WHAT ALL HAPPENED AUGUST TO OCTOBER 1983
Find out what all happened August to October 1983

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

Rangoon bombing: attempted assassination of South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan during an official visit to Rangoon, Burma. Chun survives but the blast kills 17 of his entourage, including four cabinet ministers, and injures 17 others. Four Burmese officials also die in the blast. (9. October 1983)

Operation Urgent Fury: The United States and its Caribbean allies invade Grenada, six days after Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and several of his supporters are executed in a coup d'état. (25. October 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)

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)

Israeli premier Menachem Begin resigns. (15. September 1983)

Gulf Air Flight 771 is bombed, killing all 117 people on board. (23. September 1983)

The metre is defined at the seventeenth General Conference on Weights and Measures as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second. (21. October 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)

Philippine opposition leader Benigno Aquino, Jr. is assassinated at the Manila International Airport (now renamed Ninoy Aquino International Airport). (21. August 1983)

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

Vanessa Williams becomes the first black Miss America. (17. September 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)

Hurricane Alicia hits the Texas coast, killing 22 people and causing over US$1 billion in damage (1983 dollars). (18. August 1983)

A Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford, Connecticut, United States, is robbed of approximately US$7 million by Los Macheteros. (12. September 1983)

Two correctional officers are killed by inmates at the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois. The incident inspires the Supermax model of prisons. (22. October 1983)

Ameritech Mobile Communications (now AT&T Inc.) launched the first US cellular network in Chicago, Illinois. (13. October 1983)

Maurice Bishop, Prime Minister of Grenada, is overthrown and later executed in a military coup d'état led by Bernard Coard. (14. October 1983)

The first democratic elections in Argentina after seven years of military rule are held. (30. October 1983)

Saint Kitts and Nevis joins the United Nations. (23. September 1983)