December 1979

Month of 1979

The following events occurred in December 1979:

The Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) Cougars won the NCAA Division I college soccer championship in the U. S., defeating the Clemson Tigers, 3 to 2, in Tampa. Danny Shouse, an American basketball player in the Icelandic professional basketball league scored 100 points for his Ármann team of Reykjavík in a game against Skallagrímur in the city of Borgarnes.

U. S. President Jimmy Carter announced his intent to run for re election in the 1980 U. S. presidential elections, and stated that Vice President Walter Mondale would again be his running mate. The Hastie fire in Kingston upon Hull in England, killed three boys and began the hunt for Bruce George Peter Lee, the UK's most prolific killer.

The government of Indonesia released 2,045 prisoners who had been detained since an unsuccessful coup d'état attempt in 1965 against the regime of President Sukarno. Another 61 political prisoners, described as by the Indonesian government as "hard core Communists", were held for trial to take place in 1980. The U. S. state of Louisiana elected their first Republican governor in more than a century, as U. S. Representative David C. Treen defeated Democrat Louis Lambert in a runoff election. At the time, registered Democratic Party voters outnumbered registered Republicans by a ratio of 22 to 1, but Lambert's opponents in the Democratic primary had endorsed Treen in the runoff election. Died: Robert Hocq, 62, French business executive who purchased and revived the ailing Cartier jewelry firm, was killed while crossing the street outside of his office in Paris.

The Arab nation of Libya, led by Muammar Gaddafi, broke relations with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and closed its bureau in Tripoli, after PLO officials resisted Gaddafi's insistence that the Palestinian representatives rely predominantly on guerrilla warfare to achieve their goals against Israel. The break came after Gaddafi had called on Palestinian commandos in the more radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) to destroy the Suez Canal in Egypt and to wreck Egyptian oil fields in retaliation for Egypt's peace accords with Israel. Died: Fulton J. Sheen, 84, American Roman Catholic Archbishop and television evangelist

The Kaohsiung Incident took place in Taiwan when police in the city of Kaohsiung blocked a rally in observation of the United Nations' Human Rights Day and a crowd of about 10,000 protesters. Eight opposition leaders, associated with the political magazine Formosa, were arrested. At the time, the Kuomintang was the only legal political party in Taiwan, formally the Republic of China. For the first time since the beginning of the Iran Hostage Crisis, one of the U. S. Embassy personnel in detention was allowed to be interviewed by the American press. U. S. Marine Sergeant William Gallegos, a guard at the besieged embassy in Tehran, was selected by his student captors to be questioned by George Lewis and Fred Francis of NBC Nightly News, and said that "The students here have been really good to us," adding "It's hard to believe, I know. We haven't been asked any questions as to what we're doing here, what really our job was. All of us can see each other. Everybody's O. K."
South Africa's white minority government partially relaxed some of its regulations under its apartheid policy of racial segregation, declaring that private businesses such as hospitals and drive in theaters no longer had to renew permits allowing the admission of non White customers.

The NATO Double Track Decision was made as members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization decided to propose to the Warsaw Pact nations a mutual limitation of medium range ballistic missiles and intermediate range ballistic missiles combined. The offer was coupled with the threat that, in case of disagreement, NATO would deploy more middle range nuclear weapons in Western Europe. This followed the so called "Euromissile Crisis". The 8.2 Tumaco earthquake shook Colombia and Ecuador with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent), killing at least 300 people and generating a large tsunami. The high tsunami reportedly swept away the people in six fishing villages along the Colombian coast. South Korean Army Major General Chun Doo hwan, Chief of Army Security Command, ordered the unauthorized arrest of the Army Chief of Staff, General Jeong Seung hwa and several other generals after alleging their involvement in the assassination of ex President Park Chung Hee. General Jeong's bodyguards engaged in a gunbattle with Chun's soldiers at the Defense Ministry headquarters and three people were killed, with four others seriously wounded before Jeong was taken into custody. General Chun followed with a demand that Prime Minister Shin fill the vacancies, left by the arrest of 16 senior officers, with men of Chun's choice. The unrecognized state of Zimbabwe Rhodesia returned to British control and resumed using the name Southern Rhodesia.

The Roman Catholic Church issued a censure against a liberal Swiss theologian and priest, Father Hans Küng, for his continued questioning of "age old tenets of the Roman Catholic faith." Father Küng, a professor at Germany's University of Tübingen, was named specifically in a Vatican declaration written in Latin and signed by Cardinal Franjo Šeper, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, declaring that "this sacred congregation by reason of its duty is constrained to declare that Professor Hans Küng, in his writings, has departed from the integral truth of Catholic faith, and therefore he can no longer be considered a Catholic theologian nor function as such in a teaching role." The Black Hole, the first Walt Disney Productions film to ever receive a parental guidance (PG) rating, premiered in the United Kingdom (with an "A" rating) and was released in the United States and Canada three days later. With a total budget of $26 million for production and promotion, the film was the most expensive produced by the Disney studios up to that time.

The United States Senate followed the previous approval of the U. S. House of Representatives and voted, 53 to 44, to pass the Chrysler Corporation Loan Guarantee Act of 1979 to authorize the financial rescue of the ailing U. S. automobile manufacturer. U. S. President Carter signed the bill into law on January 7 to authorize a 1.5 billion dollar government loan. Mudar Badran resigned as Prime Minister of Jordan and was replaced by Abdelhamid Sharaf, a former Jordanian Ambassador to the U. S. Badran, though only 40, died of a heart attack less than eight months later, on July 4, 1980. Siegfried Haag, a former lawyer and member of the Red Army Faction terrorist group in West Germany, was sentenced to 15 years in prison. He would be released seven years later because of illness. The Academy Award winning film Kramer vs. Kramer, starring Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep as a divorcing couple fighting over custody of their child, was released nationwide in the United States. New York Times critic Vincent Canby described it as "one of those rare American movies that never have to talk importantly and self consciously to let you know that it has to do with many more thnings than are explicitly stated."

The first advanced maneuverable reentry vehicle ballistic missile, the AMaRV, was launched as the payload of a U. S. Minuteman I and was capable of autonomously adjusting its trajectory during its descent in order to reach its target. A military court in South Korea sentenced seven men, led by former Korean Central Intelligence Agency director Kim Jae kyu, to be executed for the October 26 assassination of President Park Chung Hee. Kim, who shot President Park to death during a banquet, told the court, "I do not wish to beg for my life, as I have found a cause to die for. My motive was a wish to establish a foundation for peaceful changes of government in the future."

Documents for a ceasefire in the Rhodesian Civil War were signed at the Lancaster House in London, to take effect on December 28. Bishop Abel Muzorewa, the Prime Minister of the biracial government that had been elected in Zimbabwe Rhodesia signed on behalf of the colonial government, while Robert Mugabe of the Zimbabwe African National Union and Joshua Nkomo of the Zimbabwe African People's Union signed for the Patriotic Front guerrilla group. For the first time since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Communist government permitted the public ceremonies for consecration of a religious leader, as Bishop Michael Fu Tieshan was certified as the Roman Catholic Bishop of Beijing by the Communist government. Bishop Fu, leader of the government approved Catholic Patriotic Association, was consecrated by eight Roman Catholic bishops from other dioceses, all of whom wore "traditional church vestments". The ceremony was not recognized by the Vatican, however, since Fu was elected by his parishioners rather than selected by the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Beijing would be reactivated by the Vatican in 1989. At least 43 bus passengers in the Philippines were killed while traveling home for the Christmas holiday, after the driver missed a detour and drove the vehicle off of a collapsed bridge. The bus, operated by Philippine National Railways (PNR) fell into the Marana River, near Ilagan City, when it reached a concrete bridge whose center span had been washed away by Typhoon Vera. The record for most consecutive games played in the National Hockey League, held by Garry Unger of the Atlanta Flames, stopped at 914 in a row when Flames' coach Al MacNeil benched Unger, marking the first time since February 24, 1968, that Unger had not appeared in a scheduled NHL game. The benching came on the same day that a reporter for the local Atlanta Constitution spoke of Unger's "selfish reputation" and wrote that the mark "seems only to dig up more talk about his lack of team play each game the streak is mentioned." Unger's record would stand for seven more years until December 26, 1986, when surpassed by Doug Jarvis of the Hartford Whalers.

In the U. S., the acquisition of National Airlines company by Pan American World Airways was approved by President Jimmy Carter upon recommendation of the Civil Aeronautics Board, bringing an end to the 45 year old airline brand. All of National's flights and aircraft were re branded as Pan Am, which became the fourth largest air carrier in the U. S.

Died: Darryl F. Zanuck, 77, American film producer and studio executive, winner of three Academy Awards for Best Picture (for How Green Was My Valley, Gentleman's Agreement and All About Eve)

The European Space Agency, financed primarily by France and nine other Western European nations, placed a rocket into Earth orbit for the first time as the unmanned Ariane 1 was launched from the Guiana Space Centre near Kourou in French Guiana. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan with 6,000 combat troops of the 40th Soviet Army were flown into the Asian nation, to prepare to replace PDPA general secretary Hafizullah Amin, who had fallen out of favor with Soviet leadership. Within three days, the troops invaded the capital city of Kabul to carry out a bloody coup d'état to kill Amin and replace him with Babrak Karmal. The invasion began a war that would last for more than nine years. Died: Rudi Dutschke, 39, West German political activist, from injuries sustained in a 1968 shooting. Known as "Red Rudi", Dutschke, who had been shot in the head on April 11, 1968, suffered frequent seizures and drowned in a bathtub while visiting friends in the city of Aarhus in Denmark.

Hafizullah Amin, who had been the Communist leader of Afghanistan's People's Democratic Party, and General Secretary of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), since September 14, was overthrown in a coup d'état, put on trial before a revolutionary tribunal for "crimes against the state", and executed. Former Prime Minister Babrak Karmal, who had been in exile in Czechoslovakia, flew into Kabul to become the new Party General Secretary and leader. The coup came with the support of Soviet Red Army combat troops who had been flown in to Afghanistan earlier in the week. Plans to replace Amin had started after the September coup, when Soviet ally Noor Mohammad Taraki had been overthrown and killed. The Soviet press agency TASS broadcast a speech on Radio Kabul declaring that "Today is the breaking of the machine of torture of Amin and his henchmen, wild butchers, usurpers and murderers of tens of thousands of our countrymen, and added that Amin and "his stooges" had been "agents of American imperialism." Ten inmates died in a fire at the Lancaster County Jail in Lancaster, South Carolina, and eight more were injured before the blaze was extinguished. The fire started at 6:00 in the evening on the second floor of the 150 year old building that had been designed by famous American architect Robert Mills. 26 year old Richard Keith Job of Hastings, New York, fell 400 feet (122 m) to his death while standing on the snow covered edge of the Rim Trail in Grand Canyon National Park. Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo, the first female Prime Minister of Portugal, submitted her resignation to President António Ramalho Eanes, clearing the way for a new government to be formed by election victor Francisco de Sá Carneiro. Sam Rutigliano of the Cleveland Browns who took his team to a winning 9–7 record thanks to their amazing miracle finishes and without their star running back Greg Pruitt was named the United Press International AFC Coach of the Year.

The "State Sponsors of Terrorism List" was introduced by the U. S. Department of State and identified four nations in the Middle East— Syria, Libya, Iraq and South Yemen— as countries subject to diplomatic sanctions for their continuing sponsorship of international terrorism. Syria would remain on the list more than 40 years later; as of 2021, the other nations on the list are Iran, Cuba and North Korea.