The following events occurred in September 1982:
September 1, 1982 (Wednesday) U.S. President Ronald Reagan, in a nationally televised address from Los Angeles, declared that Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in Gaza should have "full autonomy" in some form, under supervision by the neighboring Kingdom of Jordan. Reagan also endorsed negotiations for "an 'undivided' Jerusalem with Palestinian control over East Jerusalem and Israel retaining West Jerusalem. The speech came after the last of the nearly 15,000 Palestinian guerrillas and Syrian troops had departed from West Beirut in Lebanon on a ship to return to Syria, and Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasir Arafat arrived in Athens. A crisis that would lead to the collapse of the West Germany's government took place at a cabinet meeting in Bonn, as Chancellor Helmut Schmidt argued with his coalition partner, Minister for Economic Affairs Otto Lambsdorff, over Lambsdorff's remarks published the day before in an interview with the daily newspaper Bild. Lambsdorff had told the newspaper that voters in an upcoming election in the state of Hesse should decide whether they wanted his Free Democrats to remain in their coalition with Schmidt's Social Democrats. Archaeologist Manolis Andronikos of Salonika University announced that he and a team had discovered the theater where King Philip II of Macedonia, father of Alexander the Great, had been assassinated in 336 BCE. Andronikos had found the burial grounds of King Philip in 1979, and said that the theater ruins were found only from the central palace at Vergina, a village in northeastern Greece that was believed by archaeologist to be on the ruins of Aegae, the ancient Macedonian capital of Aegae. King Philip had been killed by an officer of his guard during a celebration before he was to embark on a new military campaign. Born: Jeffrey Buttle, Canadian figure skater and 2008 World Champion; in Smooth Rock Falls, Ontario Died: Wladyslaw Gomulka, 77, the de facto leader of Poland from 1956 to 1970 as General Secretary of the nation's Communist organization, the Polish United Workers' Party
September 2, 1982 (Thursday) Died: Jay Novello (stage name for Michael Romano), American character actor on radio, film and television
September 3, 1982 (Friday) Sicily's Cosa Nostra organized crime element ambushed and killed the police chief of Palermo, along with his wife and an escort police officer in the town of Mondello. General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa and his wife Emanuela were passing the Via Isidoro Carini when four hit men, pulled alongside Dallas Chiesa's car in two vehicles and shot the couple, firing 30 shots from AK-47 rifles. The escort officer, Domenico Russo, died from his wounds 12 days later. Born: Sarah Jean Burke, Canadian freestyle skier, winner of the 2005 FIS Freestyle World Ski championship in the halfpipe, and five-time Winter X Games gold medalist (2007-2009, 2011); in Barrie, Ontario Died: Frederic Dannay, 66, American mystery writer who wrote, along with Manfred Bennington Lee, under the pseudonym Ellery Queen
September 4, 1982 (Saturday) An arson fire killed 25 people at an apartment building and injured 30 others in Los Angeles, California. Humberto de la Torre had an argument with his uncle and used gasoline and one match to set fire to the Dorothy Mae Apartments building at 821 Sunset Boulevard.The building, with 43 units, housed almost 200 people, most of whom were immigrants in four families from the Mexican state of Zacatecas. De la Torre would be sentenced to 625 years in prison, with a 25-year sentence for each of 25 counts of murder.</ref> The blaze would also lead to the passage of the "Dorothy Mae Law" by the state of California, retroactively requiring fire sprinklers for all residential buildings, of at least three stories in height, that were built prior to 1943. The Oregon Journal, the afternoon newspaper for Portland, Oregon, published its final issue after 80 years.. Kirkland Laing, a professional welterweight boxer who was little known outside of England, scored a major upset in a tune-up fight, defeated former WBC world welterweight champion Roberto Durán in a 10-round bout in Detroit. Born: Ning Chang (Chang Chun-ning, also known as Janine Chang), German-born Taiwanese film and TV actress, singer and film producer in both Taiwan and Mainland China; in Munich, West Germany Died: Jim Shampine, 41, American supermodified car driver with 8 championships in the sport, was killed in a crash during a 200 mile race at the Oswego Speedway in Oswego, New York.
September 5, 1982 (Sunday) Died: Sir Douglas Bader, 72, British flying age credited with 22 aerial victories in World War II, who returned to being an RAF pilot in 1939 despite having both legs partially amputated in 1931
September 6, 1982 (Monday) China's 12th Communist Party Congress approved a new party constitution that eliminated praise for the late Chairman Mao Zedong (such as "the greatest Marxist-Leninist of our time") and for Mao's Cultural Revolution, and forbidding "all forms of personality cult". Specifically, the new party constitution declared that "No party members, whatever their position, are allowed to make decisions on major issues individually," and "No leaders are allowed to practice arbitrary individual rule or place themselves above the party organization."
September 7, 1982 (Tuesday) Born: Emese Szász, Hungarian fencer and 2016 women's fencing gold medalist; in Budapest Died: Ken Boyer, 51, American baseball player and 1964 National League MVP, died from cancer.
September 8, 1982 (Wednesday) Elections were held in the Netherlands for all 150 seats of the Tweede Kamer, the "second chamber" or lower house of the Dutch parliament, the Staten-Generaal. While no party won the required 76 seat majority, the Christen-Democratisch Appèl (CDA), led by Ruud Lubbers, finished a close second with 45 seats and was able to form a coalition government with the Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, known as the VVD or Volkspartij), which won 36 seats, replacing the government that had been led by outgoing Prime Minister Dries van Agt of the CDA. Died: Sheikh Abdullah, Indian politician and Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir since 1975
September 9, 1982 (Thursday) Born: Ai Otsuka, Japanese singer known for her 2003 hit song "Sakuranbo; in Osaka Died: Tee Tee Luce, 87, Burmese philanthropist and founder of the Home for Waifs and Strays in Yangon, died in exile in England.
September 10, 1982 (Friday) Born: Misty Copeland, American ballet dancer and the first African-American principal dancer in the American Ballet Theatre; in Kansas City, Missouri Bret Iwan, American voice actor known for voicing the role of Mickey Mouse on television since 2009; in Pasadena, California Died: Jane Ingham, 85, English botanist
September 11, 1982 (Saturday) Born: Elvan Abeylegesse, Ethiopian distance runner who held the women's 5000m world record from 2004 to 2006; in Addis Ababa, winner of two Olympic silver medals in 2008, which were disqualified in 2009 for doping; in Addis Ababa Shriya Saran, Indian film actress and star of Sivaji: The Boss
September 12, 1982 (Sunday) Born: Isabelle Caro, French model, television actress and spokesperson for the campaign against anorexia nervosa (d.2010); in Aubergenville, Yvelines département Max Hoff, German canoeist, 2016 Olympic gold medalist and seven world championship gold medals from 2009 to 2013, and 2018 to 2019; in Troisdorf, West Germany Died: Franz Grothe, 73, German composer of classical music, film scores and popular songs
September 13, 1982 (Monday) Born: Nenê Hilario, Brazilian men's professional basketball player for Brazil and from 2002-2020 for the NBA; as Maybyner Rodney Hilário in São Carlos, São Paulo state
September 14, 1982 (Tuesday) Lebanese President-elect Bachir Gemayel was killed along with 26 other people when a bomb exploded at the Phalangist headquarters in Achrafieh, where he was addressing the Lebanese Forces for the last time as their commander. At 4:10 pm, the bomb, placed by Syrian terrorist Habib Shartouni of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party in an apartment directly above the meeting room, was detonated as Gemayel was addressing the delegates. Died: Princess Grace of Monaco, 52, died the day after her auto accident. Kristján Eldjárn, 65, the third President of Iceland from 1968 to 1980, died in Cleveland, Ohio, while recovering from heart surgery. John Gardner, 49, American writer known for On Moral Fiction (1978), was killed in a motorcycle accident near his home in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania
September 15, 1982 (Wednesday) The first issue of USA Today, a national newspaper for the United States, was published after being developed by Al Neuharth, the chairman of Gannett Company with initial distribution in the metropolitan areas of Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, at a cost of 25 cents per issue.
September 16, 1982 (Thursday) Tne massacre of thousands of Lebanese Palestinian refugees by the Phalangists, a Lebanese Christian militia, began in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in West Beirut at 6:00 in the evening;, four days after the assassination of the president-elect, Bachir Gemayel. The Lebanese National Resistance Front was founded by Walid Jumblatt after the collapse of the Lebanese National Movement in the wake of Israel's invasion of Lebanon, and began guerrilla operations against the occupying Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Pole Position, the most popular video arcade game of 1983, made its debut in Japan after being created by the Namco corporation. Licensed to Atari for North American distribution, it would be introduced in arcades across the United States and Canada on November 30, 1982.
September 17, 1982 (Friday) The military government of Bolivia, led by General Guido Vildoso since July, announced its resignation in the wake of a general strike throughout the South American nation, and issued an order reconvening the National Congress to validate the results of the 1980 presidential election that had been interrupted by a military coup on July 17, 1981. In West Germany, a crisis that would end in the removal of Chancellor Helmut Schmidt from office began with the collapse of a coalition between Schmidt's Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD, the Social Democrats) and the Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP, the Free Democrats) that had been assembled after no party won a majority in the 1980 elections for the 497-member Bundestag. With the 218 SPD seats and the 53 FDP seats, the coalition surpassed the necessary 249 seats for a majority but on September 17, all four FDP members of the cabinet— Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Interior Minister Gerhart Baum, Economy Minister Otto Graf Lambsdorff and Agriculture Minister Josef Ertl— resigned. Schmidt then named four members of his own party as replacements, and was removed by vote of the Bundestag on October 1.
September 18, 1982 (Saturday) Tne Sabra and Shatila massacre ended at 8:00 in the morning, after 38 hours during which the Phalangist Christian militia, led by Elie Hobeika, had carried out the torture and murder of at least 762 Palestinian civilians (and perhaps as many as 3,500) as retaliation for the assassination of the Prime Minister-elect, Bachir Gemayel.
September 19 1982 (Sunday) The first emoticons were posted by Scott Fahlman. Born: Skepta (stage name for Joseph Adenuga Jr.), British grime music MC rapper; in London
September 20, 1982 (Monday) The village of Muabanama, located in the Lugela District of the People's Republic of Mozambique, was destroyed by guerrillas of the Revolutionary Party of Mozambique in the course of the Mozambican Civil War.