April 1980

April 1, 1980 (Tuesday)

• The 1980 United States census was taken, with the United States Bureau of the Census counting everyone who had been born on and before April 1 and who had still been alive at the time that the census form was completed. The initial announcement by the Bureau on December 31 would be that the population was 226,504,825. The adjusted official figure, made public by the Bureau on April 19, 1982, was 226,545,805 United States residents.
• Boston television station WNAC-TV aired a fake news bulletin at the end of the 6 o'clock news which reported that Great Blue Hill in Milton, Massachusetts, had become an erupting volcano, and presented a report "complete with film of flowing lava, burning houses and edited remarks from President Jimmy Carter and Governor Edward J. King". Though intended as an April Fool's Day joke, the fake news bulletin on Channel 7 was believed by many of the residents of Milton, and the city's police department received more than 100 calls from panicked viewers. The executive producer of the 6 o'clock news, Homer Cilley, was fired by the WNAC station for "his failure to exercise good news judgment" and for violating Federal Communications Commission rules about showing stock footage without identifying it as such.
• Iran's de facto leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, announced through a speech delivered by his son Ahmad Khomeini that there would be no transfer of the 50 U.S. Embassy hostages from their student captors to Iranian government control, despite what appeared to be an agreement between the U.S. and Iranian governments. The elder Khomeini described the American proposal as "diabolic trickery" and Iran's President Abolhassan Banisadr said that the U.S. would need to "remain silent on the issue" until the newly elected Parliament could convene in June.
• The Southern African Development Community was formed by the leaders of nine nations— Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe — at a summit in the Zambian capital at Lusaka.
• Syrian Special Forces began the Siege of Aleppo to suppress the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, an anti-government movement that had started with strikes in March. By Saturday, troops, tanks and armored vehicles from the Syrian Army's Third Division arrived in the city and began arresting dissidents. During the occupation, which would continue for ten months, at least 1,000 residents were killed and 8,000 others arrested.
• California Governor Jerry Brown dropped out of the race for the Democratic Party nomination of president, after coming in third place in the Wisconsin and Kansas primaries.
• The Major League Baseball Players Association executive board voted to open the 1980 baseball season, but to cancel all remaining exhibition games and to set a May 23 strike date if their May 22 deadline for an agreement was not signed. The exhibition season had eight more days to run, from April 2 to April 9.
• Born:
• *Hafiz Bakhshaliyev, Azerbaijani World Kickboxing Champion between 2004 and 2008; in Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan SSR, Soviet Union
• *Randy Orton, American WWE professional wrestling champion; in Knoxville, Tennessee

  April 2, 1980 (Wednesday)

• The Crude Oil Windfall Profit Tax Act was signed into law by U.S. President Jimmy Carter. It would be repealed on August 23, 1988 after a continuing drop in the worldwide price of oil.
• The St. Pauls Riot broke out in Bristol after local police raided the Black and White Café on suspicion of narcotics sales. At the height of the riot, 3,000 young Britons, both black Jamaicans and white, damaged local businesses and damaged police cars and fire trucks. Nineteen regular city policemen, normally unarmed except for clubs, were injured along with six rioters. After the outnumbered city police were ordered to withdraw, a unit of 400 helmeted riot police retook the St. Paul's section without incident.
• Born: Bobby Bones, American radio talk show host; in Hot Springs, Arkansas
• Died: Stanley F. Reed, 95, U.S. Supreme Court justice from 1938 to 1957

  April 3, 1980 (Thursday)

• The Federal Home Loan Bank Board voted to authorize savings and loan associations to offer the first adjustable-rate mortgage in the United States, changing existing regulations to offer the renegotiable-rate mortgage to mortgagors for home purchases, the first variable rate mortgage in the United States. Under the regulations, the interest rate could be changed every three years, and could rise no more than 5 percentage points over the original APR life of a 30-year mortgage, or be lowered without limit. The new rule was made in response to a decrease in new housing starts and purchases by buyers hesitant about a long-term commitment to the high interest rates at the time, and was a concept similar to the "rollover mortgage" that were already in use in Canada.
• The Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that the Viking 2 lander had ceased operating after having sent data from Mars for almost 3½ years. A spokesman for JPL in Pasadena, California said that the last useful transmission had been on January 31 and that the one made on March 15 was unintelligible. On September 3, 1976, Viking 2 had landed at the Utopia Planitia on Mars since ceased operation after its batteries were drained.
• Kosmos 1171, a Soviet satellite intended solely as a target for an anti-satellite weapon, was launched into orbit from the USSR's Plesetsk Cosmodrome. Between April 18 and April 20, Kosmos 1174 was used for three unsuccessful attempts to intercept and destroy the orbiting target, after which 1174 was given a self-destruct order. Thirty years after its launch, Kosmos 1171 remained in orbit.
• The two competing U.S. car racing organizations, the United States Auto Club and Championship Auto Racing Teams, agreed on a partial merger as the Championship Racing League, with USAC and CART jointly sanctioning the races of the 1980 Indy Car racing season. The partnership lasted for only five races, starting with the Datsun Twin 200 on April 13 in Ontario, California, and included the Indianapolis 500. After the Red Roof Inns 150 on July 13, the USAC withdrew from the agreement. Johnny Rutherford, who finished in first place of three of the races, was the champion of the brief CRL season.
• Born: Suella Braverman, Home Secretary of the United Kingdom since 2022; in Harrow, London
• Died:
• *Edward Bullard, 72, British geophysicist who found new evidence to confirm the continental drift
• *Mary McCarty, 56, American stage, film and TV character actress.

  April 4, 1980 (Friday)

• Puerto Rican terrorists Carlos Alberto Torres, Oscar López Rivera, Elizam Escobar, Adolfo Matos, and seven other members of the Puerto Rican nationalist group Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña, were arrested in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois on suspicion of complicity in 100 attempted and successful bombings over a six-year period. Torres had been on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list since 1977. Evanston police were alerted by a resident who had called concerning suspicious activity by nine people who were making repeated trips to and from a van parked "in the 1200 block of Forest Avenue". Many of the group would accept an offer of presidential clemency on September 7, 1999. López Rivera would refuse clemency and remain in federal prison until the commutation of his 55-year prison sentence in 2017.
• Fidel Castro removed the Cuban police who had been guarding the Peruvian Embassy in Havana, allowing the embassy grounds to become a haven for dissatisfied Cuban citizens. After the police were removed, hundreds of Cubans entered the diplomatic protection of the embassy grounds.
• The radical environmental advocacy group Earth First! was founded by Dave Foreman and four other men— Howie Wolke, Mike Roselle, Bart Koehler, and Ron Kezar— as the group was driving home from the Pinacate Desert in Mexico.
• Died:
• *Red Sovine, 62, American country music singer and songwriter known for the "truck driver songs" "Teddy Bear" and "Phantom 309", from a heart attack and subsequent crash while driving in Nashville.
• *Aleksander Ford, 71, Polish film director who had fallen into disfavor with Poland's Communist government and fled to the U.S. in 1968, killed himself in Miami.

  April 5, 1980 (Saturday)

• The long-running American police drama Hawaii Five-O came to an end after 12 seasons and 279 episodes. In the series finale, Honolulu police detective Steve McGarrett, who had been introduced on the first episode on September 20, 1968.
• What would become the band R.E.M. was created as lead vocalist Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, drummer Bill Berry and bassist Mike Mills played their first show together, for a birthday party for their friend Kathleen O'Brien at an Episcopal church in Athens, Georgia. Two weeks later, they first performed under the R.E.M. name at the Coffee Club 11-11 in Athens on April 19.
• A then-record price for a postage stamp— U.S. $850,000— was paid at an auction by an unidentified bidder for the British Guiana 1c magenta. The one-cent stamp, issued by British Guiana in 1856, had set the previous record of $280,000 when it was purchased in 1970 by a nine-member syndicate headed by dealer Irwin Weinberg. On June 17, 2014, Weinberg's syndicate would resell the stamp for US$9,480,000. In 2020 dollars, the progression of the price paid was $1,900,000, $2,700,000 and $10,266,000.

  April 6, 1980 (Sunday)

• Post-it Notes, invented by 3M scientist Spencer Silver and promoter Art Fry, went on sale for the first time in the United States as a product of the 3M Company. In 1978, the product had been test marketed as "Press 'n' Peel pads".
• İhsan Sabri Çağlayangil became the Acting President of Turkey upon the expiration of the 7-year term of Fahri Korutürk, who left office without a president-elect to take over. Turkey's Parliament, which was required to elect the president by a two-thirds majority vote of the 635 combined members of both houses, had yet to have a candidate nominated by any of the political parties. Secret ballots had been taken to test the viability of individuals who might be advanced by one of the parties, but a nominee was not put forward until April 10 and was unable to secure even a 50 percent majority. While the joint session kept balloting, Çağlayangil was authorized to act in his capacity as leader of the Republican Senate. He would serve until a coup d'etat on September 12.
• An Easter service was allowed to be held for the 50 U.S. Embassy personnel being held hostage in Tehran, conducted by three American members of the clergy who were permitted to meet with the hostages and report about their condition. Two Methodist ministers, Nelson Thompson and Jack Bremer, and Roman Catholic priest Darrell Rupiper conducted services along with Hilarion Capudji, the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem.
• Born:
• *Khalid bin Sultan Al Qasimi, Emirati fashion designer and a member of United Arab Emirates royalty who founded the Qasimi Homme clothing store chain in Britain; in Sharjah
• *Margarita Simonyan, Armenian Russian journalist and chief editor for the Russian international news agency Rossiya Segodnya and for Russia's RT television network; in Krasnodar, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
• *Bardish Chagger, Canadian politician and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons from 2016 to 2019; in Waterloo, Ontario
• Died: John Collier, 78, British fiction and screenplay writer known for his stories of fantasy