June 1979

The following events occurred in June 1979:

June 1, 1979 (Friday)

*The Republic of "Zimbabwe Rhodesia" was proclaimed, with the first black-led government of the former Rhodesia, which had been ruled by the white minority for 90 years. Abel Muzorewa, a Methodist Bishop and black African, became the Prime Minister while the white Rhodesian former Prime Minister, Ian Smith, served as the third most senior official as Minister of Portfolio.
*The Seattle SuperSonics won the NBA Championship against the Washington Bullets, winning 97 to 93 to win the best-4-of-7 series, four games to one.
*Born:
**Markus Persson, Swedish video game programmer and co-creator of the Minecraft game; in Stockholm
**Rhea Santos, Philippine and Canadian TV news anchor; in San Mateo, Rizal
*Died:
**Werner Forssmann, 74, German physician and 1956 Nobel Prize in Medicine winner who developed the cardiac catheterization procedure
**Ján Kadár, 61, Czechoslovakian filmmaker and Academy Award winner
**Jack Mulhall, 91, American film actor who appeared in 430 films over fifty years
**Eric Partridge, 85, New Zealand-born British lexicographer and expert on slang.

June 2, 1979 (Saturday)

*Pope John Paul II arrived in his native Poland on his first official, nine-day stay, becoming the first Pope to visit a Communist country. The former Archbishop of Krakow landed at the Warsaw airport at 10:05 a.m. where he was welcomed by a crowd of 20,000 and was cheered by hundreds of thousands of supporters who lined the route of his motorcade, before holding a nationally televised mass at Victory Square before a crowd of 200,000. Officially, the occasion for the visit by Karol Wojtyla, who had become Pope less than a year earlier, was the 900th anniversary of the martyrdom of Saint Stanislaus of Szczepanów, who had been killed by King Boleslaw II of Poland on April 11, 1079. The visit, later known as "nine days that changed the world", would bring about the solidarity of the Polish people against Communism, ultimately leading to the rise of the Solidarity movement.
*'' Ariel 6'', the last of the British Ariel satellite program, was launched from the United States Wallops Island launch site. On April 26, 1962, '' Ariel 1'' had been the first British satellite.
*Twenty people were killed near Samcheok in South Korea, and more were injured, after the bus they were in toppled over a cliff after colliding with a truck.
*Born:
** Choirul Huda, Indonesian soccer football goalkeeper known for being fatally injured during a Liga 1 game; in Lamongan, East Java (d. 2017)
**Morena Baccarin, Brazilian-born U.S. TV actress and Emmy Award nominee; in Rio de Janeiro
*Died:
** Jim Hutton, 45, American film and television actor known for the title role in the ''Ellery Queen'', TV detective series
** P. V. H. Weems, 90, U.S. Navy officer, inventor and navigational expert who invented the Weems Plotter and the Second Setting Watch, and founded the Weems School of Navigation.

June 3, 1979 (Sunday)

* A blowout at the Ixtoc I oil well in the southern Gulf of Mexico caused at least 600,000 tons (130 million U.S. gallons) of oil to be spilled into the waters until it was brought under control on March 23, 1980. The disaster would be the largest accidental oil spill in history until it was surpassed by the ''Deepwater Horizon'' oil spill in 2010.
* Parliamentary voting was held in Italy for the 630-seat Chamber of Deputies and the 315-seat Senate of the Republic. The Democrazia Cristiana Party continued its plurality in both houses (262 in the Chamber and 138 in the Senate) and Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti formed a new government.
*The Uganda–Tanzania War, which had started on October 9, 1978, came to an end as the Tanzania People's Defence Force secured Uganda's western border to prevent the supporters of Idi Amin from attempting a counterinvasion.
*Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Louly became the new President of Mauritania after the ruling Military Committee for National Salvation decided to replace President Mustafa Ould Salek. A former Mauritanian Army officer, Colonel Salek had led the bloodless coup that had overthrown President Moktar Ould Daddah on July 10, 1978.
*Fifty-two people were burned to death in Thailand, and 11 seriously injured, when a bus crowded with 68 partygoers collided head-on with a fully-loaded gasoline truck on a mountain road in Phang Nga Province
*Born:
**Pierre Poilievre, Canadian politician, Leader of the Opposition, in Calgary
** Tábata Jalil, Mexican TV hostess; in Mexico City
*Died: Arno Schmidt, 65, German author

June 4, 1979 (Monday)

* Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings took power in the West African nation of Ghana in a military coup d'état, overthrowing General Fred Akuffo and ending the rule of the Supreme Military Council. Ghana Army Major General Neville Alexander Odartey-Wellington, Chief of Staff of the Army, died during the defense of the Council headquarters. Most of the members of the council, including four former heads of state, would be executed in the next few weeks.
* South Africa's State President and former Prime Minister, John Vorster, resigned after being accused by a government board of inquiry of attempting to cover up the " Muldergate" scandal and perjury in his testimony to the board. Vorster was replaced in the largely ceremonial position by Marais Viljoen, the president of the South African Senate.
*Joe Clark took office as Canada's 16th and youngest Prime Minister at the age 39, the day before his 40th birthday.
*Iran reversed its agreement to receive a new U.S. Ambassador, rejecting career diplomat Walter L. Cutler. The post had been vacant since the April 6 resignation of William H. Sullivan. With Cutler's rejection by the Iranian government, and the refusal by the U.S. Department of State to nominate a different diplomat, U.S. Embassy chargé d'affaires Bruce Laingen remained the senior U.S. official in Iran. The Iranian Foreign Minister later stated that Cutler had been refused because of American intervention in African politics when Cutler had been the Ambassador to Zaire.
*The roof of Kemper Arena, the 19,500 sports facility for the NBA's Kansas City Kings and the site of the 1976 Republican National Convention less than three years earlier, collapsed in a storm at 6:45 p.m. Fortunately, no events were scheduled at the time, and the most recent event had been a week earlier, a Memorial Day concert by the Village People. Coincidentally, the American Institute of Architects was holding its national convention in Kansas City the same day, at Bartle Hall at the Kansas City Convention Center half a mile away.
*The song "Tusk" was recorded by Fleetwood Mac along with the 112-member University of Southern California Marching Band, setting a record for the most musicians on a rock music single.
*Born: Hanieh Tavassoli, Iranian film actress, in Hamedan
*Died:
** Hans Mauch, 60, Swiss ice skater and slapstick comedian who was "Frack" in the famous Ice Follies duo of Frick and Frack.
** Gilda de Abreu, 74, Brazilian actress and film director
** Seamus O'Donovan, 82, Irish Republican Army explosives expert and Nazi collaborator.

June 5, 1979 (Tuesday)

*Sandinista National Liberation Front guerrillas captured León, Nicaragua's second-largest city as the Guardia Nacional abandoned the barracks. More provinces fell to the Sandinist National Liberation Front as Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza Debayle declared a national siege, with rebel rule in the departamentos of Matagalpa, Ocotal and Chichigalpa in the north, Diriamba and Granada in the south, and Masaya near the capital.
*The University of Rio de Janeiro was founded. Officially referred to as the "Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro", it is commonly known as "Unirio".
*Died: Heinz Erhardt, 70, West German comedian and radio and TV actor

June 6, 1979 (Wednesday)

*The Kola Superdeep Borehole broke the world record for greatest depth drilled into the Earth, reaching to break the mark set in the U.S. in 1974 by the "Bertha Rogers hole" in Washita County, Oklahoma. Drilling would cease in 1989 at a depth of which has not been exceeded since.
*Twelve days after the May 25 crash of American Airlines Flight 191, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10 jumbo jet, had killed all 271 people on board in the worst single airplane crash in U.S. history, the Federal Aviation Administration suspended the flight certification of all 138 of the McDonnell-Douglas DC-10 jumbo jets operating in the United States. An inspection of other DC-10s after the disaster had shown that a large number of the DC-10s had the same defect in their engine mountings that had led one of the three jet engines of Flight 191 to drop from the aircraft during takeoff. While there were 143 more DC-10 jets being operated by airlines outside the U.S., virtually all had been grounded voluntarily by foreign airlines. On June 19, the DC-10 jets began returning to the air in most European nations, as a Martinair DC-10 departed Zürich to take vacationers to Majorca, followed by a Swissair flight to Tel Aviv
*The 200th annual Epsom Derby, the horse race with the largest purse, at the time, in Europe and in the United Kingdom, took place at Epsom Downs in Surrey. With a prize of £153,980 the race won by the Irish-bred and British-trained thoroughbred Troy, ridden by Willie Carson.
*The high Kalabaland Dhura mountain in the Himalayas, located in India, was climbed for the first time. The ascent of the Chiring We peak was made by a team of three mountaineers, Harish Kapadia, Vijay Kothari and Lakhpa Tsering.
*Born:
** Randa Abdel-Fattah, prolific Australian novelist; in Sydney
** Shanda Sharer, American murder victim, known for her brutal murder by fellow students; in Pineville, Kentucky (d. 1992)

*Died:
**Jack Haley, 81, American film actor best known for portraying the Tin Woodman in ''The Wizard of Oz''
** Ion Idriess, 89, prolific Australian novelist
** Babu Rajab Ali, 84, Pakistani poet notable for his compositions and performance of the Kavishari sung verse.

June 7, 1979 (Thursday)

*The first direct elections to the European Parliament began, allowing citizens from across all nine (at that time) member states of the European Union to elect 410 MEPs in the first international election in history. Voting in the nine European Community nations was staggered over four days, based on national preference for the day of the week for voting, and the first votes took place in Ireland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
*India's second orbiting satellite, ''Bhaskara-I'', was launched from the Soviet Union as part of its Intercosmos program to gather Earth observation data. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had launched the first satellite designed and built in India, ''Aryabhata'', on April 19, 1975; Bhaskara-I orbited earth for 10 years and re-entered the atmosphere in 1989.
*Egypt conducted its first multiparty parliamentary elections since 1952, when the monarchy was abolished and a republic was established. President Anwar Sadat's ruling National Democratic Party won all but 45 of the 392 seats.
*Born: Anna Torv, award-winning Australian TV actress; in Melbourne
*Died:
** Yehudit Harari, 93, Belarusan-born Israeli educator and one of the co-founders (in 1909) of Tel Aviv
** Forrest Carter, 53, American white supremacist and Western novelist best known for ''Gone to Texas'', which became the basis for the film ''The Outlaw Josey Wales''; from a heart attack Weeks later, a newspaper reporter's story that was picked up by the Associated Press concluded that Forrest Carter was Asa Carter, a fervent Alabama segregationist who had last been in the news in 1972, and that Carter's death had been ruled by a coroner as having been caused by choking to death "after being in a fistfight at a relative's home".

June 8, 1979 (Friday)

*Motorcycle speedway competitor Vic Harding of the Hackney Hawks was killed, and Steve Weatherley of the Eastbourne Eagles was permanently paralyzed, when the two collided during a competition at the Hackney Wick Stadium in greater London.
*Died:
**Wehrmacht Lieutenant General Reinhard Gehlen, 77, German military officer, founder of the Gehlen Organization intelligence agency after World War II that eventually became West Germany's Bundesnachrichtendienst (BRD) spy agency.
** C. S. Bull, 83, American unit still photographer who created most of the publicity photos for the MGM studios from the 1920s thorough the 1950s.

June 9, 1979 (Saturday)

*Six students and one adult were killed in a fire at Luna Park in Sydney, Australia, while riding one of the attractions, the "Ghost Train". The ride had gone into a tunnel with 35 people on board, and came out with only 28.
*The Rhodesian Security Forces invaded neighboring Mozambique to attack an encampment of the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army guerrillas, killing 30 of the ZANLA forces in their first military engagement since majority black African rule began in Zimbabwe Rhodesia.
*The Dobani Peak mountain in Pakistan, high, was climbed for the first time in history, conquered by Japanese mountaineers Isao Ikeuchi and Masaru Hashimoto.
*Hamburger SV won the championship of the 1978–79 Bundesliga on the final day of the season, finishing one point ahead of VfB Stuttgart on the strength of 21 wins and 7 draws to the 20 wins and 8 draws of Stuttgart.
* Sepp Maier, goalkeeper for Bayern Munich and for the West German national team, appeared in his 442nd consecutive soccer football match, closing out a 17-season career on the final day of the 1978-79 Bundesliga season. In all, Maier played in 599 matches, and had not missed a game since August 20, 1966. Maier was seriously injured in an auto accident the following month.
*The Canada national cricket team, founded in 1968, played its first ever One Day International match, as part of the 1979 ICC Trophy competition, facing Pakistan at the Headingley Cricket Ground in England.
*Panionios F.C. won the Greek Cup in soccer football, 3 to 1, over AEK Athens before 20,000 fans at Piraeus.
*Died:
** Frederick "Cyclone" Taylor, 94, Canadian ice hockey star and inductee to the Hockey Hall of Fame
** Scott Garland, 27, Canadian NHL ice hockey centre for the Los Angeles Kings, was killed in a single car accident in Montreal.

June 10, 1979 (Sunday)

*Voting concluded in the 10 nations participating in the first direct elections for the European Parliament as voters in France, Italy, West Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg cast their ballots; previously, each nation's parliaments selected the representatives. The Christian Democrat parties in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium won 108 of the 410 seats, and Britain's Conservative Party was the largest single vote-getter with 60 seats. Among the representatives elected was the former Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary, Otto von Hapsburg.
*The first championship of Australia's professional basketball association, the National Basketball League (NBL), was won by the St Kilda Saints of Melbourne, who defeated the Canberra Cannons by a single point in NBL Grand Final game at Melbourne, 94 to 93.
*Born: Lee Brice (Kenneth Mobley Brice Jr.), American country music singer; in Sumter, South Carolina

June 11, 1979 (Monday)

*The most distant volcanic eruption ever observed by humans took place on Io, one of the moons of the planet Jupiter, as the Surt volcano was photographed by the ''Voyager 1'' space probe as it displaced lava and sent the images back to the planet Earth.
*In what was only the third successful hijacking of an American airliner since strict security measures had been enacted at the end of 1972, Delta Airlines Flight 1061, a jet with 195 passengers and a crew of 12 was seized while en route to Fort Lauderdale, Florida from New York City. The Lockheed L-1011 TriStar jet was diverted at 7:07 in the evening about 90 miles east of Charleston, South Carolina and landed in Cuba at the Havana

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