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Jan |
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Feb 7, 1979 - Josef Mengele, Nazi concentration camp doctor and medical experimenter, allegedly drowned after a "stroke" in Atlantic, and was secretly buried in another man's grave in Brazil. |
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March 28, 1979 - America's worst commercial nuclear accident occurred inside the Unit Two reactor at the Three Mile Island plant near Middletown, Pa., almost to meltdown. Thousands living near the plant left the area before the 12-day crisis ended, during which time some radioactive water and gases were released. A combination of mechanical and human factors allowed the Unit 2 reactor to lose cooling water. It cost more than $1 billion and more than a decade to remove the damaged nuclear fuel. A 1997 study indicated increased cancer rates for people living downwind. |
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April |
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May |
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June 18, 1979 - President Carter and Soviet President Leonid I. Brezhnev signed the SALT II strategic arms limitation treaty in Vienna. The agreement set a ceiling on long-range bombers and missiles and limited development to only one new land-base missile system for the duration of the treaty. |
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July 11, 1979 - The abandoned U.S. space station Skylab made a spectacular return to Earth, burning up in the atmosphere and showering debris over the Indian Ocean and Western Australia. July 16, 1979 - Saddam Hussein succeeded Premier al-Bakr and became president of Iraq and chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC). He established a multilayered security system with 3-5 secret police units. He later put his son Qusay in charge of his 10,000 member Special Guards. |
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Aug |
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Sept 10, 1979 - Four Puerto Rican nationalists imprisoned for a 1954 attack on the House of Representatives and a 1950 attempt on the life of President Truman were granted clemency by President Carter. |
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Oct |
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Nov 4, 1979 - The US Embassy was taken over by Iranian students and a hostage crisis began. 90 people, including 63 Americans, were taken hostage at the American embassy in Teheran, Iran, by militant student followers of Ayatollah Khomeini who demanded the return of Shah Mohammad Reza Pablavi to Iran for trial. He was undergoing medical treatment in New York City. The students held 52 American hostages for 444 days, and were released on the day of the inauguration President Ronald Reagan, January 20, 1981. |
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Dec
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