RETURN TO INDEX
Top Song(s)
• Blondie - Heart of Glass
• Chic - Le Freak
• Gloria Gaynor - I Will Survive
• Donna Summer - Hot Stuff
• The Knack - My Sharona
Top Film(s)
• Alien
• Apocalypse Now
• Stalker
• Life of Brian
• Manhattan
Best Selling Book(s)
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
• Sophie's Choice - William Styron
• The Dead Zone - Stephen King
• The Executioner's Song - Norman Mailer
• Kindred - Octavia E. Butler
Famous Deaths
• January 26 – Nelson Rockefeller, 41st Vice President of the United States
• February 9 – Dennis Gabor, Hungarian-born British physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
• March 16 – Jean Monnet, French political economist, diplomat and a founding father of the European Union
• March 29 - Yahya Petra of Kelantan, Sultan of Kelantan and 6th King of Malaysia
• April 4 - Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, 9th Prime Minister of Pakistan and 4th President of Pakistan
• May 27 – Ahmed Ould Bouceif, Mauritanian military officer, second Prime Minister of Mauritania
• July 15 - Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, Mexican politician, 49th President of Mexico
• August 24 - Ahmad Daouk, Lebanese politician, 12th Prime Minister of Lebanon
• September 10 – Agostinho Neto, Angolan poet and politician, 1st President of Angola
• November 1 - Mamie Eisenhower, 34th First Lady of the United States
Medical/Science/Technology
• Pluto enters a 20-year period inside the orbit of Neptune for the first time in 230 years.
• The maiden launch of Ariane 1, the first rocket in the Ariane launcher family.
• Arthur William Baden Powell publishes New Zealand Mollusca.
• May 8 - Radio Shack releases TRSDOS 2.3.
• VisiCalc becomes the first spreadsheet program.
• The RISE project first discovers hydrothermal vents on a mid-ocean ridge in the Pacific Ocean.
• The first modern Sudoku, known as Number Place, devised by Howard Garns.
• The World Health Organization certifies the global eradication of smallpox.
• The last naturally occurring cases of polio are reported in the United States.
• Tumor protein p53 is identified by Lionel Crawford, David Lane, Arnold J. Levine and Lloyd J. Old.
Political
• January 1 – The United States and the People's Republic of China establish full diplomatic relations.
• March 26 – At the White House, Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Menachem Begin of Israel sign the Egyptian–Israeli Peace Treaty.
• April 20 – President Jimmy Carter is attacked by a swamp rabbit while fishing in his hometown of Plains, Georgia.
• June 18 – Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev sign the SALT II agreement in Vienna.
• July 3 – President Jimmy Carter signs the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul.
• October 17 - President Jimmy Carter signs a law establishing the Department of Education.
• November 6 – Kentucky Fried Chicken magnate and former Boston Celtics owner John Y. Brown Jr. is elected Governor of Kentucky.
• November 7 – Senator Ted Kennedy announces that he will challenge President Jimmy Carter for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination.
• November 14 – President Jimmy Carter issues Executive Order 12170, freezing all Iranian assets in the United States.
• December 8 – U.S. Representative David C. Treen is elected Governor of Louisiana.
National
• March 4 – The U.S. Voyager I space probe photos reveal Jupiter's rings.
• March 25 – The first fully functional Space Shuttle orbiter, Columbia, is delivered to the John F. Kennedy Space Center.
• March 29 – America's most serious nuclear power plant accident at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania.
• April 1 – Nickelodeon debuts on cable television, playing children's television shows 24 hours a day.
• April 10 – A tornado hits Wichita Falls, Texas, killing 42.
• May 9 – A Unabomber bomb injures Northwestern University graduate student John Harris.
• September 1 – The U.S. Pioneer 11 becomes the first spacecraft to visit Saturn, when it passes the planet.
• October 1–6 – Pope John Paul II visits the United States.
• December 6 – The world premiere for Star Trek: The Motion Picture is held at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
• December 21 – Chrysler receives government loan guarantees upon the request of CEO Lee Iacocca.
Worldwide
• January 8 – The French tanker Betelgeuse explodes at the Gulf Oil terminal at Bantry, Ireland; 50 are killed.
• February 3 – Ayatollah Khomeini creates the Council of the Islamic Revolution.
• March 17 – The Penmanshiel Tunnel in the UK collapses, killing two workers.
• April 4 – Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto is executed by hanging for the murder of a political opponent.
• May 1 – Greenland is granted limited autonomy from Denmark, with its own Parliament sitting in Nuuk.
• June 12 – Bryan Allen flies the man-powered Gossamer Albatross across the English Channel.
• July 1 - Sweden becomes the first country to outlaw corporal punishment in the home.
• August 14 – A freak storm during the Fastnet Race results in the deaths of 15 sailors.
• October 16 – A tsunami in Nice, France kills 23 people.
• December 23 – The highest aerial tramway in Europe, the Klein Matterhorn, opens.