June 1979


The following events occurred in June 1979:

June 1, 1979 (Friday)

June 2, 1979 (Saturday)

  • Pope John Paul II arrived in his native Poland on his first official, nine-day stay, becoming the first Pope to visit a Communist country. The former Archbishop of Krakow landed at the Warsaw airport at 10:05 a.m. where he was welcomed by a crowd of 20,000 and was cheered by hundreds of thousands of supporters who lined the route of his motorcade, before holding a nationally televised mass at Victory Square before a crowd of 200,000. Officially, the occasion for the visit by Karol Wojtyla, who had become Pope less than a year earlier, was the 900th anniversary of the martyrdom of Saint Stanislaus of Szczepanów, who had been killed by King Boleslaw II of Poland on April 11, 1079. The visit, later known as "nine days that changed the world", would bring about the solidarity of the Polish people against Communism, ultimately leading to the rise of the Solidarity movement.
  • Ariel 6, the last of the British Ariel satellite program, was launched from the United States Wallops Island launch site. On April 26, 1962, Ariel 1 had been the first British satellite.
  • Twenty people were killed near Samcheok in South Korea, and more were injured, after the bus they were in toppled over a cliff after colliding with a truck.
  • Born:
  • *Choirul Huda, Indonesian soccer football goalkeeper known for being fatally injured during a Liga 1 game; in Lamongan, East Java
  • *Morena Baccarin, Brazilian-born U.S. TV actress and Emmy Award nominee; in Rio de Janeiro
  • Died:
  • *Jim Hutton, 45, American film and television actor known for the title role in the Ellery Queen, TV detective series
  • *P. V. H. Weems, 90, U.S. Navy officer, inventor and navigational expert who invented the Weems Plotter and the Second Setting Watch, and founded the Weems School of Navigation.

June 3, 1979 (Sunday)

June 4, 1979 (Monday)

June 5, 1979 (Tuesday)

June 6, 1979 (Wednesday)

  • The Kola Superdeep Borehole broke the world record for greatest depth drilled into the Earth, reaching to break the mark set in the U.S. in 1974 by the "Bertha Rogers hole" in Washita County, Oklahoma. Drilling would cease in 1989 at a depth of which has not been exceeded since.
  • Twelve days after the May 25 crash of American Airlines Flight 191, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10 jumbo jet, had killed all 271 people on board in the worst single airplane crash in U.S. history, the Federal Aviation Administration suspended the flight certification of all 138 of the McDonnell-Douglas DC-10 jumbo jets operating in the United States. An inspection of other DC-10s after the disaster had shown that a large number of the DC-10s had the same defect in their engine mountings that had led one of the three jet engines of Flight 191 to drop from the aircraft during takeoff. While there were 143 more DC-10 jets being operated by airlines outside the U.S., virtually all had been grounded voluntarily by foreign airlines. On June 19, the DC-10 jets began returning to the air in most European nations, as a Martinair DC-10 departed Zürich to take vacationers to Majorca, followed by a Swissair flight to Tel Aviv
  • The 200th annual Epsom Derby, the horse race with the largest purse, at the time, in Europe and in the United Kingdom, took place at Epsom Downs in Surrey. With a prize of £153,980 the race won by the Irish-bred and British-trained thoroughbred Troy, ridden by Willie Carson.
  • The high Kalabaland Dhura mountain in the Himalayas, located in India, was climbed for the first time. The ascent of the Chiring We peak was made by a team of three mountaineers, Harish Kapadia, Vijay Kothari and Lakhpa Tsering.
  • Born:
  • *Randa Abdel-Fattah, prolific Australian novelist; in Sydney
  • *Shanda Sharer, American murder victim, known for her brutal murder by fellow students; in Pineville, Kentucky
  • Died:
  • *Jack Haley, 81, American film actor best known for portraying the Tin Woodman in The Wizard of Oz
  • *Ion Idriess, 89, prolific Australian novelist
  • *Babu Rajab Ali, 84, Pakistani poet notable for his compositions and performance of the Kavishari sung verse.

June 7, 1979 (Thursday)

June 8, 1979 (Friday)

June 9, 1979 (Saturday)

June 10, 1979 (Sunday)

June 11, 1979 (Monday)

  • The most distant volcanic eruption ever observed by humans took place on Io, one of the moons of the planet Jupiter, as the Surt volcano was photographed by the Voyager 1 space probe as it displaced lava and sent the images back to the planet Earth.
  • In what was only the third successful hijacking of an American airliner since strict security measures had been enacted at the end of 1972, Delta Air Lines Flight 1061, a jet with 195 passengers and a crew of 12 was seized while en route to Fort Lauderdale, Florida from New York City. The Lockheed L-1011 TriStar jet was diverted at 7:07 in the evening about 90 miles east of Charleston, South Carolina and landed in Cuba at the Havana airport at 8:34. The hijacker, former Cuban Air Force pilot Eduardo Guerra Jimenez, had defected to the U.S. on October 5, 1969, when he landed a MiG-17 at Homestead Air Force Base near Miami.
  • Born: Olaf Schmid, British Army bomb defuser; in Truro
  • Died:
  • *John Wayne, 72,, popular American film actor, died of stomach cancer
  • *Loren Murchison, 80, American Olympic athlete and member of the relay team that won gold medals in 1920 and 1924

June 12, 1979 (Tuesday)

June 13, 1979 (Wednesday)

  • Solar One, the first crewed solar-powered aircraft, made its maiden flight, piloted by Ken Stewart after the solar cells had charged. Stewart flew the aircraft at Lasham Airfield near Hampshire in England for at a height of
  • Born: Ágnes Csomor, Hungarian TV actress; in Budapest
  • Died:
  • *Darla Hood, 47, American child actress best known of the Our Gang film comedies, died of complications from routine surgery.
  • *Sunshine Sue, 66, American country music singer and one of the first women to host a national network radio program, the Old Dominion Barn Dance.

June 14, 1979 (Thursday)

  • Air France Flight 54, a Concorde airliner with 81 people aboard, suffered a blowout of two tires while attempting a takeoff from Dulles International Airport in Washington, DC and shrapnel damaged one of the four engines, punctured fuel tanks and severed hydraulic lines and wires. After the control tower informed Flight 54 that two of its tires on the left main landing gear had blown, the pilot made a safe landing 20 minutes later on another runway that had been prepared by fire trucks.
  • Jerome Robbins's ballet Opus 19/The Dreamer, performed by the New York City Ballet company to the music of the late Sergei Prokofiev, had its world premiere, and starred Mikhail Baryshnikov and Patricia McBride as the principal dancers.
  • Died: Ahmad Zahir, 33, popular Afghan singer and songwriter, was killed in an auto accident while traveling through the Salang Tunnel.

June 15, 1979 (Friday)

June 16, 1979 (Saturday)

June 17, 1979 (Sunday)

  • The government of Malaysia forcibly expelled 2,500 Vietnamese refugees by loading them onto five boats, none considered seaworthy, towed them out to international waters and abandoned them.
  • Hale Irwin won golf's U.S. Open tournament at Toledo, Ohio, finishing two strokes ahead of Gary Player and Jerry Pate. A sportswriter for The New York Times commented that, although the final day was "one of the sloppiest final rounds they had played in recent years... everyone else played as poorly as he did."
  • At Rochester, New York, golfer Jane Blalock won the Ladies Professional Golf Association title.

June 18, 1979 (Monday)

  • U.S. President Jimmy Carter and U.S.S.R. leader Leonid Brezhnev signed the SALT II agreement in Vienna. According to U.S. officials, Communist Party leader Brezhnev, "leader of a country where atheism is the rule," surprised Carter by telling him "God will not forgive us if we fail." A Soviet spokesman, Leonid Zamyatin, told a press conference that Brezhnev had actually said 'Future generations will not forgive us if we fail.' After the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union in December, Carter would halt further proceedings on Senate ratification of the treaty on January 3, 1980, and SALT II would never take effect.
  • The first round of voting was held in presidential and parliamentary elections in Ghana that took place as scheduled even after Jerry Rawlings had overthrown the government of the West African nation. Hilla Limann and Victor Owusu were the top two finishers in the first round of presidential voting, with 35% and 30% of the vote, respectively, and since neither had a majority, a runoff election was held on July 9. Voting was also held for the 140 seats of the Parliament of Ghana, with candidates of Limann's National Party (Ghana)|People's National Party] taking an early lead in the first round.
  • Under the leadership of the Conservative government of Prime Minister Thatcher, the United Kingdom revised the Value Added Tax on sales of classified goods, setting a single rate of 15% on all sales.

June 19, 1979 (Tuesday)

June 20, 1979 (Wednesday)

  • A Nicaraguan National Guard soldier killed ABC TV news correspondent Bill Stewart and his interpreter Juan Espinosa. Both Stewart and Espinosa complied with orders from a guardsman to lie face down, and then both were shot by a rifle at point-blank range. Other members of the news crew captured the murder on tape. Corporal Lorenzo Brenes was arrested the next day after being identified as the gunman, but the killing of the American newsman ended any chance of U.S. support of the regime of Anastasio Somoza Debayle as Secretary of State Cyrus Vance called for Somoza to step down and for the Organization of American States to send an international peace force to maintain order.
  • Ugandan President Yusufu Lule resigned after less than 10 weeks in office after a vote of no confidence by the National Consultative Council that had been installed as the new government following the Uganda-Tanzania War. Former Ugandan Attorney General Godfrey Binaisa was appointed as the new President of Uganda and would serve until May 12, 1980.
  • American Airlines Flight 293, a Boeing 727 flight from New York to Chicago, was hijacked by a Serbian Yugoslavian terrorist, Nikola Kavaja, who was out on bail during the appeal of his conviction for bombing the home of the Yugoslav consul in Chicago. Kavaja released the passengers and most of the crew, forced the jet to return to New York City, and then successfully demanded a Boeing 707 to fly him to Ireland, where he surrendered.

June 21, 1979 (Thursday)

  • The first Prime Minister of Dominica, Patrick John, was removed from office by vote of the House of Assembly after only seven months in office. He was replaced by Communications Minister Oliver Seraphin. Prime Minister John refused to step down, in that the Assembly had not followed the procedure of first having a vote of no confidence in the government but yielded by the end of the month.
  • The U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission voted to turn down a petition to ban the further manufacture and sale of skateboards after a consumer safety advocacy group cited 140,000 skateboard accidents reported by physicians during 1977. At the time, there were an estimated 20 million skateboards in use in the U.S.; the commission's Chairman, Susan B. King, said in a statement that the injuries "had resulted mainly because of how skateboards were used, rather than how manufacturers built them."
  • The gravesite of Korean Christian evangelist Yi Byeok, founder of Korea's Roman Catholic community, was discovered by chance in Gyeonggi Province almost 200 years after his martyrdom.
  • The cricket teams of Sri Lanka and Canada met in the final of the first-ever ICC Trophy, sponsored by the International Cricket Conference to qualify the best two of the ICC's 16 associate members for the Cricket World Cup. The other six spots in the 8-team tournament were occupied by the ICC's full members. At the final played in England at Worcester, Sri Lanka won by scoring 324 runs against Canada's 264. Both teams qualified for the seventh and eighth seed of the World Cup tournament.
  • Born: Chris Pratt, American TV actor; in Virginia, Minnesota
  • Died: Elias IV of Antioch, 64, Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch and All The East since 1970

June 22, 1979 (Friday)

June 23, 1979 (Saturday)

June 24, 1979 (Sunday)

June 25, 1979 (Monday)

June 26, 1979 (Tuesday)

  • Twenty-eight crewmembers of the French freighter Emanuel Delmas were burned to death after the ship collided with an Italian oil tanker, the Vera Berlingieri, off of Italy's west coast.
  • Pol Le Gourrierec, France's Ambassador to Pakistan was arrested and charged with espionage after attempting to enter Pakistan's nuclear facilities at the Kahuta Research Laboratories, along with the Embassy's First Secretary, Jean Forlot. The two men were beaten up after reaching a roadblock leading up to the site, with Forlot suffering a skull fracture and Ambassador Le Gourrierec having a tooth broken.
  • The longest trial in South Africa's history ended after 19 months with the conviction of 16 of 18 members of the Pan Africanist Congress were convicted of attempting to overthrow the white South African government.
  • An assault force of five helicopters, sent by the black African government of Zimbabwe Rhodesia, attacked suburbs of Lusaka, capital of neighboring Zambia, killing 22 people in suspected Zimbabwe African People's Union houses in effort to kill ZAPU leader Joshua Nkomo.
  • The James Bond film Moonraker, adapted from Ian Fleming's 1955 novel of the same name, and starring Roger Moore as Bond, had its world premiere at the Odeon Leicester Square cinema in London, with a general release in the UK the next day and in North America on Friday.
  • The longest passenger liner in the world up to that time, SS France, was sold to the Norwegian shipowner Knut Utstein Kloster, who would rename it the SS Norway. The length ship had sailed from 1962 until 1974 and had been sitting in port at Le Havre.
  • Born:
  • *Luka, popular Brazilian singer; in Porto Alegre
  • *Nanuka Zhorzholiani, Georgian TV journalist; in Tbilisi, Georgian SSR, Soviet Union
  • *Ryan Tedder, American music producer and vocalist for OneRepublic; in Colorado Springs, Colorado
  • Died:
  • *Ghanaian Army Lieutenant Generals Fred Akuffo, 42, and Akwasi Amankwaa Afrifa, 43, both former heads of state of the West African nation of Ghana as Chairman of the National Liberation Council, were executed by a firing squad three weeks after the coup d'état led by Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings, after being tried and found guilty of corruption. Afrifa ruled Ghana for 15 months from 1969 to 1970, and Akuffo for 11 months from 1978 to 1979. Afrifa had won election eight days earlier as a member of the Ghanaian Parliament. The former leaders and four cabinet members, convicted of corruption by a military tribunal, were taken to a military firing range at a beach outside of Accra for their execution.
  • *Major General Robert Kotei, 43, Chief of Staff of the Ghanaian Armed Forces until June 4.
  • *Colonel Roger Felli, 38, Foreign Minister of Ghana until June 5
  • *Rear Admiral Joy Amedume, Chief of Staff of the Ghanaian Navy until his arrest on June 4, was shot by a firing squad.
  • *Colonel George Boakye, 41, Commander of the Ghanaian Air Force until June 4.

June 27, 1979 (Wednesday)

  • In the first aerial combat between the air forces of Israel and Syria since the 1973 Yom Kippur War, several formations of Syrian Air Force MiG-21 jet fighters challenged Israeli Air Force F-15 jets that were striking Palestinian camps in Lebanon near Damour and Sidon, Israel reported that it had shot down at least five Syrian jets and although Syria conceded losing four, it asserted that it had downed four IAF fighters. The last clash between the two nations had been on April 29, 1974, when six Syrian planes were downed in the Golan Heights.
  • Born: Kim Gyu-ri, South Korean film and television actress; in Seoul

June 28, 1979 (Thursday)

  • Greece became the tenth member of the European Economic Community as the Hellenic Parliament voted to ratify the Treaty of Accession 1979. The treaty, signed on May 28, made Greece the first new member since 1973 of the "Common Market", a predecessor to the European Union. Of 300 deputies of the Boule, 193 voted in favor, three abstained, and the other 104 declined to attend the session at all.
  • At a meeting in Geneva of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the representatives of the 13 OPEC nations voted to increase the price of a barrel of oil by 16 percent, to as high as $23.50 a barrel. Since the beginning of 1979, the price of oil had increased by almost 50 percent from $15.50.
  • East Germany's Deputy Prime Minister, Kurt Fichtner was fired along with the Minister for Coal and Energy, Klaus Siebold, in a move approved by the nation's ruling Socialist Unity Party. Their dismissals came days after the government announced that the prices to be charged for energy would be increased by 30 percent for the 1980 winter. Siebold had signed off on shutdowns of electrical power plants for maintenance during one of the coldest winters in the Communist nation's history, and Fichtner's purchasing decisions had left the large power stations with only a one-day reserve of coal on the day before the cold wave struck.
  • Died: Philippe Cousteau, 37, French oceanographer, cinematographer and co-producer of sea expedition documentary films with his father Jacques Cousteau, was killed in the crash of a seaplane near Lisbon, where the Cousteaus were on a filming expedition.

June 29, 1979 (Friday)

June 30, 1979 (Saturday)