October 1981

[October 1], 1981 (Thursday)

• The first cellular telephone system was inaugurated. Nordic Mobile Telephone set up the network in Sweden.
• Eighty-three people were killed and more than 300 injured when a car bomb exploded outside of the Beirut headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organization's intelligence center. The Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners, which the PLO asserted was a front for Israel, claimed it carried out the attack.
• Gunther Guillaume, whose unmasking as an East German spy brought down the government of West German chancellor Willy Brandt in 1974, was released from prison and allowed to cross into East Germany.
• The first five percent of President Reagan's 25% cut of U.S. federal income taxes took effect. The next 10% would take effect July 1, 1982, and the final 10% on July 1, 1983.
• Led by Dr. Paul L. Schechter, astronomers at the Kitt Peak National Observatory reported the discovery of a "hole" in the universe, 300 million light years in diameter, that had only one-tenth of the stars and galaxies found elsewhere. The void, described by Schechter as "exceedingly hard to understand", is beyond the constellation Boötes and encompasses one percent of the space in the known universe.

  [October 2], 1981 (Friday)

• The Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was elected president of Iran with 16,007,972 votes out of 16,846,996 cast. Education minister Ali-Akbar Parvaresh placed second.
• U.S. president Ronald Reagan announced his plans to resurrect the B-1 bomber program that had been scrapped by President Carter, with 100 of the planes to be built by 1987, and another plan to deploy 100 MX missiles.
• Died:
• *Harry Golden, 79, American journalist
• *Hazel Scott, 61, American jazz singer and pianist

  [October 3], 1981 (Saturday)

• The hunger strike at Maze Prison was called off after seven months by Sinn Féin, the political arm of the Irish Republican Army. Ten IRA prisoners had died, while another seven had given up fasting. The decision, made by prisoner Brendan McFarlane, ended the fasting for the remaining six IRA strikers. Three days later, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland James Prior announced that some of the original demands of the strikers, including the right to not wear prison uniforms, would be granted.
• Born: Zlatan Ibrahimović, Swedish footballer, in Malmö

  [October 4], 1981 (Sunday)

• The body in Lee Harvey Oswald's grave was exhumed at the Rose Hill Cemetery in Fort Worth, Texas, to determine whether the corpse was indeed Oswald's. Michael Eddowes, author of the 1977 book The Oswald File, paid the $250,000 expense for the body removal and its examination at the Baylor University Medical Center. Oswald's dental records were examined and confirmed that his was indeed the body in the grave. The examining team wrote a detailed account of the examination two years later.

  [October 5], 1981 (Monday)

• The last model of the Triumph Motor Company's sports cars, a 1982 Triumph TR7, rolled off the assembly line at Solihull, West Midlands, England.
• In the Washington Post gossip column "The Ear", Diana McLellan outraged former President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn by writing that "word's around Rosalynn's close pals about exactly why the Carters were so sure" that incoming First Lady Nancy Reagan wanted them out prior to the expiration of Carter's term: "They're saying that Blair House, where Nancy was lodging... was bugged. And at least one tattler in the Carter tribe has described listening in to the tape itself... Ear is absolutely appalled. Stay tuned, uh, whoever's listening." Three days later, the Carters announced plans to sue the Post, and, on October 23, the newspaper printed publisher Donald Graham's apology, which was accepted.
• Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews during World War II and vanished after being arrested by the Soviet Union, was made an honorary American citizen in a resolution signed by President Reagan.
• The first eight-team playoff in Major League Baseball history began as the Kansas City Royals lost to the Oakland A's in the first game of a series to decide the American League West title. Each of baseball's four divisions were decided by matching up the winners of the first and second halves of the strike-torn season. The Cincinnati Reds, with the best overall record in the 1981 season did not qualify for the playoffs because they failed to win the NL West in either half of the season. MLB returned to the four-team playoff system for the next 12 seasons, then realigned, with eight teams in the playoffs in 1995, after the 1994 strike season.
• The Reverend Sun Myung Moon, leader of the Unification Church, was indicted for U.S. federal income tax evasion. He was convicted and served an 18-month prison sentence.
• Born: Enrico Fabris, Italian speed skater and 2006 Olympic gold medalist; in Asiago
• Died:
• *Gloria Grahame, 58, American film actress and winner of the 1952 Academy of Ward for best supporting actress Oscar, died from breast cancer.
• *Jud Strunk, 45, American singer and songwriter, was killed in an airplane crash shortly after taking off from the Carrabassett Valley airport near Farmington, Maine, along with his friend, Dick Ayotte.

  [October 6], 1981 (Tuesday)

• Egypt's President Anwar Sadat was assassinated at Nasr City while watching the annual Armed Forces Day parade. As a squadron of jets flew overhead in formation at 12:40 p.m., a military vehicle halted in front of the reviewing stand, and six of the men jumped out, hurling stun grenades and firing machine guns. Sadat was hit by two bullets and died at a hospital two hours later. Seven other people, including two of the gunmen, were killed. The four surviving assassins, ringleader Lt. Khaledi Islambouli, Sgt. Hussein Abbas, reserve Air Force officer Atta Hemeida and shop owner Abdel-Hamid Abdel-Aal, as well as mastermind Mohammed Abdel-Salam Farag, were executed on April 15, 1982.

  [October 7], 1981 (Wednesday)

• Bobby Carpenter, 18, had already become the first hockey player to go directly to the NHL from a high-school team. Twelve seconds into his first NHL game for the Washington Capitals, he set a record with an assist to Ryan Walter for a goal, then later scored a goal himself in the 5–3 loss to the Buffalo Sabres.

  [October 8], 1981 (Thursday)

• For the first and only time in history, three former presidents of the United States flew together on the same airplane. Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter, the 37th, 38th and 39th holders of the office, were greeted at the White House by the 40th, current president Ronald Reagan, before flying by helicopter to Andrews Air Force Base, where they departed at 7:45 p.m. for the funeral of Egypt's assassinated president, Anwar Sadat.
• Bobby Unser was again declared the winner of the Indianapolis 500 after months. He had crossed the finish line first on May 24, but was disqualified the next day for having passed during a yellow caution flag, with Mario Andretti declared the winner. Unser took his case to the United States Auto Club appeals panel, which voted 2–1 to declare him the official winner. He was fined $40,000 but was not penalized the lap. Andretti continued appealing, finally abandoning the case on March 4, 1982.
• OSO I, the first of the Orbiting Solar Observatory satellite series, re-entered the Earth's atmosphere more than 18 years after its launch on March 7, 1962, and burned up on re-entry.
• 23-year-old Maria Cecilia Alfaro of Miramar, Puerto Rico, a Fred Harvey Company desk clerk at Yavapai Lodge, fell to her death while watching the sunset from the Rim Trail in Grand Canyon National Park.
• Cagney & Lacey was first telecast as a made-for-TV movie, and attracted a Nielsen rating of 42.
• Ted Kaczynski, later exposed as the Unabomber, planted his fifth bomb. The device he left at the University of Utah's Bennion Hall was detected and defused before it could explode.
• Died: Armando Bo, 66, Argentine film director

  [October 9], 1981 (Friday)

• American rock musician Prince, opening for the Rolling Stones during their 1981 tour at Los Angeles Coliseum, was booed off the stage by an impatient crowd, but went on to a stellar career.
• President of France François Mitterrand signed Law No. 81-908, abolishing the death penalty. The measure had passed the National Assembly on September 18 and the Senate of France on September 30.
• A landslide at the Philippine municipality of Maco, Compostela Valley killed hundreds of people. In addition to 194 bodies recovered at the site, 200 miners were missing after the landslide.
• Born: Zachery Ty Bryan, American child actor, in Aurora, Colorado

  [October 10], 1981 (Saturday)

• In the largest protest march in Germany since the end of World War II, at least 150,000 people gathered in Bonn, West Germany to demonstrate against the further deployment of American nuclear missiles in Europe.

  [October 11], 1981 (Sunday)

• The Super Chicken III, piloted by John Shoecroft and Fred Gorrell, became the first balloon to cross the United States without stopping. The 2,515-mile journey from Costa Mesa, California to Blackbeard Island in Georgia took 55 hours and 25 minutes to complete.
• Died: Brooks Hays, 83, former U.S. Congressman from Arkansas who was voted out of office in 1958 after taking a stand against segregation in schools

  [October 12], 1981 (Monday)

• CBS Cable, the first venture into cable television by the broadcast CBS Television Network, went on the air in several markets with a series of programs dedicated to the classical arts, with telecasts of symphonies, dance, theater, and operas. The venture was unsuccessful, and CBS Cable was shut down at 4:00 a.m. on December 17, 1982.
• Born: Paul Givan, First Minister of Northern Ireland, in Lisburn