On this day in 1979, two gigantic supertankers collide off the island of Little Tobago in the Caribbean Sea, killing 26 crew members and spilling 280,000 tons of crude oil into the sea. At the time, it was the worst oil-tanker accident in history and remains one of the very […]
Continue ReadingMonthly Archives: July 1979
An Army Doctor Is Accused Of stabbing His Family To Death
Jeffrey MacDonald stands trial in North Carolina for the murder of his wife and children nearly 10 years before. Captain MacDonald, an army doctor stationed at Fort Bragg, made an emergency call to military police in the early morning hours of February 17, 1970. Responding officers found Colette MacDonald and […]
Continue ReadingJimmy Carter Speaks About A National “Crisis In Confidence”
On this day in 1979, President Jimmy Carter addresses the nation via live television to discuss the nation’s energy crisis and accompanying recession. Carter prefaced his talk about energy policy with an explanation of why he believed the American economy remained in crisis. He recounted a meeting he had hosted […]
Continue ReadingDisco Is Dealt Death Blow By Fans Of The Chicago White Sox
As the 1970s came to an end, the age of disco was also nearing its finale. But for all of its decadence and overexposure, disco didn’t quite die a natural death by collapsing under its own weight. Instead, it was killed by a public backlash that reached its peak on […]
Continue ReadingSkylab Crashes To Earth
Parts of Skylab, America’s first space station, come crashing down on Australia and into the Indian Ocean five years after the last manned Skylab mission ended. No one was injured. Launched in 1973, Skylab was the world’s first successful space station. The first manned Skylab mission came two years after […]
Continue ReadingThe First Sony Walkman Goes On Sale
The transistor radio was a technological marvel that put music literally into consumers’ hands in the mid-1950s. It was cheap, it was reliable and it was portable, but it could never even approximate the sound quality of a record being played on a home stereo. It was, however, the only […]
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