August 1978

August 1, 1978 (Tuesday)

• The Montoneros terrorist group made an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the chairman of Argentina's Joint Chiefs of Staff, Rear Admiral Armando Lambruschini, in the bombing of a nine-story apartment building. Lambruschini was uninjured but three civilians were killed, including the Admiral's 15-year-old daughter.

  August 2, 1978 (Wednesday)

• The Health Commissioner of the U.S. state of New York declared a public health emergency arising from the toxic contamination of the water supply of Niagara Falls, New York, particularly in the Love Canal neighborhood with over 1,000 residences and an elementary school. Dr. Robert P. Whalen initially recommended that "pregnant women should move away at once" from the site and declared it to be "a great and imminent peril to the health of the general public... as a result of exposure to toxic substances." In 1976, two reporters from the Niagara Gazette, David Pollak and David Russell, had first discovered the presence of poisonous substances in a dumpsite that had been used near the Love Canal neighborhood by the Hooker Chemical Company. Another investigative reporter, Michael Brown, followed up in early 1978 and found that residents had suffered a higher rate of illnesses and disabilities than the national average, and that the primary toxic chemical in the dumpsite was dioxin. On August 7, U.S. President Jimmy Carter invoked use of the new Superfund to evacuate the Love Canal neighborhood and then to initiate a cleanup that would continue until 2004; in all, 950 families were relocated.
• Six firefighters were killed and 28 injured while responding to a blaze at the Waldbaum's supermarket at 2892 Ocean Avenue in the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood in Brooklyn in New York City. The group was on top of the building's roof when the structure collapsed.
• Died:
• *Totie Fields, 48, American comedian, died from a pulmonary embolism the day before she was scheduled to begin two weeks of shows at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas.
• *Richard D. Obenshain, 42, Republican nominee for U.S. Senator from Virginia, was killed in a small plane crash while returning to Richmond from a day of campaigning. Obenshain, favored to win the November 7 election to replace retiring Senator William L. Scott, died along with an aide and the pilot of the twin-engine Piper Seneca.John Warner, whom Obenshain had defeated in the Republican primary would become the new nominee. Warner, husband of Elizabeth Taylor, would win in November and retain the U.S. Senate seat until 2009.
• *Carlos Chávez, 79, Mexican composer and conductor who founded the Symphony Orchestra of Mexico
• *Ronald Bannerman, New Zealand World War One flying ace with 17 victories

  August 3, 1978 (Thursday)

• Ezzedine Kalak, the Palestine Liberation Organization's diplomatic representative to France since 1973, was assassinated in Paris along with his aide, Adnan Hammad. Two members of the Abu Nidal Organization, Hatem Husni and Kayad Assad, entered the PLO office and shot Kalak and Hamid to death.
• U.S. President Jimmy Carter signed a proclamation designating the first Sunday of September after Labor Day of each year as 'National Grandparents' Day. Poland had been the first nation to observe a special day for grandparents Day, beginning on January 21, 1965, for Dzień Babci, followed on January 22 for Dzień Dziadka for grandfathers.
• Born: Mariusz Jop, Polish footballer with 27 caps for the Poland National Team; in Ostrowiechttps://us.soccerway.com/players/mariusz-jop/732/|Mariusz Jop], at Soccerway.com
• Died: General Luo Ruiqing, 72, the first Minister of Public Security for the People's Republic of China, later persecuted during the Cultural Revolution until his rehabilitation and restoration to office in 1975 by the Communist Party, died in Heidelberg, West Germany, where he was undergoing medical treatment.

  August 4, 1978 (Friday)

• A bus accident drowned 40 people near Eastman, Quebec, with only 7 survivors, in what was, at the time, the deadliest road accident in Canadian history. The bus had taken a group of handicapped residents of the town of Asbestos, Quebec, to watch a play at the Théâtre de la Marjolaine in Eastman and was returning them home when its brakes failed while it was descending a steep hill toward the Lac d'Argent. The vehicle went across a beach, skimmed across the lake and stopped in water deep, where it floated for 15 minutes before sinking. The driver and six volunteers were able to swim to safety, while the people left inside were unable to leave. The bus was found the next day at the bottom of the lake, and had the bodies of 40 passengers.
• A flash flood killed at least nine people in the U.S. town of Albany, Texas and left others missing.
• Died:
• *René Challan, 67, French classical composer
• *Tinsley R. Harrison, 78, American physician and author of the first five editions of Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine
• *Frank Fontaine, 58, American comedian known for his portrayal of the character "Crazy Gugenheim" on ''The Jackie Gleason Show''

  August 5, 1978 (Saturday)

• The Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, announced the introduction of Western-type political freedoms in the indefinite future, with legislation to be considered by the Iranian parliament in October. Speaking on TV, the Shah told viewers "We shall give the maximum possible political liberties, freedom of speech and of the press, freedom to stage public demonstrations within the limits of law," but added that "Iran's monarchy, Iran's fate is not something to tamper with."
• At Islamabad in Pakistan, terrorists backed by Iraq invaded the liaison office of the Palestine Liberation Organization and fired submachine guns, killing four people, in an attempt to assassinate the Yousaf Abu Hantash, the PLO diplomatic representative. Shouting out Hantash's name, the two gunmen were unable to recognize him from among the crowd of Palestinians who were visiting the office at the time.
• Born: Carolina Duer, Argentine boxer and holder of the women's bantamweight title in the International Boxing Federation bantamweight title and the World Boxing Organization ; in Buenos Aires
• Died: Arshad al-Umari, 90, Prime Minister of Iraq during 1946 and 1954

  August 6, 1978 (Sunday)

• At 9:41 in the evening local time, Pope Paul VI died at his residence at Castel Gandolfo in Italy. The Pope, who had guided the Roman Catholic church for 15 years, received communion from his bed during the 6:00 Sunday mass and then suffered a massive heart attack. He remained lucid and, an hour before his death, said that he felt dizzy. Jean-Marie Villot, the Vatican Secretary of State, temporarily assumed the duties of administering the Church until a successor could be elected.
• Elections for parliament were held in Panama, with 1,927 independent candidates competing for the 505 seats of the National Assembly of Community Representatives
• Born:
• *Peng Cheng-min, Taiwanese professional baseball player and 2010 Most Valuable Player of the Chinese Professional Baseball League; in Kaoshiung
• *Lee Ji-ah, South Korean television and film actress; in Songpa District of Seoul
• *Freeway, 80, leader of the Roman Catholic Church since 1963
• * Edward Durell Stone, 76, American architect known for designing the Museum of Modern Art, in New York City, the and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C

  August 7, 1978 (Monday)

• General Juan Alberto Melgar Castro, who had become President of Honduras in 1975 when he led a military coup d'état to overthrow President Oswaldo López Arellano, was removed by another military coup and replaced by a three-man junta led by General Policarpo Paz Garcia.
• Hans Filbinger, the Ministerpräsident of the West German state of Baden-Württemberg, similar to a U.S. state governor, resigned after the newspaper Die Zeit revealed that he had sentenced at least four people to death in Nazi Germany as a military judge.
• Julio César Turbay was inaugurated to a 4-year term as the 25th President of Colombia.
• Born: Alexandre Aja, stage name for Alexandre Jouan-Arcady, French film director known for horror films; in Paris
• Died: Jovita Fuentes, 83, Philippine soprano singer

  August 8, 1978 (Tuesday)

• The Pioneer 13 probe to the planet Venus was launched by the U.S. from Cape Canaveral at 2:33 in the morning local time. Carrying four separate smaller descent modules, the spacecraft arrived at Venus on December 9.
• The Bidong Island refugee camp opened in Malaysia for 121 Vietnamese "boat people", the first of thousands of people who had arrived at the camp after escaping in boats from the former South Vietnam.
• Egypt's president Anwar Sadat and Israel's prime minister Menachem Begin accepted an invitation from U.S. president Jimmy Carter to meet at Camp David in order to work out a peace agreement.
• Born: Louis Saha, French footballer with 20 caps for the France national team; in Paris
• Died: Jean Juge, 70, Swiss physicist at the University of Geneva, skier and mountaineer, president of the International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation from 1972 to 1976, died of exhaustion after successfully climbing the north face of the Matterhorn, the highest peak in Switzerland's Alps. Juge refused to follow his two climbers back down to a shelter during difficult weather conditions, and a colleague told reporters, "That's the way he always wanted to die."

  August 9, 1978 (Wednesday)

• In Greece, the pilot and co-pilot of Olympic Airways Flight 411 were able to save all 418 people on board and to prevent the Boeing 747 from crashing into downtown Athens. At 2:00 in the afternoon, the aircraft took off from Ellinikon International Airport with a crew of 18 and 400 passengers bound for New York's JFK Airport. One of the engines failed and a member of the crew mistakenly turned off the water pump switch, preventing the airplane from climbing higher than in altitude. Captain Sifis Migadis and Captain Kostas Fikardos were able to keep the other engines from stalling and climbed to, narrowly clearing -high Pani Hill at Alimos, dropping to an altitude of as it flew over apartment buildings in the suburbs of Kallithea, Nea Smyrni, and Syggrou. The flight engineer was able to increase engine power sufficiently to increase altitude and to make a gradual turn to avoid impact with Mount Aigaleo, after which Migadis and Fikardos flew over the Aegean Sea, dumped most of its heavy load of fuel, and safely landed back at the airport.
• Born: Daniela Denby-Ashe, English TV actress known for the BBC sitcom My Family; in London,
• Died:
• *James Gould Cozzens, 74, American novelist known for Guard of Honor and By Love Possessed
• *Julien Ghyoros, 55, Belgian composer and orchestra conductor