News and Events of 1979

Year by Year: 1900-2012 View a 1979 calendar

World Events

World Statistics

Population: 4.378 billion
population by decade

Nobel Peace Prize:
Mother Teresa of Calcutta (India)

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Vietnam and Vietnam-backed Cambodian insurgents announce fall of Cambodian capital Phnom Penh and collapse of Pol Pot regime (Jan. 7).
Shah leaves Iran after year of turmoil (Jan. 16); revolutionary forces under Muslim leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, take over (Feb. 1 et seq.).
Conservatives win British election; Margaret Thatcher becomes new prime minister (May 3).
Carter and Brezhnev sign SALT II agreement (June 14).
Nicaraguan President General Anastasio Somoza Debayle resigns and flees to Miami (July 17); Sandinistas form government (July 19).
Iranian militants seize US embassy in Teheran and hold hostages (Nov. 4).
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan stirs world protests (Dec. 27).

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U.S. Events

U.S. Statistics

President: James Earl Carter, Jr.
Vice President: Walter F. Mondale
Population: 225,055,487
Life expectancy: 73.9 years
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000): 55.7
Property Crime Rate (per 1,000): 50.2

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Ohio agrees to pay $675,000 to families of dead and injured in Kent State University shootings (Jan. 4).
Nuclear power plant accident at Three Mile Island, Pa., releases radiation (March 28). Background: Nuclear Power Plant Accidents

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Economics

US GDP (1998 dollars):   $2,557.50 billion
Federal spending:   $504.03 billion
Federal debt:   $829.5 billion
Median Household Income
(current dollars):  $16,461
Consumer Price Index:   72.6
Unemployment:   5.8%
Cost of a first-class stamp:   $0.15

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Sports

Sports Links

Pro Football Summary

Pro Basketball Summary

Pro Baseball Summary

Super Bowl

Pittsburgh d. Dallas (35-31)

World Series

Pittsburgh d. Baltimore (4-3)

NBA Championship

Seattle d. Washington Bullets (4-1)

Stanley Cup

Montreal d. NY Rangers (4-1)

Wimbledon

Women: Martina Navratilova d. C. Evert Lloyd (6-4 6-4)
Men: Bjorn Borg d. R. Tanner (6-7 6-1 3-6 6-3 6-4)

Kentucky Derby Champion

Spectacular Bid

NCAA Basketball Championship

Michigan St. d. Indiana St. (75-64)

NCAA Football Champions

Alabama (12-0-0)

Entertainment

Entertainment Awards

Pulitzer Prizes
Fiction: The Stories of John Cheever, John Cheever
Music: Aftertones of Infinity, Joseph Schwantner
Drama: Buried Child, Sam Shepard

Oscars awarded in 1979
Academy Award, Best Picture: The Deer Hunter, Barry Spikings, Michael Deeley, Michael Cimino and John Peverall, producers (Universal)

Nobel Prize for Literature: Odysseus Elytis (Greece)

1979 Emmy Awards

1979 Tony Awards

Grammys awarded in 1979
Record of the Year: "Just the Way You Are," Billy Joel
Album of the Year: Saturday Night Fever, Bee Gees, David Shire, Yvonne Elliman, Tevares, Kool and the Gang, K.C. and the Sunshine Band, MFSB, Trammps, Walter Murphy and Ralph MacDonald (RSO)
Song of the Year: "Just the Way You Are," Billy Joel, songwriter

Miss America: Kylene Baker (VA)

More Entertainment Awards...

Events

The Sugar Hill Gang releases the first commercial rap hit, "Rapper's Delight," bringing rap off the New York streets and into the popular music scene.

Movies

Apocalypse Now, All That Jazz, Kramer vs. Kramer, Breaking Away

Music

The Sugar Hill Gang, "Rapper's Delight"

Books

Penelope Fitzgerald, Rites of Passage
Stephen King, The Dead Zone
Norman Mailer, The Executioner's Song
Jayne Anne Phillips, Black Tickets
William Styron, Sophie's Choice
Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff

Science

Nobel Prizes in Science

Chemistry: Herbert C. Brown (US) and Georg Wittig (West Germany), for developing a group of substances that facilitate very difficult chemical reactions

Physics: Steven Weinberg, Sheldon L. Glashow (both US), and Abdus Salam (Pakistan), for developing theory that electromagnetism and the ""weak"" force, which causes radioactive decay in some atomic nuclei, are facets of the same phenomenon

Physiology or Medicine: Allan McLeod Cormack (US) and Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield (UK), for developing computed axial tomography (CAT scan) X-ray technique

An overheated reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear facility in Pennsylvania threatens to melt down. It does not, but 144,000 residents of nearby Middletown are evacuated. Background: nuclear energy
The first human-powered aircraft flies across the English Channel: Bryan Allen pilots the Gossamer Albatross from Folkestone, England, to Cap Gris-Nez, France (June 12). Background: Famous Firsts in Aviation
The accidental release of anthrax spores at a Soviet bioweapons facility in Sverdlovsk kills several hundred.