October 1979

Month of 1979

The following events occurred in October 1979:

The use of home video recorders to record television broadcasts was ruled lawful by U. S. District Judge Warren J. Ferguson in Los Angeles, who declared that the "such recording is permissible under the copyright acts of 1909 and 1976" and rejected a request by Universal Studios and Walt Disney Productions seeking to stop the Sony and RCA corporations to stop selling VCRs. Ferguson's ruling would be reversed by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, but reinstated by the U. S. Supreme Court in its ruling in Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. on January 17, 1984. Pope John Paul II addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on human rights and spoke out against all forms of concentration camps and torture, then conducted mass at Yankee Stadium in front of 80,000 faithful. Died: Hannelore Schmatz, 39, West German mountaineer, and Ray Genet, 48, Swiss born American mountaineer, both died of hypothermia after stopping to rest during their descent of Mount Everest. Their Nepalese guide, Sungdare Sherpa, who remained with Schmatz, lost most of his fingers and toes due to frostbite.

The U. S. Senate voted, 81 to 15, to censure longtime incumbent Senator Herman Talmadge (D. Georgia) for improper financial conduct for more than five years before he had been caught. The vote took place after an investigation by the Senate of allegations that he had diverted more than $43,000 of campaign funds to his personal use for reimbursement of expenses that he had never incurred. Talmadge, in his fourth six year term in the Senate, was defeated for re election in 1980. The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to British electronics engineer Godfrey Hounsfield and South African born physicist Allan MacLeod Cormack of the United States for their invention (each independently of the other) of computed axial tomography, the basis for the CT scan. The award by the Nobel Assembly of the Karolinska Institute was described as "one of the most unusual in the 78 year history of the prizes" because neither Hounsfield or Cormack had "a doctoral degree in medicine or any field of science." Sclerocactus wrightiae, known as Wright's fishhook cactus, was added to the federal endangered species list.

Elections were held in Switzerland for the 200 seats of the National Council and the 46 seats of the Council of States. Huber Matos, who had fought alongside Fidel Castro in 1959 but was imprisoned later in the year on charges of sedition, was released from prison after completing the entirety of his 20 year sentence. He was then allowed to leave and moved to Costa Rica, then to the United States. Norway's soccer football championship, the Norgesmesterskapet i fotball, was won in Oslo by Viking FK of Stavanger, which beat SK Haugar of Haugesund, 2 to 1. In an effort to minimize black market trading and to nullify the effect of bank notes taken by its former dictator and his followers, the government of Uganda announced that it would require the exchange of the African nation's currency (the Ugandan shilling with newly minted shillings. Uganda closed its borders with its five neighbors, restricted entry and exit, and declared that after October 27, the old shillings (which bore the image of deposed president Idi Amin) would no longer be legal tender if not exchanged for new versions before the deadline. When Amin and other members of the old regime had fled in April, they had taken millions of old shilling notes with them, all of which were made worthless by the changeover.

U. S. President Jimmy Carter and the U. S. Department of State permitted the deposed Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to enter the United States for treatment for suspected cancer at Cornell Medical Center in New York City. The Shah arrived at LaGuardia Airport at 10:00 p. m. after a flight from Mexico., a decision which would outrage Iran and prompt the seizure of the U. S. Embassy in Tehran and the taking of its employees as hostages. Died: Jesse Bishop, 46, became the first U. S. prison inmate to be put to death in the gas chamber in the U. S. since 1967, and only the third person to be legally executed in the U. S. since 1976. Bishop, who had shot and killed David Ballard in 1977 during the robbery of a Las Vegas casino, died at the Nevada State Prison in Carson City. Before being put to death, Bishop told detectives that he had committed 18 "murders for hire".

South Korea's President Park Chung Hee was assassinated at a dinner party by the Director of his Korean Central Intelligence Agency, Kim Jae gyu. At 7:35 in the evening in Seoul, Kim Jae gyu's first shot killed Park's bodyguard, Cha Chi choi, because of Cha's reputation as "a superb marksman" and "a tough former paratrooper detested by a section of the military and by top men in the K. C. I. A." Park, who had been President of an oppressive government since 1961, was shot to death along with four of his bodyguards and his chauffeur during an argument that started after Park had berated Kim for being ineffective in suppressing student uprisings. In an emergency meeting three hours after the incident, the Cabinet of Ministers named Prime Minister Choi Kyu Hah as the acting president and imposed martial law over most of the nation and closed all airports under its jurisdiction.

The Caribbean nation of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines was granted independence from the United Kingdom after 352 years of British rule. Milton Cato continued as Prime Minister of the nation
An explosion in a coal mine in Mungyeong in South Korea killed 43 miners. Died: Father Charles Coughlin, 88, controversial American Roman Catholic priest known for his conservative political radio program during the 1930s.

Robert Boulin, 59, French Minister of Labor, disappeared after having had lunch with his son. Boulin, who had recently been accused of corruption, was found dead the next day in a pond near the forest of Rambouillet, and an empty bottle of barbiturates was found in his car, along with several suicide notes.

Western Airlines Flight 2605 crashed when the DC 10 landed on a closed runway at Mexico City at the end of its flight from Los Angeles, killing 72 of the 89 people on board, along with one person on the ground. Midway Airlines, created to draw flights to Chicago's Midway International Airport, began its first flight, with three Douglas DC 9 jets making low cost flights from Midway to Cleveland, Kansas City and Detroit. It would go bankrupt in 1991. The government of the Philippines created the Gintong Alay ("Golden Harvest") program for the Ministry of Youth and Sports Development to increase Philippine success in track and field athletics. Died: Eddie Bentz, 85, American bank robber who was incarcerated at Alcatraz federal prison from 1936 to 1948. Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris kidnap and murder Shirley Lynette Ledford, their 5th and final victim.