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World Events
U.S. Events
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
Sports
Super BowlPittsburgh d. Dallas (35-31)World SeriesPittsburgh d. Baltimore (4-3)NBA ChampionshipSeattle d. Washington Bullets (4-1)Stanley CupMontreal d. NY Rangers (4-1)WimbledonWomen: 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 ChampionSpectacular BidNCAA Basketball ChampionshipMichigan St. d. Indiana St. (75-64)NCAA Football ChampionsAlabama (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
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.
Deaths
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