This Year in History:
1979
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
On January 7, 1979, Vietnamese troops seize the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, toppling the brutal regime of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge, organized by Pol Pot in the Cambodian jungle in the 1960s, advocated a radical Communist revolution that would wipe out Western influences in Cambodia and set up a […]
On January 9, 1979, the United Nation’s Children’s Fund, a.k.a. UNICEF, stages a concert fundraiser featuring dozens of leading lights of late-’70s pop music. Designed to publicize the organization’s proclamation of 1979 as the “International Year of the Child” the event called attention to the poverty, malnutrition and lack of access to quality education affecting […]
Faced with an army mutiny and violent demonstrations against his rule, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the leader of Iran since 1941, is forced to flee the country. Fourteen days later, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of the Islamic revolution, returned after 15 years of exile and took control of Iran. In 1941, British […]
On January 26, 1979, “The Dukes of Hazzard,” a television comedy about two cousins in the rural South and their souped-up 1969 Dodge Charger known as the General Lee, debuts on CBS. The show, which originally aired for seven seasons, centered around cousins Bo Duke (John Schneider) and Luke Duke (Tom Wopat) and their ongoing […]
On January 29, 1979, Deng Xiaoping, deputy premier of China, meets President Jimmy Carter, and together they sign historic new accords that reverse decades of U.S. opposition to the People’s Republic of China. Deng Xiaoping lived out a full and complete transformation of China. The son of a landowner, he joined the Chinese Communist Party […]
Brenda Spencer kills two men and wounds nine children as they enter the Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego. Spencer blazed away with rifle shots from her home directly across the street from the school. After 20 minutes of shooting, police surrounded Spencer’s home for six hours before she surrendered. Asked for some explanation […]
On February 1, 1979, the Ayatollah Khomeini returns to Iran in triumph after 15 years of exile. The shah and his family had fled the country two weeks before, and jubilant Iranian revolutionaries were eager to establish a fundamentalist Islamic government under Khomeini’s leadership. Born around the turn of the century, Ruhollah Khomeini was the […]
On February 2, 1979, Sid Vicious, former bassist for the notorious Sex Pistols—and the living embodiment of everything punk rock stood for and against—dies of a heroin overdose in a Greenwich Village apartment. His death likely came as a surprise to very few. To the New York City Police Department and Medical Examiner’s Office, he […]
Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi doctor who performed medical experiments at the Auschwitz death camps, dies of a stroke while swimming in Brazil—although his death was not verified until 1985. When war erupted, Mengele was a medical officer with the SS, the elite squad of Hitler’s bodyguards who later emerged as a secret police […]
In response to the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, China launches an invasion of Vietnam. Tensions between Vietnam and China increased dramatically after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Attempting to expand its influence, Vietnam established a military presence in Laos; strengthened its ties with China’s rival, the Soviet Union; and toppled the Cambodian […]
On March 9, 1979, the 26 Major League Baseball teams are ordered by MLB commissioner Bowie Kuhn to allow equal access to all reporters, regardless of sex. The commissioner’s order comes after Sports Illustrated reporter Melissa Ludtke’s successful lawsuit against MLB for refusing her access to clubhouses at Yankee Stadium during the 1977 World Series between the […]
On March 14, 1979, Judy Chicago’s art installation “The Dinner Party” opens at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The piece remains one of the most famous—and controversial—works of feminist art. “The Dinner Party” consists of ceremonial place settings for 39 real and mythical women from history. These place settings sit atop a massive […]
In a ceremony at the White House, Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin sign a historic peace agreement, ending three decades of hostilities between Egypt and Israel and establishing diplomatic and commercial ties. Less than two years earlier, in an unprecedented move for an Arab leader, Sadat traveled to Jerusalem, Israel, […]
On this day a peace treaty was signed that ended three decades of war between Egypt and Israel. Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed the treaty, and both won a Nobel Peace Prize. Robert Frost the famous American poet was born in San Francisco on this day, and Vladimir Putin […]
On March 27, 1979, one of pop music’s most famous love triangles shifts when British Blues guitarist Eric Clapton finally marries his muse, former model Pattie Boyd. He had been pursuing her since she was married to one of his best friends, Beatle George Harrison. Women have served as artistic muses throughout history—from Camille Claudel […]
At 4 a.m. on March 28, 1979, one of the worst accidents in the history of the U.S. nuclear power industry begins when a pressure valve in the Unit-2 reactor at Three Mile Island fails to close. Cooling water, contaminated with radiation, drained from the open valve into adjoining buildings, and the core began to […]
The world’s first anthrax outbreak begins in Sverdlovsk, Russia (now Ekaterinburg), on April 2, 1979. By the time it ends six weeks later, according to official records, 66 people had died and some 30 more had survived serious illness. Ekaterinburg, as the town was known in Soviet times, also suffered livestock losses from the epidemic. […]
On April 7, 1979, nearly a year after his brother Bob pitched a no-hitter, Houston Astros pitcher Ken Forsch tosses his first career no-hitter. Ken and Bob become the first—and only—brothers to pitch official no-hitters in Major League Baseball history. On April 16, 1978, Bob Forsch pitched a no-hitter for the St. Louis Cardinals against […]
On April 11, 1979, Ugandan dictator Idi Amin flees the Ugandan capital of Kampala as Tanzanian troops and forces of the Uganda National Liberation Front close in. Two days later, Kampala fell and a coalition government of former exiles took power. Amin, chief of the Ugandan army and air force from 1966, seized control of […]
Margaret Thatcher, leader of the Conservative Party, becomes Britain’s first female prime minister on May 4, 1979. The Oxford-educated chemist and lawyer took office the day after the Conservatives won a 44-seat majority in general parliamentary elections. Margaret Hilda Roberts was born in Grantham, England, in 1925. She was the first woman president of the […]
