Top News Stories from 1979
World Events
World Statistics
Population: 4.378 billion
population by decade Nobel Peace Prize: Mother Teresa of Calcutta (India)
More World Statistics... - 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.).
- Carter and Brezhnev sign SALT II agreement (June 14).
- Conservatives win British election; Margaret Thatcher becomes new prime minister (May 3).
- 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).
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
More U.S. Statistics... - 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
Economics
US GDP (1998 dollars): $2,557.50 billion
Federal spending: $504.03 billion
Federal debt $829.5 billion
Median Household Income(current dollars): "Just the Way You Are," Billy Joel billion
Consumer Price Index: $72.6
Unemployment: 5.8%
Cost of a first-class stamp: $0.15
Sports
Super Bowl
Pittsburgh d. DallasWorld Series
Pittsburgh d. Baltimore (4-3)NBA Championship
Seattle d. Washington BulletsStanley Cup
Montreal d. NY RangersWimbledon
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 BidNCAA 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
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)
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
More Nobel Prizes in 1998... - 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.
