March 1979

March 1, 1979 (Thursday)

• Voters in Scotland and in Wales considered the question of whether either constituent part of the United Kingdom should have a greater level of self-government. Voters in Wales rejected the proposal for devolution outright, 20% to 80%, and although more voters in Scotland favored rather than opposed the measure, there was insufficient turnout for at least 40% of eligible voters to support the resolution. The result was that 51.6% supported the proposal, but with a turnout of 64%, this represented only 32.9% of the registered electorate. The Scotland Act 1978 did not have sufficient support among the Scottish electorate. This was an act to create a devolved deliberative assembly for Scotland. An amendment to the Act stipulated that it would be repealed if less than 40% of the total electorate voted "Yes" in the referendum.
• Voting was held in Spain for the two houses of the national parliament, the Cortes. The Unión de Centro Democrático party of Prime Minister Adolfo Suárez won 168 of the seats in the 350-member Chamber of Deputies and an absolute majority of 119 seats in the 208-member Senate.
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, a macabre Broadway musical about murderous barber Sweeney Todd, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, made its debut with a first performance at the Uris Theatre.
• Died:
• *Harvey Bailey, 91, American bank robber who stole more than one million dollars between 1921 and 1933, then stayed in federal prison until 1964; he later wrote an autobiography titled Robbing Banks Was My Business.
• *Dewey F. Bartlett, 59, former Governor of Oklahoma and U.S. Senator, died of lung cancer.
• *Mustafa Barzani, 75, Kurdish leader who led armed fighting against both Iran and Iraq for a self-governing Kurdish homeland, died of lung cancer in an American hospital.
• *Dolores Costello, 75, American film actress known for The Sea Beast and The Magnificent Ambersons, grandmother of Drew Barrymore
• *Stefan Frenkel, 76, Polish-born violinist, academic and composer, died of a heart attack.

  March 2, 1979 (Friday)

• The film Norma Rae, a drama based on a true story about labor union activist Crystal Lee Sutton, had its premiere, released nationwide in the U.S. by 20th Century Fox and starring Sally Field in the title role.
• Born: Aleksandar Obradović, Serbian whistleblower who revealed corruption and fraud within the Serbian government-owned defense contractor Krušik corporation; in Valjevo, SR Serbia, Yugoslavia

  March 3, 1979 (Saturday)

• Italian downhill skier Leonardo David was fatally injured during an FIS Alpine SKI World Cup race at Lake Placid, New York. David, an 18-year-old rookie, had won his first World Cup race less than a month earlier on February 7 at Oslo, and was less than from the end of the course when he lost control, fell, and "spun several times and slid through the finish line". He got back up, walked over to his team coach and collapsed while bending down to take off his skis. He never regained consciousness and would remain in a coma until his death on February 26, 1985.
• Died: Harry P. Cain, 73, controversial U.S. Senator for Washington from 1946 to 1953, died of complications from emphysema.

  March 4, 1979 (Sunday)

• Previously unknown to astronomers, rings were discovered around the planet Jupiter by Voyager 1, the U.S. space probe.
• Pope John Paul II issued his first encyclical, Redemptor hominis, setting out the goals for his pontificate and proposed solutions for contemporary human problems. In the first paragraph, titled "At the close of the second Millennium", the Pope wrote that "this time...is already very close to the year 2000. At this moment it is difficult to say what mark that year will leave on the face of human history," but added that "it will be the year of a great Jubilee" that "will recall and reawaken in us in a special way our awareness of the key truth of faith which Saint John expressed at the beginning of his Gospel."
• Yes-or-no elections were held in the Soviet Union for the Communist Party nominees in each electoral district for the official parliament, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Voting was mandatory for all eligible citizens, who were each presented with the name of the Communist candidate for the 750-member Soviet of Nationalities and the 750-member Soviet of the Union.
• Died:
• *Jamil Baroody, 73, Saudi Arabian delegate to the United Nations, died of cancer.
• *Willi Unsoeld, 52, American mountain climber and member of the first U.S. team to scale Mount Everest, was killed in an avalanche along with a member of a 12-student expedition from Evergreen State College while descending Mount Rainier in the U.S. state of Washington.

  March 5, 1979 (Monday)

• The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times adopted the Pinyin system of spelling Chinese names that had been implemented on January 1 by the government of the People's Republic of China for English-language press releases. Since the start of the century, the Times had used the Wade–Giles system. Among the updates revisions were "Beijing" for "Peking" and "Deng Xiaoping" for "Teng Hsiao-ping", as well as China's Xinhua News Agency itself, formerly "Hsinhua".
• MetrôRio, the first underground subway in Brazil's largest city, Rio de Janeiro, was opened with the inauguration of a segment linking the neighborhoods of Gloria and Cidade Nova.
• Voyager 1 made its closest approach to Jupiter, coming within of the largest planet in the Solar System.
• SGR 0525−66, the first astronomical object to be detected from Earth as a "soft gamma repeater" — a neutron star that emits large bursts of gamma-ray and X-ray radiation at irregular intervals— was observed by two Soviet space probes and, 11 seconds later, by a U.S. probe, Helios 2 as all Earth-launched instruments were hit by a large blast of gamma radiation at approximately at 1551 UTC. The radiation was believed to be a magnetar giant flare, the first identified, from near LMC N49, a remnant of the supernova of a star in another galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, an estimated 163,000 light-years from Earth.
• Died: Alan Crofoot, 49, Canadian operatic tenor, jumped to his death from the fifth floor of a hotel in Dayton, Ohio.

  March 6, 1979 (Tuesday)

• The People's Republic of China announced that it had started withdrawing troops from Vietnam after 17 days of war. The cost of the three-week Sino-Vietnamese War to Vietnam was the destruction of bridges, roads, provincial hospitals and the electrical power grid in the Lao Cai, Lang Son and Cao Bang provinces.
• Voters in the U.S. Virgin Islands overwhelmingly rejected a proposed constitution that would have provided limited self-government for the U.S. territory. Out of a little more than 10,000 voters, less than 44 percent approved the proposal for an elected governor and territorial legislature.
• Died: Charles Wagenheim, 83, American actor, was beaten to death by his caregiver, Stephanie Boone, after a confrontation with her for forging checks.

  March 7, 1979 (Wednesday)

• Operation Rekstok, a series of South African raids in Angola against bases of the South-West Africa People's Organization as part of the South African Border War, took place in coordination with a simultaneous raid by the South African Defence Force into Zambia against the People's Liberation Army of Namibia, Operation Saffraan.
• World Team Tennis, which had operated for five seasons, suspended further operations after one of its two remaining teams folded. During summer of 1978 season, WTT had competed with 10 franchises that each played a 44-game schedule. During the off-season, however, teams dropped out of the league, one by one, and after January, only the Phoenix Racquets and the Golden Gaters of San Francisco were still operating. Citing economic problems, Phoenix announced that it would go out of business. The Golden Gaters, the only team left in the WTT, announced later in the day that, since "they had been left with no opposition", they "were forced to conclude that there would not be a season" in 1979. WTT would return in 1981 with a shorter schedule.
• Died:
• *Andres Figueroa Cordero, 54, one of four Puerto Rican terrorists who entered the U.S. Capitol on March 1, 1954, and shot five U.S. Representatives during a session of Congress, died of cancer in his hometown of Aguada, Puerto Rico, a little more than six months after his release from federal prison.
• *Lei Chen, 81, former government minister of the Kuomintang Party government in mainland China and later in Taiwan, who later became an opposition leader and was jailed for 13 years for sedition.
• *Guiomar Novaes, 84, Brazilian concert pianist, died after a heart attack.

  March 8, 1979 (Thursday)

• Britain's Aerospace Developments AD500 airship, the prototype for the Skyline 500, was damaged in a storm after heavy winds prevented it from being taken into its hangar. The AD500 had made its maiden flight only 33 days earlier, on February 3.
• The office of Prime Minister of Algeria was re-established after having been disbanded in 1963. Interior Minister Mohamed Ben Ahmed Abdelghani was named by President Chadli Bendjedid to the position.
• Thousands of women participated in the International Women's Day Protests in Tehran, 1979, against the introduction of mandatory veiling during the Iranian revolution.
• Died: Richard C. Meredith, 41, American science fiction author, died of a cerebral hemorrhage, three months before the publication of his last novel, The Awakening.

  March 9, 1979 (Friday)

• The Dutch electronics corporation Philips publicly demonstrated a prototype of what would become known as "a 'CD'", a compact disc that stored digital audio, at a press conference in Eindhoven.
• Using data from the Voyager space probe, astronomer Linda A. Morabito discovered evidence of volcanic activity on Io, one of the moons of Jupiter.
• Died:
• *Barbara Mullen, 64, American-born actress active in the United Kingdom, died of a heart attack.
• *Jean-Marie Villot, 73, French Roman Catholic Cardinal and Secretary of State for the Vatican since 1970, died of bronchial pneumonia.