On this day
Revisit the music, news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.
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HR is expected to approve measure giving President authority to set temperature controls in office buildings and many commercial establishments; Pres Carter says he will invoke it immediately (S)
Retail business in New York City soared last month, buoyed by this year's later Easter and warm weather favorable to shopping.
Article on growing controversy over savings interest rates; notes NYC Consumer Affairs Dept survey found many savings insts offer less than maximum allowable interest and other disadvantageous terms; details findings; cites NYS Sen Emanuel R Gold experiment that found same amounts deposited on same day in accounts offering same terms at 3 different institutions earned different amounts of interest; drawing (L)
retired Navy Lieut Comdr Arthur E Lindberg, whose service as counterspy led to conviction of 2 Soviet spies, is awarded Legion of Merit; Lindberg's 17 months of posing as Navy officer eager to sell Govt documents for money recalled; his illus (M)
Representative Lionel Van Deerlin says his bill to reshape communications law may have to be toughened so that competitors of AT&T are better protected against co, House Communications subcommittee hearing; says it might be wise to compel Bell System to form separate subsidiaries for unregulated services, such as data processing; George Knapp, ITT vice president, proposes letting competitors jointly own with AT&T long lines department, which manages national phone network, idea that AT&T calls ‘unworkable’; IBM vice president Wallace Doud says AT&T should be required to adopt more stringent accounting practices; Bell System executive James Olson also testifies (S)
Music on My Birthday
The Top 50 albums for the chart week of May 9, 1979, covering May 9, 1979.
The Doobie Brothers
Peaches & Herb
Supertramp
Bad Company
Bee Gees
1979Rosario Dawson, American actress[†]
Rosario Isabel Dawson is an American actress. She made her feature-film debut in the 1995 independent drama Kids. Her subsequent film roles include He Got Game (1998), Josie and the Pussycats (2001), Men in Black II (2002), The Rundown (2003), Rent (2005), Sin City (2005), Clerks II (2006), Death Proof (2007), Seven Pounds (2008), Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010), Unstoppable (2010), Zookeeper (2011), Trance (2013), Top Five (2014), Zombieland: Double Tap (2019), and Clerks 3 (2022). Dawson has provided voice-over work for Disney/Marvel, Warner Bros./DC Comics, and ViacomCBS's Nickelodeon unit. She is also recognized for her portrayal of the live-action Ahsoka Tano in the Star Wars franchise.
1979Brandon Webb, American baseball player[†]
Brandon Tyler Webb is an American former professional baseball pitcher. Webb pitched in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Arizona Diamondbacks from 2003 through 2009, and, after multiple shoulder surgeries, signed with but did not play for the Texas Rangers in 2011. Webb attended the University of Kentucky, where he played college baseball for the Wildcats baseball team.
1979Cyrus S. Eaton, Canadian-American banker, businessman, and philanthropist (born 1883)[†]
Cyrus Stephen Eaton Sr. was a Canadian-American investment banker, businessman and philanthropist, with a career that spanned 70 years.
1979Eddie Jefferson, American singer and lyricist (born 1918)[†]
Eddie Jefferson was an American jazz vocalist and lyricist. He is credited as an innovator of vocalese, a musical style in which lyrics are set to an instrumental composition or solo. Jefferson himself claims that his main influence was Leo Watson. Perhaps Jefferson's best-known song is "Moody's Mood for Love" which was recorded in 1952 by King Pleasure and catapulted the contrafact into wide popularity. Jefferson's recordings of Charlie Parker's "Parker's Mood" and Horace Silver's "Filthy McNasty" were also hits.
1979Iranian Jewish businessman Habib Elghanian is executed by firing squad in Tehran, prompting the mass exodus of the once 100,000-strong Jewish community of Iran.[†]
Iranian Jews, also Persian Jews or Parsim, constitute one of the oldest communities of the Jewish diaspora. Dating back to the biblical era, they originate from the Jews who relocated to Iran during the time of the Achaemenid Empire. Books of the Hebrew Bible bring together an extensive narrative shedding light on contemporary Jewish life experiences in ancient Iran; there has been a continuous Jewish presence in Iran since at least the time of Cyrus the Great, who led Achaemenid army's conquest of the Neo-Babylonian Empire and subsequently freed the Judahites from the Babylonian captivity.
In 1979, the world population was approximately 4,368,539,528 people[†]