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Top Song(s)
• Survivor - Eye of the Tiger
• The Human League - Don't You Want Me
• Steve Miller Band - Abracadabra
• J Geils Band - Centrefold
• Men At Work - Down Under
Top Film(s)
• Blade Runner
• The Thing
• Fanny and Alexander
• E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
• The King of Comedy
Best Selling Book(s)
• The Gunslinger - Stephen King
• The BFG - Roald Dahl
• Different Seasons - Stephen King
• Schindler’s List - Thomas Keneally
• The House of the Spirits - Isabel Allende
Famous Deaths
• January 22 - Eduardo Frei Montalva, 27th President of Chile
• March 28 – William Giauque, Canadian chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
• April 29 - Kassim Al-Rimawi, 52nd Prime Minister of Jordan
• May 1 - Hussein ibn Nasser, 36th Prime Minister of Jordan
• June 2 - Fazal Ilahi Chaudhry, Pakistani politician, 5th President of Pakistan
• July 16 - C. R. Swart, last Governor-General and 4th President of South Africa
• August 12 - Tomas Romero Pereira, 41st President of Paraguay
• September 14 - Kristjan Eldjarn, 3rd President of Iceland
• October 4 - Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr, 25th Prime Minister of Iraq and 4th President of Iraq
• November 28 – Helen of Greece and Denmark, Queen Mother of Romania
Medical/Science/Technology
• Allan Hills A81005, the first lunar meteorite found on Earth, is 182771717 discovered in the Allan Hills.
• Syzygy: all 9 planets align on the same side of the Sun.
• First report of anti-human monoclonal antibody production.
• The Commodore 64 8-bit home computer is launched by Commodore International.
• First computer virus, the Elk Cloner, written by 15-year-old Rich Skrenta, is found in the wild.
• Michael Freedman proves the Poincare conjecture in dimensions equal to 4.
• Allen Hill and colleagues at the University of Oxford develop a glucose biosensor.
• Janet Balaskas establishes and names the active birth movement.
• Working Formulation adopted as a standard classification for non-Hodgkin lymphomas.
• Helen House, the world’s first children’s hospice, is set up by Sister Frances Dominica in Oxford, England.
Political
• January 26 – President Reagan delivers his first State of the Union Address.
• March 10 – The United States places an embargo on Libyan oil imports, alleging Libyan support for terrorist groups.
• April 21 – Queen Beatrix becomes the first Dutch monarch to address the United States Congress.
• May 1 – At the first day of the 1982 World's Fair, it is kicked off with an address by President Ronald Reagan.
• June 8 – President Reagan becomes the first American chief executive to address a joint session of the British Parliament.
• June 30 – The Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution of the United States falls short of the 38 states needed to pass.
• September 1 – The United States Air Force Space Command is founded.
• September 3 – Speaker O'Neill and President Reagan settle the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act.
• October 15 – The Garn–St. Germain Depository Institutions Act deregulates the U.S. savings and loan industry.
• November 2 – United States elections, 1982. The Republican Party loses 27 seats to the majority Democratic Party in the House.
National
• January 8 – AT&T agrees to divest itself into 22 subdivisions.
• February – Brake Masters, an automotive repair chain is founded in Tucson, Arizona.
• March 26 – A ground-breaking ceremony for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is held in Washington, DC.
• May 2 – The Weather Channel is begun in the U.S.
• June 12 – A rally against nuclear weapons draws 750,000 to New York City's Central Park.
• July 9 – Pan Am Flight 759 (Boeing 727) crashes in Kenner, Louisiana, killing all 146 on board and eight on the ground.
• September 15 – The first edition of USA Today is published.
• October 19 – Car designer John DeLorean is arrested for selling cocaine to undercover FBI agents.
• November 13 – The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C.
• December 7 – The first U.S. execution by lethal injection is carried out in Texas on Charles Brooks Jr.
Worldwide
• January 26 – Mauno Koivisto is elected President of Finland.
• February 2 – The Hama massacre begins in Syria.
• March 29 - Royal Assent is given to the Canada Act 1982.
• April 30 – The Bijon Setu massacre takes place in broad daylight at a railway crossing in India.
• May 30 - Spain becomes the 16th member of NATO.
• June 20 – Falklands War ends with British forces retaking the South Sandwich Islands.
• July 23 - The International Whaling Commission decides to end commercial whaling by 1985–1986.
• September 14 - Princess Grace of Monaco dies after having suffered a car crash a few days previously.
• October 27 – In Canada, Dominion Day is officially renamed Canada Day.
• November 20 - The General Union of Ecuadorian Workers (UGTE) is founded.