June 1979

Month of 1979

The following events occurred in June 1979:

Voting concluded in the 10 nations participating in the first direct elections for the European Parliament as voters in France, Italy, West Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg cast their ballots; previously, each nation's parliaments selected the representatives. The Christian Democrat parties in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium won 108 of the 410 seats, and Britain's Conservative Party was the largest single vote getter with 60 seats. Among the representatives elected was the former Crown Prince of Austria Hungary, Otto von Hapsburg. The first championship of Australia's professional basketball association, the National Basketball League (NBL), was won by the St Kilda Saints of Melbourne, who defeated the Canberra Cannons by a single point in NBL Grand Final game at Melbourne, 94 to 93. Born: Lee Brice (Kenneth Mobley Brice Jr.), American country music singer; in Sumter, South Carolina

Air France Flight 54, a Concorde airliner with 81 people aboard, suffered a blowout of two tires while attempting a takeoff from Dulles International Airport in Washington, DC and shrapnel damaged one of the four engines, punctured fuel tanks and severed hydraulic lines and wires. After the control tower informed Flight 54 that two of its tires on the left main landing gear had blown, the pilot made a safe landing 20 minutes later on another runway that had been prepared by fire trucks. Jerome Robbins's ballet Opus 19/The Dreamer, performed by the New York City Ballet company to the music of the late Sergei Prokofiev, had its world premiere, and starred Mikhail Baryshnikov and Patricia McBride as the principal dancers. Died: Ahmad Zahir, 33, popular Afghan singer and songwriter, was killed in an auto accident while traveling through the Salang Tunnel.

The government of Malaysia forcibly expelled 2,500 Vietnamese refugees by loading them onto five boats, none considered seaworthy, towed them out to international waters and abandoned them. Hale Irwin won golf's U. S. Open tournament at Toledo, Ohio, finishing two strokes ahead of Gary Player and Jerry Pate. A sportswriter for The New York Times commented that, although the final day was "one of the sloppiest final rounds they had played in recent years everyone else played as poorly as he did." At Rochester, New York, golfer Jane Blalock won the Ladies Professional Golf Association title.

U. S. President Jimmy Carter and U. S. S. R. leader Leonid Brezhnev signed the SALT II agreement in Vienna. According to U. S. officials, Communist Party leader Brezhnev, "leader of a country where atheism is the rule," surprised Carter by telling him "God will not forgive us if we fail." A Soviet spokesman, Leonid Zamyatin, told a press conference that Brezhnev had actually said 'Future generations will not forgive us if we fail.' After the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union in December, Carter would halt further proceedings on Senate ratification of the treaty on January 3, 1980, and SALT II would never take effect. The first round of voting was held in presidential and parliamentary elections in Ghana that took place as scheduled even after Jerry Rawlings had overthrown the government of the West African nation. Hilla Limann and Victor Owusu were the top two finishers in the first round of presidential voting, with 35% and 30% of the vote, respectively, and since neither had a majority, a runoff election was held on July 9. Voting was also held for the 140 seats of the Parliament of Ghana, with candidates of Limann's People's National Party taking an early lead in the first round. Under the leadership of the Conservative government of Prime Minister Thatcher, the United Kingdom revised the Value Added Tax on sales of classified goods, setting a single rate of 15% on all sales.

Voting along party lines, a joint session of the Parliament of South Africa elected Senate President (and National Party nominee) Marais Viljoen to the ceremonial position of State President of South Africa. Viljoens, by a margin of 155 to 23, defeated United Party leader De Villiers Graaff. Yes no voting was held in the West African nation of Mali for President Moussa Traoré and for the 82 candidates of the Democratic Union of the Malian People, the nation's lone legal political party.

A Nicaraguan National Guard soldier killed ABC TV news correspondent Bill Stewart and his interpreter Juan Espinosa. Both Stewart and Espinosa complied with orders from a guardsman to lie face down, and then both were shot by a rifle at point blank range. Other members of the news crew captured the murder on tape. Corporal Lorenzo Brenes was arrested the next day after being identified as the gunman, but the killing of the American newsman ended any chance of U. S. support of the regime of Anastasio Somoza Debayle as Secretary of State Cyrus Vance called for Somoza to step down and for the Organization of American States (OAS) to send an international peace force to maintain order. Ugandan President Yusufu Lule resigned after less than 10 weeks in office after a vote of no confidence by the National Consultative Council that had been installed as the new government following the Uganda Tanzania War. Former Ugandan Attorney General Godfrey Binaisa was appointed as the new President of Uganda and would serve until May 12, 1980. American Airlines Flight 293, a Boeing 727 flight from New York to Chicago, was hijacked by a Serbian Yugoslavian terrorist, Nikola Kavaja, who was out on bail during the appeal of his conviction for bombing the home of the Yugoslav consul in Chicago. Kavaja released the passengers and most of the crew, forced the jet to return to New York City, and then successfully demanded a Boeing 707 to fly him to Ireland, where he surrendered.

Greece became the tenth member of the European Economic Community (EEC) as the Hellenic Parliament voted to ratify the Treaty of Accession 1979. The treaty, signed on May 28, made Greece the first new member since 1973 of the "Common Market", a predecessor to the European Union. Of 300 deputies of the Boule, 193 voted in favor, three abstained, and the other 104 declined to attend the session at all. At a meeting in Geneva of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the representatives of the 13 OPEC nations voted to increase the price of a barrel of oil by 16 percent, to as high as $23.50 a barrel. Since the beginning of 1979, the price of oil had increased by almost 50 percent from $15.50. East Germany's Deputy Prime Minister, Kurt Fichtner was fired along with the Minister for Coal and Energy, Klaus Siebold, in a move approved by the nation's ruling Socialist Unity Party. Their dismissals came days after the government announced that the prices to be charged for energy would be increased by 30 percent for the 1980 winter. Siebold had signed off on shutdowns of electrical power plants for maintenance during one of the coldest winters in the Communist nation's history, and Fichtner's purchasing decisions had left the large power stations with only a one day reserve of coal on the day before the cold wave struck. Died: Philippe Cousteau, 37, French oceanographer, cinematographer and co producer of sea expedition documentary films with his father Jacques Cousteau, was killed in the crash of a seaplane near Lisbon, where the Cousteaus were on a filming expedition.