WHAT ALL HAPPENED MAY TO AUGUST 1979
Find out what all happened May to August 1979

An IRA bomb explodes at the Grote Markt in Brussels. (28. August 1979)

Margaret Thatcher becomes the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. (4. May 1979)

Bryan Allen wins the second Kremer prize for a man powered flight across the English Channel in the Gossamer Albatross. (12. June 1979)

SALT II is signed by the United States and the Soviet Union. (18. June 1979)

White Night riots in San Francisco following the manslaughter conviction of Dan White for the assassinations of George Moscone and Harvey Milk. (21. May 1979)

The Federated States of Micronesia become self-governing. (10. May 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)

Pope John Paul II starts his first official visit to his native Poland, becoming the first Pope to visit a Communist country. (2. June 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)

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)

American Airlines Flight 191: In Chicago, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10 crashes during takeoff at O'Hare International Airport killing all 271 on board and two people on the ground. (25. May 1979)

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

A Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb kills British retired admiral Louis Mountbatten and three others while they are boating on holiday in Sligo, Republic of Ireland. Shortly after, 18 British Army soldiers are killed in an ambush near Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland. (27. August 1979)

Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings takes power in Ghana after a military coup in which General Fred Akuffo is overthrown. (4. June 1979)

The Ghost Train Fire at Luna Park Sydney (New South Wales, Australia) kills seven. (9. June 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)

The roof of the uncompleted Rosemont Horizon in Rosemont, Illinois, collapses, killing 5 workers and injuring 16. (13. August 1979)

Soviet dancer Alexander Godunov defects to the United States. (21. August 1979)

The first black-led government of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 90 years takes power. (1. June 1979)

Konstantinos Karamanlis signs the full treaty of the accession of Greece with the European Economic Community. (28. May 1979)