Issues downloading GDELT event data prior to 2013-04-01

[RvdVeer]

I'm trying to access GDELT Event data (V1) prior to 2013. I took the code below from the gdeltr2 vignette:

> events1983 <-
+   get_data_gdelt_periods_event(periods = 1983)

However, this returns 0 events:

You got 2971 GDELT Global Knowledge Graph URLS from 2013-04-01 to 2021-01-28
|==================================================================================> =======| 100% 222 MB
You retrieved 0 GDELT events for the period of 1983

Its the same for any year prior to 2013. Yet the code seems to work fine for those periods that are available at a daily basis:

> events20130401 <-
+   get_data_gdelt_periods_event(periods = 20130401)

Downloaded, parsed and imported http://data.gdeltproject.org/events/20130401.export.CSV.zip
You retrieved 27758 GDELT events for the period of 20130401

Any thoughts? Thanks!