November 1979

November 1, 1979 (Thursday)

• A military coup led by Bolivian Army Colonel Alberto Natusch overthrew the government of Bolivian President Wálter Guevara. Soon after the takeover of the presidential residence in La Paz, the Palacio Quemado, rebel soldiers fired into a crowd of protesters, killing six of them after Natusch went on the radio and proclaimed himself the new President of Bolivia. The coup, and Colonel Natusch's presidency, ended after 16 days with the selection by the Bolivian Congress of a new civilian president to replace Guevara.
• Thirty-one people on board the oil tanker Burmah Agate were killed when the ship was rammed by the Mimosa, an abandoned, drifting freighter, about offshore from Galveston, Texas.
• In the United States, the United Auto Workers called a strike against the International Harvester Company as 35,000 employees walked off the job following a breakdown in negotiations, shutting down plants in eight states. The action came a day after chief executive officer Archie McCardell was given a $1,800,000 bonus by the company after the layoff of numerous IH employees. The strike would ultimately cost IH $600 million.
• Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini delivered a radio address and urged Iranian students to assemble for a massive protest in Tehran, to take place on Sunday, November 4 to observe the first anniversary of the massacre of 56 Tehran University students by the Army of the Shah of Iran. Khomeini urged students to "expand with all their might their attacks against the United States and Israel, so they may force the United States to return the deposed and cruel Shah", who was in the U.S. for medical treatment. The Iranian government provided security for the Embassy that day in response to rumors of a planned rally at the U.S. Embassy, but would fail to do the same on November 4.
• Video Concert Hall, the first music video program on television, was launched at 11:00 o'clock p.m. as an offering of cable's Madison Square Garden Sports Network and described as a show that would run on weeknights, featuring "well-known popular artists performing music ranging from rock to middle-of-the-road".
• Died:
• *Mamie Eisenhower, 82, First Lady of the United States from 1953 to 1961 as the wife of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower
• *Albert Préjean, 85, French film actor

  November 2, 1979 (Friday)

• A team of gendarmes tracked down and killed France's most-wanted fugitive, Jacques Mesrine, wanted for murder, kidnapping and bank robbery, after following him to Porte de Clignancourt on the outskirts of Paris. Mesrine, nicknamed l'homme aux mille visages for his many disguises, was hit by 15 bullets and died at the scene.
• Ecuador's President Jaime Roldós Aguilera signed a decree raising the national minimum wage from 2,000 to 4,000 sucres per month, the equivalent of $160 in 1979
• Assata Shakur, a former member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army, escaped from the New Jersey State Prison for Women near Clinton after three African-American men came for a visit, seized two guards as hostages at gunpoint, and then commandeered a prison van for their escape. Chesimard/Shakur fled to Cuba and would remain there more than 40 years.

  November 3, 1979 (Saturday)

• In Greensboro, North Carolina, five members of the Communist Workers Party were shot to death and seven were wounded by a group of Klansmen and neo-Nazis, during a "Death to the Klan" rally.
• Pro football defensive end Ed "Too Tall" Jones of the Dallas Cowboys made his debut in a new sport, professional boxing, and won his first pro heavyweight bout, going against Abraham Yaqui Meneses in Las Cruces, New Mexico. After six bouts and a 6–0 record, he would retire from boxing and return to the Dallas Cowboys for the 1980 season.
• Born: Pablo Aimar, Argentine soccer football midfielder and national team member; in Río Cuarto, Córdoba

  November 4, 1979 (Sunday)

• The Iran hostage crisis began as several hundred Iranian radicals, mostly students, invaded the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 90 hostages. They demanded that the United States send the former Shah of Iran back to stand trial.
• Roger Mudd's interview with U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy was aired on a CBS Reports special, seen before Senator Kennedy's expected declaration of his candidacy and his challenge to U.S. President Jimmy Carter for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination. In addition to questioning Kennedy about the Chappaquiddick incident, Mudd asked, "Senator, why do you want to be President?" Kennedy's stammering answer, which has been described as "incoherent and repetitive", as well as "vague, unprepared" raised serious questions about his motivation in seeking the office, and marked the beginning of the sharp decline in Kennedy's poll numbers. One commentator, Anthony Lewis of The New York Times, wrote that Kennedy's answers were "stumbling, inarticulate, unconvincing" and "in general seemed to be those of a man unsure of the why's and where's in his life... unsure of who he was." Kennedy said "The reasons that I would run are because I have great belief in this country, that it is— there's more natural resources than any nation of the world, there's the greatest educated population in the world... and the greatest political system in the world," and closed by saying "And I would basically feel that, that it's imperative for this country to either move forward — that it can't stand still — or otherwise it moves backward." Analyst James R. Dickerson of the Washington Star quoted Kennedy and said that Kennedy "came to his interview... prepared to answer questions about Chappaquiddick and his marital problems but not about why he wants to be president and what he would do if elected."

  November 5, 1979 (Monday)

• Troops supporting Colonel Alberto Natusch's junta in Bolivia initiated a violent crack-down on protesters, firing at them in downtown La Paz with guns and heavy artillery, then pursuing them into the poorer sections of the nation's capital and killing at least 15 in one day. General David Padilla, who had handed over control of the country to a civilian president in August, urged Bolivians to keep fighting against Natusch, saying in a statement "Never more than now, the armed forces, because of some ambitious, disloyal and unpatriotic men, are acting irresponsibly like criminals."
• The radio news program Morning Edition premiered on National Public Radio in the United States at six o'clock in the morning Eastern Time, with updated versions for stations located in other time zones.
• The Ayatollah Khomeini first referred to the United States as "The Great Satan".
• Born: Leonardo Nam, Argentine-born Australian actor; in Buenos Aires
• Died:
• *Al Capp, 70, American comic strip cartoonist known for creating Li'l Abner
• *Amedeo Nazzari, 71, Italian film star of the 1940s and 1950s

  November 6, 1979 (Tuesday)

• A month after Japanese parliamentary elections had failed to restore the absolute majority that the Liberal Democratic Party had once held in Japan's House of Representatives, Prime Minister Masayoshi Ohira was challenged for leadership of the LDP by his predecessor, Takeo Fukuda. In a vote among the 256 LDP members of the House, Ohira defeated Fukuda, 138 to 121 on the second ballot, after failing to receive a majority of votes from a field of candidates.
• The civilian government of Iran's Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan resigned abruptly, ending hopes of a quick resolution to the Iran hostage crisis and leaving the fate of the imprisoned American Embassy employees under the control of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
• For the first time ever, the Roman Catholic College of Cardinals was provided information about the details of the financing of the Roman Catholic Church, kept secret by the Pope and his advisers for centuries. A group of 120 cardinals assembled at Vatican City in closed session, under condition that the data not be revealed to the public, and at the direction of Pope John Paul II, heard reports from the Pope's economic advisers, headed by Giuseppe Caprio, Egidio Vagnozzi and Agostino Casaroli.
• Canada's Prime Minister Joe Clark narrowly overcame a vote of no confidence by only two votes, and only after his Progressive Conservative Party members of the House of Commons were joined by five members of the Social Credit Party.
• Died: Charles "Chick" Evans, 89, American golfer who won the U.S. Open in 1916 as an amateur.

  November 7, 1979 (Wednesday)

• In Boston, U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy announced that he would challenge President Jimmy Carter for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination.
• Born: Samin Nosrat, American chef, newspaper columnist and author of the best-selling cookbook Salt Fat Acid Heat; in San Diego

  November 8, 1979 (Thursday)

• Retired Coca-Cola chairman Robert W. Woodruff made "the largest single donation in the history of American philanthropy" by transferring three million shares of participating interest in The Coca-Cola Company to Emory University in Atlanta. Adjusting for six stock splits to almost 300 million shares, the value of the original donation was 24 billion dollars forty years later.
• The ABC television network in the U.S. began the first regular late night news program, with a special report at 11:30 p.m. Eastern time, The Iran Crisis–America Held Hostage. The news feature would be renamed ABC News Nightline on March 24, 1980, and has now been on ABC for more than 40 years.
• Elections were held in the central African nation of Kenya for the unicameral National Assembly, with 742 candidates of the sole political party, the Kenya African National Union, vying for the 158 elected seats in the 170-member parliament. The election, the first since the death of President Jomo Kenyatta the year before, saw roughly half of the incumbents voted out of office, and the first white Kenyan representative to be elected since the nation's independence.
• Los Angeles Lakers head coach Jack McKinney suffered a near-fatal head injury after crashing while riding a bicycle, and after only 13 games as an NBA head coach. Assistant Coach Paul Westhead took over as acting coach while McKinney recovered, and led the Lakers to the NBA championship. McKinney himself would be fired on May 13, having never returned to the job.
• Dick Vitale was fired from his job as head coach of the NBA Detroit Pistons after only 12 games, and would never coach basketball again. Vitale, who was hired by ESPN after being fired, would go on to greater fame and fortune as a sports commentator.
• Born:
• *Aaron Hughes, Northern Irish soccer football defender; in Cookstown, County Tyrone
• *Salvatore Cascio, Italian child actor who won a BAFTA Award for best supporting actor at the age of 8 for the film Cinema Paradiso; in Palazzo Adriano, Sicily
• Died: Yvonne de Gaulle, 79, widow of French President Charles de Gaulle, Première dame during his presidency from 1959 to 1969