Important Historical Events of the year 1978, Year 1978 in History

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List of 1978 Major News Events in History, Most Important Historical Events in 1978

What happened in the year 1978?

Date	Event
January 1, 1978	Air India Flight 855, a Boeing 747, crashes into the Arabian Sea off the coast of Bombay, India, due to instrument failure, spatial disorientation, and pilot error, killing all 213 people on board.
January 2, 1978	On the orders of the President of Pakistan, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, paramilitary forces opened fire on peaceful protesting workers in Multan, Pakistan; it is known as 1978 massacre at Multan Colony Textile Mills.
January 13, 1978	United States Food and Drug Administration requires all blood donations to be labeled "paid" or "volunteer" donors.
January 18, 1978	The European Court of Human Rights finds the United Kingdom's government guilty of mistreating prisoners in Northern Ireland, but not guilty of torture.
January 19, 1978	The last Volkswagen Beetle made in Germany leaves VW's plant in Emden. Beetle production in Latin America continues until 2003.
January 24, 1978	Soviet satellite Kosmos 954, with a nuclear reactor on board, burns up in Earth's atmosphere, scattering radioactive debris over Canada's Northwest Territories. Only 1% is recovered.
January 31, 1978	The Crown of St. Stephen (also known as the Holy Crown of Hungary) goes on public display after being returned to Hungary from the United States, where it was held after World War II.
February 6, 1978	The Blizzard of 1978, one of the worst Nor'easters in New England history, hit the region, with sustained winds of 65 mph and snowfall of four inches an hour.
February 8, 1978	Proceedings of the United States Senate are broadcast on radio for the first time.
February 9, 1978	The Budd Company unveils its first SPV-2000 self-propelled railcar in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
February 11, 1978	Pacific Western Airlines Flight 314 crashes at the Cranbrook/Canadian Rockies International Airport in Cranbrook, British Columbia, Canada with 42 deaths and seven survivors.
February 13, 1978	Hilton bombing: a bomb explodes in a refuse truck outside the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, Australia, killing two refuse collectors and a policeman.
February 16, 1978	The first computer bulletin board system is created (CBBS in Chicago).
February 17, 1978	The Troubles: The Provisional IRA detonates an incendiary bomb at the La Mon restaurant, near Belfast, killing 12 and seriously injuring 30 others, all Protestants.
February 19, 1978	Egyptian forces raid Larnaca International Airport in an attempt to intervene in a hijacking, without authorisation from the Republic of Cyprus authorities. The Cypriot National Guard and Police forces kill 15 Egyptian commandos and destroy the Egyptian C-130 transport plane in open combat.
February 24, 1978	The Yuba County Five disappear in California. Four of their bodies are found four months later.
March 2, 1978	Czech Vladimír Remek becomes the first non-Russian or non-American to go into space, when he is launched aboard Soyuz 28.
March 2, 1978	The late iconic actor Charlie Chaplin's coffin is stolen from his grave in Switzerland.
March 5, 1978	The Landsat 3 is launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
March 9, 1978	President Soeharto inaugurated Jagorawi Toll Road, the first toll highway in Indonesia, connecting Jakarta, Bogor and Ciawi, West Java.
March 11, 1978	Coastal Road massacre: At least 37 are killed and more than 70 are wounded when Fatah hijack an Israeli bus, prompting Israel's Operation Litani.
March 14, 1978	The Israel Defense Forces launch Operation Litani, a seven-day campaign to invade and occupy southern Lebanon.
March 15, 1978	Somalia and Ethiopia signed a truce to end the Ethio-Somali War.
March 16, 1978	Former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro is kidnapped; he is later murdered by his captors.
March 16, 1978	A Balkan Bulgarian Airlines Tupolev Tu-134 crashes near Gabare, Bulgaria, killing 73.
March 16, 1978	Supertanker Amoco Cadiz splits in two after running aground on the Portsall Rocks, three miles off the coast of Brittany, resulting in the largest oil spill in history at that time.
March 22, 1978	Karl Wallenda of The Flying Wallendas dies after falling off a tight-rope suspended between two hotels in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
March 23, 1978	The first UNIFIL troops arrived in Lebanon for peacekeeping mission along the Blue Line.
March 28, 1978	The US Supreme Court hands down 5–3 decision in Stump v. Sparkman, a controversial case involving involuntary sterilization and judicial immunity.
April 7, 1978	Development of the neutron bomb is canceled by President Jimmy Carter.
April 14, 1978	Tbilisi demonstrations: Thousands of Georgians demonstrate against Soviet attempts to change the constitutional status of the Georgian language.
April 17, 1978	Mir Akbar Khyber is assassinated, provoking the Saur Revolution in Afghanistan.
April 27, 1978	John Ehrlichman, a former aide to U.S. President Richard Nixon, is released from the Federal Correctional Institution, Safford, Arizona, after serving 18 months for Watergate-related crimes.
April 27, 1978	The Saur Revolution begins in Afghanistan, ending the following morning with the murder of Afghan President Mohammed Daoud Khan and the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.[6]
April 27, 1978	Willow Island disaster: In the deadliest construction accident in United States history, 51 construction workers are killed when a cooling tower under construction collapses at the Pleasants Power Station in Willow Island, West Virginia.
April 28, 1978	The President of Afghanistan, Mohammed Daoud Khan, is overthrown and assassinated in a coup led by pro-communist rebels.
May 1, 1978	Japan's Naomi Uemura, travelling by dog sled, becomes the first person to reach the North Pole alone.
May 3, 1978	The first unsolicited bulk commercial email (which would later become known as "spam") is sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United States.
May 4, 1978	The South African Defence Force attacks a SWAPO base at Cassinga in southern Angola, killing about 600 people.
May 8, 1978	The first ascent of Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen, by Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler.
May 12, 1978	In Zaire, rebels occupy the city of Kolwezi, the mining center of the province of Shaba (now known as Katanga); the local government asks the US, France and Belgium to restore order.
May 25, 1978	The first of a series of bombings orchestrated by the Unabomber detonates at Northwestern University resulting in minor injuries.
June 1, 1978	The first international applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty are filed.
June 9, 1978	The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints opens its priesthood to "all worthy men", ending a 148-year-old policy of excluding black men.
June 11, 1978	Altaf Hussain founds the student political movement All Pakistan Muhajir Students Organisation (APMSO) in Karachi University.
June 15, 1978	King Hussein of Jordan marries American Lisa Halaby, who takes the name Queen Noor.
June 19, 1978	Garfield's first comic strip, originally published locally as Jon in 1976, goes into nationwide syndication.
June 21, 1978	The original production of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, Evita, based on the life of Eva Perón, opens at the Prince Edward Theatre, London.
June 22, 1978	Charon, the first of Pluto's satellites to be discovered, was first seen at the United States Naval Observatory by James W. Christy.
June 25, 1978	The rainbow flag representing gay pride is flown for the first time during the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade.
June 26, 1978	Air Canada Flight 189, flying to Toronto, overruns the runway and crashes into the Etobicoke Creek ravine. Two of the 107 passengers on board perish.
June 28, 1978	The United States Supreme Court, in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke bars quota systems in college admissions.
July 1, 1978	The Northern Territory in Australia is granted self-government.
July 7, 1978	The Solomon Islands becomes independent from the United Kingdom.
July 10, 1978	President Moktar Ould Daddah of Mauritania is ousted in a bloodless coup d'état.
July 11, 1978	Los Alfaques disaster: A truck carrying liquid gas crashes and explodes at a coastal campsite in Tarragona, Spain killing 216 tourists.
July 25, 1978	Puerto Rican police shoot two nationalists in the Cerro Maravilla murders.
July 25, 1978	Birth of Louise Joy Brown, the first human to have been born after conception by in vitro fertilisation, or IVF.
July 30, 1978	The 730: Okinawa Prefecture changes its traffic on the right-hand side of the road to the left-hand side.
August 7, 1978	U.S. President Jimmy Carter declares a federal emergency at Love Canal due to toxic waste that had been disposed of negligently.
August 10, 1978	Three members of the Ulrich family are killed in an accident. This leads to the Ford Pinto litigation.
August 13, 1978	One hundred fifty Palestinians in Beirut are killed in a terrorist attack during the second phase of the Lebanese Civil War.
August 17, 1978	Double Eagle II becomes first balloon to cross the Atlantic Ocean when it lands in Miserey, France near Paris, 137 hours after leaving Presque Isle, Maine.
August 19, 1978	In Iran, the Cinema Rex fire causes more than 400 deaths.
August 22, 1978	Nicaraguan Revolution: The FLSN seizes the National Congress of Nicaragua, along with over a thousand hostages.
August 22, 1978	The District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment is passed by the U.S. Congress, although it is never ratified by a sufficient number of states.
August 26, 1978	Papal conclave: Albino Luciani is elected as Pope John Paul I.
September 3, 1978	During the Rhodesian Bush War a group of ZIPRA guerrillas shot down civilian Vickers Viscount aircraft (Air Rhodesia Flight 825) with a Soviet-made SAM Strela-2; of 56 passengers and crew 38 people died in crash, 10 were massacred by the guerrillas at the site.[4]
September 5, 1978	Camp David Accords: Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat begin peace discussions at Camp David, Maryland.
September 7, 1978	While walking across Waterloo Bridge in London, Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov is assassinated by Bulgarian secret police agent Francesco Gullino by means of a ricin pellet fired from a specially-designed umbrella.
September 8, 1978	Black Friday, a massacre by soldiers against protesters in Tehran, results in 88 deaths, it marks the beginning of the end of the monarchy in Iran.
September 15, 1978	Muhammad Ali outpoints Leon Spinks in a rematch to become the first boxer to win the world heavyweight title three times at the Superdome in New Orleans.
September 16, 1978	The 7.4 Mw  Tabas earthquake affects the city of Tabas, Iran with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent). At least 15,000 people are killed.
September 17, 1978	The Camp David Accords are signed by Israel and Egypt.
September 19, 1978	The Solomon Islands join the United Nations.
September 25, 1978	PSA Flight 182, a Boeing 727, collides in mid-air with a Cessna 172 and crashes in San Diego, killing all 135 aboard Flight 182, both occupants of the Cessna, as well as seven people on the ground.
September 30, 1978	Finnair Flight 405 is hijacked by Aarno Lamminparras in Oulu, Finland.
October 1, 1978	Tuvalu gains independence from the United Kingdom.
October 8, 1978	Australia's Ken Warby sets the current world water speed record of 275.97 knots at Blowering Dam, Australia.
October 16, 1978	Pope John Paul II becomes the first non-Italian pontiff since 1523.
October 21, 1978	Australian civilian pilot Frederick Valentich vanishes over the Bass Strait south of Melbourne, after reporting contact with an unidentified aircraft.
November 3, 1978	Dominica gains its independence from the United Kingdom.
November 14, 1978	France conducts the Aphrodite nuclear test as 25th in the group of 29 1975–78 French nuclear tests.
November 15, 1978	A chartered Douglas DC-8 crashes near Colombo, Sri Lanka, killing 183.
November 18, 1978	The McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet makes its first flight, at the Naval Air Test Center in Maryland, United States.
November 18, 1978	In Jonestown, Guyana, Jim Jones leads his Peoples Temple to a mass murder–suicide that claimed 918 lives in all, 909 of them in Jonestown itself, including over 270 children.
November 23, 1978	Cyclone kills about 1,000 people in eastern Sri Lanka.
November 23, 1978	The Geneva Frequency Plan of 1975 goes into effect, realigning many of Europe's longwave and mediumwave broadcasting frequencies.
November 27, 1978	In San Francisco, city mayor George Moscone and openly gay city supervisor Harvey Milk are assassinated by former supervisor Dan White.
November 27, 1978	The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) is founded in the Turkish village of Fis.
December 4, 1978	Following the murder of Mayor George Moscone, Dianne Feinstein becomes San Francisco's first female mayor.
December 6, 1978	Spain ratifies the Spanish Constitution of 1978 in a referendum.
December 10, 1978	Arab–Israeli conflict: Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin and President of Egypt Anwar Sadat are jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
December 11, 1978	The Lufthansa heist is committed by a group led by Lucchese family associate Jimmy Burke. It was the largest cash robbery ever committed on American soil, at that time.
December 15, 1978	U.S. President Jimmy Carter announces that the United States will recognize the People's Republic of China and sever diplomatic relations with the Republic of China (Taiwan).
December 22, 1978	The pivotal Third Plenum of the 11th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party is held in Beijing, with Deng Xiaoping reversing Mao-era policies to pursue a program for Chinese economic reform.
December 23, 1978	Alitalia Flight 4128 crashes into the Tyrrhenian Sea while on approach to Falcone Borsellino Airport in Palermo, Italy, killing 108.
December 26, 1978	The inaugural Paris-Dakar Rally begins.[19]
December 27, 1978	Spain becomes a democracy after 40 years of fascist dictatorship.