May 1980

May 1, 1980 (Thursday)

• The first U.S. government shutdown for lack of funding took place as the U.S. Federal Trade Commission ceased operations. A total of 1,600 workers were furloughed, and meetings and court dates were canceled. The shutdown ended that evening, with the House approving a $7.6 million extension of funding 284–96, and the Senate 71–10. The shutdown was estimated to cost $700,000, of which $600,000 was for salaries.
• "About that urban renaissance.... there'll be a slight delay", an article by journalist Dan Rottenberg in Chicago magazine, contained the first recorded use of the word "yuppie" to refer to a "young urban professional". Referring to the migration of renters and buyers to Chicago from its suburbs, Rottenberg wrote "Some 20,000 new dwelling units have been built within two miles of the Loop over the past ten years to accommodate the rising tide of “Yuppies"—young urban professionals rebelling against the stodgy suburban lifestyles of their parents."
• Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 818 was hijacked shortly after taking off from Stockton, California for Los Angeles. The hijacker, from Ceres scaled a fence at the Stockton Municipal Airport, then ran across the grounds to where stairs had been lowered for the outside boarding of the Boeing 727. He then held one hostage, PSA flight engineer Alan Romatowski, at gunpoint for six hours until Romatowski overpowered and disarmed him. The hijacker's father said that his 25-year old son had written a screenplay about "a young man hijacking an airplane, kidnapping a senator, flying to Iran and kidnapping the Ayatollah in order to get the hostages back to the U.S. safely". After being convicted in November by a jury that rejected his defense of temporary insanity, the hijacker was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment, with the provision that he would receive psychiatric treatment until federal parole officers determined that he could be released.
• "Pick Six" betting, the first large-jackpot wagering game in the United States, was introduced for horse race betting, based on the daily races at the Hollywood Park Racetrack in Inglewood, California. Under a format similar to a long-operating program at Mexico's Agua Caliente Racetrack in Tijuana, a bettor could by a Pick Six betting card for two-dollars to choose the winners for six consecutive races, or pay $128 for picking two possibilities for the winners of six races, with all combinations priced under formula of $2 x n, with n being the number of possibilities. The people who picked the most winners out of six races would split 75% of the pool of Pick Six purchases. Seventeen bettors received $8,491 apiece for picking all six winners in the first day of Pick Six.
• Died: Henry Levin, 70, American film director, died of a heart attack while directing the television film, Scout's Honor.

  May 2, 1980 (Friday)

• A referendum on system of government was held in Nepal, the first voting in 22 years. Voters decided to keep the panchayat political system that had prevailed since 1962, when an indirectly elected legislature, the Rastriya Panchayat, was created to advise King Mahendra. Votes were made by stamping the ballot blue or yellow.
• The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued its decision in Amstar Corp. v. Domino's Pizza, Inc, 617 F.2d 295, reversing a lower court decision that had ruled that Domino's Pizza would have to change its name so as not to infringe the trademark of Domino Sugar. While the suit was in progress, new franchises for the pizza restaurant carried the name "Pizza Dispatch".
• One-quarter of Sweden's workers went on strike, or were locked out by employers, after the 2,200,000 member Trade Unions Confederation was unable to reach an agreement with the Swedish Employers Association on wage increases.
• Died: Special Air Service Captain Herbert Westmacott, 28, was shot and killed while he and seven other SAS members were capturing a unit of four members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, Paul Magee, Joe Doherty, Angelo Fusco, and Robert Campbell, who had taken over a house on Antrim Road. On June 11, 1981, the four IRA gunmen would escape from Crumlin Road Jail and perpetrate additional crimes.

  May 3, 1980 (Saturday)

• Genuine Risk became the second female winner in the history of the Kentucky Derby, and the first since Regret won in 1915, as the filly finished in first place against a field of 12 colts.
• An explosion at a fireworks factory killed at least 40 of the workers, mostly women and children, and severely injured 11 more, at the city of Mandir Hasod in the Madhya Pradesh state of India.
• Cari Lightner, a 13-year-old girl, was killed by a drunken driver while walking in a bike lane along Sunset Boulevard and New York Avenues in Fair Oaks, California. The driver was soon released, leading her mother to found Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The 46-year-old driver, who had recently been arrested for another DUI hit-and-run, left Cari's body at the scene. Cari's mother, Candace Lightner, organized Mothers Against Drunk Driving and subsequently served as its founding president. A 1983 television movie about Lightner garnered publicity for the group, which grew rapidly. The Irving, Texas–based organization was founded on September 5, 1980.
• The Helsinki Convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area, signed in 1974, entered into force with an agreement not to allow pollution of the Baltic.
• Annie Wu Suk-ching established Beijing Air Catering Ltd, the first joint venture company to be set up in the People's Republic of China since 1954.
• A group of 3,000 protesters set up a camp at Gorleben, in Lüchow-Dannenberg, in the Lower Saxony state of West Germany, to protest against the establishment of a nuclear waste dump, and declared the occupied area as the Free Republic of Wendland. The "Free Republic" lasted for 32 days, until police moved in on June 4 to evict the protesters.
• Died: George P. Elliott, 61, American poet and novelist

  [May 4], 1980 (Sunday)

• Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito died at 3:05 in the afternoon at the University of Ljubljana Medical Center. Vice President Lazar Koliševski, the Communist leader of the Yugoslavian state of Macedonia, temporarily became president until the scheduled expiration of his one-year vice presidency on May 15.
• Pope John Paul II issued a decree barring Roman Catholic priests from serving in political offices. Among those affected by the ruling was U.S. Representative Robert F. Drinan of Massachusetts, a Jesuit priest and "the only Roman Catholic cleric in Congress". Drinan, a Democrat, was running for a sixth term of office and withdrew from the race in accordance with the papal order.
• In a rush to see the Pope during his visit to Zaire, nine people were killed in Kinshasa and 72 others injured when the gates were opened to the grounds of the People's Palace.
• The United States Department of Education began operations in Washington, DC, after separating from the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Shirley Hufstedler took office as the first cabinet level Secretary of Education.

  [May 5], 1980 (Monday)

• The Declaration on Euthanasia was issued by Pope John Paul II.
• Commandos from Britain's 22nd Special Air Service rescued the 19 of the remaining 21 hostages in the siege of the Iranian Embassy in London. The attack was ordered after the occupying terrorists executed two of the hostages following Iran's refusal to release political prisoners. Three of the five terrorists were killed, and the other two were captured.
• The bodies of the eight U.S. servicemen who had been killed during the Desert One attempt to rescue the American hostages at the U.S. Embassy, were flown out of Iran from the Mehrabad International Airport to Zürich. A U.S. Air Force C-130 then transported the nine caskets to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware the next day. On Sunday, Iranian government had allowed the remains to be removed from the city morgue in Tehran, after an agreement was signed with Syrian Catholic Archbishop Hilarion Capucci, Roman Catholic nuncio Annibale Bugnini, and Switzerland's Ambassador to Iran, Erik Lang.
• Konstantinos Karamanlis was elected as the new President of Greece, after the Parliament voted, 183 to 117, for him to succeed President Konstantinos Tsatsos in June. Karmanalis had served as prime minister since 1974.
• The Petition of Fifty was signed by 50 prominent Indonesians, including former prime ministers Burhanuddin Harahap and Mohammad Natsir, to protest President Suharto's use of the state policy of Pancasila against political opponents.
• Freelance U.S. journalist Cynthia Dwyer was taken prisoner in Tehran, where she had been reporting on the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis. Iranian guards went to Dwyer's room at the Hilton Hotel in Tehran and charge her with being a spy for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. She would be held captive until February 10, 1981, when she was expelled from the country.
• Born: Hank Green, American Internet personality, author, and entrepreneur, in Birmingham, Alabama
• Died: Emanuele Basile, 30, Italian police captain, the chief of the Carabinieri's district in Sicily, after being shot the night before as he was walking into his home town of Monreale. The killing prompted the issuance of 55 arrest warrants the next day against the Cosa Nostra drug traffickers.

  [May 6], 1980 (Tuesday)

• In a rare labor strike in the Soviet Union, 200,000 employees of AvtoVAZ auto and truck manufacturing plants in the city of Gorky walked off of the job and refused to work for three days as a protest against inadequate supplies of food. The employees returned to work on May 8 after fresh food was rushed to the two industrial complexes. Although no mention of a disturbance was made in the state-controlled Soviet press, reports reached the Moscow bureau of Financial Times, the London business daily newspaper, which published the information on June 14. The plants, in co-operation with Italy's Fiat company, manufactured the Soviet Lada automobile and now have operations in the city of Tolyatti.
• In the U.S., the NBC television network announced that it would not telecast the 1980 Summer Olympics from Moscow. Edgar H. Griffiths, Chairman of NBC's parent company, RCA said at a meeting of RCA stockholders, "NBC will not be televising the Olympics because the U.S. team will not be participating, because this is not in accord with the policy of the president of the United States." NBC had spent US$70,000,000 for rights to and preparation for the broadcast. Even after insurance paid for most of the loss, the company still lost $22,000,000.
• Faced with the impossibility of reconciling the various factions vying for power in the Chadian Civil War, French forces withdrew their last troops after three years of operations.
• NASA announced the discovery of a previously-unknown 15th moon of the planet Jupiter, found by astronomer Stephen P. Synnott on an image transmitted by Voyager 1 on March 5, 1979 and on seven other photos. Temporarily designated as "S/1979 J 3", the small moon is now called Metis.
• Born: Kasumi Takahashi, Japanese-born Australian gymnast and winner of five gold medals at the age of 14; in Tokyo
• Died: Andrew Durant, 25, Australian musician for the country rock group Stars, died of cancer.