Top News Stories from 1978

World Events

• Rhodesia's Prime Minister Ian D. Smith and three black leaders agree on transfer to black majority rule (Feb. 15).
• US Senate approves Panama Canal neutrality treaty (March 16); votes treaty to turn canal over to Panama by year 2000 (April 18).
• Former Italian Premier Aldo Moro kidnapped by left wing terrorists, who kill five bodyguards (March 16); he is found slain (May 9).
• Pope Paul VI , dead at 80, mourned (Aug. 6); new Pope, John Paul I, 65, dies unexpectedly after 34 days in office (Sept. 28); succeeded by Karol Cardinal Wojtyla of Poland as John Paul II (Oct. 16).
• "Framework for Peace" in Middle East signed by Egypt's President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Premier Menachem Begin after 13-day conference at Camp David led by President Jimmy Carter (Sept. 17).
• Jim Jones's followers commit mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana (Nov. 18).

U.S. Events

• President Carter chooses Federal Appeals Court Judge William H. Webster as F.B.I. director (Jan. 19).
• US Supreme Court in Bakke case, bars quota systems in college admissions but affirms constitutionality of programs giving advantage to minorities (June 28).

Economics

Sports

Super Bowl

World Series

NBA Championship

Stanley Cup

Wimbledon

Kentucky Derby Champion

NCAA Basketball Championship

NCAA Football Champions

World Cup

Entertainment

Events

• Sony introduces the Walkman, the first portable stereo.

Movies

• The Deer Hunter, Midnight Express, Heaven Can Wait, Coming Home

Books

• Maya Angelou, And Still I Rise
• John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever
• Barry Hannah, Airships
• John Irving, The World According to Garp
• Peter Mathiessen, The Snow Leopard
• Richard Nixon, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon
• Adrienne Rich, The Dream of a Common Language
• Herman Wouk, War and Remembrance

Science

• Three Albuquerque, NM, men, Ben Abruzzo, Larry Newman, and Maxie Anderson, make the first successful transatlantic balloon flight in the helium-filled Double Eagle II. Background: Famous Firsts in Aviation
• Balloon anigoplasty is developed to treat coronary artery disease. Background: Health & Nutrition
• Louise Brown, the first test-tube baby, is born at Oldham Hostpital in London. Background: reproduction
• Recombinant DNA techniques are used to produce human insulin. Background: genetic engineering
• A fusion reaction in a reactor at Princeton reaches 60 million degrees Fahrenheit for 1/20 of a second. Background: nuclear energy

Death

• Hubert Humphrey
• Anastus Mikoyan
• Norman Rockwell

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