Events Date 1983 April | History by KabAstro

Apr 1 Anti-nuclear demonstrators link arms in 14-mile human chain in England
Apr 1 Iraq increases missile attacks on Iran

Sports History

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

Apr 3 2nd NCAA Women's Basketball Championship: USC beats Louisiana Tech, 69-67; Trojans' forward Cheryl Miller tournament MOP

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 45th NCAA Men's Basketball Championship: North Carolina State beats Houston, 54-52; Wolfpack win with buzzer-beating dunk by Lorenzo Charles off a desperation 30 foot shot from Dereck Whittenburg
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 137th Grand National: Ben de Haan wins aboard 13/1 bet Corbiere; Jenny Pittman first female GN winning trainer
Apr 9 6th NASA Space Shuttle Mission: Challenger 1 returns to Earth

#1 in the Charts

Apr 9 David Bowie's single "Let's Dance" becomes his 1st song to hit #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
Apr 11 3rd Golden Raspberry Awards: "Inchon!" wins

Apr 11 47th US Masters Tournament, Augusta National GC: Seve Ballesteros of Spain wins his 2nd Masters and 3rd major title, 4 strokes ahead of Ben Crenshaw and Tom Kite; Monday finish because of torrential rain

Golfer and Five-Time Major Winner Seve Ballesteros

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

Election of Interest

Apr 12 Harold Washington elected Chicago's 1st black mayor

1st African American Mayor of Chicago Harold Washington

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
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
Apr 14 NY Islanders tie own record with 2 shorthanded playoff goals (vs NY Rangers)

Event of Interest

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 87th Boston Marathon: American double; Greg Meyer men's champion in 2:09:00; Joan Benoit takes women's race in 2:22:43; her 2nd event title
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 28th Eurovision Song Contest: Corinne Hermes for Luxembourg wins singing "Si la vie est cadeau" in Munich
Apr 23 David Hookes scores his only Test Cricket century, 143* v Sri Lanka
Apr 24 "Show Boat" opens at Uris Theater NYC for 73 performances
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