The following events occurred in July 1982:
July 1, 1982 (Thursday) Ireland's Prime Minister (Taoiseach) Charles Haughey and his government passed a vote of confidence in the Dáil by seven votes, 84 to 77.
July 2, 1982 (Friday) Larry Walters, an American truck driver in Los Angeles, attached 42 weather balloons, filled with helium, to a lawnchair and lifted off from San Pedro, California to make a 45-minute flight, reaching an altitude of after originally tethering the chair to his jeep. Using a pellet gun, he descended by shooting and deflating individual balloons until he could safely descend to the ground. Iranian Shia cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Sadoughi, a representative of Iran's leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, was assassinated when a grenade was thrown at him after he had finished conducting the Friday Prayer at a mosque in Yazd. Three bystanders were killed in the explosion as well. English punk rock singer William Broad, better known by his stage name of Billy Idol, released his first album, which included his first hit song, "White Wedding". Died: DeFord Bailey, 82, the first African-American country music star known for performing on the Grand Ole Opry radio show with his white co-star, Uncle Dave Macon and inductee to the Country Music Hall of Fame Tom Jewett, American entrepreneur and pilot, was killed near Mojave, California in the crash of the Quickie Free Enterprise, an airplane which he and Gene Sheehan had designed to fly around the world on a single tank of 1382 litres or 365 U.S. gallons of aviation fuel. |
July 3, 1982 (Saturday) Uri Avnery, an Israeli journalist and political activist who had founded the Gush Shalom peace movement, met with Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat, after being allowed to cross enemy lines in Beirut. The meeting marked the first time that Arafat had ever had a meeting with an Israeli. The bodies of three murdered judges of the Supreme Court of Ghana— Cecilia Koranteng-Addow, Frederick Poku Sarkodee and Kwadwo Agyei Agyapong— along with that of retired Ghana Army Major Sam Acquah. were found in a search of the Bundase Military Range of the Ghana Military Academy near Accra, three days after they had been kidnapped from their homes.
July 4, 1982 (Sunday) Antonio Guzmán Fernández, the President of the Dominican Republic since 1978, shot himself in the head at the National Palace, the presidential residence and offices, in Santo Domingo. Guzman had six weeks left in his term after deciding not to run for re-election, and had been ill with depression for months. His vice president, Jacobo Majluta was sworn into office the next day and served out Guzman's term until August 16, when he turned the office over to the newly-elected president, Salvador Jorge Blanco. Elections were held in Mexico for the president, as well as all 64 seats in the Senado de la República and all 400 seats in the Cámara de Diputados. Candidates from Mexico's ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) repeated their wins of the presidency and both houses of the Mexican Congress, with Miguel de la Madrid winning more than 74% of the vote against 16% won by Pablo Emilio Madero of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN). The PRI also won all 64 of the seats in the Senado and 299 of the 400 seats in the Camara de Diputados. Three Iranian diplomats and a reporter for Iran's news agency were kidnapped in the course of the Lebanon War between Israel and Palestinian organizations in Lebanon. Seyed Mohsen Mousavi, the chargé d'affaires at the Iranian embassy in Beirut); Ahmad Motevaselian, an attache at the embassy in Lebanon; and Taghi Rastegar Moghadam, an embassy employee, were returning from Iran's Embassy in Syria, accompanied by Kazem Akhavan, a photojournalist of the Islamic Republic News Agency. The group were last seen in public when they were stopped at a Lebanese Forces checkpoint in northern Lebanon while traveling south from Damascus to Beirut. A four-member team, led by Seiichi Kawauchi from the Japanese Alpine Club, became the first people to climb to the top of the high Sosbun Brakk mountain in the Karakoram range in Pakistan. The other climbers were Hisao Hashimoto, Mikio Tabata, and Norichika Matsumoto. STS-4, the fourth mission of the U.S. Space Shuttle, ended successfully as the shuttle Columbia landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California at 8:09 a.m. local time (1609 UTC). Columbia had been launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on June 27 with astronauts Ken Mattingly and Henry Hartsfield. The first Grand Prix of Cleveland was held on the runways of the Burke Lakefront Airport, which was closed for maintenance, under the name "the Budweiser Cleveland 500", and event on the Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) circuit. The initial race was won by Bobby Rahal. The race would be discontinued after 2007. The American Association Denver Bears set the all-time record for the highest attendance by a Minor League Baseball team when they drew 65,666 spectators to Mile High Stadium for a game against the visiting Omaha Royals. Died: Terry Higgins, 37, Welsh disk jockey, and one of the first well-known persons in Britain to die of AIDS."Terrence Higgins' legacy, 30 years after death". Neil Prior, BBC News Wales, 5 July 2012. Retrieved 23 February 2015.
July 5, 1982 (Monday) In the United States, the Penn Square Bank of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma failed after mismanagement of high-risk loans to borrowers against the bank's assets and deposits.
The Maqam Echahid memorial was dedicated at Algiers to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Algeria's independence from France and to honor the persons killed in the Algerian War. Born: Sophie Adenot, French engineer and spationaute known for being launched in the NASA spacecraft SpaceX Crew-12 to the International Space Station; in Cosne-Cours-sur-Loire, Nièvre département
July 6, 1982 (Tuesday) The crash of Aeroflot Flight 411 in the Soviet Union killed all 90 people on board. The four-engine Ilyushin Il-62 jet airliner departed from Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport at 12:33 in the morning local time, with a destination of Darkar in Senegal and a final scheduled stop at Freetown, Sierra Leone. Within seconds after takeoff, the number 1 engine caught fire. A minute later, engine 2 failed at an altitude of only and the pilot turned the aircraft back toward Moscow with its left two engines gone, but the aircraft stalled at and crashed into a forest near the town of Mendeleyevo about from the airport. The longest lunar eclipse of the 20th century (and the longest since 1859), with a total duration of 106 minutes, took place, and was visible over Australia and North and South America. El Chico National Park was created in the Pachuca Mountains of Mexico in the state of Hidalgo.Decree to create the park (in Spanish) Died: Raúl Roa García, 75, Foreign Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976. Alma Reville, 82, English screenwriter, film editor and widow of Alfred Hitchcock Warren Tufts, 56, American comic strip cartoonist known for Casey Ruggles, was killed in a private plane crash.
July 7, 1982 (Wednesday) The daily newspaper The Telegraph began publication in the Indian city of Calcutta (now Kolkata).About The Telegraph Retrieved on 30 October 2009 Ogun State University was established in Nigeria and the city of Ago-Iwoye in the West African nation's Ogun State. It would be renamed in 2001 and is now Olabisi Onabanjo University. David Moorcroft of Britain broke the world record for the 5000 meter run, completing the five kilometers in 13 minutes and 0.41 seconds at the Bislett Games in Oslo, and breaking the mark of 13:06.20, held for four years by Henry Rono of Kenya. Died: Bhakti Hridaya Bon, 81, Hindu Vaishnavist guru"Swami Bon: Life and Teachings of a Gaudiya Vaishnava Saint", article from Swami Bon website, September 2012. Edward Huebsch, 68, American screenwriter and Communist Party member who was blacklisted from 1956 to 1977 Vice Admiral Alexandros Sakellariou, 95, leader of the Royal Hellenic Navy during World War II
July 8, 1982 (Thursday) "Diet Coke" was formally introduced by the Coca-Cola Company, being put on sale initially in New York City. A group of gunmen in the predominantly Shia Muslim city of Dujail carried out an assassination attempt against Iraq's President Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim during a visit. Nearly 800 men, women and children were arrested. Hundreds of others would be deported outside the city. After Saddam had given a speech praising local residents who had served in the ongoing war with neighboring Iran, he was being driven in a motorcade back to the capital at Baghdad when a group of gunmen from the Islamic Dawa Party attacked the group. Two of Saddam's bodyguards were killed, but he was uninjured. For the next four hours, a gun battle continued and most of the attackers were killed, while the survivors were captured and interrogated. Afterwards, arrests were made of hundreds of people in Dujail and the neighboring town of Balad. "Operation Sofia", ordered by Guatemalan Army Chief of Staff Héctor Mario López Fuentes, began in the province of El Quiché to eradicate villages whose residents were believed to be harboring leftist rebels. The 1st Battalion of the Guatemalan Airborne Troops carried out a campaign that lasted for six weeks until being finished on August 20. With four teams remaining in the FIFA World Cup final tournament in Spain, semifinal games took place between Poland and Italy (in Barcelona) and between West Germany v France (in Seville). West Germany and France were tied, 3 to 3, after extra time. The two teams were tied, 1 to 1 after 90 minutes full time, and each scored two goals in the 30 minute extra time period. For the first time in World Cup history, the penalty shoot-out was used to decide the winner. After five shots apiece, both teams had made 4 goals apiece. On the sixth round of shots, the kick by France's Maxime Bossis was blocked, while West Germany's Horst Hrubesch converted for the 5 to 4 win on penalties. The Argentine hit comedy and drama Plata dulce (literally, "sweet silver", a phrase similar to "easy money") was released nationwide in the South American country, and would win the Silver Condor Award for Best Film the following year. Born: Alicia Vela-Bailey, American actress and stunt double for actresses in U.S. films Died: Virginia Hall, 76, American spy who worked for Britain's Special Operations Executive and the U.S. Office of Strategic Services during World War II, and after the war for the Central Intelligence Agency Isa Miranda (stage name for Ines Isabella Sampietro), 77, Italian film actressMonica Cardarilli (2004) Miranda, Isa. Enciclopedia del Cinema Sylvan Byck, 77, American cartoonist who served as editor and evaluator for King Features Syndicate Gunnar Eriksson, 60, Swedish cross-country skier and Olympic gold medalist
July 9, 1982 (Friday) Pan Am Flight 759 crashed on takeoff from New Orleans and plummeted into a neighborhood in the New Orleans suburb of Kenner, Louisiana. All 146 people on board were killed, along with and eight others on the ground. With 138 passengers and seven crew, Flight 759 departed from New Orleans at 4:08 p.m. local time, with a destination of Las Vegas, into a heavy thunderstorm and a sudden microburst and, 63 seconds after becoming airborne, impacted at 1624 Fairway Street in Kenner, then across Hudson Street, 17th Street and Taylor Street. - Copy at Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University.