1979

Events:

January 4 - State of Ohio agrees to pay $675,000 to families of dead and injured in Kent State University shootings.
January 7 - Vietnam and Vietnam-backed Cambodian insurgents announce the fall of Phnom Penh, Cambodian capital, and the collapse of the Pol Pot regime.
January 16 - Shah leaves Iran after a year of turmoil.
February 11 - 43 million viewers watch "Elvis!" on ABC.
February 11 - Ruhollah Khomeini seizes power in Iran.
March 25 - The first fully functional space shuttle orbiter Columbia was delivered to Kennedy Space Center.
March 28 - Conservatives win the British election; Margaret Thatcher becomes the new prime minister.
March 28 - Nuclear power plant accident at Three Mile Island, Pa., releases radiation
June 14 - Jimmy Carter and Brezhnev sign the SALT II agreement.
July 17 - Nicaraguan president General Anastasio Somoza Debayle resigns and flees to Miami; Sandinistas form a new government on July 19.
August 27 - Lord Mountbatten killed by the IRA.
November 4 - Iranian militants seize the U.S. embassy in Teheran and take hostages.
December 27 - Soviet Union invasdes Afghanistan.
VisiCalc becomes the first spreadsheet program.

Sport:

Births:

Deaths:

August 27 - Earl Mountbatten of Burma, 79, British World War II hero, and three others are killed by a blast on a fishing boat off the Irish coast; two I.R.A. members are accused on August 30.