Margaret Thatcher becomes UK Prime Minister
May 4, 1979Following a Conservative Party general election victory, Thatcher became the first woman to serve as UK Prime Minister.
Following a Conservative Party general election victory, Thatcher became the first woman to serve as UK Prime Minister.
Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi fled Iran in January, Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile on February 1, and the Islamic Republic of Iran was proclaimed on April 1.
Militant students seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking 52 American hostages in a standoff that would last 444 days.
A partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island Unit 2 reactor in Pennsylvania became the most serious accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power history.
Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin signed a treaty formally ending the state of war between Egypt and Israel, brokered with U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev signed the SALT II arms limitation treaty in Vienna, though it was never ratified by the U.S. Senate.
The Sandinista National Liberation Front ousted the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua after a prolonged civil conflict.
NASA's first space station re-entered the atmosphere, scattering debris over the Indian Ocean and Western Australia after years in orbit.
Both Voyager probes passed Jupiter within months of each other, returning detailed images and discovering active volcanoes on the moon Io.
Soviet forces entered Afghanistan to prop up the communist government, beginning a nearly decade-long conflict.
Borg defeated Roscoe Tanner in the final, continuing his run of five straight Wimbledon singles titles from 1976 to 1980.