October 1979

October 1, 1979 (Monday)

• Nigeria terminated military rule, and the Second Nigerian Republic was established, ending 13 years of military rule. Shehu Shagari, a former Finance Minister who had won a presidential election in 1978, succeeded Nigerian General Olusegun Obasanjo. After being sworn in, Shagari surprised observers by asking his political opponents to submit nominations for his Cabinet. On the same day, an "American-style" Senate and House of Representatives was inaugurated, and a federal system of governors for the African nation's 19 states took office.
• The Panama Canal Zone ceased to exist as a United States territory and reverted to control of the Republic of Panama after more than 75 years. From its creation on May 4, 1904, until its termination, the territory of was part of the U.S.
• Pope John Paul II arrived in Boston, described by one reporter as the "keystone city of American Roman Catholicism" for his first visit to the United States as part of an eight-day tour of the U.S., and held a Mass at Boston Common before 100,000 worshipers.
• U.S. President Jimmy Carter announced in a televised speech that he would order a moderate response to the discovery of a presence of Soviet Union troops in Cuba, backing away from a previous statement that the presence of Red Army soldiers in the Western Hemisphere was unacceptable. "My fellow Americans," Carter said, "the greatest danger to American security tonight is certainly not the two or three thousand Soviet troops in Cuba. The greatest danger to all nations of the world... is the breakdown of a common effort to preserve the peace and the ultimate threat of nuclear war." Carter stated that the U.S. response would be to increase surveillance of Cuba, establish a "Caribbean Task Force" in Key West, Florida, and conduct a landing exercise of 1,500 U.S. Marines at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba that had been under a perpetual lease for decades.
• The MTR, the rapid transit railway system in Hong Kong, opened.
• The new United States Bankruptcy Code went to effect, superseding the first Code that had been created in 1898.
• Market Daily, the official economic newspaper of the People's Republic of China, published its first issue after having received approval from the Chinese Communist Party.
• James Eppolito, a gangster in the Gambino crime family, was murdered along with his son, shot and killed by Gambino enforcers Roy DeMeo and Anthony Gaggi with the approval of Gambino boss Paul Castellano. Gaggi was wounded and then arrested, while fleeing the scene, by an off-duty NYPD officer who had been alerted to the killings by a witness.
• Died:
• *Dorothy Arzner, 82, American film director from 1927 to 1943 and, at one time, the only female director in Hollywood
• *Nikolay Glazkov, 60, Soviet Russian poet
• *Alfred Leland Crabb, American historical novelist

  October 2, 1979 (Tuesday)

• The use of home video recorders to record television broadcasts was ruled lawful by U.S. District Judge Warren J. Ferguson in Los Angeles, who declared that the "such recording is permissible under the copyright acts of 1909 and 1976" and rejected a request by Universal Studios and Walt Disney Productions seeking to stop the Sony and RCA corporations from selling VCRs. Ferguson's ruling would be reversed by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, but reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in its ruling in Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. on January 17, 1984.
• Pope John Paul II addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on human rights and spoke out against all forms of concentration camps and torture, then conducted mass at Yankee Stadium in front of 80,000 faithful.
• Died: Hannelore Schmatz, 39, West German mountaineer, and Ray Genet, 48, Swiss-born American mountaineer, both died of hypothermia after stopping to rest during their descent of Mount Everest. Their Nepalese guide, Sungdare Sherpa, who remained with Schmatz, lost most of his fingers and toes due to frostbite.

  October 3, 1979 (Wednesday)

• Dith Pran, whose experience during the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge takeover of Cambodia would be dramatized in the film The Killing Fields, was able to escape to Thailand and reunite with his colleague Sydney Schanberg, whom he served as a translator.
• Pope John Paul II concluded his tour of New York City with a Mass at Shea Stadium and at Madison Square Garden, then traveled to Philadelphia.
• The Cardenal Caro Province was created in central Chile from the southern portion of the San Antonio Province.
• A ban against serving alcohol in airplanes flying over the U.S. state of Kansas was reversed after six years by the state's Attorney General, Robert Stephan. The ban had been in place since 1973 based on an opinion by Stephan's predecessor, Vern Miller, that the sale of alcohol on flights taking off from or landing in the state of Kansas violated state liquor laws if the sale took place in Kansas airspace. The ban did not affect airliners flying over Kansas from one state to another. Stephan concluded that federal aviation laws pre-empted Kansas state regulation of navigable airspace.
• The National Stoolball Association was founded in the town of Haywards Heath, West Sussex England to oversee the game of stoolball a cricket-like sport.
• Born:
• *Josh Klinghoffer, American guitarist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers; in Santa Monica, California
• *Benji Hillman, English-born Israeli Defense Forces officer who posthumously became the namesake of the Benji Hillman Foundation to aid "lone soldiers" immigrants to Israel who are serving their mandatory term in the Israeli Army; in London

  October 4, 1979 (Thursday)

• South Korea's National Assembly voted to expel Kim Young-sam, the leader of the New Democratic Party, the primary opposition to President Park Chung Hee's Democratic Republican Party, based on President Park's "Emergency Decree 9" of 1975, which made public criticism of the President a criminal offense. The 159 Democratic Republican Party members of the 233-seat National Assembly were the only legislators to participate in the vote, which was boycotted by other parties. Kim Young-sam would later serve as President of South Korea from 1993 to 1998.
• Pope John Paul II departed Philadelphia and traveled to Des Moines, Iowa. In Iowa, he held mass at St. Patrick's Church near the small town of Cumming, then at Living History Farms and at Buccaneer Arena in the Des Moines suburb of Urbandale, before traveling to Chicago.
• Born:
• *Caitríona Balfe, Irish TV and film actress; in Dublin
• *Adam Voges, Australian cricketer and batsman for the national team; in Subiaco, Western Australia

  October 5, 1979 (Friday)

• The Soviet Union and East Germany signed a 10-year mutual support treaty on the occasion of a meeting between the leaders of the Communist parties of their respective nations, as Erich Honecker hosted the visiting Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev. Brezhnev pledged to withdraw up to 20,000 of its 400,000 troops in East Germany over 12 months.
• Born: Gao Yuanyuan, Chinese actress and model; in Beijing
• Died: Charlie Smith, 100 to 105 years old, African-American centenarian who claimed to have been born in 1842 and to be 137 years old at the time of his death.

  October 6, 1979 (Saturday)

• The Federal Reserve System changed from an interest rate target policy to a money supply target policy. The announcement was made in a news conference by Fed Chairman Paul A. Volcker and came in conjunction with a statement that the Federal Reserve Board had voted, 7 to 0, to raise the "discount rate" from 11% to a record-high of 12%. In addition, banks would be required to maintain a reserve of 8% on future borrowings from the Fed by requiring the banks to purchase certificates of deposit.
• The constitution of the Muscogee Nation, located on the American Indian reservation in east central Oklahoma, was ratified by Muscogee tribal citizens in 12 Oklahoma counties, with a capital at Okmulgee, Oklahoma.
• Pope John Paul II was received as a guest of U.S. President Jimmy Carter at the White House on the last day of his first visit to the United States.
• Died:
• *Elizabeth Bishop, 68, American poet and short-story writer, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner
• *Anastasios Orlandos, 91, Greek architect and historian
• *Konstantinos Papaioannou, 80, Greek physicist and mathematician

  October 7, 1979 (Sunday)

• Elections were held in Japan for the 511 seats of the Shūgiin, Japan's House of Representatives and lower house of its national parliament, the Kokkai. The Liberal Democratic Party of Prime Minister Masayoshi Ohira again failed to achieve a majority but maintained control after winning 248 seats
• A column of 64 soldiers and officers of Iran's Revolutionary Guards was "almost wiped out" by Kurdish rebels near Iran's border with Iraq, with 22 confirmed dead and the other 42 listed as missing in action. The incident was disclosed by the Guards Chief of Staff, Major General Hossein Shaker, in a radio interview.
• Swissair Flight 316 from Geneva caught fire after a hard landing at Athens, killing 14 of the 142 passengers on board when it overran the runway.
• Kim Hyong-uk, the former director of South Korea's Central Intelligence Agency, disappeared in Paris after he refused to stop working on a book exposing the inner workings of the agency, which he directed from 1963 to 1969. Kim, 54 at the time that he vanished, was never seen in public again.
• Born:
• *Simona Amânar, Romanian gymnast and gold medalist in two Olympics; in Constanța
• *Shawn Ashmore, Canadian film and TV actor known for the X-Men film series, and his identical twin brother Aaron Ashmore, Canadian TV actor; in Richmond, British Columbia
• *Tang Wei, Chinese film actress; in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province