| 22nd January 1983 | Björn Borg retires from tennis after winning five consecutive Wimbledon championships. |
| 31st January 1983 | Seatbelt use for drivers and front seat passengers becomes mandatory in the United Kingdom. |
| 4th February 1983 | Karen Carpenter, American singer and drummer (b. 1950) dies from heart failure, which is attributed to her long battle with anorexia. |
| 5th March 1983 | Bob Hawke is elected Prime Minister of Australia. |
| 18th April 1983 | The April 1983 U.S. Embassy bombing in Beirut kills sixty-three people. |
| 9th June 1983 | Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister since 1979, wins the 1983 general election in a landslide victory over Michael Foot with forty-nine percent of the popular vote. |
| 18th June 1983 | Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space, on the Space Shuttle ‘Challenger’ |
| 21st July 1983 | The lowest temperature on earth is recorded in Vostok Station, Antarctica with -89.2 °C (-128.6 °F). |
| 29th July 1983 | David Niven, English actor (b. 1910) dies. |
| 16th August 1983 | “The Bill” first airs on television as “Woodentop“. |
| 25th September 1983 | Thirty-eight Irish republican prisoners, armed with six handguns, hijack a prison meals lorry and smash their way out of HMP Maze in the largest prison escape in British history. |
| 2nd October 1983 | Neil Kinnock is elected leader of the Labour Party. |
| 4th October 1983 | Richard Noble sets a new land speed record of 633.468 mph, driving ‘Thrust 2’ at the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. |
| 25th October 1983 | Microsoft Word is first released. |
| 26th November 1983 | 6,800 gold bars worth nearly £26 million are taken from the Brinks Mat vault at Heathrow Airport. Only a fraction of the gold is ever recovered, and only two men are convicted of the crime. |
| 2nd December 1983 | Michael Jackson's music video for "Thriller" is broadcast for the first time. It becomes the most famous music video ever made, increasing record sales of the already popular album "Thriller". |
| 17th December 1983 | A Provisional IRA car bomb kills six Christmas shoppers and injures ninety other people outside Harrods. |
| 31st December 1983 | Brunei gains independence from the United Kingdom. |