March 1982

The following events occurred in March 1982:

• Iran's parliament, the Majlis, voted to allow the Islamic Republic's government to sell the historic treasures that had been collected by the deposed Shah of Iran during his reign.
• The Soviet Union's Venera 3 probe landed on the surface of the planet Venus and returned data for two hours and seven minutes, eventually failing under temperatures of 457 °C (855 °F). The probe returned eight photographs of the surface, the first since the original Venera lander had transmitted the first pictures on October 22, 1975.

• France's Law of Decentralization, drafted by Interior Minister Gaston Defferre, was passed into law by the Assemblée nationale, creating the administrative regions of France, a new level of subnational divisions between the départements and the national government. While the 96 metropolitan départements continue to have autonomy, they were grouped into 22 metropolitan régions française ¹ which through mergers have now become 13.
• South Korea's government announced a general amnesty for 2,863 prisoners, including 297 dissidents deemed as political offenders. While former opposition leader Kim Dae Jung was not released, his sentence of life imprisonment was reduced to 20 years incarceration. Observers noted that none of 419 of South Korea's known political prisoners were scheduled for release.
• U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig said in testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee that he had "overwhelming and irrefutable" evidence that a rebellion against El Salvador's right-wing military government was being directed by foreign powers. The House voted, 396 to 3, to urge U.S. President Ronald Reagan to press for unconditional discussions among El Salvador's political factionsto "guarantee a safe and stable environment for free and open elections."
• Israeli troops began removing Jewish settlers from Ophira, an unauthorized settlement near Sharm el-Sheik on the southern tip of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula in advance of the scheduled April 25 withdrawal of Israel from the area. The Indian press reported his death on March 5.
• An assassination attempt was made in Belfast against Lord Lowry, the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, as Irish Republican Army two gunmen fired on him as he arrived at Queen's University for a luncheon. Lowry was wounded in the thigh

• Chavviram Singh Yadav, one of India's most notorious bandit leaders in the Chambal Valley, was killed in a 90-minute gunbattle in the city of Etah in Uttar Pradesh state police, along with 12 of his followers. In addition to terrorizing state residents with his random attacks, Chavviram also committed murders in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. His body and those of his henchmen were then displayed on posts at the town of Aliganj.

• Bertha Wilson became the first woman to be appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada.

• Zhao Cangbi, the Minister of Public Security for the People's Republic of China, announced a plan to release of 4,327 former Republic of China government officials who had been imprisoned for more than 30 years since the defeat of Chiang Kai-shek by the Chinese Communist Army in 1949. Zhao told the National People's Congress that the government would pay the expenses for transport for those who wanted to move to Taiwan, and that those who chose to stay and who were still able to work would be given jobs. A bulletin from the government's Xinhua News Agency quoted Zhao as saying "These former Kuomintang personnel in custody have repented and by and large have turned over a new leaf after a long period of education and reform.
• Venera 14, the second of two Soviet space probes, landed on Venus and sent data for about one hour. As with Venera 13, the probe returned data to other Soviet spaceships flying by the planet, which then relayed images back to Earth.

• Died: John Belushi, American comedian, actor and musician, died after multiple injections of speedball, a combination of cocaine and heroin while he was staying at a bungalow at the Chateau Marmont celebrity resort in Hollywood, California.² A female friend, Cathy Smith, would later be convicted in 1986 of involuntary manslaughter.³

• Five Egyptian Moslem fundamentalists were sentenced to death for their role in the October 6 assassination of Egypt's President Anwar Sadat, with four having been the soldiers who had opened fire on Sadat while he was reviewing a military parade (including their leader, Lt. Khaled Ahmed el-Istambouly) and the fifth having been an associate who had provided the ammunition. Another 17 defendants were convicted as accessories and given terms ranging from one year up to life in prison.

• Elections were held in Guatemala for president, with General Angel Anibal Guevara reportedly getting most of the vote, despite a call for a boycott by leftist leaders. The Guatemalan government was overthrown 16 days later by dissatisfied army officers.

• The People's Republic of China approved a reorganization plan to reduce the number of ministries from 12 to six, to reduce the number of Vice-Premiers from 13 to 2, and to consolidate 98 state council organizations to 52, with a forecast to fire more than one-third of the 49,000 ministerial staff members to only 32,000.
• The British House of Commons voted, 177 to 13, to approve the patriation bill allowing Canada to create its own constitution. Fewer than one-third of the 635 members of Commons turned out to vote. The House of Lords followed suit on March 25, and the bill was sent to Queen Elizabeth II for royal assent, which came on March 29.

• Charles Haughey was elected as the new Taoiseach, the prime minister of Ireland, by the Dail, by a vote of 86 to 79 over his opponent, Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald.
• The U.S. Department of Defense released aerial reconnaissance photographs which it said proved that the leftist Republic of Nicaragua was attempting to build, with help from the Soviet Union and Cuba, the largest military force in Central America.

• The day of the "Jupiter Effect" arrived as all nine of the Solar System's planets were on the same side of the Sun, within a 95 degree arc. The eventual syzygy of the planets had been predicted decades earlier, but the event had been the basis for a bestselling book in 1974, The Jupiter Effect, by John Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann. The two wrote that the combined gravitational pull of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Mars, Venus, Mercury and Pluto would likely wreak havoc on Earth, although the predictions were dismissed by most astronomers and astrophysicists, and no unusual events occurred on the day of the syzygy.
• Euro TV was launched in Italy by Gianni Ferrauto and Calisto Tanzi, with syndicated programming to 18 stations that broadcast identical programs for six hours nationwide each day, with the remainder left to the affiliates' individual choices.⁴ The network would last for five years, until being superseded on September 5, 1987, by the Odeon 24 network.
• The United States placed an embargo on Libyan petroleum imports, citing Libya's involvement of state-sponsored terrorism.
• The Washington Post published an investigative report that asserted that President Reagan had authorized the creation of a CIA-trained paramilitary force of 500 people from other Latin American nations to lead commando raids inside Nicaragua to overthrow the Sandinista government.The State Department confirmed the next day that it had secretly provided $10.4 million in financial support to "non-Marxist democratic forces" and that it was prepared to provide $7.4 million more.
• Died: Tadj ol-Molouk, 85, mother of the late Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and former Queen consort of Iran from 1925 to 1941 as wife of Reza Shah, died in exile in Mexico at the Pahlavi family residence in Acapulco.

• U.S. Senator Harrison A. Williams Jr. of New Jersey resigned as the Senate was preparing to vote on a resolution to expel him from office following his 1981 conviction for bribery and conspiracy in the FBI's Abscam operation.

• At a press conference and briefing at the U.S. Department of State, Orlando Jose Tardencillas was introduced as proof that Marxist nations were attempting to gain control of Central America. Tardencillas, a 19-year-old Nicaraguan rebel, had been captured in El Salvador and confessed to being trained along with other Nicaraguans in Cuba and Ethiopia. When the news conference began, however, Tardencillas recanted his confession, denied that he had been trained abroad, and told reporters that he had "obviously been presented for purposes of propaganda. ⁵
• The U.S. Department of Labor announced the first decrease in the consumer price index since February 1976, after six years of constant inflation.

• A group of 45 soldiers from South Africa's 32 Battalion special forces unit, composed largely of black soldiers who had formerly served in Portugal's colonial troops before Angolan independence, crossed into Angola and killed 201 guerrillas with the South West African People's Organization (SWAPO). The Battalion lost three of its own soldiers.
• Italy's Prime Minister Giovanni Spadolini won a vote of confidence in the Italian parliament, whose members voted their approval of his government, 352 to 237.

• Voting for both houses of the Congreso de la Republica of Colombia was held. The Partido Liberal won 104 of the 199 seats in the Cámara de Representantes and 55 of the 114 seats in the Senado.⁶
• Nine teenagers were killed and one critically injured after their van, with 10 people aboard, was struck by a Long Island Rail Road train in Mineola, New York. The 19-year-old van driver drove around the lowered gates of a railroad crossing and then got stuck on the track.
• In Morocco, one of the 24 nations in the upcoming World Cup, the soccer football team Raja Casablanca won the Moroccan Throne Cup, defeating Renaissance de Kénitra, 1 to 0, for the national tournament championship.

• Nicaragua's leader, Daniel Ortega Saavedra declared a state of siege and suspended all constitutional rights for 30 days.

• Claus von Bülow was found guilty of the attempted murder of his wife, Sunny von Bulow, by a jury in Newport, Rhode Island.⁷
• Soviet head of state and party leader Leonid Brezhnev announced that the Soviet Union was halting further deployment of SS-20 nuclear missiles in Eastern Europe. U.S. officials in Moscow responded by saying that the unilateral move was propaganda that had come the day after the U.S. said that the Soviets had already placed 300 intermediate-range missiles Warsaw Pact nations and was constructing five additional bases.

• Four members of a Dutch television crew were killed by Salvadoran troops while traveling with leftist guerrillas as war correspondents. The four men— Jacobus Andries Koster, jan Kuiper, Johannes Willemsen and Hans ter Laan— were in El Salvador's Chalatenango province to report on daily life in rebel held areas when their escorts opened fire on the Salvadoran Army unit.
• The first contingent of U.S. participants in a 3,000 member international peacekeeping force arrived in the Sinai arrived with 670 of a planned 1,200 U.S. Army troops.
• In India, the state of Kerala was placed under President's Rule after its Chief Minister and his cabinet resigned. The next day, the government of the state of Assam came under direct rule.

• A legal case brought on behalf of Mary Whitehouse against the National Theatre of Britain concerning alleged obscenity in the play The Romans in Britain, ended after the intervention of the Attorney General for England and Wales intervenes.⁸⁹

• At the United Nations, Nicaragua's ambassador called for an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council to intervene in what it called "an imminent invasion" by American combat troops or by U.S.-trained paramilitary forces.
• Argentine scrap metal workers, whose group had been infiltrated by Marines from the South American nation, raised the flag of Argentina on South Georgia and the Falkland Islands, two British overseas territories long claimed by Argentina. The demonstration would be followed by an invasion of the Islands on April 2 by Argentine forces.

• The world's largest oil producer, Saudi Arabia, agreed to cut production effective April 1, after a two-day meeting of the OPEC nations, in a move to stop the falling prices of oil resulting from the high worldwide supply and decreasing demand.
• A crash killed all 27 people on a Garuda Indonesia airliner that overran the runway upon landing in Bandar Lampung during a heavy rain. The Fokker F28 jet, which had departed from Jakarta, caught fire after impact.¹⁰
• The right-wing Konserwatiewe Party of South Africa was founded by Andries Treurnicht as he and 22 other disaffected parliament members from the ruling National Party who were opposed to any concessions to non-white South Africans in the white-minority nation's apartheid policy.¹¹
• Died: Jo Copeland, 84, American women's fashion designer known for the buttoned two-piece suit (1944)¹²

• The United Auto Workers (UAW) labor union made concessions along with General Motors Corporation (GM) in reaching a 30-month contract, similar to the UAW concessions to the Ford Motor Company earlier in the year. GM called of its plans to close four factories or to lay off 11,000 workers, pledging to make no closings for two years, and the UAW agreed to give up worker benefits including guaranteed pay raises and an extension of paid vacations.

• The third flight of the American space shuttle Columbia was launched from Cape Canaveral with astronauts Jack Lousma and C. Gordon Fullerton, colonels in the U.S. Marines and U.S. Air Force, respectively. The mission was plagued with problems, but was the first to depart on the scheduled launch day, when it was witnessed by a crowd of 750,000 people.
• The U.S. State Department released a report to prove that the Soviet Union and its allies had used chemical warfare that killed more than 10,000 deaths various nations in Asia, including 3,000 people in 47 chemical attacks in Afghanistan since the invasion's start at the end of 1978. In addition, the report charged that the Communist regimes in Laos and Vietnam had used trichothecene and other chemical agents against Hmong rebels and killed at least 6,504 people in 261 separate attacks, and that the Khmer Rouge government in Cambodia had killed 981 people with lethal chemicals.

• The government of Guatemala's President, General Romeo Lucas Garcia, was overthrown 16 days after an election had been held for a new president. The Lucas regime was replaced by a three-man junta, headed by retired General Efrain Rios Montt, with the assistance of General Horacio Maldonado Schaad and Colonel Luis Gordillo Martinez.
• The government of Israel's Prime Minister Menachem Begin faced three consecutive motions of no confidence in the Knesset, with all three ending in a 58 to 58 tie. Although the coalition government led by Begin's Likud party was not required to dissolve the motion passed, Begin proposed that he and his cabinet should resign, but the cabinet ministers voted, 12 to 6, to remain in power.

• In a coup d'etat in Bangladesh, General Hussain Muhammad Ershad ousted President Abdus Sattar, ending three years of civilian rule in the Asian nation. In a radio broadcast, Ershad, who gave himself the title of martial law administrator, suspended the nation's constitution and instituted martial law, and said, "I am a soldier. My whole and sole aim is to reestablish democracy in accordance with the hopes and aspirations of the people," and pledged to appoint a civilian president and to hold elections "as soon as possible."¹³
• The U.S. Senate voted unanimously, 94 to 0, to slow creation of new federal government regulations by adding a new step of cost-benefit analysis before publishing proposed regulations for "notice and comment", and required that independent agencies select the least costly method of attaining beneficial objectives. The U.S. Congress, for the first time, would have the power of a "legislative veto" (approved by a 69 to 25 vote) over a proposed regulation within 45 days of its publication, although the U.S. Department of Defense, the Federal Reserve System and the Securities and Exchange Commission would be exempt from being vetoed.

• The Norfolk Southern Railway, at 17,860 miles (28,740 km) the third largest railway system in the United States, was created as the Interstate Commerce Commission approved the merger of the Norfolk and Western Railway and the Southern Railway.
• The day after taking power, Bangladesh leader Ershad announced the arrest of about 100 public officials on charges of corruption and his intent to have them tried by military courts.

• The Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Song and Dance premiered on London's West End at the Palace Theatre for the first of 781 performances.¹⁴
• In Colombia, the crash of Aeropesca Flight 217 into a mountain near Quetame and killed all 21 people aboard. The Vickers Viscount turboprop was carrying 15 passengers and a crew of six from Villavicencio to Bogota and struck a mountain at an altitude of 7,700 feet (2,300 m) and 39 miles (63 km) from its destination.¹⁵
• In Spain, voting was held for the newly created Parliament of Andalusia, after Andalusia had been granted autonomy by the Spanish government. Of the 109 seats, the PSOE-A socialist workers' party of Rafael Escuredo won 66 for a majority.¹⁶
• Born: Leka Zogu, Albanian government official and pretender to the throne of the monarchy of Albania (as King Leka II to monarchists) since the death of his father, Leka, Crown Prince of Albania, in 2011; in Johannesburg, South Africa¹⁷
• Died:
  • Sam Kydd, 67, British actor who appeared in 290 films in his career and as the title character in the ITV children's television series Orlando from 1965 to 1968, died from emphysema..¹⁸
  • Sultan al-Atrash, 91, Druze Syrian independence fighter who led the Great Syrian Revolt from 1925 to 1927¹⁹
  • Jack Malloch, 61, South African-born bush pilot and gun-runner, was killed on the last day of filming of a documentary film, Pursuit of a Dream, when he crashed during a thunderstorm in a restored Mk 22 Spitfire airplane.²⁰²¹

• A. F. M. Ahsanuddin Chowdhury was appointed as the new President of Bangladesh by General H. M. Ershad, who had overthrown the government three days earlier.
• The German Doppelkopf Association (Deutsche Doppelkopf-Verband or DDV) was founded to govern the play of the German four-player card game doppelkopf, at Brunswick by representatives of 16 doppelkopf clubs.²²
• Born: Kinda Alloush, Syrian actress in Egyptian and Syrian film, known for the drama Nezouh (2022) and the comedy Excuse My French (2014); in Damascus
• Died:
  • Fazlur R. Khan, 52, Bangladeshi and American structural engineer for his innovations in skyscraper construction, died from a heart attack. Khan was the creator of particularly tubular design, first implemented in 1966 and now in use for most buildings over 40 stories in height, and the principal designer of the Willis Tower, which was, at the time of his death, the Sears Tower, tallest building in the world.²³²⁴
  • John Addey, 61, British astrologer known for postulating Addey's Theory of Harmonics in 1976. His biography noted that "he was born on 15 June 1920 at 8.15 am and died at 5.17 pm on 27 March 1982"²⁵

• Two separate women's college basketball champions were crowned in the United States as Louisiana Tech won the first NCAA Division I women's tournament in Norfolk, Virginia, defeating Cheyney State College, 76 to 62, and Rutgers University beat the University of Texas, 83 to 77, in the last tournament of the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW), in Philadelphia.
• Elections were held for the 60-seat Constituent Assembly in El Salvador. The Christian Democrat party of the Salvadoran head of state, junta leader Jose Napoleon Duarte, won 24 seats, but the nation's five conservative parties combined for a majority of seats.

• Royal Assent was given by Queen Elizabeth II to the Canada Act 1982, setting the stage for the repatriation of the Canadian Constitution that would take place on April 17.
• The 54th Academy Awards, hosted by Johnny Carson, were held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. Chariots of Fire won four Oscars, including the Academy Award for Best Picture.
• The North Carolina Tar Heels defeated the Georgetown Hoyas, 63 to 62, to win the NCAA men's basketball championship, played at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans. The winning shot was made by North Carolina freshman Michael Jordan with 17 seconds remaining.²⁶

• Space Shuttle Columbia ended its third mission the eight-day long STS-3. For the first and only time in the history of the shuttle, the spacecraft landed in New Mexico at the White Sands Space Harbor, near Alamogordo, rather than the originally planned landing site, Edwards Air Force Base in California.
• Tens of thousands of Argentinians participated in a demonstration in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires in a protest against the nation's military government, and thousands were arrested and detained.
• The Royal Navy submarine HMS Spartan was ordered to travel to the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean after British intelligence determined that Argentina was preparing to launch an invasion.²⁷
• Ekiti State University was established in the city of Ado-Ekiti in Nigeria as Obafemi Awolowo University.²⁸ It would have an enrollment of more than 27,000 students after 40 years.
• The Habou-Béné, the largest shopping complex in the West African nation of Niger and located at its capital, Niamey, was destroyed by a fire. It would take more than five years for the government of Niger to rebuild the market.
• The John Pielmeier play Agnes of God opened on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre²⁹ for the first of 599 performances.
• Died:
  • Agnes Newton Keith, 80, American writer known for her autobiographical book Three Came Home, an account of her internment in a Japanese prison camp during Japan's occupation of North Borneo; Claudette Colbert portrayed Keith in the film adaptation of the same name in 1950.³⁰
  • Violet King Henry, 52, the first black woman to be licensed as a lawyer in Canada, died from cancer.³¹
  • Sergio Grieco, 65, Italian film director and screenwriter who also used the pen name Terence Hathaway, known for Grieco films such as Julius Caesar Against the Pirates (Giulio Cesare contro i pirati)(1962), and the Hathaway film Agent 077: Mission Bloody Mary (1965) and its sequel, Agent 077: From the Orient with Fury³²

• Six of the 10 members of the ruling Politburo of the Communist Party of Vietnam were removed from their jobs, including General Vo Nguyen Giap, who had led Communist forces in North Vietnam in defeating French and American forces over nearly 30 years, as well as foreign minister Nguyen Duy Trinh, economic planner Le Thanh Nghi, former interior minister Tran Quoc Hoan and peace negotiator Xuan Thuy. The de facto ruler, Communist Party First Secretary Le Duan, retained his post along with President Truong Chinh, Prime Minister Pham Van Dong, Interior Minister Pham Hung and peace negotiator Le Duc Tho.