At A Glance

16 January 1979 at a glance

Day of the week
16 January 1979 was a Tuesday.
Billboard Hot 100 No. 1
The Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 was “Too Much Heaven” by Bee Gees.
Top Film of 1979
The highest-grossing film worldwide released in 1979 was Moonraker.
Bestselling Novel of 1979
“The Matarese Circle” by Robert Ludlum was No. 1 on Publishers Weekly's US fiction list for 1979.
Top-Rated TV Show
“60 Minutes” (CBS) was No. 1 in the Nielsen ratings for the 1979–80 season.
Star sign
The star sign for 16 January is Capricorn.
Chinese zodiac
In the Chinese zodiac, 16 January 1979 fell in the Year of the Horse.
Birthstone
The birthstone for January is Garnet.
Moon phase
The moon phase on 16 January 1979 was Waning Gibbous.

On this day: 16 January

  • 1969 Space Race: Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 perform the first-ever docking of crewed spacecraft in orbit, the first-ever transfer of crew from one space vehicle to another, and the only time such a transfer was accomplished with a space walk.
  • 1979 Iranian Revolution: The last Iranian Shah flees Iran with his family for good and relocates to Egypt.
  • 1984 A radiation detector at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, United States, detects radioactivity after a truck carrying rebar accidentally passed through the laboratory's area, revealing a contamination incident that occurred in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, the previous month.
  • 1991 Coalition Forces go to war with Iraq, beginning the Gulf War.
  • 1992 El Salvador officials and rebel leaders sign the Chapultepec Peace Accords in Mexico City, Mexico ending the 12-year Salvadoran Civil War that claimed at least 75,000 lives.

Famous people born on January 16

  • Aaliyah, American singer and actress (1979–2001)
  • Lin-Manuel Miranda, American actor, playwright, and composer (born 1980)
  • Sade, Nigerian-English singer-songwriter and producer (born 1959)
  • Sidharth Malhotra, Indian actor (born 1985)

Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Choose your country: the charts, news and leaders change to match.

Events of 1979 in the United States

A selection from Wikipedia's '1979 in the United States'. Not a complete list.

  • February 20 – This Old House premieres on PBS.
  • March 29 – America's most serious nuclear power plant accident at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania.
  • April 1 – Nickelodeon debuts on cable television, playing children's television shows 24 hours a day. Pinwheel, which first premiered on the channel C-3 in 1977, was one of the first shows to be broadcast on the channel.
More events of 1979 →Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Life in the US in 1979

President

Jimmy Carter

Gas (per gallon)

$0.86

Loaf of Bread

$0.43

Average House

$62,900

Weekly Wage

$250

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Famous Faces Born in the 1970s

Well-known people born in the same decade as you, not on your birthday.

Keri Russell23 March 1976ActressView their day →Tupac Shakur16 June 1971Rapper & actorView their day →Zoe Saldaña19 June 1978ActressView their day →Christopher Nolan30 July 1970FilmmakerView their day →Jon Bernthal20 September 1976ActorView their day →Jason Sudeikis18 September 1975Actor & comedianView their day →Milo Ventimiglia8 July 1977ActorView their day →Sarah Paulson17 December 1974ActressView their day →

Sources: Wikidata and Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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