November 1980

November 1, 1980 (Saturday)

• The CSX Corporation, which now operates about of track, was created by the merger of two U.S. railroads, the Chessie System and the Seaboard Line. The merged company operated the tracks of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway, Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad, and the Louisville and Nashville Railroad.
• For the first time, contraceptives could be sold legally in Ireland as the Family Planning Act went into effect. Sale was not mandatory, and Ireland's Catholic Guild of Pharmacists, of which half of the nation's pharmacists were members, urged druggists to refuse to sell birth control devices. At the same time, the law required the eight private family planning clinics in Ireland to register with the government or to be closed. For several years, the private clinics had bypassed the law against sales by giving out contraceptives and accepting voluntary donations of money.
• Edward Seaga was sworn in as the new Prime Minister of Jamaica.
• An agreement was signed in Plymouth, Montserrat by the leaders of six Caribbean island nations and the British Overseas Territory of Montserrat to create the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, which would result in the signing of the Treaty of Basseterre on June 18, 1981. The other founding members were Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
• At the request of the West African nation of Gambia, neighboring Senegal airlifted 150 troops to prevent a possible invasion by Libya.

  November 2, 1980 (Sunday)

• Iran's parliament, the Majlis voted to free the 52 U.S. Embassy hostages if, and only if, four demands were met: a commitment by the U.S. to not interfere with the affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran; the release of frozen Iranian assets that had been frozen on November 14, 1979; the cancellation of economic sanctions against Iran; and to return to Iran all U.S. properties of the late Shah of Iran.
• The Indian Army sent troops into the Assam state after protesters had spent 10½ months blockading a pipeline that shipped the state's crude oil to the rest of the nation. The final incident that led to the army intervention was when students held 43 state legislators prisoner inside a building at Dispur. Since the protests— which centered on demands that all foreigners should be expelled from Assam, primarily those who fled from Bangladesh — had started at the beginning of the year, at least 1,600 people had been killed or had disappeared.
• After his Liberal Party coalition lost 13 seats in House of Representatives elections, Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser fired five of his cabinet ministers including Business and Consumer Affairs Minister Eric Robinson.
• Died: Willie Sutton, 79, American bank robber. Sutton, who spent 44 years in prison until being paroled at the end of 1969, estimated that he had stolen more than two million dollars from banks before going into hiding in 1946, and eluded capture until 1952. When asked about why he robbed banks, Sutton famously replied "Because that's where the money is."

  November 3, 1980 (Monday)

• Control of the 49 American hostages at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was turned over by their student captors to the Iranian government, almost a year after the November 4, 1979 takeover. The hostages, however, continued to be held by the students.
• The U.S. State Department issued an embargo against the importation of tuna from Ecuador, in reprisal from the South American nation's seizure of American boats fishing more than off of its coast. Ecuador, which sought to collect a license fee of $100,000 per each boat, claimed that its territorial waters extended into the Pacific Ocean.

  November 4, 1980 (Tuesday)

• Former California Governor Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States in a landslide victory over incumbent President Jimmy Carter. Carter conceded defeat at 9:50 p.m. Eastern time in Washington, D.C., while voting was still in progress on the U.S. Pacific coast. Reagan won the most votes in 44 of the 50 states of the U.S. and received 489 of the 538 electoral votes. With 43,903,230 votes against Carter's 35,480,115 and 5,719,850 from independent challenger John B. Anderson, Reagan had a majority of the popular vote and was sworn in on January 20 as the 40th President of the United States. Carter carried only his state of Georgia, Vice President Walter Mondale's state of Minnesota, and West Virginia, Maryland, Hawaii, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia. Anderson's best showing was in Massachusetts, where he won more than 15% of the popular vote. The vote took place exactly one year after the beginning of the Iran hostage crisis, which was still ongoing at the time of the election.
• While the Democratic Party retained control of the U.S. House of Representatives with 243 seats to the Republican Party's 192, the Republicans captured a 53 to 47 majority in the U.S. Senate, changing the balance, which had previously been a 59 to 41 Democratic majority.
• Died:
• *Johnny Owen, 24, Welsh professional boxer and European bantamweight champion, died 46 days after sustaining a head injury during his September 19 bout with Lupe Pintor for the WBC bantamweight title.
• *Elsie MacGill, 75, pioneering Canadian aeronautical engineer and electrical engineer

  November 5, 1980 (Wednesday)

• Helmut Schmidt was formally re-elected Chancellor of West Germany and sworn in for a third term. The vote in the Bundestag followed party lines along the results of the October 5 election, a 282 to 254 win over Franz Josef Strauss from Schmidt's SPD/FDP coalition over Strauss's CDU/CSU party.
• Julius Nyerere was sworn in for a fourth, and final, five-year term as President of Tanzania at Dar es Salaam. Nyerere had announced earlier that he would not seek re-election in 1985.
• Born: Christoph Metzelder, German professional soccer football centre back and German national team member at two World Cups

  November 6, 1980 (Thursday)

• The first activation of a surgically implanted insulin pump in a human being took place at the University of Minnesota, when a 54-year-old patient with Type 2 diabetes was deemed ready for the use of the "Infusaid Model 400 Constant Rate" delivery of insulin. Although external intravenous insulin pumps had first been used in 1963 for outpatient therapy, the device was the first small enough to be placed into a person's body, an operation which had taken place on September 5.
• Sir David Beattie took office as the new Governor-General of New Zealand after being appointed by Queen Elizabeth II on the recommendation of Prime Minister Robert Muldoon. Beattie succeeded Sir Keith Holyoake, who had resigned on October 25, and served as New Zealand's head of state until November 10, 1985.
• Former Iranian foreign minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh was arrested in Tehran after criticizing government television's "first channel" and its Islamic fundamentalist administrators during a debate on the "second channel". He was released after a few days on the intervention of the Ayatollah Khomeini.

  November 7, 1980 (Friday)

• A young married couple in Rockville, Maryland committed suicide before over 100 witnesses in a courtroom as they awaited sentencing on drug possession. William Melton, 27, and Tracy Melton, 21, were at their sentencing hearing when William ingested potassium cyanide powder. As he went into seizures and collapsed, Tracy poisoned herself as well. The clerk of the Montgomery County Circuit Court commented later, "They weren't even going to get a long sentence. They just would have ended up in the pre-release center."
• Born: Gervasio Deferr, Spanish gymnast and Olympic gold medalist in 2000 and 2004, in Premià de Mar, Catalonia
• Died:
• *Steve McQueen, 50, American film and television star, died at the Plaza Santa Maria hospital in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, 13 hours after surgery for tumors caused by mesothelioma, at the time considered a "rare, untreatable form of lung cancer". In addition to calling worldwide attention to mesothelioma, McQueen's case also demonstrated the inefficacy of laetrile as a treatment for cancer.
• *Ilhan Erdost, 35, Turkish publisher who had been arrested after the September 12 coup d'état, was beaten to death by guards at the Mamak military prison in Ankara.

  November 8, 1980 (Saturday)

• On the Islamic calendar, the 15th Century AH began on 1 Muharram 1401 AH.
• At 2:28 in the morning local time, a 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of California at a depth of, causing damages of more than two million dollars and six injuries, none of them fatal. The quake led to the cancellation of plans to restart the Humboldt Bay Nuclear Power Plant near Eureka, California.

  November 9, 1980 (Sunday)

• The first of two rounds of parliamentary elections for the Ivory Coast was carried out throughout the western African nation. Although there was only one political party in the Ivory Coast, there were 649 candidates vying for the 147 parliamentary districts. Seventy-four of the seats were filled by candidates who received more than 50 percent of the vote. In the second round, held on November 23, runoff elections were held for the other 73 seats, with voters choosing between the two candidates in each district who had received the highest number of votes in their district.
• Died:
• *Victor Sen Yung, 65, Chinese-American film and TV actor, known as Jimmy Chan in the Charlie Chan film series and later as Hop Sing on the TV show Bonanza, was found dead in his home in North Hollywood, California
• *Gloria Guinness, 68, Mexican socialite and fashion icon
• *Carmel Myers, 81, American silent film actress famous for being a "vamp" in the 1920s.