December 1979


The following events occurred in '''December 1979:'''

December 1, 1979 (Saturday)

December 2, 1979 (Sunday)

December 3, 1979 (Monday)

December 4, 1979 (Tuesday)

  • U.S. President Jimmy Carter announced his intent to run for re-election in the 1980 U.S. presidential elections, and stated that Vice President Walter Mondale would again be his running mate.
  • The Hastie fire in Kingston upon Hull in England, killed three boys and began the hunt for Bruce George Peter Lee, the UK's most prolific killer.

December 5, 1979 (Wednesday)

  • The government of Israel released Bassam Shakaa, the Palestinian mayor of the city of Nablus, 24 days after arresting him on November 11 and ordering his deportation. In the wake of the arrest, the other mayors of Palestinian cities in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip had resigned in protest and begun a campaign of civil disobedience against the Israeli government. "Never before in the 12 years of Israeli occupation have Palestinian leaders acted in such unison," a reporter for The New York Times wrote, "and never before have they been able to effect such a dramatic reversal by the Israeli military authorities."
  • A tentative agreement on the future of the white-ruled southern African nation of Rhodesia was reached between the British Government and representatives of the Patriotic Front, an alliance of anti-government rebel groups.
  • Jack Lynch announced his resignation as Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland.
  • Died: Sonia Delaunay, 94, French design artist and co-founder of the Orphism movement

December 6, 1979 (Thursday)

  • Choi Kyu-hah was overwhelmingly approved as President of South Korea by a vote of 2,465 to 84 in a special electoral college assembled in Seoul to name a successor to Park Chung Hee, who had been assassinated on October 26. Choi, a former prime minister, had been serving as acting president until an election could be held.
  • At least 14 people were killed and 60 others injured in Spain when an unmanned train crashed into a passenger train that had been halted near Les Franqueses del Vallès. Officials of the state-owned company Renfe Operadora had switched off the electrical power to prevent the passenger train from getting closer, while trying to stop the crewless train that had rolled out of a station and down a steep grade, and "efforts to stop the runaway train by blocking the line or switching it to a siding failed."
  • Sixteen people were killed and 10 injured in Argentina in an early morning fire at the Rilke II nightclub in Rosario.
  • The first elections for the House of Assembly of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines since the Caribbean nation's independence took place, as the Saint Vincent Labour Party of Prime Minister Milton Cato won 11 of 13 seats. The next day, Cato declared a state of emergency after a group of armed rebels temporarily seized the airport and the police station on one of the Grenadines, Union Island.
  • The world premiere of Star Trek: The Motion Picture was held at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., before going into nationwide release in the U.S. and Canada the next day. New York Times critic Vincent Canby commented that the title was superfluous because "I doubt anyone who sees it could possibly confuse this film with those shards of an earlier, simpler, cheaper television era."
  • Born: Stephenie LaGrossa, American reality show contestant, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

December 7, 1979 (Friday)

  • South Korea's President Choi Kyu-hah revoked "Presidential Emergency Decree Number 9", which had been in place since 1974 when it was implemented by then-president Park Chung Hee. Later in the day, the South Korean government released 68 dissidents who had been imprisoned for violating the decree against criticism of the Park government. Foremost among the dissidents released was Kim Dae-jung, who would later become President of South Korea in 1998.
  • The Satcom III communications satellite became useless, 12 hours after its launch the night before, when an attempt to place it into a permanent geosynchronous orbit failed. At 1:57 p.m. Eastern time, technicians at the RCA Corporation sent the command to fire a small engine to place the $20,000,000 Satcom III to a point above the Pacific Ocean, then lost communication with the craft. With capacity for 24 relay channels, Satcom III was set to receive and forward transmissions from various companies to cable service providers.
  • Born:
  • *Sara Bareilles, American singer-songwriter; in Eureka, California
  • *Eric Bauza, Canadian voice actor; in Scarborough, Ontario
  • *Jennifer Carpenter, American TV actress; in Louisville, Kentucky
  • Died:
  • *Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, 79, British-born American astronomer known for her discovery of the composition of stars
  • *Shahriar Shafiq, 34, Iranian prince and former Iranian Navy captain, was shot and killed in Paris while walking along the Rue de la Villa Dupont. Shafiq, a nephew of the recently deposed Shah of Iran and son of the Shah's twin sister, Princess Ashraf, was returning home from grocery shopping when a gunman walked up to him and fired two 9mm bullets into his head. The Islamic Revolutionary Tribunal, which had sentenced Shafiq to death in absentia, took responsibility for the assassination.

December 8, 1979 (Saturday)

  • The government of Indonesia released 2,045 prisoners who had been detained since an unsuccessful coup d'état attempt in 1965 against the regime of President Sukarno. Another 61 political prisoners, described as by the Indonesian government as "hard core Communists", were held for trial to take place in 1980.
  • The U.S. state of Louisiana elected their first Republican governor in more than a century, as U.S. Representative David C. Treen defeated Democrat Louis Lambert in a runoff election. At the time, registered Democratic Party voters outnumbered registered Republicans by a ratio of 22 to 1, but Lambert's opponents in the Democratic primary had endorsed Treen in the runoff election.
  • Born: Ingrid Michaelson, American singer-songwriter, in New York City
  • Died: Robert Hocq, 62, French business executive who purchased and revived the ailing Cartier jewelry firm, was killed while crossing the street outside of his office in Paris.

December 9, 1979 (Sunday)

December 10, 1979 (Monday)

  • The Kaohsiung Incident took place in Taiwan when police in the city of Kaohsiung blocked a rally in observation of the United Nations' Human Rights Day and a crowd of about 10,000 protesters. Eight opposition leaders, associated with the political magazine Formosa, were arrested. At the time, the Kuomintang was the only legal political party in Taiwan, formally the Republic of China.
  • For the first time since the beginning of the Iran Hostage Crisis, one of the U.S. Embassy personnel in detention was allowed to be interviewed by the American press. U.S. Marine Sergeant William Gallegos, a guard at the besieged embassy in Tehran, was selected by his student captors to be questioned by George Lewis and Fred Francis of NBC Nightly News, and said that "The students here have been really good to us," adding "It's hard to believe, I know. We haven't been asked any questions as to what we're doing here, what really our job was. All of us can see each other. Everybody's O.K."
  • South Africa's white minority government partially relaxed some of its regulations under its apartheid policy of racial segregation, declaring that private businesses such as hospitals and drive-in theaters no longer had to renew permits allowing the admission of non-White customers.

December 11, 1979 (Tuesday)

December 12, 1979 (Wednesday)

  • The NATO Double-Track Decision was made as members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization decided to propose to the Warsaw Pact nations a mutual limitation of medium-range ballistic missiles and intermediate-range ballistic missiles combined. The offer was coupled with the threat that, in case of disagreement, NATO would deploy more middle-range nuclear weapons in Western Europe. This followed the so-called "Euromissile Crisis".
  • The 8.2 Tumaco earthquake shook Colombia and Ecuador with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX, killing at least 300 people and generating a large tsunami. The high tsunami reportedly swept away the people in six fishing villages along the Colombian coast.
  • South Korean Army Major General Chun Doo-hwan, Chief of Army Security Command, ordered the unauthorized arrest of the Army Chief of Staff, General Jeong Seung-hwa and several other generals after alleging their involvement in the assassination of ex-President Park Chung Hee. General Jeong's bodyguards engaged in a gunbattle with Chun's soldiers at the Defense Ministry headquarters and three people were killed, with four others seriously wounded before Jeong was taken into custody. General Chun followed with a demand that Prime Minister Shin fill the vacancies, left by the arrest of 16 senior officers, with men of Chun's choice.
  • The unrecognized state of Zimbabwe Rhodesia returned to British control and resumed using the name Southern Rhodesia.

December 13, 1979 (Thursday)

  • The Progressive Conservative Party government of Canada's Prime Minister Joe Clark, installed less than seven months earlier, lost a vote of no confidence in the House of Commons by six votes, 139 to 133, after "its failure to make good on its promises to cut taxes and stimulate the economy." Clark then announced that he would ask Governor General Edward Schreyer to call for new elections to be held in February. The vote came a day after the government excise tax on a gallon of fuel was increased another 18 cents per gallon immediately as a means of curbing energy use, and an announcement that a 12 cent increase would be added on January 1.
  • Shin Hyun-hwak became the new Prime Minister of South Korea after being nominated by President Choi Kyu-hah and confirmed by the National Assembly.
  • Died: Jon Hall, 64, American film and television actor known for the series ''Ramar of the Jungle''

December 14, 1979 (Friday)

  • East Germany completed a 68-day amnesty program that it had started on October 7, 1979, the 30th anniversary of the creation of the German Democratic Republic from the Soviet occupation zone of Germany. The Communist government announced that during the amnesty period, 21,928 prisoners, or more than two-thirds of the incarcerated population, had been set free. Excluded from consideration were "murderers, war criminals, people convicted of brutal crimes and those jailed under international agreements".
  • Born:
  • *Chris Cheng, American marksman and sport shooter; in Mission Viejo, California
  • *Michael Owen, English soccer football striker and national team member; in Chester, Cheshire

December 15, 1979 (Saturday)

  • The former Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, quietly departed the United States after the Republic of Panama agreed to accept him. The Shah and his family were flown to Contadora Island, one of the Pearl Islands roughly from the Panamanian coast.
  • In a harbinger of the failure of the European Space Agency's plans to launch a rocket into orbit, a test-firing of the Ariane rocket's engines ended abruptly with an automatic shutdown.
  • Born: Adam Brody, American television and film actor; in San Diego
  • Died: Ethel Lackie, 72, American swimmer and 1924 Olympic gold medalist

December 16, 1979 (Sunday)

December 17, 1979 (Monday)

December 18, 1979 (Tuesday)

  • The Roman Catholic Church issued a censure against a liberal Swiss theologian and priest, Father Hans Küng, for his continued questioning of "age old tenets of the Roman Catholic faith." Father Küng, a professor at Germany's University of Tübingen, was named specifically in a Vatican declaration written in Latin and signed by Cardinal Franjo Šeper, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, declaring that "this sacred congregation by reason of its duty is constrained to declare that Professor Hans Küng, in his writings, has departed from the integral truth of Catholic faith, and therefore he can no longer be considered a Catholic theologian nor function as such in a teaching role."
  • The Black Hole, the first Walt Disney Productions film to ever receive a parental guidance rating, premiered in the United Kingdom and was released in the United States and Canada three days later. With a total budget of $26 million for production and promotion, the film was the most expensive produced by the Disney studios up to that time.

December 19, 1979 (Wednesday)

  • The United States Senate followed the previous approval of the U.S. House of Representatives and voted, 53 to 44, to pass the Chrysler Corporation Loan Guarantee Act of 1979 to authorize the financial rescue of the ailing U.S. automobile manufacturer. U.S. President Carter signed the bill into law on January 7 to authorize a 1.5 billion dollar government loan.
  • Mudar Badran resigned as Prime Minister of Jordan and was replaced by Abdelhamid Sharaf, a former Jordanian Ambassador to the U.S. Badran, though only 40, died of a heart attack less than eight months later, on July 4, 1980.
  • Siegfried Haag, a former lawyer and member of the Red Army Faction terrorist group in West Germany, was sentenced to 15 years in prison. He would be released seven years later because of illness.
  • The Academy Award-winning film Kramer vs. Kramer, starring Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep as a divorcing couple fighting over custody of their child, was released nationwide in the United States. New York Times critic Vincent Canby described it as "one of those rare American movies that never have to talk importantly and self-consciously to let you know that it has to do with many more things than are explicitly stated."

December 20, 1979 (Thursday)

  • The first advanced maneuverable reentry vehicle ballistic missile, the AMaRV, was launched as the payload of a U.S. Minuteman I and was capable of autonomously adjusting its trajectory during its descent in order to reach its target.
  • A military court in South Korea sentenced seven men, led by former Korean Central Intelligence Agency director Kim Jae-kyu, to be executed for the October 26 assassination of President Park Chung Hee. Kim, who shot President Park to death during a banquet, told the court, "I do not wish to beg for my life, as I have found a cause to die for. My motive was a wish to establish a foundation for peaceful changes of government in the future."

December 21, 1979 (Friday)

  • Documents for a ceasefire in the Rhodesian Civil War were signed at the Lancaster House in London, to take effect on December 28. Bishop Abel Muzorewa, the Prime Minister of the biracial government that had been elected in Zimbabwe Rhodesia signed on behalf of the colonial government, while Robert Mugabe of the Zimbabwe African National Union and Joshua Nkomo of the Zimbabwe African People's Union signed for the Patriotic Front guerrilla group.
  • For the first time since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Communist government permitted the public ceremonies for consecration of a religious leader, as Bishop Michael Fu Tieshan was certified as the Roman Catholic Bishop of Beijing by the Communist government. Bishop Fu, leader of the government-approved Catholic Patriotic Association, was consecrated by eight Roman Catholic bishops from other dioceses, all of whom wore "traditional church vestments". The ceremony was not recognized by the Vatican, however, since Fu was elected by his parishioners rather than selected by the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Beijing would be reactivated by the Vatican in 1989.
  • At least 43 bus passengers in the Philippines were killed while traveling home for the Christmas holiday, after the driver missed a detour and drove the vehicle off of a collapsed bridge. The bus, operated by Philippine National Railways fell into the Marana River, near Ilagan City, when it reached a concrete bridge whose center span had been washed away by Typhoon Vera (Yayang)|Typhoon Vera].
  • The record for most consecutive games played in the National Hockey League, held by Garry Unger of the Atlanta Flames season|Atlanta Flames], stopped at 914 in a row when Flames' coach Al MacNeil benched Unger, marking the first time since February 24, 1968, that Unger had not appeared in a scheduled NHL game. The benching came on the same day that a reporter for the local Atlanta Constitution spoke of Unger's "selfish reputation" and wrote that the mark "seems only to dig up more talk about his lack of team play each game the streak is mentioned." Unger's record would stand for seven more years until December 26, 1986, when surpassed by Doug Jarvis of the Hartford Whalers.

December 22, 1979 (Saturday)

  • In the U.S., the acquisition of National Airlines company by Pan American World Airways was approved by President Jimmy Carter upon recommendation of the Civil Aeronautics Board, bringing an end to the 45-year old airline brand. All of National's flights and aircraft were re-branded as Pan Am, which became the fourth-largest air carrier in the U.S.
  • Died: Darryl F. Zanuck, 77, American film producer and studio executive, winner of three Academy Awards for Best Picture

December 23, 1979 (Sunday)

December 24, 1979 (Monday)

  • The European Space Agency, financed primarily by France and nine other Western European nations, placed a rocket into Earth orbit for the first time as the unmanned Ariane 1 was launched from the Guiana Space Centre near Kourou in French Guiana.
  • The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan when 6,000 combat troops of the 40th Soviet Army were flown into the Asian nation, to prepare to replace PDPA general secretary Hafizullah Amin, who had fallen out of favor with Soviet leadership. Within three days, the troops invaded the capital city of Kabul to carry out a bloody coup d'état to kill Amin and replace him with Babrak Karmal. The invasion began a war that would last for more than nine years.
  • Died: Rudi Dutschke, 39, West German political activist, from injuries sustained in a 1968 shooting. Known as "Red Rudi", Dutschke, who had been shot in the head on April 11, 1968, suffered frequent seizures and drowned in a bathtub while visiting friends in the city of Aarhus in Denmark.

December 25, 1979 (Tuesday)

  • All 28 crewmen of the Taiwanese freighter Lee Wang Zin were killed when the Taiwanese ore freighter capsized off the coast of the Canadian province of British Columbia.
  • The U.S. Embassy hostages in Iran were allowed by their captors to have Christmas services, as three U.S. clergymen and a French-born Algerian archbishop spent five hours with the hostages.
  • Died: Joan Blondell, 73, American film and television actress

December 26, 1979 (Wednesday)

December 27, 1979 (Thursday)

December 28, 1979 (Friday)

December 29, 1979 (Saturday)

December 30, 1979 (Sunday)

  • Time magazine announced that it had selected the Ayatollah Khomeini as its "Man of the Year" for 1979, to appear on the cover of its issue dated January 7, 1980, describing him as the individual who "has done the most to change the news, for better or worse." The magazine added that "As the leader of Iran's revolution he gave the 20th century world a frightening lesson in the shattering power of irrationality, of the ease with which terrorism can be adopted as government policy," and that "The revolution that he led to triumph threatens to upset the world balance of power more than any other political event since Hitler's conquest of Europe."
  • Born: Flávio Amado, Angolan soccer football striker and national team member; in Luanda
  • Died: Richard Rodgers, 77 American musical composer and the first person to win the Tony, Oscar, Grammy and Emmy awards, as well as the Pulitzer Prize; as part of the team of Rodgers and Hart and then Rodgers and Hammerstein, he composed the music for the songs in Oklahoma!, South Pacific, The Sound of Music and other successful musicals

December 31, 1979 (Monday)