Timeline Saturday 31 December 1977

Events on Saturday 31 December 1977 6

• 1970 – 1977 Cultural Revolution Exile Spent years during the Cultural Revolution doing manual labour on a farm, raising pigs and planting rice. He was not rehabilitated until 1978, after Mao's death.
• 1973 – 1977 Secretary of State Served as the 56th US Secretary of State from 1973 to 1977, the first naturalised citizen to hold the post. Practised shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East following the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.
• 1977 1977: Niki Lauda Ferrari Lauda won his second title, completing a remarkable comeback from his near-fatal 1976 accident. He left Ferrari acrimoniously at the end of the season.
• 1977 Discovery of Split Genes Made the discovery that would reshape biology. Working with adenovirus, Sharp and his team found that a single molecule of messenger RNA corresponded to four separate, discontinuous segments of DNA. This revealed that genes in higher organisms are interrupted by non-coding sequences (introns), which are spliced out before the genetic information is translated into proteins. The discovery overturned the assumption that genes were continuous stretches of DNA.
• 1977 Metropolitan Opera Debut Made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, performing the role of Mimi.
• 1977 Voluntary Admission to Psychiatric Hospital After further suicide attempts, voluntarily checked herself into a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo, where she would live for the rest of her life. She established a studio a short distance from the hospital and was driven there each morning to work. 'If it were not for art,' she later said, 'I would have killed myself a long time ago.'