The December 23, 1981 was a Wednesday under the star sign of ♑. It was the 356 day of the year. President of the United States was Ronald Reagan.
If you were born on this day, you are 44 years old. Your last birthday was on the Tuesday, December 23, 2025, 197 days ago. Your next birthday is on Wednesday, December 23, 2026, in 167 days. You have lived for 16,268 days, or about 390,438 hours, or about 23,426,299 minutes, or about 1,405,577,940 seconds.
Date: 24 December 1981
All normal cable, telex and telephone communications with Poland have been shut off since Dec. 14, though the West German Postal Ministry said yesterday that some telex connections, though apparently not with Warsaw, had been restored. The military authorities closed down the internal telephone and telex network on the night of Dec. 12, hours before Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski announced the imposition of martial law.
Date: 24 December 1981
Radio Free Europe, the American radio station here, has begun broadcasting Christmas greetings and personal messages from Poles in the West to relatives and friends in Poland. The program, called ''Telephone Bridge to Poland,'' was started shortly after communications were cut by the military takeover.
Date: 23 December 1981
The Greek Government said today that it would soon introduce a bill in Parliament absolving all people charged with or convicted of having violated press laws, as well as those facing up to a year's imprisonment for minor offenses. The measure was apparently designed in part to ease criticism of the strict press laws. The Justice Ministry said 48 people were sentenced to prison in 1980 for violations of those laws.
Date: 24 December 1981
Jim Klobuchar, a sports columnist for The Minneapolis Star, has been suspended for 10 days with pay for fabricating quotations in a story about possible injuries and damage that could result if fans went on a souvenir-seeking rampage after Sunday's game between the Minnesota Vikings and the Kansas City Chiefs at Metropolitan Stadium. The game was the last for the Vikings in the stadium; they will move to a domed field next season.
Date: 24 December 1981
By Christopher Lehmann-Haupt MEDIA. The Second God. By Tony Schwartz. Illustrated by Nurit Karlin. 206 pages. Random House. $13.50. TOWARD the end of ''Media: The Second God,'' I was once more on the verge of feeling depressed by the utopianism of Tony Schwartz's vision of the coming uses of the electronic media. Somehow, it didn't seem cheering to learn that ''the telephone is growing, albeit slowly, as a tool in education'' and that ''over 30,000 Wisconsin students attend telephone-based courses.'' Call me troglodytic, but I cannot believe that a lecture by telephone could ever be as compelling as a first-rate one in the flesh.
Date: 24 December 1981
Special to the New York Times
Following are excerpts from domestic Polish radio and television broadcasts as transcribed and translated from the Polish here by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, a United States Government agency End of Steel Strike 10 P.M. Wednesday, (4 P.M. Wednesday E.S.T.) Today the forces of order of the civic militia together with soldiers of the Polish People's Army restored order and calm in the Katowice steelworks. Some 2,000 employees from some departments, kept in the foundry for many days by terrorists from the former Solidarity works committee, have left for home. Many metalurgists earlier managed to flee the works. No one was hurt during the action by the forces of order. Most of the provocateurs and organizers of the work boycott in the Katowice steelworks have been apprehended.
Date: 23 December 1981
Special to the New York Times
Following are excerpts from the Soviet press agency Tass and excerpts from domestic Polish radio and television broadcasts as transcribed and translated from the Polish here by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, a United States Government agency Mine Strikes Go On 1 P.M. Tuesday, (7 A.M. Tuesday, E.S.T.) Life is returning progressively to normal throughout the country. Despite the numerous restrictions of martial law, both the economy and citizens' everyday life are steadily returning to normal in accordance with universal expectations. Today is generally calm and industrious in Katowice Province. Railway workers are particularly busy ferrying goods, transporting people and clearing snow from the rail tracks and trackside equipment. More than 424,000 tons of various goods have been transported out of Katowice Province during the past 24 hours. Most industrial plants are operating.
Date: 24 December 1981
By Clyde Haberman
Clyde Haberman
Although a new survey showed this week that rising crime rates were the No. 1 concern of New Yorkers, Mayor Koch says he will not change his mind about trimming police hiring when he presents his preliminary budget for the 1983 fiscal year on Jan. 15. A cutback is ''definite,'' the Mayor said the other day, and it will be across the board, affecting all forces proportionately -the New York Police Department as well as the Transit and Housing Authority police. The decision is likely to create a political hurdle for Mr. Koch. Even before the survey reaffirmed that fear of crime is pervasive, it was clear that other elected officials who must vote on the Mayor's proposed budget would oppose him on this matter.
Date: 23 December 1981
By John Vinocur
John Vinocur
In the last few days, there were about 350 people on the street in Hamburg to protest the killings, arrests, and marshal law in Poland. Karlsruhe and Saarbrucken had about 100 protestors each. The numbers reached 2,000 or 3,000 in Munich Monday night where the television cameras showed Franz Josef Strauss, the conservative leader, candle in hand, leading a thin torchlight procession. In a country where 250,000 protesters gathered this fall to express concern about what they see as developing East-West confrontation - caused in the view of many of the demonstrators by NATO arms policies - the figures speak clearly: there is deep discomfort in West Germany about responding to the situation in Poland.
Date: 23 December 1981
By John Herbers, Special To the New York Times
John Herbers
State and local officials, in an unexpected show of unity, have taken a step toward achieving a new order of domestic government that the participants say has no precedent. Aroused by the Reagan Administration's plans for further budget cuts and the President's promise to give them new authority, in a way they do not like, they have drawn a statement of ''principles and priorities for partnership federalism.'' Leaders of the nation's governors, legislators, mayors and county officials hammered out the statement here last Wednesday. All agree that their effort could collapse because their history is one of division and strife. But they also say it could lead to some major changes in the federal system and that the document, the product of a series of compromises, says more than it seems to.