury judgments arising from the development of asbestosis in Manville employees.

August 27, 1982 (Friday)

• Ricky Henderson of the Oakland A's broke the Major League Baseeball record for most stolen bases in a season, held by Lou Brock since 1974 and would close the season with 130 stolen bases.
• Died: Anandamayi Ma, 86, Indian saint, teacher, and mystic, who was revered as an incarnation of Hindu goddess Durga.

August 28, 1982 (Saturday)

• Born: LeAnn Rimes, American country singer; in Jackson, Mississippi

August 29, 1982 (Sunday)

• Element 109, meitnerium, was synthesized in the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, West Germany, by a resarch team led by Peter Armbruster and Gottfried Münzenberg, with the bombardment of bismuth-209 by accelerated nuclei of the isotope iron-58 and detected a single atom of meitnerium-278, with a half-life of 4.5 seconds.
• The Transglobe Expedition, the first trip around the world from south to north to both poles, came to an end slightly less than three years after its start on September 2, 1979, as as Ranulph Fiennes, Charles R. Burton, and Oliver Shepard returned to their starting point at London. They had reached the South Pole on December 15, 1980 and the North Pole on April 11, 1982, before traveling southward back to London.
• Born: Zhang Bo, Chinese film and television actor; in Beijing.
• Died:

  

  Ingrid Bergman

  • Ingrid Bergman, 67, Swedish actress and autobiographer, died from breast cancer which had spread to her spine, collapsing her twelfth vertebra and retained only a small part of her left lung had not collapsed
  • Nahum Goldmann, 87, Belarusian Zionist, founder of the World Jewish Congress who served as the organization's president from 1951 until 1978, president of the World Zionist Organization from 1956 until 1968

August 30, 1982 (Monday)

• The leadership of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), led by Yasser Arafat, departed from Lebanon as Muslim members of the Multinational Force in Lebanon|Multinational Peace Force moved in. Arafat and others flew from Beirut to relocation in Tunisia.
• Furukawa Electric defeated Yanmar Diesel, 3 to 2, to win the JSL Cup, the playoff tournament of the Japan Soccer League.
• The village of Tiki Island, Texas, with a population of more than 1,100 was incorporated on a man-made island that had been primarily constructed in Galveston Bay by land excavated from canals.

August 31, 1982 (Tuesday)

• Mass protests, organized by the Solidarity trade union, took place in 66 cities in Poland against the state of martial law declared by the nation's Communist government. Street fights and rioting marked many of the protests, three protesters were shot and killed in Lubin, and one demonstrator each was killed in Wroclaw, Gdansk, Nova Huta and Torun, and police arrested 4,050 people.
• The crash of a U.S. Air Force Lockheed C-141 Starlifter cargo plane in Graham County, North Carolina killed all nine people on board while they were flying on a training mission from Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina.
• Born: Alina Dumitru, Romanian judo champion and 2008 Olympic gold medalist
• Died: Sri Ramappa Balappa Bidari, 83, Indian lawyer and independence activist, and prime minister of the Aundh State principality prior to India's independence from 1941 to 1948; in Bucharest