February 12 – 100 women protest in Lahore, Pakistan, against military dictator Zia-ul-Haq's proposed Law of Evidence. The women are tear-gassed, baton-charged and thrown into lock-up but are successful in repealing the law.
The Venezuelan bolívar is devalued and exchange controls are established in an event now referred to as Black Friday by many Venezuelans (the Bolívar had been the most stable and internationally accepted currency).[clarification needed]
Two separate research groups led by Robert Gallo and Luc Montagnier independently declare that a novel retrovirus may have been infecting people with HIV/AIDS, and publish their findings in the same issue of the journal Science.[7][8]
June 22 – Emanuela Orlandi, a 15-year-old Vatican girl, mysteriously disappears in Rome while returning home from a music lesson. The disappearance of the girl led to many speculations involving international terrorism, Italian organized crime, and even a plot inside the Vatican to cover a sexual scandal inside the Holy See. Because of all these theories, the Orlandi case would later become Italy's most famous mystery.
July 7 – Ten-year-old American girl Samantha Smith accepts her invitation from Soviet Premier Yuri Andropov and begins her visit to the USSR with her parents.
Hurricane Alicia hits the Texas coast, killing 22 and causing over US $3.8billion (2005 dollars) in damage.
Five people are killed and 18 others injured when a road train is deliberately driven into a motel at Ayers Rock in the Northern Territory of Australia (the driver, Douglas Edward Crabbe, is convicted in March1984).
The Soyuz T-10-1 mission ends in a pad abort at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, when a pad fire occurs at the base of the Soyuz U rocket during the launch countdown. The escape tower system, attached to the top of the capsule containing the crew and Soyuz spacecraft, fires immediately, pulling the crew safe from the vehicle a few seconds before the rocket explodes, destroying the launch complex.
The mass burial of around 700,000 unsold Atari video game cartridges, consoles, and computers occurs in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
October 21 – At the 17th General Conference on Weights and Measures, the metre is defined in terms of the speed of light as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.
General elections are celebrated in Venezuela in which the opposition party, Democratic Action, wins a majority in both chambers of the Venezuelan Congress and the presidency for the 1984–1989 period under Jaime Lusinchi. Voter turnout is 87.3% and Lusinchi obtains 58.4% of the votes.
December 5 – ICIMOD is established and inaugurated with its headquarters in Kathmandu, Nepal, and legitimised through an Act of Parliament in Nepal this same year.
December 7 – Two Spanish passenger planes collide on the foggy runway at a Madrid airport, killing 90 people.
December 9 – The Australian dollar is floated by Federal treasurer Paul Keating. Under the old flexible peg system, the Reserve Bank bought and sold all Australian dollars and cleared the market at the end of the day. This initiative is taken by the government of Bob Hawke.
Parry, Robert (2001). The map library in the new millennium. Chicago; London: American Library Association Library Association Pub. p.90. ISBN9780838935187.
Blackburn, Peter (May 28, 1983). "New capital grows in rural Africa: PETER BLACKBURN reports on Yamoussoukro's dramatic promotion from an obscure village buried in the bush to the capital of the Ivory Coast". South China Morning Post. ProQuest1553829422.
RC Gallo; PS Sarin; EP Gelmann; M Robert-Guroff; E Richardson; VS Kalyanaraman; D Mann; GD Sidhu; RE Stahl; S Zolla-Pazner; J Leibowitch; M Popovic (1983). "Isolation of human T-cell leukemia virus in acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS)". Science. 220 (4599): 865–867. Bibcode:1983Sci...220..865G. doi:10.1126/science.6601823. PMID6601823.
Aldrich, Robert (1993). The Crisis in New Caledonia in the 1980s. In: France and the South Pacific since 1940. Palgrave Macmillan, London. p.242. ISBN978-1-349-10830-5.
Howard, Geoffrey (1986). Automobile aerodynamics: theory and practice for road and track. London Osceola, Wis., USA: Osprey for Motorbooks International. p.53. ISBN9780850456653.
Frederick S. Calhoun (1998). Hunters and Howlers: Threats and Violence Against Federal Judicial Officials in the United States, 1789-1993. U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Marshals Service. p.15.
