This page relates to the year 1979 Gregorian Calendrier.

Events

  • 26 - March 27th: Conference of OPEC. The oil price increases by 20%. Beginning of the Second oil crisis.

  • 15 - June 18th: Agreements SALT 2 signed with Vienna by Brejnev and Casing, they will never be ratified because of invasion of the Afghanistan.
  • 28 - June 29th: Summit of the G7 in Tokyo which refuses any regulation with the international scales concerted vis-a-vis the second oil crisis and with world inflation. Tokyo and Bonn joins Paris to charge the responsibility for the second oil crisis to monetary laxism and the energy wasting of the United States.
  • 3 - September 9th: Meeting of the non-aligned countries with Havana: Tito leads the moderate ones in their opposition to the prosovietic position of the cuban leader Fidel Castro.
  • December 27th: Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, end of the relaxation. The war between islamist procommunists and men of the maquis lasts ten years and is completed by the unilateral withdrawal of Soviet unable to control the country.

  • the negotiations for the resumption of the bilateral relations between the China and the Soviet Union which begin at the end of 1979 are stopped at the beginning of 1980, before beginning again in 1982.

Europe

  • January 1st: Entry in sovereignty of the Canton of the Jura in the Swiss Confederation.
  • March 1st: Legislative elections in Spain. UCD obtains 37% of the votes (it must control with the Alianza Popular).
  • March 3rd: Government of Wilfried Martens in Belgium.
  • March 13rd: In the the EEC, coming into effect of EMS (European Monetary System) and ECU, money of account.
  • June 2nd: First voyage of the pope Jean-Paul II in Poland.
  • 7 - June 10th: the EEC: First elections with the European Parliament by the vote for all in the nine Member States of the EEC. The Christian Democrats and the social democrats dominate, but must pass from the compromises. Simone Veil is elected president of the Parliament.
    • Election of 81 British deputies in the European Parliament of Strasbourg: 60 conservatives, 17 members of the Labor Party, a Scottish nationalist and three Irish.
  • , Portugal: Resignation of the government of Carlos Mota Pinto and dissolution of the Parliament. Transition government of Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo. Line Victoire moderated with the legislative elections of December.
  • December 12th: Decision of deployment of Cruise and Pershing II in Western Europe in 1983 if the the USSR leaves the SS-20, beginning of the “crisis of the missiles”.

  • the Catalonia and the Basque Country accept by referendum the statute of autonomy.

  • Reform of the Spanish working Socialist party (Felipe González gives up its station of May to October). Any reference to the Marxism-Leninism is excluded from the socialist charter. The party makes the conquest of almost all the town halls between 1979 and 1982.
  • Judgment and imprisonment in Czechoslovakia of the leader intellectuals the movement of opposition to the mode (the writer Václav Havel, the journalist and playwright Jiří Dienstbier, the journalist Petr Uhl and the mathematician and philosopher Václav Benda). A dissenting group, the Committee for the defense of the people wrongfully persecuted, continuous to communicate to the Occident information on the living conditions in Czechoslovakia.

the United Kingdom

  • “Winter of dissatisfaction” under the Labor ministry Callaghan (at the beginning of 1979). The strikes exasperate the population (29,5 million day's works lost due to strike).
  • March 28th: The government Callaghan falls not to have not succeeds in making vote by referendum the devolution of autonomy in Scotland and the Wales.
  • May 3rd: The elections bring back the conservatives to the capacity.
  • May 4th: Margaret Thatcher, of the conservative party, which does not hide its intention to dismantle the Welfare state and “to break” the trade unions, becomes Prime Minister for the the United Kingdom. It is the first woman to occupy this station (until in 1990).
  • August 27th: Attack of the WILL GO which costs the life Lord Mountbatten.

  • Margaret Thatcher introduces a program inspired of the liberal ideas and monetarists; a monetary policy closes to fight against a strong inflation, tax stimulants to give again tonicity at the private companies, a lowering of the trade-union capacity. Geoffrey Howe, chancellor of the Exchequer (1979-1983), intends to mark a rupture with the past. The income tax sees its standard rate passing from 33 to 30% and its decreased maximum rate from 83 to 60%, but to avoid a deepening of the deficit, it is necessary to increase the VAT from 8 to 15%. Side of the expenditure, like the appropriations assigned to the maintenance of law and order and defense grow, one decreases the budgets of the public services concerned with the local authorities, housing and education. The priority is granted to the fight against inflation, in order to profit from the advantages which the price stability gets. The progression of the welfare expenditures, which passed between 1945 and 1979 from 8 to 22% of GNP, is stopped.

  • Following its defeat, the workers party carries out a turn on the left with the election at its head of Michael Foot (1980), which recommends the planning of the economy, more nationalizations, the increase in the taxes, the withdrawal of Europe and the immediate abandonment of any nuclear armament. Moderate fraction (Jenkins, Williams, Rodgers, Owen) made secession to found the social democrat party (SDP) which negotiates an alliance with the liberals of David Steel for the elections of 1983.

Italy

  • January 31st: The government Andreotti gives its resignation when the Communists announce that they turn over in the opposition.
  • March 13rd: Italy adheres to EMS.
  • March 21st: After the failure of Ugo Malfa (PRI), Giulio Andreotti form a new government.
  • March 31st: Not having obtained confidence with the Senate, Andreotti resigns.
  • April 1st: Vis-a-vis the absence of parliamentary majority, the president of the Republic dissolves the Parliament.
  • April 7th: The fight against the terrorists extends in the academic world and intellectual. 25 professors and intellectuals, whose philosopher of the Université of Padoue Toni Negri are stopped by the police force. Della Chiesa dismantles the Red Brigades (1979 - 1981).
  • With the elections of June, NCV passes from 34,4% to 30,4% of the voices, PSI increases a little, cd. is maintained with the fall (38,3%) and the radical party of Marco Pannella passes from 1,1% to 3,5%.
  • June 22nd: The Andreotti government, which had ensured the go concern during the elections, resigns. The Communists refuse to support a government in which they would not be represented by ministers.
  • August 5th: The Christian-Democrat Francesco Cossiga form a government with the participation of the liberals.
  • September 12th: An eruption of the Etna, in Sicily (Italy) made 12 dead.
  • In November, Enrico Berlinguer announces the new line of NCV: the democratic solution of alternative, is alliance with PSI against cd..

  • Week 39 hours. Plan of triennial cleansing.

  • the census estimates at a fork from four to seven million the illegally working number of people. This underground economy, being given rather low production costs, proves to be a considerable support for the Italian economy whose real state is less catastrophic than the official figures imply it.

France

See also: 1979 in France

Africa

  • February 7th: The colonel Chadli Bendjedid becomes president of the Algérie (fine in 1992).
  • 11 - March 16th: Conference of Kano which puts an end to the civil war with the Chad and sets up a government chaired by Goukouni Oueddei, chief of the Frolinat (face of national release) the March 23rd. The civil war begins again.
  • April 11th: The dictator of the Uganda Idi Amin Dada is put in escape by the army Tanzania. Its mode made since 1971 approximately 200  000 dead of which part of the executives of the country.
  • June 19th: Presidential and legislative elections with the Mali. Moussa Traoré is re-elected president of the Republic.
  • June 28th: A government of 15 members is made up in Mali, which does not count, in addition to the general Moussa Traoré (Minister for defense), who two soldiers.
  • August:
    • Summit of the the Commonwealth of Lusaka which solves the question rhodésienne with the free organization of elections in February 1980.
    • With Lusaka, the five States of the frontline against the Apartheid (Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia) develops their co-operation to reduce their economic dependence with respect to the South Africa. Joined the following year by the Lesotho, the Swaziland, the Malawi and the Zimbabwe, they set up a conference for the Coordination of the Development South-African (SADCC, April 1st 1980), which seeks to reorganize the transport system to avoid the ports of apartheid, to attract overseas investments and to promote the interregional trade.
    • ethnic Massacres with the Burundi.
  • August 5th: The Mauritania disengages conflict against the Front Polisario. The Morocco continues the war against RASD.
  • August 21st: Agreements of Lagos signed by the representatives of eleven factions Chad iennes and of nine African countries.
  • September 3rd: Goukouni Oueddei is recognized like president of Chad (fine in 1982).
  • September 10th: Died of Agostinho Neto, directing MPLA. José Eduardo dos Santos replaces it like president in Angola.
  • September 13rd: Independence of the Bantustan of the Venda, not recognized by the international community.
  • 20 - September 21st: Dismissal of the emperor of Central Africa Jean Bédel Bokassa, compromised in massacres of children. The former president David Dacko takes again the capacity in Central Africa following a coup d'etat operated with the assistance of French parachutists (fine in 1981).
  • September 26th: In Central Africa, Bernard Christian Ayandho is named Prime Minister for the Central African Republic.
  • October 1st: Shehu Shagari founds a civil mode with the Nigeria (IIIe République).

  • Raid South-African in Angola supports some with UNITA.

Economy & company

  • Authorization of the Black trade unions in South Africa. The multiracial trade unions remain prohibited.
  • the Nigeria undergoes an economic serious attack due to the deceleration of the oil exportations (unemployment, inflation…).
  • Declaration of Monrovia: the African political officials commit themselves promoting the social economic development and the integration of their economies in order to increase their independence.
  • the the IMF imposes on the Senegal a Plan of structural adjustment (NOT), implying the reduction in the public expenditure in order to restore the balance of the budget, the liquidation of the nonprofitable companies and the privatization of the potentially or really profitable firms, the devaluation of the national currency, the compression of manpower of the public administrations and the public sector. The STEPS are spread in all the African countries, causing dismissals and wage cuts, the rise of the prices, the massive reduction of the school offer, the deterioration of the health systems and conditions of existence.
  • 44,2% of the population of North Africa lives downtown on average.

Americas

The United States

  • March 28th: Radioactive escape with the power station of Three the Mile Island (Pennsylvania), most serious Nuclear accident in the United States.

  • April: Second oil crisis. World economic crisis (1979-1983). 13,3% of inflation.
  • May 25th: the flight 191 of American Airlines is crushed with Chicago. 271 victims.
  • July 15th: Jimmy Carter denounces it “Malayan” in which the country is inserted. The monetarist Paul Volcker, appointed president of the Federal Reserve System, subjects the country a Draconian cure as from October (limitation of the money supply, raises short-term interest rates).
  • November 4th: Business of the hostages of Teheran. Fifty-two employees of the American embassy will be released after 444 days of detention.

  • Creation of the “moral Majority” by those and religious and populist line leaders of the “New Right-hand side”.

  • 69 civil nuclear plants are in function in the United States.
  • the United States imports 50% of the oil which they consume.

Latin America

  • January: The pope Jean-Paul II visit the Mexico.
  • January 27th - February 12th: Third conference of the Latin-American episcopate of Puebla, with the Mexico. The theologists of the release are isolated debates.
  • March 12th: Luís Herrera Campíns, Christian-Democrat with the capacity with the Venezuela.
  • March 13rd: Coup d'etat to Grenade (Maurice Bishop).
  • March 15th, Brazil: The general João Figueiredo seizes the power, and the country starts a shy person return to the democracy.
  • March 16th, Nicaragua: The three tendencies of FSLN form a single national management.
  • March 29th: Revolution Sandinista with the Nicaragua (fine in 1990). The final offensive is launched. The dictatorship of Somoza can count any more on no support.
  • June 29th: In Bolivia, the elections do not release from victorious Net. Siles (35,9%) arrives at the head in front of Paz (35,8%) and Banzer (14%), but without having absolute majority. The Parliament appears unable to slice between Siles and Paz and the president of the Senate Wálter Guevara Arze takes over temporarily the duties for one year (August 8th). The political operations and the plots multiply to prepare the following electoral deadline. With the Parliament, the army is accused of corruption.
  • July 17th: Somoza flees the Nicaragua.
  • July 19th: Fall of the dictatorship of Somoza, released by the United States, with the Nicaragua. Seizure of power by the Sandinistas. FSLN makes a triumphal entry in Managua. A junta of government of national rebuilding of five members sets up itself, including/understanding the various tendencies of the opposition. Its program is clearly Sandinista: confiscation of the goods of the family Somoza, suppression of the National guard, nationalization of the banking system, and the foreign trade, land reform. The mixed economy must be reached by the creation of a nationalized sector, called “surface of property of the people” which must coexist with the private sector and a mixed sector. The private sector preserves a clear preponderance however (60% of GNP in 1980). Divergences appear between the middle-class and the Sandinistas, who assert themselves little by little on the executive as with the legislature while preserving political pluralism.
  • August 10th: Populist the Jaime Roldós Aguilera (38 years), is democratically elected president of the Ecuador. It forms a government reformist.
  • August 31st: The United States reveals that a Soviet brigade is stationed with Cuba.
  • 3 - September 9th: Conference of non-aligned with Havana, which marks the failure and the end of the movement.
  • October 15th: Coup d'etat carried out by young officers reformists with the El Salvador intended to prevent an evolution with the Nicaraguan. They launch a process of democratization of the country, but the “revolutionary junta of government” directed by the colonel Adolfo Majano-Ramos who settles finds in impossibility of affirming her authority vis-a-vis the army which continues to repress any form of social dispute in the name of the fight against Communism. The issued land reform the March 5th 1980, just like the reform of the foreign trade and that of the bank cannot be concluded. The revolutionary organizations refuse to support what they describe as coup d'etat proaméricain. Their violences echo that of the death squads.
  • November 1st: In Bolivia, coup d'etat of the general Alberto Natusch Busch, who seizes the power, becoming the 55 E president of the Republic. The army organizes the dissolution of the assembly.
  • November 16th, Bolivia: The general Alberto Natusch Busch, after 16 days from military regime and 200 died, withdraws himself and the soldiers give the capacity to the civilians, the president of the Parliament, Lidia Gueiler Tejada, becoming president of the Republic.

Asia

  • January 1st: Establishment of diplomatic relations between the China and the the United States. Washington recognizes the government of Beijing like the single legal government of China: there are only one China and Taiwan in fact part. The treaty of mutual safety concluded with the island in 1954 is abolished.
  • January 4th: Travel of Deng Xiaoping to the the United States.
  • April 10th: The Congress of the United States vote a law which condemns any attempt at reunification of the China by the force.
  • July 7th: The China obtains the clause of the most favoured nation.
  • In July, Deng Xiaoping authorizes the creation of companies to foreign assets in China.

  • December 27th: Intervention of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

    • Unable to contain the rebellion, Mohammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin request the military aid of the Soviets. The December 27th, President Amin is reversed and killed at the time of a coup d'etat supported by the Soviets, and Afghanistan is occupied by their troops.
  • December 26th: Babrak Karmal, former vice-president isolated and exiled in 1978, is installed with the presidency of Afghanistan (fine in 1986). The insurrection continues, and more than 3 million people pass the border to take refuge with the Pakistan. Soviet troops (120  000 men) enlisent themselves, control only one weak part of the country, undergo losses (15  000 killed) and finally are demoralized.

Southeast Asia

  • January 7th: Invasion of the Kampuchea by the Vietnam and taken Phnom Penh. ,
  • January 12th: Fall of the mode of Pol Pot. Expulsion of the Khmer Rouge and introduction of a mode close to Hanoi to the Kampuchea. The Khmer Rouges control only the refugee camps at the border with the Thailand. They owe their political survival using China and of the United States.
  • February 17th - March 16th: Conflict sino-Vietnamese in reaction to the occupation of Kampuchea. 200  000 Chinese soldiers cross the border. The Vietnam resists the price of heavy losses on each side, and of the negotiations follow.
  • Mars: The Soviet fleet uses the old American base of Cam Ranh with the Vietnam.
  • April: Elections organized to name a new Room of the representatives in Thailand.

  • the troops Vietnameses try to overcome the forces of the guerilla antigovernment in Kampuchea (1979 - 1989).

  • Of the Kampuchean refugees and Laotians tributary in Thailand, which must also face the pressures Vietnameses on her border.
  • Conference with Geneva on the question of the refugees.
  • the Burmese government stresses the autonomy of the Burma, by reducing its dependence with respect to foreign aid and by differing its adhesion with the Asian development bank. Burma breaks even its bonds with the group of the non-aligned countries in 1979 to protest against its inclinations pro-Soviet; it will be réadmise in August 1992 there.
  • tragic food Situation in Kampuchea according to UNO.
  • the number of refugees fleeing the Communist regimes culminates with 393  562 departures (1  359  260 departures of 1975 with 1989).

Indian Sub-continent

  • Charan Singh, Minister Indian for the Interior, publicly shows the Prime Minister Morarji Desai of nepotism to the beginning of the year.
    • Turbid between Hindus and Moslems in several States. RSS, arm temporal of the Jan Sangh, is shown to be the instigator about it.
    • Charan Singh resigns to protest against the attitude of Morarji Desai which he shows to support the Jan Sangh.
  • April 4th: Hanging of Ali Bhutto with the Pakistan.
  • July 22nd: Morarji Desai resigns and Charan Singh becomes Prime Minister (August 15th). Taking into account the fact that it is likely not to obtain the confidence of the Parliament, it is agreed that it would regulate the go concern until the elections of January 1980.
  • October 17th: Mère Teresa obtains the Nobel Prize of peace for its assistance with disinherited India.

  • Violent riots antimonarchists with the Nepal. The king Birendra agrees to subject to the popular vote a political reform, introducing the vote for all for the election of the local councils.

  • the economic situation is degraded again in India by the conjugation of a new monsoon and the second oil crisis.

Oceania, the Pacific & the Antarctic

  • a tourist plane is crushed on the sides of the Mont Erebus in the Antarctic, 257 dead.

The Middle East

  • February: Incidents of border enters Iraq and Iran.
  • Mars: Jimmy Carter must intervene, but does not manage to modify the new orientation of the israélo-Egyptian agreement which leaves side the question of the territories.
  • March 26th: Peace treaty between the Egypt and Israel (Washington) putting fine at the war which lasted since 1948. Egypt recognizes the Israeli State, which evacuates the the Sinai.
  • April:
    • Saad Haddad proclaims the State of free Lebanon in the area which it controls (Southern Lebanon). The Syria does not manage to dominate the Christian tiny room and decreases its engagement in Lebanon.
    • Vis-a-vis the Iranian threat, the Iraq concluded with the Saudi Arabia an agreement from safety by which Iraq commits itself defending Saudi Arabia in the event of Iranian aggression or of Soviet threat.
  • May 26th: Israel officially restores with the Egypt the town of El Arich, capital of the the Sinai, pursuant to the Camp David agreements. To leave the dead end, the question of the Jordanian territories and Syrians occupied by Israel are occulted, as well as the problems of the establishments of Jewish settlers in the West Bank and with Gaza, of the ultimate statu of Jerusalem and of Palestinian autonomy. The Arab coalition anti-Israeli loses her military main force.
  • May 29th: The talks on Palestinian autonomy begin again between the Egypt and Israel at the same time as the Israeli withdrawal of the the Sinai (1979-1982).
  • June 6th: Islamist attacks in Syria. A commando attacks the artillery school of Alep and assassinates 83 juniors, all of confession Alaouite. The islamist movement is established especially in the big cities of North (Alep, Hama, Homs, Lattaquié) and forsakes Damas firmly held by the armed forces and police of the mode.
  • July 16th: Saddam Hussein becomes President of the Republic in Iraq after having drawn aside from the capacity his/her uncle, the general Ahmad Hassan Al-Bakr, leader historical baasist. He cumulates the president's functions of the Republic, general secretary of the Ba' HT, chief of the council of command of the revolution and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. In the days which follow, its opponents within Ba' HT, in majority Chiites, are eliminated.
  • October: The tensions between the Yemen of the south and the Yemen of the North, sharpened by the discovery of oil layers on badly defined borders, push the government of the south to combine it with the Soviet Union, to which it grants naval and air facilities.
  • November 20th: A group of exaltés seizes the large mosque of Mecque and proclaims its chief the Mahdi, man guided by God. The Saoudi police force, helped by a quota of GIGN French, takes again the control of the places after fifteen days of seat. The insurrectionists all are carried out. The business calls into question the dogma of the protection of the Holy Cities by the Saoudi mode, which must find a legitimacy while fighting against the heresies of the Islam.
  • November: The populations Chiites of the Saoudi kingdom, which do not have the right to celebrate their worship, taken in the exaltation of the Iranian revolution, organize religious demonstrations immediately repressed by the police force (19 dead).

  • In Syria, the Sunnites form 70% of the population but are private capacity, between the hands of the Alaouites since the Années 1960.

  • Expulsion of the Shiite of Iranian origin of Iraq.

Iran

See also: Iranian Revolution

  • January 16th: Escape of the Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, reached of a cancer.
  • : Proclamation of the Islamic Republic in Iran. The Ayatollah Khomeyni, then in exile in France, returns to Iran and founds an Islamic Republic based on the return to the religious purity and the rejection of occidentalization.
  • February 11th: The Ayatollah Khomeyni announces the victory of the revolution and seizes the power. It establishes an authoritative theocracy where it allots the supreme capacity of arbitration. Mehdi Bazargan becomes its Prime Minister (fine the November 5th).
  • March 30th: The Islamic Republic is approved by referendum.
  • April: Second oil crisis following the Iranian revolution. The strikes in the Iranian industry of oil stop Iranian exports and start one second wave of panic at the consumer countries, which carry out purchases of precaution. The course of the triple crude barrel, 12,70 to 36 dollars between 1979 and 1980.

  • Iran de Khomeyni, hostile with the “Great Satan” American, hates also the Soviet Union and the access to the Persian Gulf bars to him and the oil layers. It causes its concern to see to extend the religious dispute in Central Asia Soviet, one of the reasons of the intervention in Afghanistan.

Arts & culture

See also: 1979 with the cinema, 1979 in music, 1979 in literature, 1979 with the theater, 1979 as a cartoon, 1979 on television

Visual arts

  • May 31st: Exposure Magritte to the Center Georges-Pompidou (Beaubourg) in Paris.
  • December 19th: Exposure, “Images of America in crisis” in the Georges-Pompidou Center.

Bullfighting

Sciences & technology

See also: 1979 in science

See also: 1979 in aeronautics

See also: 1979 in the railroads

Sports

See also: 1979 in sport

See also: 1979 in football

Births in 1979

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Death in 1979

Beats-smg: 1979 Be-X-old: 1979 Map-bms: 1979 Simple: 1979 Zh-min-nan: 1979 nor Zh-yue: 1979 年

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