WHAT ALL HAPPENED JANUARY TO OCTOBER 1979
Find out what all happened January to October 1979

An intense windstorm strikes western Washington and sinks a 1/2-mile-long section of the Hood Canal Bridge. (13. February 1979)

Iranian Jewish businessman Habib Elghanian is executed by firing squad in Tehran, prompting the mass exodus of the once 100,000 member strong Jewish community of Iran. (9. May 1979)

The Department of Education Organization Act is signed into law creating the US Department of Education and US Department of Health and Human Services. (17. October 1979)

Iran becomes an Islamic republic by a 99% vote, officially overthrowing the Shah. (1. April 1979)

ABC News correspondent Bill Stewart is shot dead by a Nicaraguan soldier under the regime of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. The murder is caught on tape and sparks an international outcry against the regime. (20. June 1979)

America's first space station, Skylab, is destroyed as it re-enters the Earth's atmosphere over the Indian Ocean. (11. July 1979)

Etan Patz, who is six years old, disappears from the street just two blocks away from his home in New York City, prompting an international search for the child, and causing the U.S. President Ronald Reagan to designate May 25 as National Missing Children's Day (in 1983). (25. May 1979)

Pope John Paul II begins his first pastoral visit to the United States. (1. October 1979)

The last Iranian Shah flees Iran with his family for good and relocates to Egypt. (16. January 1979)

In Kabul, Setami Milli militants kidnap the American ambassador to Afghanistan, Adolph Dubs who is later killed during a gunfight between his kidnappers and police. (14. February 1979)

A blowout at the Ixtoc I oil well in the southern Gulf of Mexico causes at least 3,000,000 barrels (480,000 m3) of oil to be spilled into the waters, the second-worst accidental oil spill ever recorded. (3. June 1979)

Park Chung-hee, President of South Korea is assassinated by Korean Central Intelligence Agency head Kim Jae-kyu. Choi Kyu-ha becomes the acting President; Kim is executed the following May. (26. October 1979)

Black Monday in Malta. The Building of the Times of Malta, the residence of the opposition leader Eddie Fenech Adami and several Nationalist Party clubs are ransacked and destroyed by supporters of the Malta Labour Party. (15. October 1979)

America's Voyager 1 spacecraft has its closest approach to Jupiter, 172,000 miles. (5. March 1979)

The lowest recorded non-tornadic atmospheric pressure, 87.0 kPa (870 mbar or 25.69 inHg), occurred in the Western Pacific during Typhoon Tip. (12. October 1979)

The tanker Betelgeuse explodes in Bantry Bay, Ireland. (8. January 1979)

Convicted bank robber Patty Hearst is released from prison after her sentence is commuted by President Jimmy Carter. (1. February 1979)

Iraqi President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr resigns and is replaced by Saddam Hussein. (16. July 1979)

Red River Valley tornado outbreak: A tornado lands in Wichita Falls, Texas killing 42 people. (10. April 1979)

U.S. President Jimmy Carter gives his so-called malaise speech, where he characterizes the greatest threat to the country as "this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation" but in which he never uses the word malaise. (15. July 1979)