On this day
Revisit the music, news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.
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Article on reaction of residents of Mendham Township to purchase by AT&T of 569 acres of Schiff Boy Scout Reservation; many are concerned that rural nature of area will be altered; illus; map (L)
Article on proposal to build 130 units of federally subsidized housing in Mount Kisco, NY, that has prompted serious and politically charged reconsideration of future development in village; outcome of debate will determine future allocation of Federal housing funds to 25 communities that make up Westchester Urban County Consortium; consortium housing specialist Dorothy Reiser, county's Housing Action Council associate director Alan Gordon, Mount Kisco Mayor Henry V Kensing, Village Planning Board member Walter Johnston, former Planning Board chairman George Wuchinich and board member John Yoegel comment; Wuchinich por (L)
article on food stores on Gramatan Av and Fourth Av, Mount Vernon, NY; illus; map (L)
Miles Beller article on Audience Studies Inc (ASI), entertainment testing organization that measures likelihood of program's success before it reaches home screens; ASI was founded by Pierre Marquis and Ralph Wells; ABC vice pres Marvin Mord, NBC vice pres William Rubens and TV producer Garry Marshall comment (L)
If there is a place lower than way down, that's where the national economy seemed headed last week. The index of leading indicators showed a 3.3 percent drop in April, the sharpest ever. April's orders for manufactured goods fell 6.1 percent, the steepest slide in 10 years. Such superlatives kept alive the debate over whether there is a recession. But they also took attention away from other statistics which, to the Carter Administration, were more encouraging.
Music on My Birthday
The Top 50 albums for the chart week of May 30, 1979, covering June 3, 1979.
Supertramp
Peaches & Herb
Donna Summer
The Doobie Brothers
Sister Sledge
1979Christian Malcolm, Welsh sprinter[†]
Christian Sean Malcolm is a retired Welsh track and field athlete who specialised in the 200 metres. In 2020 he was appointed Head Coach of the British Athletics Olympic Programme.
1979Pierre Poilievre, Canadian politician, Leader of the Opposition[†]
Pierre Marcel Poilievre is a Canadian politician who has been the leader of the Conservative Party since 2022. He previously served as the member of Parliament (MP) for Carleton from 2004 to 2025 and as the leader of the Opposition from 2022 to 2025.
1979A blowout at the Ixtoc I oil well in the southern Gulf of Mexico causes at least 3,000,000 barrels (480,000 m3) of oil to be spilled into the waters, the second-worst accidental oil spill ever recorded.[†]
Ixtoc 1 was an exploratory oil well being drilled by the semi-submersible drilling rig Sedco 135 in the Bay of Campeche of the Gulf of Mexico, about 100 km (62 mi) northwest of Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche in waters 50 m (164 ft) deep. On 3 June 1979, the well suffered a blowout resulting in the largest oil spill in history at its time. To-date, it remains the second largest marine oil spill in history after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
In 1979, the world population was approximately 4,368,539,528 people[†]