Harbor Creek High School
Class Of 1979
1979 Year In Review
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1979
World Events
U.S. Events
World Statistics
U.S. Statistics
Economics
Sports
Entertainment
Entertainment Awards
Science
Deaths
- Oil spills pollute ocean waters in Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico (Jan 1, Jun 8, Jul 21, Nov 1)
- Vietnam and Vietnam-backed Cambodian insurgents announce fall of Phnom Penh, Cambodian capital, and collapse of Pol Pot regime (Jan 7)
- Shah leaves Iran after year of turmoil (Jan 16); revolutionary forces under Muslim leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, take over (Feb 1 et seq.)
- Conservatives win British election; Margaret Thatcher is new prime minister (May 3)
- Carter and Brezhnev sign SALT II agreement (Jun 14)
- Nicaraguan President General Anastasio Somoza Debayle resigns and flees to Miami (Jul 17); Sandinistas form government (Jul 19)
- Earl Mountbatten of Burma, 79, British World War II hero, and three others killed by blast on fishing boat off Irish coast (Aug 27); two I.R.A. members accused (Aug 30)
- Iranian militants seize US embassy in Teheran and hold hostages (Nov 4)
- Soviet invasion of Afghanistan stirs world protests (Dec 27)
- Ohio agrees to pay $675,000 to families of dead and injured in Kent State University shootings (Jan 4)
- Nuclear power plant accident at Three Mile Island, Pa., releases radiation (Mar 28)
- Population: 4.378 billion
- Nobel Peace Prize: Mother Teresa of Calcutta (India)
- President: James Earl Carter, Jr.
- Vice President: Walter F. Mondale
- Population: 225,055,487
- Life expectancy: 73.9 years
- Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000): 55.7
- Property Crime Rate (per 1,000): 50.2
- US GDP (1998 dollars): $2,557.50 billion
- Federal spending: $504.03 billion
- Federal debt: $829.5 billion
- Median Household Income (current dollars): $16,461
- Consumer Price Index: 72.6
- Unemployment: 5.8%
- Cost of a first-class stamp: $0.15
- Cost of a gallon of gas: $0.80
- Super Bowl: Pittsburgh d. Dallas (35-31)
- World Series: Pittsburgh d. Baltimore (4-3)
- NBA Championship: Seattle d. Washington Bullets (4-1)
- Stanley Cup: Montreal d. NY Rangers (4-1)
- Wimbledon:
- Women: Martina Navratilova d. C. Evert Lloyd (6-4 6-4)
- Men: Bjorn Borg d. R. Tanner (6-7 6-1 3-6 6-3 6-4)
- Kentucky Derby Champion: Spectacular Bid
- NCAA Basketball Championship: Michigan St. d. Indiana St. (75-64)
- NCAA Football Champions: Alabama (12-0-0)
- Events
- The Sugar Hill Gang releases the first commercial rap hit, "Rapper's Delight," bringing rap off the New York streets and into the popular music scene.
- Movies
- Apocalypse Now
- All That Jazz
- Kramer vs. Kramer
- Breaking Away
- Music
- Billboard Top 5 Albums
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Billy Joel - 52nd Street -
Bee Gees - Spirits Having Flown -
Doobie Brothers - Minute By Minute -
Cars - Cars -
Supertramp - Breakfast In America
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- Billboard Top 5 Albums
- Books
- Penelope Fitzgerald, Rites of Passage
- Stephen King, The Dead Zone
- Norman Mailer, The Executioner's Song
- Jayne Anne Phillips, Black Tickets
- William Styron, Sophie's Choice
- Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff
Pulitzer Prizes
- Fiction: The Stories of John Cheever, John Cheever
- Music: Aftertones of Infinity, Joseph Schwantner
- Drama: Buried Child, Sam Shepard
Oscars awarded in 1979
- Best Picture: The Deer Hunter
Nobel Prize for Literature
- Odysseus Elytis (Greece)
Grammys awarded in 1979
- Record of the Year: "Just the Way You Are," Billy Joel
- Album of the Year: Saturday Night Fever, Bee Gees, David Shire, Yvonne Elliman, Tevares, Kool and the Gang, K.C. and the Sunshine Band, MFSB, Trammps, Walter Murphy and Ralph MacDonald (RSO)
- Song of the Year: "Just the Way You Are," Billy Joel, songwriter
Miss America
- Kylene Baker (VA)
- An overheated reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear facility in Pennsylvania threatens to melt down. It does not, but 144,000 residents of nearby Middletown are evacuated.
- The first human-powered aircraft flies across the English Channel: Bryan Allen pilots the Gossamer Albatross from Folkestone, England, to Cap Gris-Nez, France (June 12).
- The accidental release of anthrax spores at a Soviet bioweapons facility in Sverdlovsk kills several hundred.
Nobel Prizes in Science
- Chemistry: Herbert C. Brown (US) and Georg Wittig (West Germany), for developing a group of substances that facilitate very difficult chemical reactions
- Physics: Steven Weinberg, Sheldon L. Glashow (both US), and Abdus Salam (Pakistan), for developing theory that electromagnetism and the "weak" force, which causes radioactive decay in some atomic nuclei, are facets of the same phenomenon
- Physiology or Medicine: Allan McLeod Cormack (US) and Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield (UK), for developing computed axial tomography (CAT scan) X-ray technique
Movies
Whether you went to the theatre or the drive-in, whether you actually saw the movie or not, movies played a big part in our culture during the 1970s just as they do today. Here are some of the major movies from 1976 to 1979.
1979Kramer Vs. Kramer won Best Picture at the Oscars while Superman was #1 at the box office. Dustin Hoffman won Best Actor for Kramer vs. Kramer and Sally Field won Best Actress for Norma Rae. Here are the major movies of 1979:
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1978Grease was number one at the box office while The Deer Hunter won Best Picture at the Oscars. Best Actor went to Jon Voight and Jane Fonda won Best Actress, both for Coming Home. Here are some of the other notable pictures of 1978:
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1977The year was a great one for the film industry with at least three truly great films in release. Star Wars was a phenomenon setting an all-time box office record with $127M. Annie Hall won big at the Oscars including the Best Picture award and Close Encounters of the Third Kind missed out on some Oscars because it had the misfortune of being released the same year as Star Wars. Richard Dreyfuss won Best Actor for The Goodbye Girl and Diane Keaton won Best Actress for Annie Hall. Here are some of the other notable pictures of 1977:
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1976One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was number one at the box office while Rocky won Best Picture at the Oscars. Peter Finch won Best Actor and Faye Dunaway won Best Actress, both for Network. Here are some of the other notable pictures of 1976:
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Music
Music evolved dramatically in the 1970s as Pop, Rock, Funk, Punk, and Disco all sought their share of the limelight. Here are some of the albums you may have been listening to from 1976 to 1979:
1979
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1978Disco was so prevalent in 1978 that some of the most unlikely rock acts turned out disc-tinged albums - some successfully (Rolling Stones, Blondie, Rod Stewart) and some not so successfully (Chicago, Elton John). The year also saw the recorded debuts of both Prince and Van Halen, with the latter eventually selling over 10 million copies.
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1977Fleetwood Mac's Rumours album was more than just album of the Year at the Grammys, it spent an unprecedented 31 weeks at #1 and sent four songs (Dreams, Go Your Own Way, Don't Stop, and You Make Loving Fun) to the top ten - also unprecedented for a group. However, it was the rise of two "love them or hate them" genres that 1977 is remembered for. Disco acts such as the Bee Gees, Chic, and Andy Gibb began to rule the airwaves while the critics raved about punk bands such as the Ramones and the Sex Pistols.
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1976
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TV
According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day (or 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year). In a 65-year life, that person will have spent 9 years glued to the tube. Here's what we were watching from 1976 to 1979. Click the links to find out more about each show at the Internet Movie Database.
| 1979-80 Ratings | |||
| Rank | Show | Network | Estimated |
| viewers | |||
| 1 | 60 Minutes | CBS | 21,669,200 |
| 2 | Three's Company | ABC | 20,066,900 |
| 3 | That's Incredible | ABC | 19,685,400 |
| 4 | Alice | CBS | 19,303,900 |
| 5 | M*A*S*H | CBS | 19,303,900 |
| 6 | Dallas | CBS | 19,075,000 |
| 7 | Flo | CBS | 18,617,200 |
| 8 | The Jeffersons | CBS | 18,540,900 |
| 9 | The Dukes of Hazzard | CBS | 18,388,300 |
| 10 | One Day at a Time | CBS | 17,549,000 |
| 11 | Archie Bunker's Place | CBS | 17,472,700 |
| 12 | Eight is Enough | ABC | 17,396,400 |
| 13 | Taxi | ABC | 17,091,200 |
| 14 | House Calls | CBS | 16,862,300 |
| 15 | Real People | NBC | 16,862,300 |
| 16 | Little House on the Prairie | NBC | 16,633,400 |
| 17 | Happy Days | ABC | 16,557,100 |
| 18 | CHiPS | NBC | 16,404,500 |
| 19 | Trapper John, M.D. | CBS | 16,175,600 |
| 20 | Charlie's Angels | ABC | 15,946,700 |
| 21 | Barney Miller | ABC | 15,946,700 |
| 22 | WKRP in Cincinnati | CBS | 15,794,100 |
| 23 | Benson | ABC | 15,717,800 |
| 24 | The Love Boat | ABC | 15,717,800 |
| 25 | Soap | ABC | 15,641,500 |
| 26 | Diff'rent Strokes | NBC | 15,488,900 |
| 27 | Mork & Mindy | ABC | 15,412,600 |
| 28 | Fantasy Island | ABC | 15,336,300 |
| 29 | Tenspeed and Brown Shoe | ABC | 15,260,000 |
| 30 | ABC Sunday Night Movie | ABC | 15,260,000 |
| 1978-79 Ratings | |||
| Rank | Show | Network | Estimated |
| viewers | |||
| 1 | Laverne & Shirley | ABC | 22,722,500 |
| 2 | Three's Company | ABC | 22,573,500 |
| 3 | Mork & Mindy | ABC | 21,307,000 |
| 4 | Happy Days | ABC | 21,307,000 |
| 5 | Angie | ABC | 19,891,500 |
| 6 | 60 Minutes | CBS | 18,997,500 |
| 7 | M*A*S*H | CBS | 18,923,000 |
| 8 | The Ropers | ABC | 18,774,000 |
| 9 | All in the Family | CBS | 18,550,500 |
| 10 | Taxi | ABC | 18,550,500 |
| 11 | Eight is Enough | ABC | 18,476,000 |
| 12 | Charlie's Angels | ABC | 18,178,000 |
| 13 | Alice | CBS | 17,284,000 |
| 14 | Little House on the Prairie | NBC | 17,209,500 |
| 15 | ABC Sunday Night Movie | ABC | 16,837,000 |
| 16 | Barney Miller | ABC | 16,837,000 |
| 17 | The Love Boat | ABC | 16,464,500 |
| 18 | One Day at a Time | CBS | 16,092,000 |
| 19 | Soap | ABC | 15,868,500 |
| 20 | The Dukes of Hazzard | CBS | 15,645,000 |
| 21 | NBC Monday Night Movie | NBC | 15,570,500 |
| 22 | Fantasy Island | ABC | 15,496,000 |
| 23 | Vega$ | ABC | 15,347,000 |
| 24 | ABC Monday Night Movie | ABC | 15,272,500 |
| 25 | CHiPS | NBC | 15,123,500 |
| 26 | Stockard Channing in Just Friends | CBS | 15,049,000 |
| 27 | Diff'rent Strokes | NBC | 14,825,500 |
| 28 | Monday Night Football | ABC | 14,751,000 |
| 29 | What's Happening | ABC | 14,751,000 |
| 30 | Lou Grant | CBS | 14,676,500 |
| 1977-78 Ratings | |||
| Rank | Show | Network | Estimated |
| viewers | |||
| 1 | Laverne & Shirley | ABC | 23,036,400 |
| 2 | Happy Days | ABC | 22,890,600 |
| 3 | Three's Company | ABC | 20,630,700 |
| 4 | 60 Minutes | CBS | 17,787,600 |
| 5 | Charlie's Angels | ABC | 17,787,600 |
| 6 | All in the Family | CBS | 17,787,600 |
| 7 | Little House on the Prairie | NBC | 17,568,900 |
| 8 | Alice | CBS | 16,912,800 |
| 9 | M*A*S*H | CBS | 16,912,800 |
| 10 | One Day at a Time | CBS | 16,767,000 |
| 11 | How the West Was Won | ABC | 16,402,500 |
| 12 | Eight is Enough | ABC | 16,183,800 |
| 13 | Soap | ABC | 16,038,000 |
| 14 | The Love Boat | ABC | 15,965,100 |
| 15 | NBC Monday Night Movie | NBC | 15,819,300 |
| 16 | Monday Night Football | ABC | 15,673,500 |
| 17 | Fantasy Island | ABC | 15,600,600 |
| 18 | Barney Miller | ABC | 15,600,600 |
| 19 | Project U.F.O. | NBC | 15,454,800 |
| 20 | ABC Sunday Night Movie | ABC | 15,163,200 |
| 21 | The Waltons | CBS | 15,163,200 |
| 22 | Barnaby Jones | CBS | 15,017,400 |
| 23 | Hawaii Five-O | CBS | 14,871,600 |
| 24 | ABC Monday Night Movie | ABC | 14,798,700 |
| 25 | Rhoda | CBS | 14,652,900 |
| 26 | The Incredible Hulk | CBS | 14,507,100 |
| 27 | Family | ABC | 14,507,100 |
| 28 | Welcome Back, Kotter | ABC | 14,507,100 |
| 29 | On Our Own | CBS | 14,288,400 |
| 30 | The Big Event | NBC | 14,142,600 |
| 1976-77 Ratings | |||
| Rank | Show | Network | Estimated |
| viewers | |||
| 1 | Happy Days | ABC | 22,428,000 |
| 2 | Laverne & Shirley | ABC | 22,000,800 |
| 3 | ABC Monday Night Movie | ABC | 18,512,000 |
| 4 | M*A*S*H | CBS | 18,440,800 |
| 5 | Charlie's Angels | ABC | 18,369,600 |
| 6 | The Big Event | NBC | 17,372,800 |
| 7 | The Six Million Dollar Man | ABC | 17,230,400 |
| 8 | ABC Sunday Night Movie | ABC | 16,660,800 |
| 9 | Baretta | ABC | 16,660,800 |
| 10 | One Day at a Time | CBS | 16,660,800 |
| 11 | Three's Company | ABC | 16,447,200 |
| 12 | All in the Family | CBS | 16,304,800 |
| 13 | Welcome Back, Kotter | ABC | 16,162,400 |
| 14 | The Bionic Woman | ABC | 15,948,800 |
| 15 | The Waltons | CBS | 15,877,600 |
| 16 | Little House on the Prairie | NBC | 15,877,600 |
| 17 | Barney Miller | ABC | 15,806,400 |
| 18 | 60 Minutes | CBS | 15,592,800 |
| 19 | Hawaii Five-O | CBS | 15,592,800 |
| 20 | NBC Monday Night Movie | NBC | 15,521,600 |
| 21 | Rich Man, Poor Man, Book II | ABC | 15,379,200 |
| 22 | Monday Night Football | ABC | 15,094,400 |
| 23 | Eight is Enough | ABC | 15,023,200 |
| 24 | The Jeffersons | CBS | 14,952,000 |
| 25 | What's Happening | ABC | 14,880,800 |
| 26 | Good Times | CBS | 14,596,000 |
| 27 | Sanford and Son | NBC | 14,453,600 |
| 28 | ABC Friday Night Movie | ABC | 14,382,400 |
| 29 | The Tony Randall Show | ABC | 14,311,200 |
| 30 | Alice | CBS | 14,240,000 |