Thank goodness we’re almost to the 80s. In 1979, I graduated from Kindergarten and I was a pink butterfly in some stage production of something I’ve forgotten. My preschool/Kindergarten was Ingleside Baptist Church and there was a roller rink there, so I liked it. Also, for some reason a local magician would visit every once in a while because as all Baptists know, God = MAGIC. That’s not true, but it really confused me as a 5 year-old.
Let’s get to the facts:
- January 29 – Brenda Ann Spencer opens fire at a school in San Diego, killing 2 faculty members and wounding 8 students and a police officer. Her justification for the action, “I don’t like Mondays,” inspires the Boomtown Rats to make a song of the same name
- February 1 — Convicted bank robber Patty Hearst is released from prison after her sentence is commuted by U.S. President Jimmy Carter AND the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returns to Tehran, Iran after nearly 15 years of exile.
- February 2 — Former Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious is found dead aged 21 of a heroin overdose in New York City, the day after being released from a 55-day sentence at Rikers Island prison on bail.
- February 11 – Ayatollah Khomeini seizes power in Iran, overthrowing Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavi.
- February 27 – The annual Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans, Louisiana is cancelled due to a strike called by the New Orleans Police Department.
- March 4 – The U.S. Voyager I spaceprobe photos reveal Jupiter’s rings.
- March 8 – Philips demonstrates the Compact Disc publicly for the first time.
- March 26 – In a ceremony at the White House, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel sign a peace treaty.
- March 28 — America’s most serious nuclear power plant accident occurs, at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania.
- May 4 – Counting in the previous day’s British general election shows that the Conservatives have won and Margaret Thatcher becomes the country’s first female prime minister, ending the rule of James Callaghan‘s Labour government
- May 8 — A Unabomber bomb injures Northwestern University graduate student John Harris.
- June – McDonald’s introduces the Happy Meal.
- July 1 — The Sony Walkman goes on sale for the first time in Japan.
- August 10 – Michael Jackson releases his breakthrough album Off the Wall. It sells 7 million copies in the United States alone, making it a 7x platinum album.
- November 4 – Iran hostage crisis begins: 3,000 Iranian radicals, mostly students, invade the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and take 90 hostages (53 of whom are American). They demand that the United States send the former Shah of Iran back to stand trial.
- The One Child Policy is introduced in China – it has since prevented about 400 million births. It is later loosened in 2013.
- The remains of Tsar Nicholas II and some of the Romanovs are discovered and exhumed near Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg).
Music in 1979 was amazing. The Cure. Squeeze. Joe Jackson. Tom Petty. Michael Jackson. Blondie. Shut up. Punk and Post-Punk were at their height. INXS was on the way. Today we have a few videos.
All you need to know about Film in 1979 is The Jerk. One of my favorites of all time. I will watch this every time it’s on tv, because like Navin, I was also born a poor black child.
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