At A Glance
23 August 1979 at a glance
- Day of the week
- 23 August 1979 was a Thursday.
- Billboard Hot 100 No. 1
- The Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 was “Good Times” by Chic.
- 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 23 August is Virgo.
- Chinese zodiac
- In the Chinese zodiac, 23 August 1979 fell in the Year of the Goat.
- Birthstone
- The birthstone for August is Peridot.
- Moon phase
- The moon phase on 23 August 1979 was New Moon.
On this day: 23 August
- 1970 Organized by Mexican American labor union leader César Chávez, the Salad Bowl strike, the largest farm worker strike in U.S. history, begins.
- 1975 The start of the Wave Hill walk-off by Gurindji people in Australia, lasting eight years, a landmark event in the history of Indigenous land rights in Australia, commemorated in a 1991 Paul Kelly song and an annual celebration.
- 1975 The Pontiac Silverdome opens in Pontiac, Michigan, 30 miles (48 km) northwest of Detroit, Michigan.
- 1977 Waylon Jennings arrested in a drug raid.
- 1985 Hans Tiedge, top counter-spy of West Germany, defects to East Germany.
Famous people born on August 23
- River Phoenix, American actor (1970–1993)
- Kobe Bryant, American basketball player and businessman (1978–2020)
- Scott Caan, American actor (born 1976)
- Louis XVI (1754–1793)
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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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.
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.
Sources: Wikidata and Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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