1977: Information and Much More from Answers.com
- ️Fri Jan 19 1979
1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980
CIA director George H. W. Bush resigns January 20 and President Carter appoints Chicago-born four-star admiral Stansfield Turner, 52, to succeed him. A classmate of the president at Annapolis, Turner will head the agency until 1981, improving its management systems, making it more accountable to congressional committees, and helping to diminish the sinister stigma that it acquired following revelations that came to light beginning in late 1974.
President Carter acts in January to pardon virtually all Vietnam era draft evaders and permit those living abroad to return without threat of persecution, but deserters are not pardoned. A spokesman for the National Council for Universal and Unconditional Amnesty says the action discriminates against deserters, who "are primarily and disproportionately from the poor and minority groups," whereas resisters "are essentially white, middle-class, and well-educated." Former U.S. Selective Service director Gen. Lewis B. Hershey dies at Angola, Ind., May 20 at age 80.
President Carter's friend Bert Lance comes under attack for questionable debts and financial commitments, the Controller of the Currency finds "unsafe and unsound" banking practices but no criminal behavior, a second Senate committee conducts hearings, and Carter tearfully accepts Lance's resignation as director of the Office of Management and Budget September 21.
The Cato Institute founded at Washington, D.C., by Los Angeles-born financial analyst Edward H. (Harrison) Crane, 3rd, 33, has $500,000 in financing from Wichita, Kansas-born oil company heir Charles de Gamahl Koch, 41, and initial ties to the Libertarian Party. A capital management executive, Crane will quickly distance the Institute from libertarianism and make it a right-wing "think tank" with positions similar to those of the Heritage Foundation founded 4 years ago. "I think Franklin Roosevelt was a lousy president," Crane will say. "What he did—which is to impose this great nanny state on America—was a great mistake." Backed by major banking, computer, oil, pharmaceutical, and tobacco interests, Cato will support opposition to environmental groups and favor privatization of Social Security while working to eliminate the departments of agriculture, commerce, education, energy, interior, and labor from the Cabinet.
The Argentine women's group Los Madres de los Desparecidos keeps a silent vigil, parading through the streets of Buenos Aires with pictures of "disappeared" daughters, sons, husbands, and fathers who have been secretly seized and in most cases murdered as "subversives" by the military government that is trying to eliminate Perónist and other elements opposed to its repressive regime (see 1976). Founded in April by patriot Azunclena De Vincenti, the group carries placards that may say, "Donde está Pedro?" or "Donde está Rosa?" They demand explanations (see 1983; war with Britain, 1982).
Former Jamaican prime minister Alexander Bustamante dies of cancer at Irish Town, Jamaica, August 6 (Jamaican Independence Day) at age 93.
Two Panama Canal treaties signed by President Carter September 7 with Panama's head of state Brig. Gen. Omar Torrijos Herrera, 48, provide for a phasing out of U.S. control. The treaties have taken 13 years to negotiate, and Panamanians approve them 2 to 1 in an October 24 plebiscite. Opponents include former California governor Ronald Reagan, who appropriates California state senator S. I. Hayakawa's remark about the Canal Zone, "It's ours. We stole it fair and square" (see 1978).
Venezuela holds her fifth consecutive free election December 3. Opposition Christian Democrats capitalize on domestic problems that have developed under the administration of President Carlos Andres Perez and elect Luis Herrera Campins to the presidency.
Former Peruvian president Juan Velasco Alvarado dies at Lima December 24 at age 67.
Former British prime minister Sir Anthony Eden, earl of Avon, dies of a liver ailment in Wiltshire January 14 at age 79.
West German terrorists murder the attorney general in charge of the Baader-Meinhof gang prosecution April 7 along with his driver and bodyguard (see 1976). Andreas Baader and two accomplices are convicted 3 weeks later and sentenced to life terms for murder, complicity in 34 attempted murders, and forming a criminal association. "So-called political motives" are no excuse for terrorism, says the judge, and no reason for clemency. The head of the Dresdner Bank, Jurgen Ponto, is murdered at Frankfurt July 30 by his granddaughter, 26, an RAF member (see 1974). Five terrorists at Cologne on September 5 seize the head of the German Industries Federation, Hanns Martin Schleyer; they kill his driver and three bodyguards, demand a ransom, and demand the release of Baader and ten other RAF members. Further outrages ensue, and Baader is found shot dead in his cell October 18 at Stuttgart's Stammheim Prison; his girlfriend Gudrun Ensslin, 37, is found hanging from a bar in her cell window; other RAF members are killed or wounded. Schleyer is "executed" October 18; West Germany mobilizes 30,000 police officers and restricts civil liberties.
Former German chancellor Ludwig Erhard dies of heart failure at Bonn May 5 at age 80; former Austrian chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg of cancer at Mutters, near Innsbruck, November 18 at age 79. Imprisoned by the Nazis, he was a professor of political science at St. Louis from 1948 to 1967.
Soviet president Nikolai Podgorny loses the job he has held since 1965 and is ousted from the Politburo May 24, having resisted Leonid Brezhnev's desire to be chairman of the Presidium as well as secretary general of the Communist Party.
A Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty signed September 21 seeks to curb the spread of nuclear materials. The 15 signatories include the United States and the USSR.
Former Soviet Army chief of staff Gen. Aleksandr M. Vasilevsky (ret.) dies at Moscow December 5 at age 82.
Spain's parliamentary elections in June are the country's first free elections since 1936 (see 1975). Civil War heroine Dolores Ibárruri ("La Pasionaria") has returned May 13 after 38 years in exile, most of them spent at Moscow (her son Rubén was an officer in the Red Army and was killed at Stalingrad). Now 81, she protested the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, stands for election on the Communist Party ticket, but loses at the polls.
Actress Melina Mercouri wins a landslide election to the Greek Parliament. Now 52, she denounced the takeover of her country's government by a right-wing military junta 10 years ago, spent most of 7 years in exile at Paris, and returned in 1974—2 days after the collapse of the junta.
China expels her "Gang of Four" from the Communist Party and restores purged leader Deng Xiaoping to power July 2. A veteran of the Long March of the 1930s, the four-foot, 10-inch Deng has twice been denounced as a counter-revolutionary. The first Communist Party Congress since Mao's death last year elects pragmatic new leadership August 20, and although hard liners continue to hold considerable power Deng will push an agenda to promote China's economy.
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi frees most of India's political prisoners, but voters repudiate her repressive 18-month "emergency" rule that has tried to stifle political opposition in the world's largest democracy; former prime minister Morarji R. Desai, now 81, is returned to power and promises to restore morality to government (he is a strict adherent to orthodox Hindu beliefs).
Pakistan's prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto loses power July 3 as his army chief of staff outs the civilian government and imposes martial law, dissolving the national and state assemblies and banning all political parties. Authorities arrest Bhutto September 3 on charges of having conspired to murder his parliamentary critic Ahmad Raza Kasuri in 1974 (see 1979).
Thailand's military stages another October coup as the students who led the 1973 rebellion bolster the Communist Party from jungle bases and begin to mount an effective challenge (see 1976). Gen. Kriangsak Chomanand is receptive to a more democratic government and the other generals transfer power at Bangkok to him (see 1988).
Ethiopia's president Gen. Teferi Benti, 55, and 10 others are killed February in a gunfight at a council meeting in Addis Ababa (see 1974). Lieut. Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam is named head of state February 11; he ejects U.S. officials April 23 and brings in Cuban advisers, Somali forces threaten Harrar, and Moscow announces in October that it will cease military aid to Somalia, backing Ethiopia instead.
Former Mali president Modibo Keida dies at Bamako May 16 at age 61.
Djibouti (French Somaliland) gains independence June 27.
The Central African Republic becomes the Central African Empire December 4 as President Jean-Bedel Bokassa has himself crowned emperor in a $20 million ceremony funded largely by Paris (see 1960). Bokassa I seized power at the end of 1963, replacing the elected government of his cousin David Dacko (see 1979).
Charter 77 draws worldwide attention in January as Czech authorities begin to crack down in its signatories—dissidents dedicated to safeguarding human and civil rights "in our country and the world." The dissidents have signed the charter in part as a protest against the arrest last year of rock band The Plastic People, founded in 1968. Czech authorities have violated last year's Helsinki Agreement, the U.S. State Department charges January 26. A U.S. statement January 28 warns Moscow not to attempt to silence Nobel scientist Andrei Sakharov, who has accused the KGB of planting a bomb that killed several people in a Moscow subway car as an excuse to intensify repression of Soviet dissidents. President Carter meets at the White House March 1 with exiled dissident Vladimir Bukovsky.
Soviet authorities arrest Ukrainian-born Jewish scientist and human rights activist Anatoly (Borisovich) "Natan" Shcharansky, 28, March 15 after an open letter by a former political prisoner, published in Izsvestia, has accused Shcharansky of working with alleged CIA agents. A U.S. protest brings charges by the USSR and other countries that Washington is intruding in the internal affairs of foreign nations (see 1979).
The U.S. Supreme Court upholds racial quotas used in reapportioning legislative districts to comply with the Voting Rights Act of 1964. It hands down the 7-to-1 decision March 1 in United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg, N.Y. v. Carey.
Florida's Miami-Dade County Commission passes an ordinance making it illegal to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. Vocalist Anita Bryant says homosexuals will now be free to recruit young people and organizes a group called Save Our Children to lobby for a repeal of the ordinance. A former Miss Oklahoma who was runner up in a Miss America contest, Bryant once called the conflict in Vietnam "a war between atheism and God," entertained the troops with Bob Hope, and sang "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "God Bless America" at both the Republican and Democratic national conventions. The state's orange growers continue to pay Bryant $100,000 per year to endorse their product and sing in their commercials, enabling her to live on Biscayne Bay. Now 37, the Southern Baptist singer emerges from her 33-room mansion and gains support from Miami's Roman Catholic archdiocese (see 1979).
Civil rights advocate Fannie Lou Hamer dies of cancer at Mound Bayou, Miss., March 14 at age 59; National Woman's Party founder Alice Paul at Morristown, N.J., July 9 at age 92.
A sex-discrimination class-action suit filed against the Reader's Digest ends November 4 with a verdict in favor of eight named plaintiffs. The magazine is ordered to pay $1.375 million in back pay and salary increases to 5,635 present and former female employees (an average of only $244 each) (seeNew York Times, 1978).
The New Japan Women's Party wins only .4 percent of the popular vote in Japan's parliamentary elections. Misako Enoki terminates her radical feminist Pink Panthers movement (see 1972) but says it has established an awareness of the liberation issue and shown that a woman can be an "assertive fighter" yet remain beautiful and feminine.
TransAfrica is founded by Virginia-born Harvard Law School graduate Randall Robinson, 36, to influence U.S. policy toward African and Caribbean countries, especially South Africa and Haiti. Robinson came to Washington, D.C., as a congressional aide 2 years ago and has been appalled by the racism still apparent in U.S. attitudes.
West Virginia-born Philadelphia Baptist minister Leon H. (Howard) Sullivan, 55, develops a set of ethical guidelines (the Sullivan Principles) for U.S. companies doing business in South Africa. Elected to the board of General Motors in 1970, Sullivan has pushed to have such companies support human rights, self-help, and equal opportunity; more than 125 corporations will sign his Principles in opposition to apartheid (but see 1987).
A South African magistrate rules December 2 that security police were blameless in the September 12 death at age 30 of black leader Steve Biko, who adopted the "black consciousness" ideas of the late Anton Lembede, was arrested in a crackdown on dissidents early in the year, kept naked for 19 days, shackled in handcuffs and leg irons for 50 consecutive hours, and driven 700 miles by Land Rover without medical attention before dying in a military hospital (or prison cell) at Pretoria. Long since stripped of their land, some 28 million black South Africans are required to carry racial identity passbooks, have no right to vote, assemble, or express themselves freely, no recourse to law, and no right to trial or counsel. They are obliged to work for a fraction of what whites receive for comparable labor (see 1985; Women for Peace, 1978).
Rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun dies of cancer at Alexandria, Va., June 16 at age 65, having contributed to the U.S. space program
The Community Reinvestment Act signed into law by President Carter October 12 forbids banks to discriminate against low-income applicants for home mortgage loans by use of so-called "redlining" and encourages financial institutions to invest in their local communities.
Nearly half of all Chinese urban workers receive 5 to 10 percent wage increases late in the year. Deputy Premier Deng Xiaoping begins decommunizing the nation with capitalist programs that increase productivity.
Former Soviet coal miner Alexei G. Stakhanov dies at Moscow November 5 at age 71.
The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act passed by Congress December 7 provides for a fine of up to $1 million for any U.S. corporation found to have paid a bribe to a foreign government, political party official, or political candidate. A corporate official or employee is subject to imprisonment for up to 5 years and a $10,000 fine if convicted of involvement in such a bribe (see Lockheed scandal, 1976).
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes December 20 at 806.22, and closes December 31 at 831.17, down from 1004.65 at the end of 1976.
Barney's begins selling women's apparel after 54 years as a New York men's retail store on Seventh Avenue at 17th Street (see 1924). It will move uptown to Madison Avenue in 1991.
New York's governor Hugh Carey vetoes a bill August 12 that would restore a ban on Sunday sales. A growing number of New York City retailers, including major department stores, now remain open on Sundays.
President Carter proposes a national energy program April 21 as U.S. imports of foreign oil continue to rise despite higher prices. Calling the situation "the moral equivalent of war," Carter urges major conservation efforts coupled with waste reduction and higher fuel prices to discourage consumption, but millions of Americans insist that the "energy crisis" has been fabricated by large oil companies to obtain price increases. Gasoline prices average less than 70¢ per gallon in most areas.
Oil from Alaska's Prudhoe Bay fields on the Arctic Ocean enters the Trans-Alaska (Alyeska) pipeline June 20 and arrives July 28 at the ice-free port of Valdez on Prince William Sound (see 1969). Traversing three mountain ranges and 800 rivers (including the Yukon), some 21,000 engineers, workers, and truck drivers have built the 49-inch (1.22-meter) diameter pipeline in 26 months across 789 miles (1,287 kilometers) at a cost of at least $8 billion and 31 lives. More than 13 million barrels will flow to U.S. refineries in the next 25 years from the largest source by far of domestic petroleum, pumping will peak at 2.1 million barrels per day in 1988, but production will fall below 400,000 barrels per day by 2005.
A power failure even worse than that of 1965 blacks out New York July 13 and continues for 25 hours during a heat wave. Looters in ghetto areas break into shops; business losses from theft and property damage come to nearly $150 million. Con Edison will be found guilty of negligence.
The U.S. Department of Energy created by an act of Congress signed into law August 4 broadens federal control over all forms of energy. Former CIA director James Schlesinger is the first secretary of energy, and his DOE will soon have 20,000 employees and an annual budget of $11 billion; critics will say that the DOE only worsens the U.S. energy dilemma.
A new Japanese atomic energy plant opens September 1; seven new U.S. nuclear power reactors begin commercial operation.
An Australian train carrying 600 Sydney-bound commuters derails January 18; a bridge collapses and two wooden cars are crushed, killing 82, injuring 89.
A Chicago rush-hour elevated train is struck from behind February 4 and plunges into a busy Loop intersection, killing 11 passengers and pedestrians, injuring 189.
The Orient Express that began service in 1883 makes its last trip into Istanbul from Paris May 22. Most travelers prefer to cover the 1,900 miles in 3 hours by air rather than take 60 hours by rail.
Canada's parliament at Ottawa creates Via Rail to take over the failing passenger services of Canadian Pacific and the government-owned Canadian National. Heavily subsidized, Via Rail will never show a profit or even break even (see 1989; Amtrak, 1971).
West Virginia's New River Gorge bridge is completed at Fayetteville; 1,700 feet long, it is the world's longest steel arch bridge.
Moscow announces the death of aircraft designer Sergei Ilyushin at age 82 February 9; former CIA contract employee Francis Gary Powers is killed at age 47 August 1 when a helicopter he is piloting for a television reporter crashes at Encino, Calif.
A KLM Boeing 747 pilot misreads tower control instructions at Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands March 27, his plane collides on takeoff with a fog-shrouded Pan American 747 still on the ground, and the accident kills all 249 aboard the KLM jet plus 333 of the 394 aboard the Pan Am jet.
Laker Airways Skytrain service between London and New York begins in September with low fares that buck the International Air Transport Association cartel's fixed ticket price policy (based on operating profitably at 45 to 60 percent of seat capacity). Skytrain passengers line up for seats, and most Laker flights are full (see 1966). Service on Laker Airways will continue for only a few years before other carriers force it out of business.
Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen win a lawsuit against Altair 8800 creator H. Edward Roberts and retain rights to their software programs when Roberts sells his company. Gates and Allen will move back to their native Seattle next year (Gates's father owns property at nearby Redmond that will be turned into a company campus), and Microsoft will grow to become the world's largest seller of computer software, making Gates a billionaire before he is 30 (see IBM PC, 1981).
The Apple II personal computer requires that users employ their TV sets as monitor screens and store data on audiocasettes (see 1976); introduced by Stephen Wozniak and Steven Jobs, it is nevertheless an advance over Apple I, retails at only $1,298, and is an instant success (see stock offering, 1980).
The Commodore computer is introduced by Auschwitz survivor Jack Tramiel, 49, whose Commodore Business Machines Ltd. has been manufacturing typewriters and calculators since the late 1950s. Promoting its product with the slogan, "Computers for the masses, not the classes," Tramiel's company will have sales of $700 million by 1983 and top $1 billion the following year.
Oracle Systems has its beginnings in Software Development Laboratories, founded at Santa Clara, Calif., with a $1,200 investment by Chicago-raised computer nerd Lawrence J. Ellison, 33, who helped develop the first IBM-compatible mainframe, and Robert Miner (who invests $650, will be in charge of product design, development, and marketing, but will die of lung cancer in 1994). Having seen an IBM study on a new computer language for databases, Ellison beats Big Blue to market and by 1996 will have a fortune of perhaps $6 billion (Miner's family will have an estimated $600 million) (see 1978).
Napalm developer (and vitamin pioneer) Louis F. Fieser dies at Cambridge, Mass., July 25 at age 78; architect and industrial designer Elliott F. Noyes at New Canaan, Conn., July 17 at age 66.
U.S. scientists report May 23 that they have produced insulin from bacteria in the laboratory, using recombinant DNA techniques of genetic engineering to change the bacteria (see 1976; medicine, 1937; 1978).
A team headed by English-born molecular biologist Richard J. (John) Roberts, 33, at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island establishes that individual genes are often interrupted by long sections of DNA that do not encode protein structure. The coding segments (exons) in the genes of the adenovirus (one of many viruses that cause the common cold) are interrupted by introns that do not carry any code. An MIT team headed by Kentucky-born molecular biologist Phillip A. (Allen) Sharp, 33, makes the same finding. Announcement of the discovery by Roberts and Sharp makes other scientists reassess their understanding of how proteins are synthesized from genes and it will soon be found that split genes are even more common than continuous gene structures in higher organisms, including humans.
Ethnologist-adventurer Thor Heyerdahl constructs a reed ship in Iraq and embarks late in the year aboard the Tigris with another international crew for a 4-month, 4,000-mile expedition whose purpose is to test Heyerdahl's theory that ancient Sumerians may have come down the Tigris River, proceeded down the Persian Gulf, crossed the Arabian Sea to what is now Pakistan, and wound up on the Red Sea, thereby spreading their culture throughout southwest Asia and the Arabian Peninsula (see Heyerdahl, 1970). Now 63, Heyerdahl crosses the Indian Ocean but ends up putting in at Djibouti and burning the Tigris as a gesture of protest against the international arms trade that he blames for the ongoing war between Ethiopia and Somalia.
The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence by Brooklyn, N.Y.-born Cornell astronomer Carl Sagan, 42, widens public interest in astronomy.
Physicist Erwin W. Müller dies at Washington, D.C., May 17 at age 55; Nobel physiologist Archibald V. Hill of a viral infection at London June 3 at age 90; mathematician Oskar Morganstern of cancer at Princeton, N.J., July 26 at age 75; electrophysiologist Edward D. Adrian, 1st Baron Adrian of Cambridge, at London August 4 at age 87; oceanographer Georg Wüst at Erlangen, West Germany, November 8 at age 87.
Balloon angioplasty begins to revolutionize treatment of coronary heart disease (see Cournand, Richards, 1941; bypass surgery, 1967). The first such procedure on a human is performed interoperatively during bypass surgery in May at St. Mary's Hospital, San Francisco. Surgeon Andreas R. Gruentzig, 37, operates on a live patient (a 37-year-old insurance salesman with an isolated proximal left anterior descending artery stenosis) at Zürich September 16. By 1995 more than 400,000 patients per year will receive the procedure in the United States alone.
Amsterdam surgeon Henk de Kok publishes the first article on laparoscopic appendectomy, a technique he invented in 1971 and has used on 30 patients (see 1911; Hasson, 1978).
Plaster-cast therapy pioneer Josep Trueta y Raspall dies at his native Barcelona January 19 at age 79; L-dopa therapy neurologist George C. Cotzias of lung cancer at New York June 13 at age 58, having treated thousands of Parkinson's disease patients.
The first MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scanner is tested July 2 by Brooklyn, N.Y., medical researcher Raymond V. Damadian, 39, whose diagnostic tool will be widely used to detect cancer tumors and other abnormalities without exposing patients to X-ray radiation or exploratory surgery (see Lauterbur, 1973). The FDA will approve commercial sale of MRI scanners in 1984 (see 1982).
Tagamet (cimetidine) wins FDA approval August 23 (it has been available in Britain, Canada, and Mexico and used on 200,000 patients). SmithKline's revolutionary new ulcer treatment drug, developed in Britain by Scottish pharmacologist James Black, now 53, blocks action of the body chemical histamine that stimulates secretion of gastric acids, the chief cause of ulcers (see 1746; Zantac, 1981; Marshall, 1983).
A cholera epidemic in the Arab states is reported September 10.
The world's last known natural case of smallpox is reported October 26, in Somalia (see 1976). When no further cases are reported after 2 years, the disease that once killed an estimated 500,000 people per year will be considered eradicated, but biological weapons laboratories will retain samples of the virus.
U.S. scientists identify a previously unknown bacterium that caused the "Legionnaire's disease" first reported last year.
Mammography for breast-cancer detection increases with the growing use of new film/screen techniques employing very low X-ray radiation doses and a Xerox process that produces breast images on charged selenium-contact aluminum plates that are then transferred to special paper. Radiation risk is considered negligible, and the survival rate when the cancer is detected in the localized stage with negative lymph nodes is 90 percent or more (the rate drops to 60 percent if the cancer has spread). Women are encouraged to self-examine their breasts, consult a physician if any suspicious lumps are felt, have biopsies if their mammograms indicate any abnormality.
Rosalyn S. Yalow and two male scientists share the Nobel Prize award for medicine (see 1959). Previous winners have virtually all been men, and Yalow speaks out against discrimination in her acceptance speech at Oslo, saying, "The world cannot afford the loss of the talents of half its people if we are to solve the many problems which beset us."
Lung cancer deaths among U.S. women (14.9 per 100,000, up from 1.5 per 100,000 in 1930) pass colo-rectal cancer deaths (14.3 per 100,000) and begin to approach breast cancer deaths.
Moscow moves to discourage smoking with a ban on lighting up in the dining areas of all restaurants. Other cities prohibit smoking in government offices, shops, cinemas, sports arenas, hotel lobbies, even on beaches, but heavy smokers defy the ban. Party chief Leonid I. Brezhnev finally kicks his heavy smoking habit. Lung cancer, heart disease, and respiratory ailments have risen steadily in the USSR.
The American Cancer Society sponsors the first Great American Smokeout in November (see California, 1976). The event will be held hereafter on the third Thursday of each November and will be instrumental in helping thousands of Americans give up the habit.
FBI agents raid the Church of Scientology's world headquarters at Los Angeles and its Washington, D.C., offices July 7 and discover evidence that members of the organization have conspired to infiltrate, burglarize, and bug offices of the IRS and Department of Justice (see 1973). They seize a 19-page document outlining a plan to sabotage IRS investigations; followers of L. Ron Hubbard decry what they call "religious intolerance," but 11 Scientologists will eventually go to prison, including Hubbard's wife, Mary Sue (see 1989).
Krishna Consciousness founder Acbhaktivendenta (Swami) Prabhubada dies of heart failure at Vrindaban, India, November 14 at age 81.
Iraq's literacy rate rises to 50 percent, up from 15 percent in 1958. The number of elementary school students has risen to 2.6 million, up from 500,000 under the Hashemite monarchy, and 1 million students attend secondary schools, up from 74,000. The number of students in schools of higher learning has surpassed 120,000, up from 8,500, and by 1980 nearly all eligible children will be enrolled in elementary schools, with about 60 percent of them moving on to secondary schools.
Our Children's Crippled Future: How American Education Has Failed by Wilkes-Barre, Pa.-born Hudson Institute staff member Frank E. (Francis Edward) Armbruster, 54, will lead to further criticisms of the U.S. educational system.
Former University of Chicago president and chancellor Robert Maynard Hutchins dies of a kidney ailment at Santa Barbara, Calif., May 14 at age 78.
West Point officials change their criteria for recruiting, testing, and training women cadets after 1 year of experience (see 1976). Of the 119 women appointed in the summer of 1976, 30 have dropped out or been dismissed. Women from the Deep South and those with some college education have proved less likely to stay the course than other cadets.
The first telephone communications system using fiber optics in place of copper wiring is installed under downtown Chicago, where about a mile and a half of fiber cables are laid down, each optical fiber carrying the equivalent of 672 voice channels (see 1975; 1981)
Ukrainian-born Buenos Aires publisher Jacobo Timerman, 54, of the 6-year-old newspaper La Opinión is arrested April 15 by 20 armed men who break into his home on orders from an Army brigade commander and held on unspecified charges as Argentina's ruling junta cracks down on critics (see politics, 1976). Having incurred the wrath of the ruling military junta by printing the names of the "disappeared ones" (desaparecidos), Timerman is tortured and held incommunicado for several weeks, a military tribunal orders his release in October, the junta refuses, the Supreme Court will issue the same order in September 1979, and the junta will then strip Timerman of his citizenship and deport him.
A Red Brigade terrorist gunman kills La Stampa deputy editor Carlos Casalegno in broad daylight at Turin November 29. A 61-year veteran of the paper, Casalegno served in the Resistance during World War II.
Journalist Bruce Bliven dies at Palo Alto, Calif., May 27 at age 87; Asahi Shinbun publisher Nagataka Murayama of cancer at Nishinomiya, Japan, August 7 at age 83; teletype inventor Edward E. Kleinschmidt of heart disease at New Canaan, Conn., August 9 at age 101; La Prensa editor-publisher Alberto Gainza Paz of cancer at Buenos Aires December 26 at age 78.
South Africans see television for the first time May 10 as test transmissions begin from the state-backed South Africa Broadcast Co. The Pretoria government has yielded to public pressure after years of banning TV on grounds that it was morally corrupting. Half the broadcasts are in English, half in Afrikaans, but no more than 10,000 sets have been sold since sales began early in the year.
Samsung exports the first Korean-made color TV sets to the United States (see 1976).
Broadcast journalist Quincy Howe dies of cancer at New York February 17 at age 76; NBC radio announcer Ben Grauer of a heart ailment at New York May 31 at age 68; color TV (and LP record) inventor Peter Goldmark in a Westchester County, N.Y., auto accident December 7 at age 71.
Nonfiction: Dispatches by New York author Michael Herr, 37, who covered the Vietnam war as a correspondent for Esquire magazine and uses some fictional devices; A Rumor of War by Vietnam veteran Philip Caputto, 36, who began the work as a novel; Winners & Losers by New York Times reporter Gloria Emerson, 48, who was sent to Vietnam in 1970; The Relevance of Liberalism by Zbigniew Brzezinski, who is appointed national security adviser; In Patagonia by Yorkshire-born writer Bruce Chatwin, 37, who quit his job as a correspondent for The Sunday Times to travel through southern Argentina and Chile; Samuel Johnson by Harvard scholar W. Jackson Bate, now 59; The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914 by Chicago-born historian David McCullough, 44; The Limits of Altruism by Garrett Hardin; One-L: An Account of Life in the First Year of Harvard Law School by Chicago-born author Scott (Frederic) Turow, 28, who will use his legal training to inform novels (see Fiction, 1987); The Power of the Positive Woman by Phyllis Schlafly, now 53, who will mount a Stop-ERA lobbying campaign that will effectively block the amendment in many states); The Complete Book of Running by New York-born writer James Fuller "Jim" Fixx, 45, who capitalizes on the new U.S. passion for jogging.
Author-critic Edward Dahlberg dies at Santa Barbara, Calif., February 27 at age 76; historian Cecil Woodham-Smith of heart disease at London March 16 at age 80; anthropologist-author Loren C. Eiseley of cancer at Philadelphia July 9 at age 69; economist Oskar Morgenstern at Princeton, N.J., July 26 at age 75; Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch at Tubingen, West Germany, August 3 at age 92; economist-author E. F. Schumacher at Ramont, Switzerland, September 4 at age 66; Harvard history professor emeritus Frederick Merk at Cambridge, Mass., September 24 at age 90; Harvard history professor emeritus William L. Langer at Boston December 26 at age 81.
Fiction: The Flounder (Der Butt) by Günter Grass; Manual of Painting and Calligraphy (Manual de Pintura e Caligrafia) by Portuguese novelist José Saramago, 54. An atheist and card-carrying communist since 1969, Saramago had a novel published when he was 25 but was silenced under the long years of fascist dictatorship; The Ice Age by Margaret Drabble; Daniel Martin by John Fowles; Secret Rendezvous (Mikkai) by Kobo Abe; The Thorn Birds by Australian novelist Colleen McCullough, 39; A Season in Purgatory by Thomas Keneally; Lancelot by Walker Percy; The Professor of Desire by Philip Roth; Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison; Dress Gray by West Point alumnus Lucian K. Truscott 4th, 31, who takes the academy and the army to task for its secrecy, sexism, and homophobia; The Women's Room by New York-born novelist Marilyn French (née Edwards), 47; Beggarman, Thief by Irwin Shaw; True Confessions by John Gregory Dunne; The Golden Child by English novelist Penelope Fitzgerald (née Knox), 60, who has written two biographies and began the novel last year to entertain her husband, Desmond, who was dying of cancer; The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien; The Shining by Stephen King; Involution Ocean by Texas-born science-fiction novelist Bruce Sterling, 23; Elbow Room by Savannah-born novelist James Alan McPherson, 34; Ackroyd by Jules Feiffer; The Public Burning by Robert Coover is about the 1953 execution of the Rosenbergs; Blood Ties by Charleston, W. Va.-born novelist Mary Lee Settle, 34; Earthly Possessions by Anne Tyler; A Book of Common Prayer by Joan Didion; Property of by New York novelist Alice Hoffman, 25; Long Time No See by Ed McBain (Evan Hunter); Death of an Expert Witness by P. D. James; The Honourable Schoolboy by John le Carré.
Novelist-diarist Anaïs Nin dies of cancer at Los Angeles January 14 at age 73; Richard Bissell at his native Dubuque May 4 at age 63; James Jones of heart failure at Southampton, N.Y., May 9 at age 55; Vladimir Nabokov of a viral infection at Montreux, Switzerland, July 2 at age 78; short-story anthologist Martha Foley of heart disease at Northampton, Mass., September 5 at age 80; novelist McKinlay Kantor of cancer at Sarasota, Fla., October 11 at age 73; James M. Cain of a heart attack at University Park, Md., October 25 at age 85; Hans Erich Nossack at his native Hamburg November 2 at age 76.
Poetry: A Part of Speech by Leningrad-born U.S. poet Joseph (Aleksandrovich) Brodsky, 37; This Body Is Made of Camphor and Gopherwood by Robert Bly; The Venetian Vespers by Anthony Hecht.
Poet-screenwriter Jacques Prévert dies at Ormonville-la-Petite April 11 at age 77; Robert Lowell of a heart attack in a taxi en route from JFK International Airport to Manhattan September 12 at age 60.
Juvenile: Miss Nelson is Missing! and It's So Nice to Have a Wolf Around the House by Harry Allard, illustrations by James Marshall; Henrietta Lays Some Eggs by Syd Hoff; Castle by David A. Macaulay; Bridge to Terabithia by Chinese-born Maryland author Katherine Paterson (née Womeldorf), 45, illustrations by Donna Diamond; Starring Sally J. Freedman As Herself by Judy Blume.
Painting: Looking at Pictures on a Screen and My Parents by David Hockney, who employs a deadpan, subtly satiric style; Orange and Lemon With Small Violet by British painter-critic Patrick Heron, 57, who won acclaim 30 years ago for a portrait of T. S. Eliot but is known now as a Cornwall abstract expressionist; Nude in Profile by Balthus, now 69; Untitled Film Stills (black-and-white photographs) by New Jersey-born artist Cindy Sherman, 23; Self-Portrait by Monroe, Wash.-born photo-realist Chuck Close, 37, who has painted a photograph taken with a wide aperture and with the focus on the eyes; Ocean Park by Richard Diebenkorn continues a series begun in 1967; Picture Without Words by Edward Ruscha; Figures in Landscape by Roy Lichtenstein; From a Day with Juan by Georgia O'Keeffe, now 89. William Gropper dies of a heart ailment at Manhasset, N.Y., January 6 at age 79; illustrator-cartoonist Russell Patterson of heart failure at Atlantic City, N.J., March 17 at age 82.
Paris hails the opening of its Centre National d'Art et de Culture Georges-Pompidou, commonly called Beauborg for the neighborhood it graces (it will later be called the Pompidou Center). English architect Richard Rogers and Italian architect Renzo Piano, 39, have designed the combination art museum and performing arts center. Piano has obtained engineering help to make the building's support structure part of of its façade, eliminating the need for interior columns, and the building will soon draw more visitors than any other in the city.
Theater: The Shadow Box by White Horse, N.J.-born playwright Michael Cristofer (Michael Procaccino), 32, 3/31 at New York's Morosco Theater, with Laurence Luckinbill as a terminal cancer patient, 315 perfs.; The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel by David Rabe 4/24 at New York's Longacre Theater, with Al Pacino, 117 perfs.; Gemini by Philadelphia-born playwright Albert Innaurato, 28, 5/21 at New York's Little Theater, with New York-born actor Danny Aiello, 43, 1,789 perfs.; Da by Irish playwright Hugh Leonard (John Keyes Byrne), 49, 7/18 at the King's Head Theatre, London, with Eamon Kelly, Tony Doyle, Mike McCabe; The Gin Game by East Baltimore-born Dallas adman-playwright D. L. (Donald Lee) Coburn, 36, 10/6 at New York's John Golden Theater, with Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy, 518 perfs.; The Night of the Tribades (Tribadernes natt, or Lesbian's Night) by Swedish novelist-journalist-playwright Per Olov Enquist 10/12 at New York's Helen Hayes Theater, with Max von Sydow as August von Strindberg, Bibi Andersson, Eileen Atkins, Werner Klemperer, 12 perfs.; A Life in the Theater by David Mamet 10/20 at New York's off-Broadway Theater de Lys, with Ellis Rabb, Peter Evans, 288 perfs.; Dracula adapted by playwright Hamilton Deane (who has adapted a screenplay by the late Hollywood screenwriter John L. Balderston) 10/20 at New York's Martin Beck Theater, with Frank Langella, 925 perfs.; The Elephant Man by Brooklyn, N.Y.-born playwright Bernard Pomerance, 36, 11/17 at London's Hampstead Theater, with David Schofield as John Merrick, the horribly misshapen victim of Proteus Syndrome (not neurofibramotosis) who was a patient at London Hospital from 1886 until his death in 1890; Chapter Two by Neil Simon 12/4 at New York's Imperial Theater, with Cliff Gorman, Anita Gillette, Judd Hirsch, Ann Wedgeworth, 857 perfs.; Cold Storage by New York-born playwright Ronald Ribman, 45, 12/29 at New York's Lyceum Theater, with Martin Balsam, Len Cariou, 227 perfs. (including 47 at the off-Broadway American Place Theater).
Playwright Carl Zuckmayer dies at Visp, Switzerland, January 18 at age 80; actor Henry Hull of a heart attack in Cornwall, England, March 8 at age 86; actor Alfred Lunt of cancer at Chicago August 3 at age 84; comedian Zero Mostel of cardiac arrest at Philadelphia September 8 at age 62; playwright Fred Finklehoffe at his Springtown, Pa., home October 5 at age 67; actress Joan Tetzel of cancer in Sussex, England, October 31 at age 56; playwright Sir Terence Rattigan of cancer in Bermuda November 30 at age 66, having tried for decades to keep his homosexuality a secret.
Radio: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 3/8 on BBC. Cambridge-born writer Douglas (Noel) Adams, 25, has been creating scripts for the BBC's science-fiction series Doctor Who, he will create characters with names such as Zaphod Beeblegrox, Slartibartfast, and Eccentrica Gallumbits whose antics will gain a wide following, and he will turn them into books (see Fiction, 1980).
Television: All Creatures Great and Small 1/8 on BBC-1; Donny and Marie 1/23 on ABC with Marie and Donny Osmond (to 1/19/1979); Roots 1/27-30 on ABC with LeVar Burton, Cicely Tyson, Maya Angelou, Ben Vereen; Eight Is Enough 3/15 on ABC with Dick Van Patten, Diana Hyland (later Betty Buckley) (to 8/29/1981); Three's Company 3/15 on ABC with John Ritter, Suzanne Somers (to 9/18/1984); Soap 9/13 on ABC with Katherine Helmond as a suburban matron, Robert Mauden as her philandering husband, St. Louis-born actor Robert Guillaume, 39, as their butler, Robert Ulrich, Cathryn Danner, comedian Billy Crystal as a homosexual in a sex-driven series created and scripted by Mount Vernon, N.Y.-born housewife-turned-writer Susan Harris (née Spivak), whose show draws fire from Roman Catholic groups (to 4/20/1981); CHIPS 9/15 on NBC with Larry Wilcox, Erik Estrada (to 4/10/1983); Logan's Run 9/16 on CBS with Michael York, Richard Jordan, Jenny Agutter, Neva Patterson in a sci-fi series (to 1/16/1978); Lou Grant 9/20 on CBS with Edward Asner in a spinoff of the Mary Tyler Moore Show (to 9/13/1982); The Love Boat 9/24 on ABC with Gavin McLeod (to 5/24/1986, 245 episodes); Romeo and Juliet 12/3 on BBC-1 begins the company's Shakespeare project.
TV comedian Freddie Prinz dies of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at Los Angeles January 29 at age 22; radio actress Virginia "Ma Perkins" Payne dies at Cincinnati February 10 at age 66; comedian Eddie "Rochester" Anderson of a heart ailment at Los Angeles February 28 at age 71; actor Sebastian Cabot of a stroke at Victoria, B.C., August 23 at age 59; actor Cyril Ritchard of heart disease at Chicago December 15 at age 79.
Films: Woody Allen's Annie Hall with Allen, Diane Keaton, Shelley Duvall; Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind with Richard Dreyfuss, François Truffaut; Fred Zinnemann's Julia with Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave, Jason Robards; Andrzej Wajda's Man of Marble with Krystyna Jancia. Also: Joan Micklin Silver's Between the Lines with John Heard, Lindsay Crouse; Pierre Schoendoerffer's Le Crabe Tambour with Jean Rochefort, Claude Rich, Jacques Dufilho, Jacques Perrin; Donald Cammell's Demon Seed with Julie Christie, Fritz Weaver; Kenji Mizoguchi's A Geisha with Michiyo Kogure; Herbert Ross's The Goodbye Girl with Richard Dreyfuss, St. Louis-born actress Marsha Mason, 35; Barbara Kopple's documentary Harlan County, U.S.A.; Robert Benton's The Late Show with Art Carney, Lily Tomlin; Bo Widerberg's Man on the Roof with Gustav Lindstedt; Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900 with Robert De Niro, Gerard Depardieu, Donald Sutherland, Burt Lancaster, Dominique Sanda, Stefania Sandrelli, Sterling Hayden; Kidlat Tahimik's The Perfumed Nightmare with Tahimik, Dolores Santamaria; George Lucas's Star Wars with Peter Cushing; Robert Altman's Three Women with Quitman, Tex.-born actress Sissy (originally Mary Elizabeth) Spacek, 26, Shelley Duval, Janice Rule; Ettore Scola's We All Loved Each Other So Much with Vittorio Gassman, Nino Manfredi, Stefania Sandrelli.
Director Henri-Georges Clouzot dies of a heart attack at Paris January 12 at age 69; actor Peter Finch of a heart attack at Los Angeles January 14 at age 60; Joan Crawford of a heart attack at New York February 14 at age 68; Andy Devine of leukemia in Orange County, Calif., February 18 at age 71; film animator John Hubley following heart surgery at New Haven, Conn., February 21 at age 62; director-screenwriter Nunnally Johnson of pneumonia at Los Angeles March 25 at age 79; director William Castle of a heart attack at Los Angeles May 31 at age 63; actor Stephen Boyd of heart failure at Los Angeles June 2 at age 49; director Roberto Rosselini of a heart attack at Rome June 3 at age 71; director Herbert Wilcox of cancer at London July 15 at age 85; comedian Groucho Marx of pneumonia at Los Angeles August 20 at age 86 ("Although it is generally known," he has said, "I think it's about time to announce that I was born at an early age"); Jean Hagen of throat cancer at Los Angeles August 29 at age 54; Ethel Waters of kidney and heart failure at Chatsworth, Calif., September 1 at age 80; director William Taylor "Tay" Garnett of leukemia at Sawtelle, Calif., October 4 at age 83; director-producer Sir Michael Balcon at Hartfield, Sussex, October 17 at age 81; actor Richard Carlson of a cerebral hemorrhage at Los Angeles November 25 at age 65; director Jacques Tourneur at Bergerac, France, December 19 at age 73; motion picture pioneer Charles Chaplin at his Swiss estate December 25 at age 88; director Howard Hawks of a brain concussion at Palm Springs, Calif., December 26 at age 81.
Hollywood musicals: John Badham's Saturday Night Fever with John Travolta, Karen Lynn Gorley, music and lyrics by The Bee Gees, songs that include "Stayin' Alive," "How Deep Is Your Love," and the title song; Martin Scorsese's documentary The Last Waltz about The Band's farewell concert at Thanksgiving, 1976.
Broadway musicals: Side by Side by Sondheim 4/18 at the Music Box Theater, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, 384 perfs; Annie 4/21 at the Alvin Theater, with Philadelphia-born actress Andrea McArdle, 13, as the cartoon character "Little Orphan Annie" (see communications, 1924), Boston-born actress Dorothy Loudon 43, as Miss Hannigan, music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Martin Charnin, songs that include "Little Girls," 2,377 perfs.
The first Spoleto Festival USA opens at Charleston, S.C., 5/25 with a performance of the 1890 Tchaikovsky opera Pique Dame. Composer Gian-Carlo Menotti has organized the festival as a counterpart to the one that he founded in Italy 20 years ago.
German violin prodigy Anne-Sophie Mutter, 13, makes her professional debut playing the Mozart Violin Concerto in G major with the Berlin Philharmonic under Herbert von Karajan at the Easter Salzburg Festival, goes on to play at the Salzburg Summer Festival, and makes her London debut with Daniel Barenboim and the English Chamber Orchestra.
The body of Kirov Ballet male lead dancer Yuri Soloviev, 36, is found January 16 at his home outside Leningrad; organ virtuoso E. Power Biggs dies after surgery for bleeding ulcers at Boston March 10 at age 70; Columbia Records president Goddard Lieberson at New York May 29 at age 66; conductor Leopold Stokowski of a heart attack at Nether Wallop, England, September 13 at age 95; soprano Maria Callas of a heart attack at her Paris home September 16 at age 53; composer Richard Addinsell at London November 15 at age 73; ballet dancer André Eglevsky of a heart attack at Elmira, N.Y., December 4 at age 60; Metropolitan Opera conductor Thomas Schippers of lung cancer at New York December 16 at age 47.
Popular songs: "You Light Up My Life" by U.S. composer-film director Joe Brooks, 37 (title song for his film); You Light Up My Life (album) by Hackensack, N.J.-born recording artist Debbie (Deborah Ann) Boone, 21, includes "End of the World" and "He's a Rebel;" Rumours (album) by Fleetwood Mac becomes the largest-selling pop album thus far, indicating a dramatic increase in record sales that will continue until 1979; "All Alone" by Canton, Ohio-born singer-songwriter Boz Scaggs (originally William Royce), 33; "Fly Like an Eagle" by Dallas-born rock singer-composer Steve Miller, 34; "Margaritaville" by Jimmy Buffet; "God Save the Queen" by the British rock group Sex Pistols, whose single is released in June to coincide with the Silver Jubilee of Elizabeth II but banned by the British media. Put together in September 1975 by London retailer Malcolm McLaren to promote his clothing store Sex, its members are all Londoners and originally included John "Johnny Rotten" Lydon, now 21; Steve Jones, 22; Paul Cook, 20; and Glen Matlock, 20, who has been replaced in February by John Simon "Sid Vicious" Ritchie, now 20. They have been mixing English pop songs of the 1960s with a rock beat and gained a wide following among teenagers, but their first recording company, EMI, dropped them in January, their contract with A&M Records was broken within a few months, and they have signed with Virgin Records; New Boots and Panties (album) by London illustrator-turned-pub rock singer Ian Drury, 34, ridicules the rock 'n' roll lifestyle with "Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll" while extolling the primal satisfactions of that lifestyle; My Aim Is True (album) by Liverpool-born singer-songwriter Elvis Costello (Declan Patrick McManus), 22, includes the single "Alison"; Songs in the Key of Life (album) by Stevie Wonder; Blondie (album) and Plastic Letters (album) by the New York "New Wave" rock group Blondie (Miami-born singer-songwriter Debbie [Deborah] Harry, 32, guitarist Chris Stein, 28, drummer Clem Burke, bass guitarist Nigel Harrison, guitarist Frank Infante, keyboardist Jimmy Destri) (founded last year, the group will continue until its breakup in 1982 and reunite in 1998); Reba McEntire (album) by Oklahoma country singer-songwriter McEntire, 23, who last year married a member of the Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association and helps him run a ranch when not on tour or appearing on Grand Ole Opry.
Jazz pianist-composer Erroll Garner dies of a heart attack at Los Angeles January 2 at age 53; rock music pioneer Elvis Presley at his Memphis mansion August 16 at age 42 after a game of racquet ball. It is commonly accepted that Presley's addiction to prescribed barbiturates contributed to his early death; British rock star Mark Bolan dies in an auto accident at London September 16 at age 29; singer Mary Ford of pneumonia related to a diabetic insulin reaction at Los Angeles September 30 at age 53; bandleader Jan Garber at Shreveport, La., October 5 at age 82; Bing Crosby collapses on a golf course at Madrid October 14 and dies at age 73; Lynyrd Skynyrd leader Ronnie Van Zaant, 28, and two other members of his 8-year old rock group are killed along with their pilot and co-pilot in the crash of their chartered Convair 240 outside Gillsburg, Miss., October 20; bandleader Guy Lombardo dies following heart surgery at Houston November 5 at age 75.
Oakland beats Minnesota 32 to 14 at Pasadena January 9 in Super Bowl XI.
Björn Borg wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Virginia Wade in women's singles; Guillermo Villas, 25, (Arg) wins in U.S. Open men's singles, Chris Evert in women's singles.
St. Louis-born golfer Judy Rankin (née Judith Torluemke), 32, is the top money winner on the LPGA circuit for the second year in a row.
The U.S. yacht Courageous retains the America's Cup by defeating her Australian challenger Australia 4 to 0.
Seattle Slew wins U.S. horse racing's Triple Crown.
Red Rum wins the Grand National Steeplechase at Aintree for an unprecedented third time (see 1973). Ridden by Tommy Stack, the 12-year-old gelding carries 162 pounds and leads the field by 25 lengths at the finish line.
Japanese baseball star Sadaharu Oh, 37, of the Yomiuri Giants hits his 756th home run September 3 in the third inning of a game against the Yakult Swallows at Tokyo's Korakuen Stadium, beating Henry Aaron's record of 755 home runs.
The New York Yankees win the World Series, defeating the Los Angeles Dodgers 4 games to 2.
Former University of Kentucky basketball coach Adolph F. Rupp dies of cancer at Lexington December 10 at age 76.
The 68-year-old Boy Scouts of America changes its name February 22 to Scouting/USA.
Canada's prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau and his wife, Margaret, announce at Ottawa May 27 that they they are separating after 6 years of marriage. He retains custody of their children.
Jacqueline Onassis negotiates a settlement with the estate of her late husband, Ari, who died in mid-May 1975 at age 75. She is to receive $20 million—more than twice the $250,000 per year provided for in his will and nearly seven times the $3 million settlement that rumors say he would have paid if there had been a divorce.
Surveys show that the number of U.S. adults under age 35 living alone has more than doubled since 1970. Analysts ascribe the growing trend toward leaving home early and marrying late to such factors as easier credit, an increased wariness about marriage, and greater career opportunities for young women. More and more married couples now live apart, usually to pursue independent careers, and often see each other only on weekends.
Las Vegas gambling impresario Steve Wynn, 35, gains control of the city's Golden Nugget Casino and adds a hotel to it (see Kerkorian, 1969). Wynn's father was a Maryland gambler and bingo parlor operator who died of heart disease at age 46 in 1963, leaving a mountain of gambling debts just before his son received his bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania. The younger Wynn took over the bingo parlor, moved soon afterward to Las Vegas, took over the mob-tainted Frontier Casino, operated a liquor distributorship, and made $500,000 in less than a year through a real estate deal that involved the late Howard Hughes, who owned the Dunes (see 1980).
Flames engulf the Beverly Hills Supper Club across the Ohio River from Cincinnati at Southgate, Ky., May 28, killing 165 at the well-known gambling casino.
Chewing-gum magnate and Chicago Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley dies of an internal hemorrhage at Elkon, Wis., April 2 at age 82, leaving an estate valued at more than $60 million; footwear magnate Ward Melville dies of cancer at New York June 5 at age 90.
U.S. blue jean sales top 500 million pairs, up from 150 million in 1957 and just over 200 million in 1967. Levi Strauss & Co. remains the largest producer, but higher-priced designer jeans increase their share of the market and counterfeit labels proliferate.
Perry Ellis Sportswear, Inc. is founded by Virginia-born New York fashion designer Ellis, 38, who has been creating menswear designs for other companies and will establish his own firm in 1980.
Milliner Sally Victor dies at New York May 14 at age 72.
Hanae Mori opens her Haute Couture Maison at Paris (see 1965).
The National Women's Conference at Houston November 18 to 21 assembles 20,000 women, men, and children from all parts of the political spectrum in the first federally-sponsored gathering to discuss and act upon issues of concern to women. Included are mothers, daughters, grandmothers, homemakers, working women, students, Nancy Reagan, two former first ladies, and some members of Congress.
Philip Morris sponsors the first Virginia Slims tennis tournament to promote a cigarette brand whose advertising targets women (see 1968).
Convicted murderer Gary Gilmore, 36, goes before a firing squad at his own request January 17 at Utah State Prison after a 10-year moratorium on capital punishment in America. Four shots are fired into his heart, and his execution will be followed by 150 more in the next 15 years.
The U.S. Supreme Court rules 6 to 3 January 25 in Oregon v. Mathiason that a criminal subject who enters a police station voluntarily and is not under arrest may be interrogated without being informed of his legal rights as required in the Miranda decision of 1966.
New York's .44-caliber killer continues his murders (see 1976). He kills Wall street clerk Christine Freud, 25, January 29 as she sits with her boyfriend in his car in Ridgewood, Queens. He shoots Virginia Voskerichain, 19, in the face at point-blank range March 8 less than 100 yards from the Freund shooting. He shoots Bronx student Valentine Suriani, 18, and her boyfriend Alexander Esau, 20, of Manhattan in a parked car April 17 a few blocks from last year's Lauria murder. He shoots Bronx student Judy Placido, 17, and her boyfriend Sal Lupo, 20, of Brooklyn June 26 in a parked car outside a Bayside, Queens, discothèque but both survive. Flatbush, Brooklyn, woman Stacy Moscowitz, 20, and her Bensonhurst boyfriend Robert Violante, 20, are shot July 31; she dies after extensive brain surgery, he is blinded. Police arrest psychotic Yonkers postal worker David Berkowitz, 24, August 10; he claims he has acted on orders from the dog of his neighbor Sam Carr, 64, who does not know him.
Canada stops granting licenses to carry handguns for protection of property and requires licenses for rifles and shotguns as well as for handguns.
Boston's 33-story aluminum-sheathed Federal Reserve Bank building is completed to designs by Cambridge, Mass., architects Hugh Stubbins & Associates.
New York's 60-story, aluminum-clad Citicorp Center is completed on Lexington and Third avenues between 53rd and 54th streets to designs by Hugh Stubbins & Associates.
New York's 51-story Olympic Tower apartment and office building is completed at 645 Fifth Avenue, just north of St. Patrick's Cathedral, to designs by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
President Carter visits Charlotte Street in New York's rubble-strewn South Bronx October 5 and promises to revive urban renewal after 8 years of Republican neglect, but a $500 million program for the South Bronx, unveiled in April of next year, will take years to implement. Meanwhile the section will remain a slum area of arson-gutted buildings.
Major U.S. rivers freeze over in January and February as some cities record all-time low temperatures (Cincinnati -25° F., Miami Beach +25° F.) in the coldest winter on record.
A Romanian earthquake the night of March 4 shatters most of downtown Bucharest. Registering 7.2 on the Richter scale, it destroys more than 20,000 houses, killing at least 1,541, injuring more than 11,000.
A North Sea oil-well blowout in late April creates a 20-mile slick.
The Surface Mining and Reclamation Act passed by Congress July 21 requires that companies restore stripped coal lands to approximate original contours. A company must obtain a permit; before it can strip-mine coal from farmland it must demonstrate its technological capability to restore the land to productivity.
Kenya's Green Belt Movement is founded by Nairobi University biologist Wangari Maathai, 37, and will be responsible for planting nearly 5 million trees in the next 10 years. Daughter of a farm worker, Maathai is the first Kenyan woman to earn a PhD and the first to head a department at the university. She is a pioneer not only in the environmental movement but also in the struggle for women's rights.
A cyclone and flood from the Bay of Bengal November 19 leaves 7,000 to 10,000 dead in India's Andhra Pradesh State.
Congress amends the Clean Air Act of 1970, setting new dates for achieving air-quality standards (many areas have failed to meet deadlines) but with new restrictions on air pollution (see 1990); the amendments allow California to set even stricter limits in an effort to reduce that state's mounting smog problem. Automakers will install catalytic converters that reduce tailpipe emissions by 90 percent to meet the California law (see 1989).
California has its worst drought year in history (see 1976).
Congress moves in December to ban U.S. manufacture of nearly all aerosol products containing fluorocarbons, which pose a threat to the atmospheric ozone layer shielding Earth from much of the sun's ultraviolet radiation (see 1974). Without that ozone protection, scientists say, there would be a sharp increase in skin cancers, but the new law exempts many products and other countries do not follow the U.S. move.
U.S. and Soviet control of the sea is extended to 200 miles offshore March 1, matching the limit set by Chile, Ecuador, and Peru in their 1952 Declaration of Santiago (see 1966). Japan does not recognize Soviet claims to the waters surrounding Soviet-occupied islands claimed by the Japanese.
Agitation to give U.S. sugar growers more protection from imports leads the International Trade Commission to say in March that rising imports threaten the domestic industry. The Commerce Department recommends in May that domestic sugar be made eligible for special aid, and when President Carter resists measures that would raise domestic sugar prices he is accused of having a bias in favor of Coca-Cola, the Atlanta-based company with which he has had a long-standing relationship. Sugar refiners, bakers, soft-drink bottlers, confectioners, and consumer groups favor direct federal subsidies to growers rather than price-support programs that would raise the price of sugar and products containing sugar, thus imposing a heavier burden on the poor than on the rich. Carter winds up signing a farm bill that provides for generous loans to sugar growers, who forfeit their crops in lieu of repayment. By early 1979, the Department of Agriculture's Commodity Credit Corp. will have a stockpile of raw sugar for which taxpayers have, in effect, forked over nearly $500 million. The CCC will eventually accumulate about 300,000 tons of raw sugar and will sell at a substantial loss to ethanol manufacturers and to China.
Hybrid-corn farmer Roswell Garst dies at Carroll, Iowa, November 5 at age 79.
President Carter receives a report January 22 from the National Research Council concluding that repeated widespread famine and malnutrition can be removed from the world within a generation if the United States and other countries mount a major research project on agriculture and nutrition. Food officials say in May that for the first time in 5 years the world is entering its primary growing season without fear that crop failures may generate food crises, but experts say that if the United States does not take steps to establish a grain-reserve system that can hold surpluses against times of scarcity there will be boom-and-bust cycles that may bring mankind back to the brink of worldwide famine.
Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity by Frances Moore Lappé and Joseph Collins, with Cary Fowler, reveals that Mali increased her exports of peanuts during the African famine of 1973 to 1974, that thousands of tons of donated rice rotted because poor people could not afford to buy it, and that underfed countries in Africa and Latin America are planting more and more of their best lands to cash crops for export to richer countries in North America and Europe. The authors argue that the world has enough food but that much of it is wasted or poorly distributed; that the plight of the poor has actually worsened in countries where the "green revolution" has improved yields; that small farms are more productive than large farms, with higher yields per acre; and that the solution is to help people use their own experience and capacities to help themselves.
The Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs (McGovern Committee) releases the first draft of its report Dietary Goals for the United States (see 1974). Based on the proposition not that people should eat more of what is good for them but less of what is bad for them, it compares the average U.S. diet in 1976 with the average diet in 1909 and questions whether Americans are indeed the best-fed people in history: it links dietary changes to specific health problems, suggesting that six of the 10 leading causes of death—heart attacks, strokes, arteriosclerosis, cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, and diabetes—are related to diet, and since these account for about half of all deaths, eating can be as life-threatening as smoking (see 1980).
A Canadian study linking saccharin intake with bladder cancer in rats leads the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to announce March 9 that it will ban use of saccharin in foods, soft drinks, chewing gum, and toothpaste (see 1907; cyclamate ban, 1969). Congress votes to delay the ban for 18 months, the British medical journal Lancet raises doubts that saccharin causes bladder cancer in humans, the FDA proposes label warnings and store signs pointing out the danger. Future studies will show that saccharin is at worst a weak animal carcinogen but may tend to enhance cancer-causing properties of other chemicals, especially to heavy smokers.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture begins efforts to reduce the amount of nitrites used by meat processors to color bacon following reports that crisply fried bacon contains nitrosamines—powerful carcinogens formed when the nitrites combine with amines produced naturally in the body. Some critics insist that no nitrites at all should be permitted, others point out that most human nitrite and nitrate intake is from leafy green vegetables. The meat industry says nitrates are needed to prevent development of botulinum toxins but will agree to use smaller amounts.
The powerful carcinogen aflatoxin produced by the fungus Aspergillus flavus contaminates corn crops in Georgia, North Carolina, and other Southeastern states. Thousands of turkeys and hogs die, calves are born dead or stunted, slaughterhouses find liver tumors in cattle, and milk supplies are contaminated because cows have been fed tainted corn. Demand for Southeastern corn plummets (acreage planted to corn in Georgia will shrink by 75 percent in the next 10 years), and the states stiffen inspection procedures and controls to prevent a recurrence. Peanut butter sales drop, and peanut butter makers press the Department of Agriculture to test every truckload of peanuts, grown primarily in the Southeast; shelling plants will soon be required to send a sample from each lot to a federal or state laboratory for analysis (see 1984).
Nothing in the Constitution requires that states use Medicaid money to fund elective abortions, nor does any federal law, says the U.S. Supreme Court in a 6-to-3 ruling handed down June 20 (see 1976). The Senate votes 56 to 42 June 29 to bar the funding of elective abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or medical necessity. The House votes 238 to 162 August 2 to bar such funding except where childbirth would endanger the life of the mother. Right-to-life groups have mobilized to defeat politicians supporting legalized abortion; critics object that abortion, while legal, is becoming a privilege for the rich. President Carter concedes that discriminating against the poor in abortion matters is unfair but echoes the late President Kennedy in saying, "There are many things in life that are not fair." Rosaura Jiminez, 27, dies in pain October 3 at the hands of an illegal McAllen, Texas, abortionist, leaving a 5-year-old daughter. The cutback in federal Medicaid funds for abortion drove her to seek out the local woman, and hers is the first recorded death by illegal abortion since the cutback.
India's birth control efforts begin to collapse in the wake of Indira Gandhi's defeat when it is revealed that 500 unmarried women were forcibly sterilized during Gandhi's "emergency" and that 1,500 men died as a result of improper vasectomies. The scandal will make the very words family planning taboo, the Ministry of Health and Family Planning will become the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, and while surgical sterilization will remain the surest and most prevalent form of birth control, voluntary sterilization will decline to 1.8 million per year, down from more than a million per month in 1975. Millions of women will become pregnant who would not have done had government programs not been cut back.
The U.S. State Department proposes December 3 that 10,000 Vietnamese "boat people" be admitted on an emergency basis. Since the fall of Vietnam 2 years ago the United States has approved admission of 165,000 Indochinese refugees.
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