On this day
Revisit the music, news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.
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May sales at nation's largest retail chains reflect slowdown in consumer buying; May sales ranged from 6.7% decline over May '78 for Sears, Roebuck & Co to 44% gain for Wal-Mart Stores; reports for J C Penney, Montgomery Ward, K Mart Corp, Carter Hawley Hale Stores and Dayton Hudson Corp noted (M)
Article on gala reopening of Radio City Music Hall attended by 6,200 invited guests, including Mayor Koch, Bess Myerson, Ginger Rogers and Barbara Waiters; illus (M)
Correction on May 25 story on sale of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art at Christie Manson & Woods; net on sale was $6.6 million (S)
Article on World Invitational Double Dutch Championship, rope-skipping tournament, NYC; game history and techniques; illus (M)
Metropolitan Transportation Auth member Stephen Berger proposes that weekend half-fare program on NYC subways and buses be abolished and program for elderly be reduced effective July 1; says NYCTA is running deficit and holds it is unfair to 'penalize the great majority to benefit a small minority'; says he is convinced that program is costing money that could be better spent on improvements for all riders, noting that reductions cost authority $10 million to $12 million annually (S)
Music on My Birthday
The Top 50 albums for the chart week of May 30, 1979, covering June 1, 1979.
Supertramp
Peaches & Herb
Donna Summer
The Doobie Brothers
Sister Sledge
1979Santana Moss, American football player[†]
Santana Terrell Moss is an American former professional football player who was a wide receiver for 14 seasons in the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Miami Hurricanes, earning consensus All-American honors. Moss was selected by the New York Jets in the first round of the 2001 NFL draft, where he spent four seasons with the team, before playing for the Washington Redskins for 10 seasons. Moss was selected as an All-Pro in 2005.
1979Markus Persson, Swedish game designer, founded Mojang[†]
Markus Alexej Persson, known by the pseudonym Notch, is a Swedish video game programmer and designer. He is the creator of Minecraft, which is the best-selling video game in history. He founded the video game development company Mojang Studios in 2009.
1979Werner Forssmann, German physician and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1904)[†]
Werner Theodor Otto Forßmann was a German researcher and physician from Germany who shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Medicine for developing a procedure that allowed cardiac catheterization. In 1929, he put himself under local anesthesia and inserted a catheter into a vein of his arm. Not knowing if the catheter might pierce a vein, he put his life at risk. Forssmann was nevertheless successful; he safely passed the catheter into his heart.
1979The first black-led government of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 90 years takes power.[†]
Rhodesia, officially the Republic of Rhodesia from 1970, was an unrecognised state in Southern Africa that existed from 1965 to 1979. Rhodesia served as the de facto successor state to the British colony of Southern Rhodesia following a unilateral declaration of independence issued by the ruling white-minority government. Throughout this fourteen-year period, Rhodesia faced internal conflict and political unrest. Following the Lancaster House Agreement in 1979, the territory returned to British political control and then subsequently gained internationally recognised independence as Zimbabwe in 1980.
In 1979, the world population was approximately 4,368,539,528 people[†]