1979 Calendar
What Happened In Year 1979?
- January 8, 1979 – The tanker Betelgeuse explodes in Bantry Bay, Ireland.
- January 28, 1979 – New Year’s Day in Chinese calendar. Start of the year of the Earth Sheep in Chinese astrology.
- January 29, 1979 – Brenda Spencer kills two people and wounds eight at the Grover Cleveland Elementary School shootings.
- January 30, 1979 – A Varig 707-323C freighter, flown by the same commander as Flight 820, disappears over the Pacific Ocean 30 minutes after taking off from Tokyo.
- February 1, 1979 – Convicted bank robber Patty Hearst is released from prison after her sentence is commuted by President Jimmy Carter.
- February 18, 1979 – Snow falls in the Sahara Desert in southern Algeria for the only time in recorded history.
- March 5, 1979 – Soviet probes Venera 11, Venera 12 and the American solar satellite Helios II all are hit by “off the scale” gamma rays leading to the discovery of soft gamma repeaters.
- March 26, 1979 – Anwar al-Sadat, Menachem Begin and Jimmy Carter sign the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty in Washington, D.C.
- May 21, 1979 – White Night riots in San Francisco following the manslaughter conviction of Dan White for the assassinations of George Moscone and Harvey Milk.
- June 2, 1979 – Pope John Paul II first official visit to his native Poland, becoming the first Pope to visit a Communist country.
- July 12, 1979 – The island nation of Kiribati becomes independent from Great Britain.
- July 17, 1979 – Nicaraguan president General Anastasio Somoza Debayle resigns and flees to Miami, Florida.
- July 25, 1979 – Another section of the Sinai Peninsula is peacefully returned by Israel to Egypt.
- August 17, 1979 – Two Soviet Aeroflot jetliners collide in mid-air over Ukraine, killing 156.
- September 22, 1979 – The Vela Incident (also known as the South Atlantic Flash) is observed near Bouvet Island, thought to be a nuclear weapons test.
- October 21, 1979 – Moshe Dayan resigns from the Israeli government because of strong disagreements with Prime Minister Menachem Begin over policy towards the Arabs.
- November 19, 1979 – Iran hostage crisis: Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini orders the release of 13 female and black American hostages being held at the US Embassy in Tehran.
- November 20, 1979 – Grand Mosque Seizure: About 200 Sunni Muslims revolt in Saudi Arabia at the site of the Kaaba in Mecca during the pilgrimage and take about 6000 hostages. The Saudi government receives help from French special forces to put down the uprising.
- November 21, 1979 – The United States Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan is attacked by a mob and set on fire, killing four. (see: Foreign relations of Pakistan)
- December 10, 1979 – Kaohsiung Incident: Taiwanese pro-democracy demonstrations are suppressed by the KMT dictatorship, and organizers are arrested.
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