June 1979

June 1, 1979 (Friday)

• The Republic of "Zimbabwe Rhodesia" was proclaimed, with the first black-led government of the former Rhodesia, which had been ruled by the white minority for 90 years. Abel Muzorewa, a Methodist Bishop and black African, became the Prime Minister while the white Rhodesian former Prime Minister, Ian Smith, served as the third most senior official as Minister of Portfolio.
• The Seattle SuperSonics won the NBA Championship against the Washington Bullets, winning 97 to 93 to win the best-4-of-7 series, four games to one.
• Born:
• *Markus Persson, Swedish video game programmer and co-creator of the Minecraft game; in Stockholm
• *Rhea Santos, Philippine and Canadian TV news anchor; in San Mateo, Rizal
• Died:
• *Werner Forssmann, 74, German physician and 1956 Nobel Prize in Medicine winner who developed the cardiac catheterization procedure
• *Ján Kadár, 61, Czechoslovakian filmmaker and Academy Award winner
• *Jack Mulhall, 91, American film actor who appeared in 430 films over fifty years
• *Eric Partridge, 85, New Zealand-born British lexicographer and expert on slang.

  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)

• A blowout at the Ixtoc I oil well in the southern Gulf of Mexico caused at least 600,000 tons of oil to be spilled into the waters until it was brought under control on March 23, 1980. The disaster would be the largest accidental oil spill in history until it was surpassed by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010.
• Parliamentary voting was held in Italy for the 630-seat Chamber of Deputies and the 315-seat Senate of the Republic. The Democrazia Cristiana Party continued its plurality in both houses and Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti formed a new government.
• The Uganda–Tanzania War, which had started on October 9, 1978, came to an end as the Tanzania People's Defence Force secured Uganda's western border to prevent the supporters of Idi Amin from attempting a counterinvasion.
• Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Louly became the new President of Mauritania after the ruling Military Committee for National Salvation decided to replace President Mustafa Ould Salek. A former Mauritanian Army officer, Colonel Salek had led the bloodless coup that had overthrown President Moktar Ould Daddah on July 10, 1978.
• Fifty-two people were burned to death in Thailand, and 11 seriously injured, when a bus crowded with 68 partygoers collided head-on with a fully loaded gasoline truck on a mountain road in Phang Nga Province
• Born:
• *Pierre Poilievre, Canadian politician, Leader of the Opposition, in Calgary
• *Tábata Jalil, Mexican TV hostess; in Mexico City
• Died: Arno Schmidt, 65, German author

  June 4, 1979 (Monday)

• Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings took power in the West African nation of Ghana in a military coup d'état, overthrowing General Fred Akuffo and ending the rule of the Supreme Military Council. Ghana Army Major General Neville Alexander Odartey-Wellington, Chief of Staff of the Army, died during the defense of the Council headquarters. Most of the members of the council, including four former heads of state, would be executed in the next few weeks.
• South Africa's State President and former Prime Minister, John Vorster, resigned after being accused by a government board of inquiry of attempting to cover up the "Muldergate" scandal and perjury in his testimony to the board. Vorster was replaced in the largely ceremonial position by Marais Viljoen, the president of the South African Senate.
• Joe Clark took office as Canada's 16th and youngest Prime Minister at the age 39, the day before his 40th birthday.
• Iran reversed its agreement to receive a new U.S. Ambassador, rejecting career diplomat Walter L. Cutler. The post had been vacant since the April 6 resignation of William H. Sullivan. With Cutler's rejection by the Iranian government, and the refusal by the U.S. Department of State to nominate a different diplomat, U.S. Embassy chargé d'affaires Bruce Laingen remained the senior U.S. official in Iran. The Iranian Foreign Minister later stated that Cutler had been refused because of American intervention in African politics when Cutler had been the Ambassador to Zaire.
• The roof of Kemper Arena, the 19,500 sports facility for the NBA's Kansas City Kings and the site of the 1976 Republican National Convention less than three years earlier, collapsed in a storm at 6:45 p.m. Fortunately, no events were scheduled at the time, and the most recent event had been a week earlier, a Memorial Day concert by the Village People. Coincidentally, the American Institute of Architects was holding its national convention in Kansas City the same day, at Bartle Hall at the Kansas City Convention Center half a mile away.
• The song "Tusk" was recorded by Fleetwood Mac along with the 112-member University of Southern California Marching Band, setting a record for the most musicians on a rock music single.
• Born: Hanieh Tavassoli, Iranian film actress, in Hamedan
• Died:
• *Hans Mauch, 60, Swiss ice skater and slapstick comedian who was "Frack" in the famous Ice Follies duo of Frick and Frack.
• *Gilda de Abreu, 74, Brazilian actress and film director
• *Seamus O'Donovan, 82, Irish Republican Army explosives expert and Nazi collaborator.

  June 5, 1979 (Tuesday)

• Sandinista National Liberation Front guerrillas captured León, Nicaragua's second-largest city as the Guardia Nacional abandoned the barracks. More provinces fell to the Sandinist National Liberation Front as Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza Debayle declared a national siege, with rebel rule in the departamentos of Matagalpa, Ocotal and Chichigalpa in the north, Diriamba and Granada in the south, and Masaya near the capital.
• The University of Rio de Janeiro was founded. Officially referred to as the "Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro", it is commonly known as "Unirio".
• Died: Heinz Erhardt, 70, West German comedian and radio and TV actor

  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.