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Period: to
The 70's
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US Soldiers Found Guilty Of Murder In My Lai Massacre
During the war, twenty-five US soldiers were charged with war-crimes but William Calley was the only one found guilty. Calley received considerable sympathy from the American public. -
Palestinian Group Hijacks Five Planes
A handful of hijackers, armed with deadly weapons, arrived at European airports ready to set in motion a plan to seize three US-bound passenger planes, divert them to a remote landing strip in the Jordanian desert, and use the passengers and crews to bargain for the release of Palestinian militants held in Europe and Israel. The elaborate scheme was the brainchild of a small guerrilla group called the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine -
Beatles Break Up
The Beatles broke up because they couldn’t decide on the management of their group. -
Aswan High Dam Completed
It was used for use of electricity and to keep floods from happening. It was also built on the Nile River. -
Computer Floppy Disk Introduced
A floppy disk is a thin flexible storage in a square or rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles. -
EPA Created
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA or sometimes USEPA) is an agency of the federal government of the United States charged with protecting human health and the environment, by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress -
First Earth Day
Earth Day is a day that is intended to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth's natural environment -
Kent State Shooting
The guardsmen fired 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis -
Apollo 13 mission suffers huge setback
A meteor punctures the oxygen tank. And when one of the astronauts pressed a button, it blew up. So then they had no oxygen. -
Bar-codes Introduced In The UK On Retail Products
By 1970, the Universal Grocery Products Identification Code or UGPIC was written by a company called Logicon Inc. The first company to produce bar code equipment for retail trade use (using UGPIC) was the American company Monarch Marking in 1970, and for industrial use, the British company Plessey Telecommunications was also first in 1970. -
18 Year Olds Given Voting Rights
The Twenty-sixth Amendment was proposed by Congress on March 23, 1971, upon passage by the House of Representatives, the Senate having previously passed an identical resolution on March 10, 1971. Ratification was completed on July 1, 1971, when action by the legislature of the 38th State, North Carolina, was concluded, and the Administrator of the General Services Administration officially certified it to have been duly ratified on July 5, 1971. This amendment allowed extended the right to vote -
World Trade Center Is Completed
Construction workers place the highest steel on the highest building in the world. New Yorkers will first hate it, then get used to it and eventually mourn its destruction.
The massive project was conceived in the 1950s to energize lower Manhattan. Architect Minoru Yamasaki worked in conjunction with Emery Roth and Sons to design twin towers 110 stories high.
Ground was broken Aug. 5, 1966, and steel construction began in August 1968. The North Tower topped out at 1,368 feet (some sources sa -
Ciggarette Ads are Banned on TV
A lot of people were dying from them and they didn’t want teenagers to die from advertizing -
Disney World Opens
Walt Disney World opens in Orlando, Florida, expanding the Disney Empire to the east coast of the United States. -
The Microprocessor is Introduced
The advent of the microprocessor age at Texas Instruments includes the introduction of the 4-bit TMS 1000 with a calculator on the chip; on November 15, 1971, Intel released the 4-bit 4004 microprocessor developed by Federico Fagin. It is unknown whose chip predated the other in the laboratory environment. -
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Ed
After the Supreme Court's decision in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education, little progress had been made in desegregating public schools. One example was the Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, system in which approximately 14,000 black students attended schools that were either totally black or more than 99 percent black. Lower courts had experimented with a number of possible solutions when the case reached the Supreme Court. -
London Bridge is Bought to the US
London Bridge is a bridge in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, United States, that is based on the 1831 London Bridge that spanned the River Thames in London, England until it was dismantled in 1967. The bridge was completed in 1971 along with a canal, and links an island in the lake with the main part of Lake Havasu City. -
South Vietnam and US invade Laos
A forty-four day raid into Laos by South Vietnamese soldiers is begun with the aid of United States air and artillery. -
D.B Cooper
D. B. Cooper is the name popularly used to refer an unidentified man who hijacked a Boeing 727 aircraft in the airspace between Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington, USA on November 24, 1971, extorted USD $200,000 in ransom, and parachuted to an uncertain fate. Despite an extensive manhunt and an exhaustive (and ongoing) FBI investigation, the perpetrator has never been located or positively identified. -
VCRs Introduced
The VCR (videocassette recorder) was introduced by the Sony Corporation, a Japanese company, in 1975. It started out with a smaller home "videocorder" known as Betamax, which at first competed heavily with the larger VHS (video home system) format. -
Direct dial between New York and London
Direct Distance Dialing (DDD) or direct dial is a telecommunications term for a network-provided service feature in which a call originator may, without operator assistance, call any other user outside the local calling area. DDD requires more digits in the number dialed than are required for calling within the local area or area code. -
End of Gold Standard for US Currency
The gold standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is a fixed weight of gold. There are distinct kinds of gold standard. First, the gold specie standard is a system in which the monetary unit is associated with circulating gold coins, or with the unit of value defined in terms of one particular circulating gold coin in conjunction with subsidiary coinage made from a lesser valuable metal. -
Attica State Prison Riots
The Attica Prison riot occurred at the Attica Correctional Facility in Attica, New York, United States in 1971. The riot was based in part upon prisoners' demands for better living conditions, and was led in large part by a small band of political revolutionaries.. -
First Benefit Concert organized for Bangladesh by George Harrison
The Concert For Bangladesh was the event title for two benefit concerts organized by George Harrison and Ravi Shankar, held at noon and at 7:00 p.m. on August 1, 1971, playing to a total of 40,000 people at Madison Square Garden in New York City. -
The Pentagon Papers Released
The Pentagon Papers, officially titled United States–Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense, is a top-secret United States Department of Defense history of the United -
China Joins the UN
China's seat in the United Nations and membership of the United Nations Security Council has been occupied by the People's Republic of China (PRC) since October 25, 1971. The representatives of the PRC first attended the UN, including the United Nations Security Council, as China's representatives on November 23, 1971. -
Amtrak Created
The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak (reporting mark AMTK), is a government-owned corporation that was organized on May 1, 1971, to provide intercity passenger train service in the United States. "Amtrak" is a portmanteau of the words "America" and "track". It is headquartered at Union Station in Washington, D.C. -
M*A*S*H TV Premiers
M*A*S*H premiered 9/17/72, and for my money, no TV show made since even comes close. For 11 years the writing and the actors were partners in a show that could make you LOL one minute, and get all teary eyed the nextThe final show is still one of the most viewed programs in TV history. -
Pong Video-Game
Pong (marketed as PONG) is one of the earliest arcade video games, and is a tennis sports game featuring simple two-dimensional graphics. While other arcade video games such as Computer Space came before it, Pong was one of the first video games to reach mainstream popularity. -
George Wallace Shot While Campaigning
A 1972 assassination attempt left him paralyzed; he used a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He is best known for his Southern populist, pro-segregation attitudes during the American desegregation period, convictions he renounced later in life -
Nixon Visits China
U.S. President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to the People's Republic of China was an important step in formally normalizing relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China. It marked the first time a U.S. president had visited the PRC, who at that time considered the U.S. one of its staunchest foes. The visit has become a metaphor for an unexpected or uncharacteristic action by a politician. -
Last Man On the Moon
The site is a companion piece to the book Last Man on the Moon, written by astronaut Eugene "Geno" Cernan. On December 11, 1972, Cernan, the commander of Apollo 17, became the last man to step foot on the moon. -
Nixon Visits Soviet Union
In 1971 Nixon made the dramatic announcements that he would visit Peking and Moscow in the first half of 1972. He ... announced progress in the negotiations with the Soviet Union on an arms limitation treaty. The visit to Peking took place in February and he was invited to meet Chairman Mao Zedong, a mark of high respect. In May, he visited Moscow and signed the agreement limiting the nuclear arsenals of the United States and the Soviet Union. -
Pocket Calculators Introduced
Pocket-sized devices become available in the 1970s, especially after the invention of the microprocessor developed serendipitously by Intel for a Busicom calculator. -
HBO Launched
HBO, (short for Home Box Office), is an American premium cable television network, owned by Time Warner. As of December 2010, HBO's programming reaches 28.6 million subscribers in the United States, making it the second largest premium subscription channel in America (Encore's programming reaches 32.8 million subscribers as of April 2011). -
Terrorists Attack at the Olympic Games in Munich
The Munich massacre is an informal name for events that occurred during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Bavaria in southern West Germany, when members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage and eventually murdered by the Islamic terrorist group Black September. -
Supplemental Security Income (SSI) Introduced
Supplemental Security Income (SSI) is a Federal income supplement program funded by general tax revenues (not Social Security taxes):It is designed to help aged, blind, and disabled people, who have little or no income; and It provides cash to meet basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter -
Supreme Court Rules Against Death Penalty
Furman v. Georgia. The court rules the death penalty does not violate the Constitution, but the manner of its application in many states does. The court notes capital punishment was likely to be imposed in a discriminatory way and that blacks were far more likely to be executed than whites. The decision essentially ends the practice of executions. -
Watergate Scandal Begins
The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. Effects of the scandal ultimately led to the resignation of the President of the United States, Richard Nixon, on August 9, 1974, the first and only resignation of any U.S. President. -
KKK Riots in NYC
After the civil war, the Ku Klux Klan arose as a “secret society “ of men, and in the beginning not poor men, but former Confederate officers. The KKK institutionalized in the south as an extension of the power of the planters, part of the overthrow of reconstruction. The KKK was the violence of armed young men enforcing segregation and a racial order of domination in the south. -
Title IX Signed Into Law by Nixon
President Richard Nixon signed Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (20 U.S.C. 1681 et seq.) into law on June 23, 1972 -
War Act Passed
War Powers Resolution, Public Law 93-148, 87 Stat. 555, passed over President Nixon's veto on November 7, 1973. The War Powers Resolution is sometimes referred to as the War Powers Act, its title in the version passed by the Senate. This Joint Resolution is codified in the United States Code ("USC") -
Abortion Legalized in U.S.
Abortion in the United States has been legal in every state since the United States Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, on January 22, 1973. Prior to "Roe", there were exceptions to the abortion ban in at least 10 states; "Roe" established that a woman has a right to self-determination (often referred to as a "right to privacy") covering the decision whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term, but that this right must be balanced against a state's interest in preserving fetal life. -
UPC Barcodes come to US
The Universal Product Code (UPC) is a barcode symbology (i.e., a specific type of barcode), that is widely used in North America, and in countries including the UK, Australia, and New Zealand for tracking trade items in stores. -
Endangered Species Act
The Endangered Species Act of 1973 ESA is one of the dozens of United States environmental laws passed in the 1970s. Signed into law by President Richard Nixon on December 28, 1973, it was designed to protect critically imperiled species from extinction as a "consequence of economic growth and development untempered by adequate concern and conservation." -
U.S. Vice President Resigns
On the domestic front, he implemented the concept of New Federalism, transferring power from the federal government to the states; new economic policies which called for wage and price control and the abolition of the gold standard; sweeping environmental reforms, including the Clean Air Act and creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency; the launch of the War on Cancer and War on Drugs; reforms empowering women, including Title IX; -
OPEC doubles price of oil
Crude oil prices behave much as any other commodity with wide price swings in times of shortage or oversupply. The crude oil price cycle may extend over several years responding to changes in demand as well as OPEC and non-OPEC supply -
Sears Tower Built
Willis Tower (formerly named, and still commonly referred to as Sears Tower) is a 108-story, 1451-foot (442 m) skyscraper in Chicago, Illinois.[4] At the time of its completion in 1973, it was the tallest building in the world, surpassing the World Trade Center towers in New York, and it held this rank for nearly 25 years. -
Paul Getty Kidnapped
Jean Paul Getty III (4 November 1956[1] — 5 February 2011),[2] also known as Paul Getty, was the eldest of the four children of Paul Getty, Jr. and Abigail (née Harris), and the grandson of oil tycoon Jean Paul Getty. His son is actor Balthazar Getty. -
U.S. Pulls Out of Vietnam
President Nixon had been elected on a promise to Vietnamize the war, meaning more fighting would be turned over to the South Vietnamese army, and to start bringing home American troops. When the President ordered US troops into Cambodia and ordered more bombings, the result was a tremendous uproar at home with more marches and demonstrations. Congress reacted to the antiwar feeling and repealed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which gave the President the authority to send troops and fight the war. -
The War Powers Act
At least, it usually seems to be called the War Powers Act. It's actually the War Powers Resolution, not that I'm convinced anyone cares. -
President Nixon Resigns
On August 8, 1974, President Richard Nixon announced that he was resigning as president of the United States during an evening television broadcast. Under pressure for his involvement in the Watergate Scandal, Nixon became the first U.S. president in history to resign from office. The resignation took effect a little before noon the following day (August 9).. -
Patty Hearst Kidnapped
Patricia Campbell Hearst (born February 20, 1954), now known as Patricia Campbell Hearst Shaw, is an American newspaper heiress, socialite, actress, kidnap victim, and convicted bank robber. -
Freedom of Information Act passed over Ford’s Veto
On November 20, 1974, the House of Representatives voted to override Ford's veto by a margin of 371 to 31; on November 21, the Senate followed suit by a 65 to 27 vote, giving the United States the core Freedom of Information Act still in effect today with judicial review of executive secrecy claims. -
General Ford Pardons Nixon
President Ford's subsequent decision to pardon Nixon eliminated the possibility of a humiliated private citizen Nixon going on trial. The decision to pardon Nixon also likely ended Ford's chances for re-election to the presidency in 1976. -
Girls allowed to play in Little League Baseball
Girls are formally permitted to play in the Little League Baseball program; and a Little League Softball program for both boys and girls is created. -
National Speed Limit 55
The National Maximum Speed Law (NMSL) in the United States was a provision of the 1974 Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act that prohibited speed limits higher than 55 mph (90 km/h). It was drafted in response to oil price spikes and supply disruptions during the 1973 oil crisis. While gasoline consumption was expected to fall by 2.2%, the United States Department of Transportation calculated actual savings at 1%. Independent studies suggest savings as low as a half percent. -
Catalytic Coverters are Introduced on Cars
First widely introduced on series-production automobiles in the United States market for the 1975 model year to comply with tightening U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations on auto exhaust, catalytic converters are still most commonly used in motor vehicle exhaust systems. Catalytic converters are also used on generator sets, forklifts, mining equipment, trucks, buses, trains, airplanes and other engine-equipped machines. -
Computerized Supermarket checkouts begin to appear
In San Francisco, California, Sara Jane Moore fired a revolver at Ford from 40 feet (12 m) away.[15] A bystander, Oliver Sipple, grabbed Moore's arm and the shot missed Ford.[16] Moore was sentenced to life in prison.[17] She was later paroled from a federal prison on Monday, December 31, 2007 (370 days after Ford's death) after serving more than 30 years. -
Microsoft Founded
The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featured Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems's (MITS) Altair 8800 microcomputer. Allen noticed that they could program a BASIC interpreter for the device; after a call from Gates claiming to have a working interpreter, MITS requested a demonstration. -
Arthur Ashe First Black Man to Win Wimbledon
On this day in 1975, Arthur Ashe defeats the heavily favored Jimmy Connors to become the first black man ever to win Wimbledon, the most coveted championship in tennis. -
Saigon Falls to Communism
The Fall of Saigon was the capture of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, by the People's Army of Vietnam and the National Liberation Front on April 30, 1975. The event marked the end of the Vietnam War and the start of a transition period leading to the formal reunification of Vietnam under communist rule. -
Fransisco Franco Dies
Franco died just after midnight on November 20, 1975, at the age of 82, just two weeks before his 83rd birthday — the same date as the death of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the Falange. It is suspected that his doctors were ordered to keep him alive by respirator and life support machines until this symbolic date -
Jimmy Hoffa Dissapearance
James Riddle "Jimmy" Hoffa (born February 14, 1913 – disappeared July 30, 1975, declared legally dead July 30, 1982) was an American labor union leader and author. -
Legionnaire's Disease strikes 182, kills 29
The first appearance of the flu like disease struck at an American Legion convention in Philadelphia -
Betamax VCR's Released
Betamax (sometimes called Beta) is a home videocassette tape recording format developed by Sony, released on May 10, 1975. The cassettes contain 1/2-inch (12.7mm)-wide videotape in a design similar to the earlier, professional 3/4-inch (19.05mm) U-matic format. The format is generally considered obsolete, though it is still used in specialist applications by a small minority of people. -
Entebbe air raid
Operation Entebbe was a hostage-rescue mission carried out by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) at Entebbe Airport in Uganda on 4 July 1976.[1] A week earlier, on 27 June, an Air France plane with 248 passengers was hijacked by Palestinian terrorists and supporters and flown to Entebbe, near Kampala, the capital of Uganda. Shortly after landing, all non-Jewish passengers were released. -
Karen Ann Quinlan
Karen Ann Quinlan had been in a coma for over a year before her parents won the right to remove the life support equipment keeping her alive. It took 9 years for her to die afterwards. -
Mao Tse-Tung Dies
September 9, 1976(1976-09-09) (aged 82) (atrophy)
Beijing, People's Republic of China -
West Point admits women
On October 8, 1975 , the President of the United States signed into law a bill directing that women would be admitted to America ’s service academies. -
Nadia Comaneci Given 7 perfect 10's
Nadia Elena Comăneci (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈnadi.a koməˈnet͡ʃʲ]; born November 12, 1961) is a Romanian gymnast, winner of three Olympic gold medals at the 1976 Summer Olympics, and the first gymnast ever to be awarded a perfect score of 10 in an Olympic gymnastic event. She is also the winner of two gold medals at the 1980 Summer Olympics. She is one of the best-known gymnasts in the world . -
North and South Vietnam join to form the socialist republic of Vietnam
A plan to improve logistics was prepared so that the North Vietnamese army would be able to launch a massive invasion of the South, projected for 1976, before Saigon's army could be fully trained. A gas pipeline would be built from North Vietnam to Vietcong headquarters in Loc Ninh, about 60 miles (97 km) north of Saigon. -
Apple Computer Launched
In the last few decades, computers have made huge strides in improving and making the world more accessible to the general population. In the 1970s, few people had no idea what their computer technology would lead to. Even fewer of them probably had the vision that they would have been made into what they are now. But in the 1970s, the popularity of computers was just beginning to take hold. -
Miniseries Roots Airs
Roots remains one of television's landmark programs. The twelve-hour mini-series aired on ABC from 23-30 January 1977. For eight consecutive nights it riveted the country. ABC executives initially feared that the historical saga about slavery would be a ratings disaster. Instead, Roots scored higher ratings than any previous entertainment program in history. It averaged a 44.9 rating and a 66 audience share for the length of its run. -
Alaskan Pipeline Completed
The pipeline was built between 1974 and 1977 after the 1973 oil crisis caused a sharp rise in oil prices in the United States. This rise made exploration of the Prudhoe Bay oil field economically feasible. Environmental, legal, and political debates followed the discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay in 1968, and the pipeline was built only after the oil crisis provoked the passage of legislation designed to remove legal challenges to the project -
Star Wars Movie Released
Star Wars is an American epic space opera franchise conceived by George Lucas. The first film in the franchise was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year intervals. Sixteen years after the release of the trilogy's final film, the first in a new prequel trilogy of films was released, again at three-year intervals, with the final film released on May 19, 2005 -
President Carter Pardons Vietnam Draft Dodgers
On this day in 1977, President Jimmy Carter, in his first day in office, fulfilled a campaign promise by granting unconditional pardons to hundreds of thousands of men who had evaded the draft during the Vietnam War by fleeing the country or by failing to register. -
New York City Blackout
The New York City Blackout of 1977 was an electricity blackout that affected most of New York City from July 13, 1977 to July 14, 1977. The only neighborhoods in New York City that were not affected were the Southern Queens, and neighborhoods of the Rockaways, which are part of the Long Island Lighting Company System -
Elvis Found Dead
The Death Baptist Hospital, Memphis. It was 3-30 P.M. on August 16, 1977. Elvis Aaron Presley was pronounced dead by his personal physician, Dr. George Nichopoulos. The pronouncement was final. Yet, for the thousands of yarning souls thronged outside the hospital it brought in shock and disbelief. The disbelief that is still being nurtured by many across the world. Not yet ready to believe that the death has brought such an abrupt end to their so beloved idol. -
First Black Miss Universe
This year's winner is Miss Botswana, 19 year-old Mpule Kwelagobe. She succeeds Wendy Fitzwilliam from Trinidad and Tobago, who, when she won last year, was reported as being only the second Black woman to have won the Miss Universe pageant. -
Red Dye #2 is Banned
Without it, instant chocolate pudding would be greenish, artificially flavored grape soda would look blue, and cake mixes would have a lemony-green tinge. The substance is Red Dye No. 2, which has been used for decades to brighten up innumerable products, including frankfurter casings, pet foods, ice cream, gravies, makeup and myriad red pills. About 1 million pounds of the coal-tar-based stuff—a $5 million industry in itself—have ended up annually in more than $10 billion worth of foods, drug -
Neutron Bomb Funding Began
A neutron bomb, or enhanced radiation weapon, is a type of nuclear weapon designed specifically to release a large portion of its energy as energetic neutron radiation rather than explosive energy. Although their extreme blast and heat effects are not eliminated, it is the enormous radiation released by ERWs that is meant to be a major source of casualties. Such radiation is able to penetrate buildings and armored vehicles to kill personnel that would otherwise be protected from the explosion. -
Love Canal in New York Declared Federal Disaster
Love Canal is a neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York, which became the subject of national and international attention, controversy, and eventual environmental notoriety following the discovery of 21,000 tons of toxic waste that had been buried beneath the neighborhood by Hooker Chemical. Love Canal officially covers 36 square blocks in the far southeastern corner of the city, along 99th Street and Read Avenue. -
First Test-Tube Baby Born
First Test-Tube Baby Born (1978): Since 1966, Dr. Patrick Steptoe, a gynecologist at Oldham General Hospital, and Dr. Robert Edwards, a physiologist at Cambridge University, had been actively working on finding an alternative solution for conception for women with blocked Fallopian tubes. However, even after they found a way to fertilize an egg outside a human body, they continued to have problems replacing the fertilized egg back into a uterus. -
Jonestown Massacre
Almost three decades ago an unusual series of events led to the deaths of more than 900 people in the middle of a South American jungle. Though dubbed a "massacre," what transpired at Jonestown on November 18, 1978, was to some extent done willingly, making the mass suicide all the more disturbing. The Jonestown cult (officially named the "People's Temple") was founded in 1955 by Indianapolis preacher James Warren Jones. -
Camp David Accords for Middle East Peace
The Camp David Accords were signed by Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin on September 17, 1978, following thirteen days of secret negotiations at Camp David.[1] The two framework agreements were signed at the White House, and were witnessed by United States President Jimmy Carter. -
Atlantic City Permits Gambling
In an effort at revitalizing the city, New Jersey voters in 1976 approved casino gambling for Atlantic City; this came after a 1974 referendum on legalized gambling failed to pass. The Chalfonte-Haddon Hall Hotel became Resorts International; it was the first legal casino in the eastern United States when it opened on May 26, 1978. -
John Paul II Becomes Pope
The Venerable Pope John Paul II[1] (Latin: Ioannes Paulus PP. II, Italian: Giovanni Paolo II, Polish: Jan Paweł II), born Karol Józef Wojtyła (18 May 1920 – 2 April 2005), reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and Sovereign of The Holy See from 16 October 1978 until his death on 2 April 2005, at 84 years and 319 days of age. -
Ayatollah Khomeini Returns as Leader of Iran
Religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini has made a triumphant return to Iran after 14 years in exile. Up to five million people lined the streets of the nation's capital, Tehran, to witness the homecoming of the Shia Muslim imam. -
Margaret Thatcher First Woman Prime Minister of Great Britain
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC, FRS (née Roberts; born 13 October 1925) is a former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom who served from 1979 to 1990. -
ESPN starts broadcasting
Founded by Bill Rasmussen,[1] his son Scott Rasmussen and Getty Oil executive Stuart Evey, it launched on September 7, 1979, under the direction of Chet Simmons, the network's President and CEO (and later the United States Football League's first commissioner). Getty Oil Company provided the funding to begin the new venture. Geoff Bray of New Britain, CT was chosen as the architect. George Bodenheimer is ESPN's current president, a position he has held since November 19, 1998. -
Jerry Falwell begins Moral Majority
The Moral Majority was a political organization of the United States which had an agenda of evangelical Christian-oriented political lobbying. It was founded in 1979 and dissolved in the late 1980s. -
Sony Introduces the Walkman
Walkman is a Sony brand tradename originally used for portable audio cassette, and now used to market Sony's portable audio and video players as well as a line of Sony Ericsson mobile phones. The original Walkman introduced a change in music listening habits by allowing people to carry music with them and listen to music through lightweight headphones. -
The Greensboro Massacre
The Greensboro massacre occurred on November 3, 1979 in Greensboro, North Carolina, United States. Five protest marchers were shot and killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party. The protest was the culmination of attempts by the Communist Workers Party to organize mostly black industrial workers in the area. -
Nuclear Accident at Three Mile Island
The Three Mile Island accident was a partial core meltdown in Unit 2 (a pressurized water reactor manufactured by Babcock & Wilcox) of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania near Harrisburg, United States in 1979. -
Iran Takes American Hostages in Tehran
Sixty-six Americans were taken captive when Iranian militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979, including three who were at the Iranian Foreign Ministry. Six more Americans escaped and of the 66 who were taken hostage, 13 were released on November 19 and 20, 1979; one was released on July 11, 1980