February 1980

February 1, 1980 (Friday)

• The U.S. Department of Energy released its emergency plans for gasoline rationing in the event of a fuel shortage during the summer. Features of the plan, which never needed to be implemented, included a four-day workweek, requirements that car drivers choose three days per week not to drive, limiting gasoline purchases to $7.00, and allowing gasoline to be bought only on odd or even numbered days of the month.
• The U.S. television soap opera Love of Life broadcast its 7,316th and last episode after a run of more than 28 years that had started on September 24, 1951. Larry Auerbach, who had directed every one of the episodes, commented that "It hasn't really died a natural death. It was murdered." The show's declining ratings had become worse after it was moved from 11:30 to 4:00 in the afternoon, after which it was dropped by 40 CBS affiliates in favor of local programming and reruns.
• The film "erotic historical drama" Caligula, which had premiered in Italy in 1979, was released in the United States by its co-producer, Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione. The unrated and pornographic film, about the decadent reign of Gaius Caesar Germanicus had a cast of distinguished actors, including Malcolm McDowell in the title role, Sir John Gielgud as Marcus Cocceius Nerva, Peter O'Toole as the Emperor Tiberius Caesar and Helen Mirren as Caligula's wife Milonia Caesonia. New York Daily News film critic Kathleen Carroll wrote that "'Caligula,' like its leading character, is doomed from the very start," and added "wo hours of 'Caligula'... is two hours more than anyone should have to endure."
• Died: Jack Bailey, 72, American game show host known for the TV series ''Queen for a Day''

  February 2, 1980 (Saturday)

• The New Mexico State Penitentiary riot began at 1:40 in the morning in Santa Fe. After 36 hours, the New Mexico National Guard and a police SWAT team were able to bring an end to the inmate takeover of the New Mexico State Penitentiary, but not before 33 inmates had been killed and more than 100 injured. Many of the deaths were inmates who were discovered, after prisoners had broken into the warden's office, to have secretly been informants. An "execution squad" used blowtorches and axes to torture and then kill inmates deemed to have betrayed others.
• Born:
• *Zhang Jingchu, Chinese film actress and China Film Media Award winner for Best Actress in 2005; in Yong'an, Fujian province
• *Nina Zilli, Italian singer, in Piacenza
• Died:
• *William H. Stein, 63, American biochemist and co-winner of the 1972 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work with Stanford Moore in perfecting the analysis of amino acids and protein sequences.
• *Joseph Fontanet, 59, French politician and former Minister of National Education, died one day after he was shot by unknown assailants outside of his apartment in Paris.
• *Carmelo Larrea, 72, Spanish songwriter and musician.

  February 3, 1980 (Sunday)

• "Operation Abscam" the FBI's sting operation against members of the United States Congress suspected of bribery, was revealed by the Bureau. Over a period of 14 months in 1978 and 1979, agents posing as Arab sheiks contacted and offered bribes to 20 public officials and 10 private individuals who were secretly being filmed. The code name "Abscam" was derived from "Arab Scam". U.S. Senator Harrison A. Williams and U.S. Representatives Frank Thompson, both of New Jersey, would be convicted later bribery, along with U.S. Representatives John Jenrette of South Carolina, Raymond Lederer and Michael "Ozzie" Myers of Pennsylvania, John M. Murphy of New York, and Richard Kelly of Florida. All of the members of Congress except for Kelly were Democrats.
• Died: Ray Heindorf, 71, American film score composer who won three Academy Awards

  February 4, 1980 (Monday)

• An unidentified patient at Johns Hopkins University Hospital became the first human being to be implanted with an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, developed by a team of physicians headed by an Israeli cardiologist, Dr. Michel Mirowski. The device was implanted by Dr. Levi Watkins. In the years since, millions of patients would have their lives prolonged by the Mirowski ICD.
• Abolhassan Banisadr was sworn in as the first president of Iran at a hospital room in Tehran. The Islamic Republic's de facto leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, administered the oath from his hospital bed in a nationally televised ceremony, then endorsed Banisadr, who had been elected to a four-year term. The TV broadcast was poorly handled by the television crew, and the chairman of Iran's state radio and television council resigned the next day. According to a Reuters account of the telecast, "Parts of it were virtually inaudible and the camera was frequently jolted and out of focus."
• Rioters in Tripoli, Libya broke into the French Embassy and destroyed much of the first floor and set fire to cars in the embassy courtyard. Embassy personnel were able to escape unharmed. The attack arose from a demonstration against France for its aid in helping Tunisia repel a Libyan attack on Gafsa. On December 2, a mob of about 2,000 people had set fire to the first and second floors of the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli.

  February 5, 1980 (Tuesday)

• As the Iran Hostage Crisis started its 94th day, the American captives at the U.S. Embassy were woken up by guards wearing black ski masks, blindfolded and led to other rooms, where they were told to disrobe, put up their hands, and kneel down. Blindfolded, the hostages could hear weapons being readied to fire and a commander ordering the guards to take aim, an experience that was the most terrifying of their captivity. One of the hostages would later tell an author, "It was an embarrassing moment. However, we were too scared to realize it." A moment later, the prisoners were told to get dressed again, and were told that the mock execution was a practical joke that their student captors had wanted to try.

  February 6, 1980 (Wednesday)

• Scientists announced the discovery of the earliest-known primate ancestor of human beings, with remains of Aegyptopithecus, described by The New York Times as "the oldest ape-human evolutionary link found so far" and dated to 30 million years ago. Elwyn Simons, who had discovered more than 20 skeletal fossils in the Sahara Desert in Egypt since 1966, said that the species, later classified as Aegyptopithecus zeuxis had been about the size of a cat. The fossils had been found inside a geological formation called the Jebel Qatrani Formation, outside of Faiyum.
• Mathieu Kérékou was re-elected, unopposed, as the President of Benin.
• The trial of serial killer John Wayne Gacy began in Chicago before a jury from Rockford, Illinois. Gacy, suspected of the murder of 27 victims between 1972 and 1978, would be executed in the electric chair on May 9, 1994.

  February 7, 1980 (Thursday)

• The "hotline" between Seoul and Pyongyang reopened at 10:00 in the morning, the day after reunification talks between South Korea and North Korea at Panmunjom, in a meeting room of the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission to discuss a meeting between the two nations' prime ministers. The direct telephone communications link had been disconnected since 1976.

  February 8, 1980 (Friday)

• Gunnar Thoroddsen deserted his political party, the Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn to form a coalition government to replace Benedikt Gröndal and to become the oldest Prime Minister of Iceland in the north Atlantic nation's history. Thoroddsen, the former mayor of Reykjavik and a losing candidate in the 1968 presidential election, allied with the Framsóknarflokkurinn and the Alþýðubandalagið to control 31 of the 60 seats in the Althing, Iceland's parliament.
• Less than one week after the FBI revealed its Abscam sting operation against Congress members, the Bureau announced the results of a second operation, Brilab, against state government officials suspected of taking money from organized crime. The code name "Brilab" was coined from the words "bribery" and "labor". Teams of FBI investigators were sent to Texas and Louisiana after the existence of Brilab had been leaked to the public.
• Born:
• *Yang Wei, Chinese gymnast and 2008 Olympic gold medalist in all-around competition; in Xiantao, Hubei province
• *William Jackson Harper, American TV actor, in Dallas
• Died: Nikos Xilouris, 43, Cretan Greek composer and folk singer, from lung cancer

  February 9, 1980 (Saturday)

• Almost two weeks before their "Miracle on Ice" meeting, the United States Olympic ice hockey team was overwhelmed by the Soviet team in an exhibition at New York City's Madison Square Garden. The Americans lost, 10 to 3.
• Born:
• *Manu Raju, American TV journalist, in Downers Grove, Illinois
• Died: Rostislav Alexeyev, 63, Soviet Russian military designer and pioneer of the ground-effect vehicle aircraft and hydrofoil ships

  February 10, 1980 (Sunday)

• The Partido dos Trabalhadores political party was founded in São Paulo. In 2002, it would capture the presidency with the election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
• An eight-year-old boy on a camping trip in the U.S. state of Washington, Brian Ingram, found roughly $3,000 of the $200,000 ransom that had been paid as a ransom to hijacker D. B. Cooper on November 24, 1971. A man, who had bought a ticket under the fictitious name of Dan Cooper, had hijacked Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305. He parachuted from the Boeing 727 somewhere over Oregon after being paid cash. No other trace of "Cooper", nor his actual identity, would ever be found. Brian was allowed to keep about half of the cash and would sell some of it at a 2008 auction for $37,000.
• Died: Dr. Louis W. Sauer, 94, American pediatrician who, in 1931, developed the first practical vaccine for whooping cough and helped create the DPT vaccine.