1982: AT&T Breakup, Falklands War

By Patrick Mondout

The Falkland's War was the major international story.

Major Stories

January 8: The Justice Department and AT&T agree to a consent decree to end a battle that first started in 1974. AT&T agrees to divest itself of its local telephone operations (the "Baby Bells").
January 13: An icy Air Florida 737 crashes into Washington, D.C.'s 14th Street Bridge and plunges into the Potomac killing 78.
January 24: The San Francisco 49ers defeat the Cincinnati Bengals 26-21 in Super Bowl XVI.
March 3: Comedian and actor John Belushi dies from a drug overdose in Hollywood.
March 19: Argentine forces land on South Georgia Island in the British Falklands Islands.
March 25: Nicaraguan strongman Daniel Ortega (who was later accused by his step-daughter of sexual abuse) suspends his country's constitution following the destruction of two bridges near the Honduran border by anti-Sandinista rebels the previous day.
April 2: Argentinean General Galtieri announces he has "retaken" the Falkland Islands (see March 19) and an eager British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher orders British naval forces to the area.
May 11: The formation of the United States Football League (USFL), which is to to compete with the NFL with spring/summer games, is announced.
April 5: The Falkland's War claims its first political casualty when Lord Carrington resigns as Foreign Secretary.
June 20: Official end to the hostilities known as the Falkland's War six days after the Argentines surrendered.
July 9: A Pan Am 727 crashes on takeoff in a thunderstorm in Louisiana killing all 146 on board and eight on the ground.
September 9: Princess Grace, the former movie star Grace Kelly, was killed in a car accident.
September 14: Lebanese Prime Minister Bashir Gemayel was assassinated by a car bomb parked outside his party's Beirut headquarters.
October 1: After a vote of no confidence by his party, Helmut Schmidt is out as Chancellor of Germany. Helmut Kohl replaces him.
October 8: The Polish government bans the opposition party Solidarity.
October 19: Carmaker John DeLorean is arrested for selling cocaine to undercover police. He was later found "not guilty", due to entrapment.
November 10: Leonid Brezhnev, leader of the Soviet Union from Khrushchev's death in 1964, dies at age 75 from heart and lung problems.
November 12: Yuri Andropov becomes the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee, succeeding the late Leonid Brezhnev.
November 14: Solidarity's (see October 8) leader Lech Walesa is released after 11 months in captivity.
December 2: Barney Clark receives the first artificial heart transplant in Salt Lake City. He lives for three months.