The following events occurred in April 1982:
April 1, 1982 (Thursday) Former Dominican Republic president Joaquín Balaguer, who had governed the Central American nation from 1960 to 1962, and again from 1968 to 1978, announced that he was withdrawing his candidacy in the May 16 presidential election, despite being the perceived frontrunner. The withdrawal cleared the way for Salvador Jorge Blanco of the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano to be the next president. In Stanley, capital of the Falkland Islands, the British governor, Rex Hunt, received a telegram that said "We have apparently reliable evidence that an Argentine task force could be assembling off Stanley at dawn tomorrow." At the same time, the Argentine amphibious warship ARA Cabo San Antonio, the destroyer ARA Santísima Trinidad and the submarine ARA Santa Fe were approaching the island of East Falkland to prepare for the invasion that would take place the next day. The night before the invasion, U.S. President Ronald Reagan initiated a phone call to Argentina's President Leopoldo Galtieri at 8:21 Washington time, and talked for 50 minutes in an attempt to persuade the ruling Argentine military junta to call off its plans. Born: Andreas Thorkildsen, Norwegian athlete, 2004 and 2008 Olympic gold medalist in the javelin throw; in Kristiansand Robert Vittek, Slovakian footballer with 82 caps for the Slovakia national team; in Bratislava
April 2, 1982 (Friday) Combat began on the Falklands between the British Royal Marines and invading Argentine forces at 7:15 in the morning. Outnumbered and outgunned, the Royal Marines withdrew toward the Government House, and at 9:30 a.m., Governor Hunt ordered the surrender. In Moscow, a Soviet court sentenced dissident Ivan Kovalyov to five years in a labor camp, to be followed by five more in internal exile, after he was convicted of "producing and distributing anti-Soviet material." Born: David Ferrer, Spanish tennis player; in Xabia, Davis Cup gold medalist for Spain in 2008, 2009 and 2011
April 3, 1982 (Saturday) British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher addressed the House of Commons and announced that a Royal Navy task force of at least 35 ships, two-thirds of Britain's naval strength, was on a two-week voyage to the Falklands to liberate the territory from Argentine control. Thatcher told the MPs, "The Falkland Islands and their dependencies remain British territory; no aggression and no invasion can alter that simple fact. It is the Government's object to see the islands are free from occupation," and added, "I stress I cannot foretell what orders the task force will receive as they proceed. That will depend on the situation at the time." On the same day, Argentina began the invasion of South Georgia after having captured East Falkland the day before. The El Chichón volcano in Mexico's Chiapas state had its second major eruption in a week, six days after the initial blast on March 28. After tremors that had lasted all day long subsided, the volcano erupted violently at 7:35 p.m. local time. The April 3 eruption was followed by pyroclastic flows of hot liquids, down the sides of the Chichonal mountain, stranding survivors in mountainside villages and preventing rescue teams from reaching them. An even more violent eruption would happen 34 hours later. U.S. President Reagan delivered the first of a series of five-minute Saturday radio broadcasts from the White House with the goal of updating the American public on current issues. The first program was delivered live from the White House at 12:05 p.m. Eastern Time. Born: Cobie Smulders (stage name for Jacoba Francisca Smulders), Canadian actress known for portraying Robin Scherbatsky in How I Met Your Mother; in Vancouver Died: Warren Oates, 53, American film actor, died from a heart attack Stephanie Roper, 22, American murder victim
April 4, 1982 (Sunday) Only one week after voters had elected 60 persons to El Salvador's new Constituent Assembly, one of the new members, David Joaquin Quinteros, died from gunshot wounds a few hours after his body was found in the city dump for San Salvador. North Korea's President Kim Il Sung was unanimously re-elected by the nation's parliament. Born: Pamela Conti, Italian footballer with 90 caps for the women's national team, who later coached the Venezuela women's team (2019-2024) and the India team (2026); in Palermo Died: Dzhabar Rasulov, 69, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Tadzhik SSR since 1961 and the Soviet republic's de facto leader
April 5, 1982 (Monday) The El Chichón volcano in Mexico had an even more violent eruption than the one 34 hours earlier on April 3. The eruption struck at 5:33 a.m. and continuing for 45 minutes. with pyroclastic flows of boiling liquids, with water vapor, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid at a temperature of () and at at speeds of into mountainside villages that had already been stranded by the April 3 eruption. Hardest hit were the municipalities of Francisco León and Chapultenango. Following the second eruption, a death toll of 5,000 was estimated. Led by the aircraft carriers HMS Invincible and HMS Hermes, a fleet of 35 Royal Navy ships departed Portsmouth toward the Falkland Islands, three days after the British territory had been captured by Argentina. Shortly afterward, the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington, resigned from office. Carrington, how had been unaware that the invasion was going to happen until 24 hours before East Falkland was captured, said that he had been responsible for a policy that had led to "a humiliating affront to this country." In Pyongyang, North Korea's parliament, the 615-member Supreme People's Assembly convened the first session since the members' elections on February 28. All of the members had been approved for the sole political party, the Democratic Front for the Reunification of Korea (also called the Fatherland Front) and took up the question of "expediting self-reliance and peaceful reunification of the fatherland by securing the guarantee of peace" with South Korea. On the U.S. NBC TV network Tom Brokaw and Roger Mudd became co-anchors of the NBC Nightly News, after longtime anchor John Chancellor retired on April 2. On September 5, 1983, Brokaw would become the sole anchor. The U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in the case of Mills v. Habluetzel, with a ruling that a one-year statute of limitations on a paternity determination suit was unconstitutional, in that it denied equal protection of the law to children whose parents were not married to each other.. Born: Thomas Hitzlsperger, German footballer with 52 caps for the Germany national team; in Munich, West Germany Hayley Atwell, English TV actress; in London Died: Abe Fortas, 71, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1965 to his 1969 resignation amid scandal, died of a ruptured aorta. Bella Bruck, 70, American character actress and comedienne
April 6, 1982 (Tuesday) The Carter Center was inaugurated in Atlanta by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, former first lady Rosalynn Carter, and administrator Paige Alexander. The Center, for which Jimmy Carter would receive the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize is a nongovernmental, nonprofit organization with a goal of advancing human rights worldwide (including funding for election monitoring, conflict mediation and support for democratic institutions) and alleviating human suffering (including campaigns to treat rare tropical disease and eradicating dracunculiasis and treating onchocerciasis, trachoma, lymphatic filariasis, and malaria). A retired North Carolina engineer, George Meek, held a press conference in Washington, DC and demonstrated the "Spiricom", an electronic device that made it possible to hold two-way conversations with the spirits of deceased people, including Dr. George Mueller, a scientist who had died in 1967. Meek offered to provide the design specifications to researchers for free. However, nobody was ever known to replicate the results. Born: Hong Kwang-ho, South Korean stage and musical actor; in Seoul Died: Helen Lawrenson, 74, American socialite and magazine writer for Vanity Fair Al Hoxie, 80, American silent western film star and stuntman of the 1920s, known for Red Blood and Riding Romance (1925), Unseen Enemies and The Road Agent (1926), Rider of the Law and His Last Bullet (1927) before beginning a new career as a police officer after the end of the silent era.
April 7, 1982 (Wednesday) The Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, signed on August 1, 1980, entred into force. A fire killed seven people and injured two others in the Caldecott Tunnel in California after a gasoline tanker truck struck a stalled automobile and burst into flame. The accident happened shortly after midnight, when traffic was minimal. Argentine General Mario Benjamín Menéndez was sworn in as the Governor of the Malvinas, replacing Rex Hunt, who had been Governor of the Falkland Islands before Argentina's invasion. The fascist British National Party was founded by far-right political activist John Tyndall and announced at a press conference in Victoria, London Born: Julia Hart, American filmmaker Marcelo Jeneci, Brazilian songwriter and singer; in São Paulo Tyron Woodley, American UFC welterweight champion and NCAA wrestling champion; in Ferguson, Missouri Sian Clifford, English television actress; in London Died: Koço Uçi, 59, Albanian composer. Stig Lindberg, 65, Swedish ceramic and textile designer
April 8, 1982 (Thursday) Israeli chemist Dan Shechtman discovered the icosahedral phase that created the recently identified quasicrystal, a finding that would lead to being awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, who had served as the Foreign Minister of Iran in 1979 and 1980, was arrested along with several army officers and clerics on charges that he was plotting the assassination of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Convicted of treason, he would be executed by firing squad on September 15, 1982. In Britain, the 7-member War Cabinet (including Prime Minister Thatcher, Defence Secretary Nott, Foreign Affairs Secretary Francis Pym and Chief of Defence Staff Terence Lewin) voted to remove 30 nuclear bombs that were part of the arsenal of four of the Falklands-bound Royal Navy warships. The Cabinet reversed the decision on April 11 because offloading the bombs was impractical. On May 28, 1982, the War Cabinet directed that the weapons be brought back from the Falklands conflict, and no nuclear weapons were used. The John Woo comedy horror film To Hell with the Devil, starring Ricky Hui, had its world premiere in Hong Kong Born: Allu Arjun, Indian Telugu cinema star and one of the highest paid actors in Indian film, known for Arya (2004), Pushpa: The Rise (2021) and Pushpa 2: The Rule (2024) in Madras, Tamil Nadu state Died: Burt Shevelove, 66, American playwright and lyricist known for Stephen Sondheim's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum(1962) and No, No, Nanette (1971)
April 9, 1982 (Friday) United Nations Security Council Resolution 503 was approved unanimously by all 15 members after the confirmation by the Supreme Court of South Africa of death sentences against African National Congress members Ncimbithi Johnson Lubisi, Petrus Tsepo Mashigo and Naphtali Manana. The Resolution declared that the world's nations were "Deeply concerned that the carrying out of the death sentences would further aggravate the situation in South Africa," calling upon "the South African authorities to commute the death sentences" and urging all nations "to use their influence and to take urgent measures... to save the lives of the three men.""Resolution 503 (1982)", United Nations documents After the resolution was adopted, South Africa commuted the death sentences to life imprisonment. Lubisi, Mashigo and Manana would be released in 1990 after the end of white rule in South Africa.