Freshman Michael Jordan hits winning shot to give North Carolina NCAA title

On March 29, 1982, 19-year-old North Carolina freshman Michael Jordan makes a 16-foot jump shot with 15 seconds left to give the Tar Heels a 63-62 win over Georgetown for the NCAA Tournament championship. “To tell the truth,” Jordan tells reporters in New Orleans afterward, “I didn’t see it go in. I didn’t want to look.” The winning shot cements Jordan in the national consciousness, and he goes on to become one of the greatest basketball players in history, winning six NBA titles with the Chicago Bulls.

After Jordan’s basket, Georgetown’s Fred Brown quickly brought the ball up court. But his pass to a teammate instead went to North Carolina’s James Worthy, clinching the win for North Carolina. “I knew it was bad as soon as I let it go,” Brown told reporters.

Even though only a freshman, Jordan showed the confidence that would be a trademark of his career. “I was thinking the game might come down to a last-second shot,” he said. “I saw myself taking it and hitting it.”

Georgetown was led by 7-foot center Patrick Ewing, who led all scorers with 28 points, and coach John Thompson, one of the best college basketball coaches of all time. He and North Carolina coach Dean Smith, also among the sport’s top coaches of all time, were fast friends. The two embraced after the game.

The championship was North Carolina’s first under Smith and first since it won its only previous title, in 1957. The Tar Heels finished the season with a 32-2 record. “We had the best basketball” team in the tournament, Smith told reporters. 

In the 1984 NBA draft, Jordan was selected by the Bulls with the third overall pick. The next year, Ewing was the No. 1 overall pick of the New York Knicks. As a Bull, Jordan would go torment Ewing and the Knicks, often blocking their road to an NBA championship. 

READ MORE: How a Canadian Invented Basketball

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Chaminade shocks No. 1 Virginia in one of greatest upsets in sports history

On December 23, 1982, Chaminade, an NAIA school with only 900 students, beats top-ranked Virginia and 7-foot-4 center Ralph Sampson, 77-72, in Honolulu in one of the greatest upsets in sports history. “Not too many people get to beat the No. 1 team in the nation,” Chaminade coach Merv Lopes tells reporters afterward. “What we did was amazing.” 

Virginia cruised through its first eight games, beating a Georgetown team that featured Patrick Ewing and a Houston team led by Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler. Although Virginia’s game against Chaminade took place in the Silverswords’ home state of Hawaii, no one expected them to beat the Cavaliers.

At halftime, the score was tied at 43. In the second half, it appeared Virginia might win easily after it took a seven-point lead. But Chaminade took a  70-68 lead with 1:37 left and never trailed again. 

“When you’re not playing well on offense, your defense has to come through for you and we just didn’t do well enough to stop them,” Virginia coach Terry Holland told reporters.

When the final score first was reported to them, ESPN’s Chris Berman and Tom Mees, who hosted SportsCenter, thought it was a mistake. Then the score was confirmed again. “We can’t tell you what happened, but the No. 1 team in college basketball has lost to—we don’t even know who they are,” Berman recalled saying on the broadcast.

In March that season, the Cavaliers lost twice to Jim Valvano’s North Carolina State team—first in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament final and then in the NCAA tournament. 

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1982 garment workers’ strike begins in New York City’s Chinatown

Over 20,000 garment workers, almost all of them Asian American women, pack into Columbus Park in New York City’s Chinatown on June 24, 1982. The rally and subsequent march demonstrate the workers’ power to the city and the entire garment industry, delivering a decisive victory for the striking workers.

After the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 did away with a racist quota system that dated back to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, a number of immigrants from China and Hong Kong made their way to New York. Many of the women who arrived in Chinatown after 1965 found work in the garment industry, where pay was bad and conditions were poor. Workers were paid based on how much they produced, rather than by the hour, which led to constant arguing with management and left many making less than minimum wage. The union representing these workers, the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, was majority-Asian, but its leadership remained mostly white and did little to communicate with its Chinese-speaking members. Nevertheless, Katie Quan, a garment worker originally from San Francisco, developed her skills as an organizer, forging bonds with her fellow workers and organizing work stoppages to secure them higher wages.

READ MORE: When 20,000 Asian Americans Demanded Garment Workers’ Rights—And Won

In 1982, the contractors who served as middlemen between manufacturers and workers refused to renew their contract with the garment workers’ union, asking them to give up some of their medical and retirement benefits in addition to three holidays. Quan quickly began organizing her comrades and drawing media attention to the workers’ cause. Although the contractors, who were for the most part also Chinese, tried to play up their ethnic connection and frame the ILGW as indifferent to its Asian members, the workers stuck together. On June 24th, Quan and her fellow organizers called a strike and drew a crowd of over 20,000 workers to their rally. Their subsequent march through the streets was a show of force, and within a few days nearly every contractor had agreed to sign the union contract.

The strike was a major victory for the garment workers and a turning point for their union, which worked much more closely with its Asian American workers from then on. Many of those involved went on to become labor leaders, including Quan, who later served as vice president of the ILGW and formed the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance. Reflecting on the strike, Quan later wrote that it had proven the power of workers to force concessions not only from their managers but also from their unions: “only when the workers stand up and organize themselves will there be justice and lasting change.”

READ MORE: Asian American Milestones: A Timeline

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Vincent Chin is murdered

Chinese American Vincent Chin, 27, is beaten in the head with a baseball bat by two white autoworkers in Detroit on June 19, 1982. Chin died in a hospital four days later, on June 23. 

During his bachelor party at a club on the night of June 19, Chin and three friends were signaled out by Ronald Ebens, 43, and Michael Nitz, 23, his stepson, according to NBC News, who, witnesses said, blamed the men for being out of work because of car imports from Japan. Following a fight, Ebens and Nitz searched for the group, finding them at a McDonald’s, where Ebens used a baseball bat to smash Chin in the head while Nitz held him down.

Convicted of manslaughter in a plea deal, Ebens and Nitz were sentenced to three years probation and a $3,000 fine with no jail time. The verdict lead to outrage and protests in the Asian American community. Kin Yee, the president of the Detroit Chinese Welfare Council, called the sentence “a license to kill for $3,000, provided you have a steady job or are a student and the victim is Chinese,” according to The New York Times.

Ebens was later found guilty in a civil rights trial (Nitz was acquitted), but the verdict was overturned on appeal. In a second civil rights trial in 1987, Ebens was again found not guilty. In a 1987 civil suit, Ebens was ordered to pay $1.5 million and Nitz was ordered to pay $50,000 to Chin’s estate. While Nitz paid the amount, Ebens’ share was left unpaid. 

READ MORE: How the 1982 Murder of Vincent Chin Ignited a Push for Asian American Rights

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Truck explosion kills 3,000 in Afghanistan

Year
1982
Month Day
November 02

On November 2, 1982, a truck explodes in the Salang Tunnel in Afghanistan, killing an estimated 3,000 people, mostly Soviet soldiers traveling to Kabul.

The Soviet Union’s military foray into Afghanistan was disastrous by nearly every measure, but perhaps the worst single incident was the Salang Tunnel explosion in 1982. A long army convoy was traveling from Russia to Kabul through the border city of Hairotum. The route took the convoy through the Salang Tunnel, which is 1.7 miles long, 25 feet high and approximately 17 feet wide. The tunnel, one of the world’s highest at an altitude of 11,000 feet, was built by the Soviets in the 1970s.

The Soviet army kept a tight lid on the story, but it is believed that an army vehicle collided with a fuel truck midway through the long tunnel. About 30 buses carrying soldiers were immediately blown up in the resulting explosion. Fire in the tunnel spread quickly as survivors began to panic. Believing the explosion to be part of an attack, the military stationed at both ends of the tunnel stopped traffic from exiting. As cars idled in the tunnel, the levels of carbon monoxide in the air increased drastically and the fire continued to spread. Exacerbating the situation, the tunnel’s ventilation system had broken down a couple of days earlier, resulting in further casualties from burns and carbon monoxide poisoning.

It took several days for workers to reach all the bodies in the tunnel. Because the Soviet army limited the information released about the disaster, the full extent of the tragedy may never be known.

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Falklands War ends

Year
1982
Month Day
June 14

After suffering through six weeks of military defeats against Britain’s armed forces, Argentina surrenders to Great Britain, ending the Falklands War.

The Falkland Islands, located about 300 miles off the southern tip of Argentina, had long been claimed by the British. British navigator John Davis may have sighted the islands in 1592, and in 1690 British Navy Captain John Strong made the first recorded landing on the islands. He named them after Viscount Falkland, who was the First Lord of the Admiralty at the time. In 1764, French navigator Louis-Antoine de Bougainville founded the islands’ first human settlement, on East Falkland, which was taken over by the Spanish in 1767. In 1765, the British settled West Falkland but left in 1774 for economic reasons. Spain abandoned its settlement in 1811.

In 1816, Argentina declared its independence from Spain and in 1820 proclaimed its sovereignty over the Falklands. The Argentines built a fort on East Falkland, but in 1832 it was destroyed by the USS Lexington in retaliation for the seizure of U.S. seal ships in the area. In 1833, a British force expelled the remaining Argentine officials and began a military occupation. In 1841, a British lieutenant governor was appointed, and by the 1880s a British community of some 1,800 people on the islands was self-supporting. In 1892, the wind-blown Falkland Islands were collectively granted colonial status.

READ MORE: How the Falklands War Cemented Margaret Thatcher’s Reputation as the ‘Iron Lady’

For the next 90 years, life on the Falklands remained much unchanged, despite persistent diplomatic efforts by Argentina to regain control of the islands. In 1981, the 1,800 Falkland Islanders—mostly sheep farmers—voted in a referendum to remain British, and it seemed unlikely that the Falklands would ever revert to Argentine rule. Meanwhile, in Argentina, the military junta led by Lieutenant General Leopoldo Galtieri was suffering criticism for its oppressive rule and economic management and planned the Falklands invasion as a means of promoting patriotic feeling and propping up its regime.

In March 1982, Argentine salvage workers occupied South Georgia Island, and a full-scale invasion of the Falklands began on April 2. Argentine amphibious forces rapidly overcame the small garrison of British marines at the town of Stanley on East Falkland and the next day seized the dependent territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich group. Under orders from their commanders, the Argentine troops inflicted no British casualties, despite suffering losses to their own units. Nevertheless, Britain was outraged, and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher assembled a naval task force of 30 warships to retake the islands. As Britain is 8,000 miles from the Falklands, it took several weeks for the British warships to arrive. On April 25, South Georgia Island was retaken, and after several intensive naval battles fought around the Falklands, British troops landed on East Falkland on May 21. After several weeks of fighting, the large Argentine garrison at Stanley surrendered on June 14, effectively ending the conflict.

Britain lost five ships and 256 lives in the fight to regain the Falklands, and Argentina lost its only cruiser and 750 lives. Humiliated in the Falklands War, the Argentine military was swept from power in 1983, and civilian rule was restored. In Britain, Margaret Thatcher’s popularity soared after the conflict, and her Conservative Party won a landslide victory in 1983 parliamentary elections.

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John Z. DeLorean is arrested in $24 million cocaine deal

Year
1982
Month Day
October 19

On October 19, 1982, the automaker John Z. DeLorean is arrested and charged with conspiracy to obtain and distribute 55 pounds of cocaine. DeLorean was acquitted of the drug charges in August 1984, but his legal woes were only beginning. He soon went on trial for fraud and over the next two decades was forced to pay millions of dollars to creditors and lawyers. Nevertheless, DeLorean occupies an important place in automotive history: Thanks to its starring role in the 1985 film “Back to the Future,” his gull-wing sports car is one of the most famous cars in the world.

DeLorean grew up in Detroit and began to work for Chrysler while he was still in college. His career was a promising one: He worked his way up the corporate ladder at General Motors, where he is credited with designing the GTO and the Firebird, and became a vice-president in 1972, but he left the company just a year later to pursue his own business interests. In 1978, he started the DeLorean Motor Company in Northern Ireland—the British government, along with investors like Johnny Carson and Sammy Davis, Jr., paid the bulk of his start-up costs—to build his dream car: the DMC-12, a sports car that was like nothing anyone had ever seen before. Its stainless-steel body was unpainted; its doors opened up, not out; it had a 130-hp Renault engine and could go from zero to 60 mph in eight seconds.

But not many people actually bought a DeLorean car. They were much too expensive: Each one cost $25,000, compared with $10,000 for the average car and $18,000 for a souped-up Corvette. The company’s financial trouble, DeLorean’s attorneys argued, was the reason the FBI had been able to entrap him in the $24 million drug deal–the authorities knew he would do anything to save his business.

DeLorean was already mired in legal problems by the time director Robert Zemeckis chose a DMC–12 to serve as Marty McFly’s time machine in “Back to the Future.” Spielberg had originally planned to use an old refrigerator instead of a car, but had changed his mind at the last minute. (The director liked the DeLorean’s futuristic look, but more than that he was worried that young fans of the movie might accidentally get stuck in refrigerators and freezers while playing make-believe.) While the DeLorean’s instant celebrity did not do much to revive its creator’s fortunes, it granted him a permanent footnote in pop-culture history.

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“Eye Of The Tiger” from “Rocky III” tops the U.S. pop charts

Year
1982
Month Day
July 24

Whether it’s Oliver Stone setting a scene from Platoon to Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber,or Quentin Tarantino setting a scene from Reservoir Dogs to “Stuck In The Middle” by Stealer’s Wheel, filmmakers often depend upon certain passages of music to produce specific emotional reactions in their audiences. And actor/director Sylvester Stallone is no exception: His Rocky franchise produced its second #1 pop hit on July 24, 1982 when Survivor’s “Eye Of The Tiger” began a six-week run atop the Billboard pop chart.

The first #1 hit from Stallone’s boxing series was “Gonna Fly Now (Theme from Rocky),” which topped the charts in the summer of 1977, with a very different tone than the hard-charging “Eye Of The Tiger.” Like the films’ main character, who transformed himself from a lovable, if bumbling palooka in the first Rocky into a vengeful, muscle-bound warrior in Rocky III, “Eye Of The Tiger” eschewed subtlety in favor of brute force. But as brute-force pop songs go, few have been more effective than the one-and-only #1 hit from the Chicago bar-band Survivor.

Survivor was hand-picked by Sylvester Stallone to write a song for the second Rocky sequel after he heard their minor 1981 hit “Poor Man’s Son,” a mid-tempo number in the vein of Foreigner or .38 Special. For the Rocky III soundtrack, Stallone told songwriting band members Frankie Sullivan and Jim Peterik that he wanted “something with a strong beat…that would appeal to the rock crowd.” What he got was one of the most effective and popular soundtrack hits of all time as “Eye Of The Tiger” raced to #1 on the pop charts and remained there for six consecutive weeks—five weeks longer than the theme song for the original Rocky.

As for Survivor, they turned out a respectable run of six more top-40 hits over the subsequent four years, including the #2 hit “Burning Heart” (1985) from the Rocky IV soundtrack.

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“Ebony And Ivory” begins a seven-week run at #1 on the pop charts

Year
1982
Month Day
May 15

Without the black keys, the white keys on a piano would pretty much be stuck playing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and “Do Re Mi.”  If you want anything more interesting than that—if you want a song like “Yesterday,” for instance—you’re going to have to get the two sets of keys working together. From this little insight, Paul McCartney crafted the biggest hit record of his post-Beatles career: “Ebony And Ivory.” Recorded as a duet with the great Stevie Wonder, “Ebony And Ivory” took the top spot in the Billboard Hot 100 on May 15, 1982 and didn’t relinquish it until seven weeks later.

McCartney had been a fan of Stevie Wonder’s for many years before they first met. He even included a Braille message for Stevie—”We love you”—on the back of his 1973 Wings album Red Rose Speedway. Wonder spent the 1970s recording a string of incredible albums that often included songs expressing a strong social consciousness. It’s not surprising, then, that McCartney thought of Stevie Wonder as a duet partner for “Ebony And Ivory.”

Stevie Wonder agreed, and his duet with Paul McCartney not only yielded a smash-hit record that topped the charts on this day in 1982, but it also continued a trend toward pop music power-couplings that was particularly prevalent in the early 1980s. Following on the late 70s success of pairings like Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond (“You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” 1978), the period from 1981-1983 witnessed a significant boom in hits from such A-list power couples, including “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” (Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty, 1981), “Endless Love” (Diana Ross and Lionel Richie, 1981), “Islands In The Stream” (Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, 1983) and “Say Say Say” (Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson, 1983).  

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U.S. Marines deployed to Lebanon

Year
1982
Month Day
August 20

During the Lebanese Civil War, a multinational force including 800 U.S. Marines lands in Beirut to oversee the Palestinian withdrawal from Lebanon. It was the beginning of a problem-plagued mission that would stretch into 17 months and leave 262 U.S. servicemen dead.

In 1975, a bloody civil war erupted in Lebanon, with Palestinian and leftist Muslim guerrillas battling militias of the Christian Phalange Party, the Maronite Christian community, and other groups. During the next few years, Syrian, Israeli, and United Nations interventions failed to resolve the factional fighting, and in August 1982 a multinational force arrived to oversee the Palestinian withdrawal from Lebanon.

The Marines left Lebanese territory on September 10 but returned on September 29 following the massacre of Palestinian refugees by a Christian militia. The next day, the first U.S. Marine to die during the mission was killed while defusing a bomb. On April 18, 1983, the U.S. embassy in Beirut was devastated by a car bomb, killing 63 people, including 17 Americans. Then, on October 23, Lebanese terrorists evaded security measures and drove a truck packed with explosives into the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 U.S. military personnel. Fifty-eight French soldiers were killed almost simultaneously in a separate suicide terrorist attack. On February 7, 1984, President Ronald Reagan announced the end of U.S. participation in the peacekeeping force.

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