April 1979

April 1, 1979 (Sunday)

• The People's Republic of China reversed its policy of allowing its citizens to post "big character posters" as an expression of free speech. Beijing city workers were ordered to remove those that had been put up for the past month. Chinese authorities allowed posters to be placed in one approved location, Democracy Wall, a brick edifice around a bus station on Chang An Boulevard. Four people were arrested a few days later, as they tried to test the new policy.
• Iran's government became an Islamic Republic, after approval of the abolition of the monarchy by 98 percent of voters.
• Police in Austria locked Andreas Mihavecz in a holding cell in the basement of a jail in Bregenz, and then forgot him. He was not noticed and released until April 18, surviving for nearly three weeks without food or drink. The three jail officials responsible for Mihavecz's confinement were later sentenced to jail terms, albeit with food and drink provided during their confinement.
• The extreme sport of bungee jumping was first performed by two Oxford University students, David Kirke and Simon Keeling. The sport was inspired by the "vine jumping" practiced as part of the culture of the Ni-Vanuatu people in the South Pacific. Kirke and Keeling jumped off the high Clifton Suspension Bridge in the English city of Bristol. Kirke and Keeling would bring the sport to the United States on October 8, when they jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco with three other people. They were arrested by the California Highway Patrol.
• The cable TV network Nickelodeon debuted on Warner Cable TV systems throughout the United States. The network was formerly called "C-3". It was originally limited to the QUBE system in Columbus, Ohio since December 1, 1977.
• Dale Earnhardt won his first career NASCAR race at the 1979 Southeastern 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway. He would go on to win 76 races and 7 championships during his career.
• Born: Ruth Beitia, Spanish Olympic champion high jumper; in Santander

  April 2, 1979 (Monday)

• Spores of anthrax bacterium Bacillus anthracis were accidentally released from a Soviet biowarfare laboratory and killed 66 people in Sverdlovsk.
• Born:
• *Jesse Carmichael, American keyboardist for Maroon 5; in Boulder, Colorado
• *Moise Poida, Vanuatan footballer and manager

  April 3, 1979 (Tuesday)

• Jane Byrne was elected as Mayor of Chicago, becoming the first woman to serve in that job and the first mayor in 46 years to come from somewhere other than the neighborhood of Bridgeport on Chicago's South Side. In February, Byrne had defeated incumbent Mayor Michael A. Bilandic in the Democratic primary election.
• Born: Gregoire Boissenot, French pop singer billed as "Gregoire"; in Senlis, Oise

  April 4, 1979 (Wednesday)

• Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, 51, who had served as President of Pakistan from 1971 to 1973, and Prime Minister from 1973 to 1977, was executed by hanging at the Rawalpindi District Jail, after President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq rejected international please for a last minute reprieve of Bhutto's death sentence. The hanging took place at 4:00 in the morning. Bhutto had been convicted, along with four officials of his secret police, of having conspired in 1974 to assassinate a political opponent, Ahmed Raza Kasuri. Bhutto and the co-conspirators were hanged on the same day. Bhutto's body was then taken to the city of Larkana for a burial ceremony.
• The pilot and co-pilot of TWA Flight 841 were able to regain control of a sudden spiral dive that had sent the Boeing 727 plummeting to earth at more than or Mach 1 and that placed them only seconds away from a crash that would have killed all 82 passengers and seven crew. The TWA jet dropped from an altitude of to in 63 seconds, doing a complete roll twice on the way down. Pilot Harvey S. Gibson was able to save the plane by lowering the landing gear, which produced enough drag to slow the descent and allowed him to level the aircraft. The jet was flying from New York to Minneapolis when, at 8:48 p.m. local time, it suddenly went into the dive while 39,000 feet above Midland, Michigan.
• A direct telephone link was activated between the offices of the Prime Minister of Israel, Menahem Begin, and the President of Egypt, Anwar Sadat.
• Born:
• *Heath Ledger, Australian film actor; in Perth, Western Australia
• *Roberto Luongo, Canadian NHL hockey goaltender; in Montreal
• *Maksim Opalev, Russian canoeist and Olympic gold medalist; in Volgograd, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
• Died: Edgar Buchanan, 76, American TV and film actor known for ''Petticoat Junction''

  April 5, 1979 (Thursday)

• The National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution purchased the most reproduced painting in United States history, the Athenaeum Portrait of George Washington, painted by Gilbert Stuart in 1796, paying five million dollars for Stuart's pair of paintings of George Washington and Martha Washington. For more than 100 years, the painting had been displayed in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts where it was on loan from the Athenaeum. Although the painting was unfinished, the iconic image of the first president of the United States is engraved on the U.S. one-dollar bill and reproductions were displayed in school classrooms throughout the U.S.
• The government of East Germany issued a regulation prohibiting foreign currency, including West Germany's Deutsche Mark, from being used as legal tender. Since 1974, East Germany had permitted people to use foreign money to purchase Western-made goods at its Intershop chain of retail stores, as a means of taking the West German mark out of circulation. The new rule, published in newspapers nationwide, set a deadline of April 16 to exchange their holdings of foreign money for Intershop coupons,

  April 6, 1979 (Friday)

• After having helped defend the regime of Uganda's ruler Idi Amin Dada during the Uganda–Tanzania War, Libya removed its support and airlifted all of its troops. With more than 1,000 soldiers and as many as 2,000 the entire Libyan force was transported from Kampala to the airbase at Nakasongola and loaded on C-130 transports and Boeing 727s for the return to Tripoli.
• President Mustafa Ould Salek of Mauritania announced the dissolution of the West African nation's parliament, the National Assembly, and its replacement by a Supreme Military Council chaired by Colonel Ahmed Ould Bouceif, who declared himself the Prime Minister. Although Salek retained the title of president as a ceremonial head of state, Colonel Bouceif had engineered the coup to install military rule and Salek would be ousted two months later.
• Died: Norman Tokar, 59, U.S. film and TV director

  April 7, 1979 (Saturday)

• The Battle of Entebbe, a turning point in the Uganda–Tanzania War, began as the Tanzania People's Defence Force 208th brigade reached the airfield serving the capital of Uganda and captured or destroyed most of the aircraft of the Uganda Army Air Force and forced the withdrawal of Libyan troops who had been defending the regime of Uganda's President Idi Amin. Tanzanian forces killed 300 Libyan soldiers, including 39 who had been attempting to evacuate on a C-130 troop transport that was shot down as it was taking off, and forced the rest to flee by motor vehicle or on foot. Within hours after the pre-dawn attack, Entebbe was captured, placing the Tanzanian forces only from the outskirts of Kampala and from the city center.
• USS Ohio, described by the U.S. Navy as "the most formidable strategic weapons system ever devised", was launched from the General Dynamics shipyard at Groton, Connecticut. It, and the 17 subsequently-built Ohio-class submarines, remain the largest U.S. submarines ever built, with capacity to carry 24 Trident II thermonuclear missiles, and displacing 18,750 tons submerged.
• Died: Amir-Abbas Hoveyda, 60, Prime Minister of Iran from 1965 to 1977 during the reign of the Shah, was executed by a firing squad at Qasr Prison in Tehran. The execution was carried out at 6:00 in the evening, about 15 minutes after he had been tried, convicted of corruption in office, and sentenced to death.

  April 8, 1979 (Sunday)

• English comedian Rowan Atkinson appeared on a television special program on ITV, Canned Laughter, in which he introduced a character, "Robert Box", whose silly behavior and nerdish appearance would be a prototype of his iconic act, Mr. Bean, in 1990.
• Using a Cray supercomputer, U.S. mathematicians David Slowinski and Harry L. Nelson discovered the 27th Mersenne prime number — specifically a prime number that is one less than a power of two M_n. The number M_n is 13,395 digits long.
• Roger Sydnor, a 30-year-old book salesman from Manhattan Beach, California, fell to his death from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon while taking photographs of the sunrise. He had apparently slipped in snow and his camera was found at the edge of the cliff from which he fell.
• Born:
• *Mohamed Kader Toure, Togolese soccer football forward; in Sokode
• *Alexi Laiho, Finnish rock guitarist; in Espoo

  April 9, 1979 (Monday)

• After more than 25 years of service, the world's first nuclear-powered submarine, USS Nautilus, departed on its final voyage, receiving a sendoff from Groton, Connecticut for a 47-day journey via the Panama Canal to the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in California, where its nuclear power would be deactivated on May 26.
• Born:
• *Keshia Knight Pulliam, American TV actress known for The Cosby Show as a child, and for Tyler Perry's House of Payne as an adult; in Newark, New Jersey
• *Mario Matt, Austrian skier and Olympic gold medalist; in Zams
• * Sebastian Silva, Chilean film director; in Santiago
• Died:
• *Pak Machjar, 76, Sundanese Indonesian composer and musicologist who created the solfège system of music notation and the 17-tone model for Sundanese music
• *General Amir Hossein Rabii, 48, the last commander of the Imperial Iranian Air Force was executed at the Qasr prison along with nine other military and civilian prisoners