On this day
Revisit the music, news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.
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PEOPLE in New York City have psychotherapists, and people in the suburbs have handymen. While anxiety in the city is existential, in the country it is structural. A therapist helps you hold your life together, and a handyman holds together your house. To move to the country is to transfer your paranoia from people to things. And things are even less permanent, less reliable, than people.
Article on controversy over LI Airports Limousine Service to JFK Internatl and LaGuardia Airports; NYC Franchises Bur wants to revoke co's license for allegedly cheating city; NYS Transportation Dept has ruled in co's favor; co pres Walter Stuart says basic issue is that co was struck by Teamsters drivers in Apr '76 and resumed service 3 mos later with substitute drivers; says Teamsters official Bernard Adelstein and bur dir Morris Tarshis have devised plan to deprive co of franchise (M)
UNIONDALE, LI., Dec. 31—Resolved: Not to let the Montreal Canadiens ruin any holiday's in 1978. Signed, the New York Islanders.
Pres and Mrs Carter arrive in Iran; Carter confers with Shah; illus (L)
Henry F. O'Brien Outgoing Suffolk County D.A.
Music on My Birthday
The Top 50 albums for the chart week of December 28, 1977, covering January 1, 1978.
Linda Ronstadt
Fleetwood Mac
Rod Stewart
Earth| Wind & Fire
Electric Light Orchestra
1978Carle Hessay, German-Canadian painter (born 1911)[†]
Hans Karl Hesse, known in later life as Carle Hessay, was a German-born Canadian painter. Although much remains uncertain of his early years, he immigrated to Canada in 1927, and later studied at art academies in Paris and Dresden. Hessay served as a Canadian soldier in World War II. After the establishment of peace, he moved to British Columbia, eventually settling in the town of Langley, where he took up art again in the 1950s. Some of his early paintings were done in the manner of Romantic realism. The influence of Expressionism soon became significant, with Hessay drawing on both the European and American movements, together with aspects of Emily Carr and the Group of Seven. He painted landscapes throughout his artistic life, as well as cityscapes, the Spanish Civil War, Biblical prophecy, and conceptions of the far future. A sizable fraction of his output consisted of abstract pieces. Over time, Hessay's depictions grew more symbolic, one commentator describing his late work as "brazenly metaphysical and apocalyptic". He often made his own pigments, and his style is distinguished by his use of colour, especially black. In 2014, a group of Canadian writers published poems based on his small abstracts. Hessay was the subject of a 2017 documentary film and art exhibition at the University of Victoria.
1978Air India Flight 855, a Boeing 747, crashes into the Arabian Sea off the coast of Bombay, India, due to instrument failure, spatial disorientation, and pilot error, killing all 213 people on board.[†]
Air India Flight 855 was a scheduled passenger flight from Bombay, India, to Dubai, United Arab Emirates. On 1 January 1978, the Boeing 747 operating the flight crashed into the Arabian Sea about 3 km off the coast of Bandra, less than two minutes after take-off, killing all 213 passengers and crew on board. An investigation into the crash determined the most likely probable cause was the captain becoming spatially disoriented and losing control of the aircraft after the failure of one of the flight instruments. It was Air India's deadliest air disaster until Flight 182 in 1985 and was the deadliest airliner accident in Indian history until Charkhi Dadri mid-air collision in 1996. It is currently at third for both categories after being surpassed by Air India Flight 171 in 2025.
In 1978, the world population was approximately 4,292,097,502 people[†]