It was a big year for the celebrity and entertainment world, and thanks to the then-newly-born Internet, almost 40 years down the track, 1983 is still firmly embedded in the conscience of society ¨C even for those who weren't born yet.
As 2023 looms, read on ?to see all the biggest and best moments pop culture in Australia and worldwide had to offer in 1983.
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The Police's Every Breath You Take, written by Sting, dominated the charts in 1983.
The single spent eight weeks at number? one on Billboard's Hot 100, making it the top song of the year, and many people used it as their wedding song ¨C so much so that Sting had to come out and warn them against it.
In an interview with the Independent, ?Sting explained that the origins of the song weren't romantic at all.
Written in 1982 after he split from first wife Frances Tomelty, Sting said Every Breath You Take was a song about possessiveness, jealousy and obsession.
"I woke up in the middle of the night with that line in my head, sat down at the piano and had written it in half an hour," he later told BBC Radio 2.
"The tune itself is generic, an aggregate of hundreds of others, but the words are interesting. It sounds like a comforting love song. I didn't realise at the time how sinister it is. I think I was thinking of Big Brother, surveillance and control."
With Return of the Jedi's release came an unexpected legacy for the late Carrie Fisher ¨C though the film was the third, and at the time, final installment of the Star Wars trilogy, it was Princess Leia's gold bikini, which she wore at the behest of alien gangster Jabba the Hutt who had taken her as a slave, that stole the show.
Fisher later opened up to NPR about the costume, saying being "nearly naked" was "not a style choice for [her]."
"It wasn't my choice," she told NPR. "When [director George Lucas] showed me the outfit, I thought he was kidding and it made me very nervous. I had to sit very straight because I couldn't have lines on my sides, like little creases. No creases were allowed, so I had to sit very, very rigid straight."
Fisher says what redeemed the costume, for her, was that Princess Leia got to kill Jabba the Hutt in the end, despite Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) trying to come to her rescue.
"[It] was so enjoyable," Fisher said of Leia's revenge. "I sawed his neck off with that chain that I killed him with. I really relished that because I hated wearing that outfit and sitting there rigid straight, and I couldn't wait to kill him."
?One month after giving the interview, Fisher died at the age of 60.
Aussie entrepreneur, aviator and philanthropist Dick Smith ?made history by completing his first solo helicopter flight around the world in 1983.
Smith's sojourn was also the first solo helicopter flight from the United States to Australia, and the first solo helicopter flight across the Atlantic Ocean.
?He travelled from August 1982 to May 1983, over three legs. Smith battled freezing temperatures, torrential rains, dust, tropical storms, extreme heat, turbulence and exhaustion on his 55,000 kilometre flight, which he completed over 260 hours.
When he flew over Alaska, Smith was actually shot at, with bullets hitting his helicopter's reserve fuel tank.
At one point, he was forced to land on a beach on the Malay coast as a large tropical storm had blocked his path.
He also met the then-Prince Charles in Scotland on his adventure.?
The last leg of Smith's trip was tricky, as he was not granted permission by the USSR to land on the Kuril Islands, so he landed on the deck of Norwegian cargo ship ?Hoegh Marlin to refuel.
In the end, however, he made it.
When Vanessa Williams was around 21, she made history as the first African-American woman to be named Miss America.
Almost a year after her coronation, when she had less than seven weeks left of her reign, however, unauthorised nude photos of Williams, which had been taken when she was working as a photographer's assistant, were published in Penthouse magazine.
As a result, Williams was forced to give up her title, and it's a time she has described as one of the lowest points of her life.
The Miss America organisation eventually apologised to Williams in 2015.
Meryl Streep, dressed like an Oscar herself, took home Best Actress at the 55th Academy Awards for her role as Zofia "Sophie" Zawistowski in Sophie's Choice (1982).
"Oh, boy! No matter how much you try to imagine what this is like, it's just so incredibly thrilling, right down to your toes," she said in her joyful speech after accepting the award presented by Sylvester Stallone.
It was her second Oscar, though her first for Best Actress. Streep won Best Supporting Actress in 1980 for Kramer vs. Kramer, and won Best Actress again in 2012 for The Iron Lady.?
Ben Kingsley, meanwhile won Best Actor for his role as Mahatma Gandhi in the biographical film Gandhi ¨C though his performance and the movie as a whole has been subject to criticism in the years since.
Some have said the film takes liberties with history, while others ?have accused Kingsley of wearing brownface for the role.
Although Kingsley is of Indian descent on his father's side, he wore darker makeup to look more like Gandhi for the film.
Gandhi may have won Best Picture, but Brian De Palma's Scarface makes a convincing case if 1983 had a popular vote ¨C even with its R rating.
Al Pacino plays Tony Montana, a Cuban refugee who becomes a wealthy drug lord in Miami, Florida. ?
The film made $US66 million (approx. $290 million now) at the box office, making it the 16th highest-grossing film of 1983 ¨C Return of the Jedi took out the top spot in the United States.
Pacino and the film has been subject to criticism, however, for its negative portrayal of Cubans as criminals, with the Cuban characters mostly played by non-Cuban actors.
During filming, some Cubans made these objections known, and as a result, the film featured a disclaimer following its credits, which said: ?"Scarface is a fictional account of the activities of a small group of ruthless criminals. The characters do not represent the Cuban/American community and it would be erroneous and unfair to suggest that they do. The vast majority of Cuban/Americans have demonstrated a dedication, vitality and enterprise that has enriched the American scene."
Back home in Australia, Cold Chisel performed its farewell show on December 15 at the newly-opened Sydney Entertainment Centre, after over a decade together.
The group did disband, but they also reunited and have been active together on-off through the years.
Jimmy Barnes, however, earlier this week announced he is stepping away from performing for a few months due to health issues.?
It was a big year for technology, with IBM launching its personal computer in Australia with the aid of a Charlie Chaplin impersonator ¨C though only the power cord was locally made, in Adelaide.
It cost $3,224 (approx. $11,667.98 now) and included a keyboard, a 64K memory bank, and a 160KB diskette drive, according to ?the Sydney Morning Herald.
January 1 also marked the official birthday of the Internet, with a new communications protocol ¨C Transfer Control Protocol/Internetwork Protocol (TCP/IP) ¨C being established. Before that, various computer networks did not have a standard way to communicate with each other.
Pictured here is Sydney secretary Jennifer Krans in 1981 with the new, at the time, ACS 400-word processor and business computer.
It was a big year for television, ?with the final episode of The Sullivans airing on Nine Network on March 10.
The soap opera, which had been on air since 1976, ?followed the middle-class Melbourne Sullivan family in the aftermath of World War II, and soared to popularity not just in Australia but also in the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Gibraltar, Greece and New Zealand.
It saw many veteran Aussie actors return to the screen, and it also kick-started the careers of Kerry Armstrong, Mel Gibson, Sam Neill, Gary Sweet and Sigrid Thornton.
One of ?Kylie Minogue's first acting roles was as Carla, a young Dutch girl who lost her family in the war. She appeared in the show for eight episodes in the 1970s, and her sister Dannii Minogue also played Carla in a later episode.
In 1983, we also said goodbye to ?The Young Doctors after 1396 episodes, and The Don Lane Show.
We said goodbye to some shows, but we also said hello!
Namely, to American sitcom Cheers, ?with the beloved show debuting Down Under in November on Nine.
Earlier in the year, the Eurovision Song Contest was also telecast in Australia for the first time.?
Also on our screens were some famous ads that actually grew to be more iconic than some of the shows they played in between.?
"You ought to be congratulated!"
Meadow Lea's catchy jingle was on every television screen and in everyone's heads, with ?Aussies being encouraged to spread margarine on everything.
After all, ?"corn is just corn without a knob [of margarine] on top."
GIO Insurance walked the line between tragedy and comedy, with Aussie woman Jan answering a phone call from her pal Sally ¨C though she spent a bit too long chatting up a storm, leaving her deep-fried chips unattended as they cooked.
"Oh my goodness, the chips!" became an instant classic.