November 1979

Month of 1979

The following events occurred in November 1979:

The Iran hostage crisis began as several hundred Iranian radicals, mostly students, invaded the U. S. Embassy in Tehran and took 90 hostages (53 of whom were American). They demanded that the United States send the former Shah of Iran back to stand trial. Roger Mudd's interview with U. S. Senator Ted Kennedy was aired on a CBS Reports special, seen before Senator Kennedy's expected declaration of his candidacy and his challenge to U. S. President Jimmy Carter for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination. In addition to questioning Kennedy about the Chappaquiddick incident, Mudd asked, "Senator, why do you want to be President?" Kennedy's stammering answer, which has been described as "incoherent and repetitive", as well as "vague, unprepared" raised serious questions about his motivation in seeking the office, and marked the beginning of the sharp decline in Kennedy's poll numbers. Kennedy said "The reasons that I would run are because I have great belief in this country, that it is— there's more natural resources than any nation of the world, there's the greatest educated population in the world and the greatest political system in the world," and closed by saying "And I would basically feel that, that it's imperative for this country to either move forward — that it can't stand still — or otherwise it moves backward." Analyst James R. Dickerson of the Washington Star quoted Kennedy and said that Kennedy "came to his interview prepared to answer questions about Chappaquiddick and his marital problems but not about why he wants to be president and what he would do if elected."

A month after Japanese parliamentary elections had failed to restore the absolute majority that the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) had once held in Japan's House of Representatives, Prime Minister Masayoshi Ohira was challenged for leadership of the LDP (and by extension, leadership of the Japanese government) by his predecessor, Takeo Fukuda. In a vote among the 256 LDP members of the House, Ohira defeated Fukuda, 138 to 121 on the second ballot, after failing to receive a majority of votes from a field of candidates. The civilian government of Iran's Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan resigned abruptly, ending hopes of a quick resolution to the Iran hostage crisis and leaving the fate of the imprisoned American Embassy employees under the control of the Ayatollah Khomeini. For the first time ever, the Roman Catholic College of Cardinals was provided information about the details of the financing of the Roman Catholic Church, kept secret by the Pope and his advisers for centuries. A group of 120 cardinals assembled at Vatican City in closed session, under condition that the data not be revealed to the public, and at the direction of Pope John Paul II, heard reports from the Pope's economic advisers, headed by Giuseppe Caprio, Egidio Vagnozzi and Agostino Casaroli. Canada's Prime Minister Joe Clark narrowly overcame a vote of no confidence by only two votes (140 to 138), and only after his Progressive Conservative Party members of the House of Commons were joined by five members of the Social Credit Party. Died: Charles "Chick" Evans, 89, American golfer who won the U. S. Open in 1916 as an amateur.

NORAD computers and the Alternate National Military Command Center in Fort Ritchie, Maryland, detected, in what proved to be a false alarm, an apparent massive nuclear strike from the Soviet Union. The alert lasted six minutes and U. S. Department of Defense officials said that if the alert had "lasted even another minute, the information would have been passed to President Carter and Secretary of Defense Brown." According to The New York Times two days later, "at 10:50 A. M. Friday, a 'war game' tape was loaded into the NORAD computer in Colorado Springs, Colo., as part of a computer test." After a review of the raw data from satellites and early warning radars, the alert was canceled. The trial in the murder of 13 year old newspaper carrier Carl Bridgewater ended after five weeks, with a guilty verdict against all four defendants. Carl had been shot to death on September 19, 1978, after stumbling upon the robbery of a house on his route in Wordsley, Staffordshire in England. James Robinson Vincent Hickey was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, with no parole prior to 2004. Michael Hickey was found guilty of murder and sentenced to indefinite detention. Patrick Molloy was found guilty on a lesser charge of manslaughter and sentenced to 12 years in prison. Born: Caroline Flack, English television host and presenter; in Enfield, London (d. 2020)

The derailment of a 106 car Canadian Pacific freight train in Mississauga, Ontario, west of Toronto, caused a massive explosion and the release of chlorine gas. The accident happened at 11:53 p. m. local time and was initially reported as having happened in the early morning hours of Sunday, when the evacuation began. It forced the evacuation of 223,000 people, the largest in Canadian history, and the largest in North American history at the time. Residents were allowed to return to their homes three days later.

American Airlines Flight 444, a Boeing 727 airliner flying from Chicago to Washington, made an emergency landing after a bomb exploded in its cargo hold, puncturing a hole in the fuselage and causing a quick loss of air pressure and a fire that produced smoke that injured 12 passengers. The 72 passengers and six crew were uninjured and the plane made an emergency landing at Dulles International Airport. The incident, along with other bombs that had been placed in packages, would lead to the FBI's search, for more than 16 years, for the identity of a suspect identified initially as "The Unabomber" and later found to be Ted Kaczynski, a former mathematics professor at the University of California in Berkeley. Kaczynski would eventually be arrested on April 4, 1996. Sir Anthony Blunt, British art historian and former Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures, was revealed to be the long sought "fourth man" of the "Cambridge Five" that had served as double agents for the Soviet Union's spy agency, the NKVD, during World War II. The revelation came in a speech by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the House of Commons. Blunt's knighthood, conferred upon him in 1954, was canceled, the first time a revocation of the honor had taken place since Sir Roger Casement was convicted of treason in 1916. Mrs. Thatcher told Commons that Blunt had been granted immunity from prosecution in 1964 because "Both at the time of his confession and subsequently, Blunt provided useful information about Russian intelligence activities and about his association with [Guy] Burgess, [Donald] Maclean and [Kim] Philby." she provided further details on November 21.

Lidia Gueiler Tejada became the first female president of Bolivia, after being elected by the Bolivian Congress. Gueiler's selection came after "four days of lengthy secret negotiations between congressional and military leaders", nationwide strikes by the Bolivian Workers Confederation, and a proclamation signed by 250 military officers asking Colonel Alberto Natusch Busch to resign. Under the terms of the resolution electing her, Gueiler would serve until a new presidential election could be held in May. At the end of Colonel Natusch's 15 days as President of Bolivia after a November 1 coup d'état, 208 civilian protesters were killed, 207 injured and 124 were missing. The first subway in Romania, the Bucharest Metro, began service with trains running on an stretch of underground track in Bucharest between the Timpuri Noi and Semanatoarea stations. Sam Church became the new president of the United Mine Workers of America after the resignation of Arnold Miller, for whom Church had served as UMWA Vice President since 1972. Miller, who had suffered a stroke on March 29, 1978, had had a heart attack on November 12, a few days before resigning for health reasons. Nevada Airlines Flight 2504, chartered to fly tourists from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon National Park, crashed on takeoff during its return flight, but the pilot was able to find a clearing during the forced landing. Despite a collision with trees and a subsequent fire, all 41 passengers and three crew were able to escape the Martin 4 0 4 airliner, with only six sustaining minor injuries. The passengers were all French nationals employed by the Coca Cola Company in France.

An American L 188 Electra turboprop airliner, manufactured by Lockheed Corporation and owned by Transamerica Airlines, lost all electrical power at an altitude of 12000 feet (3658 m). The plane had taken off without passengers, to haul cargo from Hill Air Force Base, near Ogden, Utah, to Las Vegas, then disintegrated in midair while plunging at a high rate of descent, killing the three crew members aboard. The doomed aircraft had first flown in 1960 and had been operating for almost 20 years.

The holiest shrine of Islam, Mecca's Grand Mosque (the Masjid al Haram), was seized by a group of 200 Juhayman al Otaybi militants on the first day of the new Islamic year (1 Muharram 1400 A. H.). The militants were driven out on December 4 by Saudi forces assisted by French commandos who were allowed into the city under these special circumstances, despite their being non Muslims, after bloody fighting left 250 people dead and 600 wounded. Sixty three of those convicted of the uprising would be beheaded in an execution which was televised live on Saudi Arabian television, on January 9, 1980. The first identified lunar meteorite on Earth, Yamato 791197, was discovered in Antarctica. Analysis of the mineral composition of the 52.4 gram rock determined in 1984 that Y 791197 had once been part of the lunar highlands on the far side of the Moon, ejected from the Moon by impact from another meteor. Subsequently, fragments of a meteorite that had been found earlier than Y 791197 would be determined in 1990 to have been of lunar origin.

Four people were killed in Pakistan when the U. S. Embassy in Islamabad was attacked by a mob and set afire, after false radio reports from the Iranian radio that the United States had caused the seizure of the Grand Mosque the day before. The Pakistani Army stormed the building and repelled the attack. Died: T. C. Chao (Tzu ch'en Chao), 91, Chinese Protestant theologian

South Africa's Prime Minister P. W. Botha convened the historic Carlton Conference at the Carlton Hotel in Johannesburg, appearing before a group of 300 business leaders, directors of government agencies, and Botha's entire cabinet of ministers.

After consulting with Islamic religious leaders, the Saudi Arabian National Guard made a counterattack to drive out radicals who had seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca four days earlier.