Timeline January 1979

Events in January 1979 12

• 1908 – 1979 Nelson Rockefeller (1908-1979) Died 26 January 1979, aged 70 Nelson Rockefeller, businessman and four-term Governor of New York who served as US Vice President under Gerald Ford, died of a heart attack in New York City. A grandson of oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, he was a major figure in liberal Republican politics for decades. He died on 26 January 1979.
• 1979 Pretenders release Stop Your Sobbing Debut single A Kinks cover produced by Nick Lowe.
• 1979 1979: Jody Scheckter Ferrari South African Scheckter won the title with Ferrari, partnered by the young Gilles Villeneuve. It would be Ferrari's last Drivers' Championship for 21 years.
• 1979 Chicago Jazz Festival Founded Her annual Grant Park tribute evolved into the first official Chicago Jazz Festival in 1979, which became one of the largest free jazz festivals in the world.
• 1979 Hear the Wind Sing Published his debut novel Hear the Wind Sing, written in spare late-night sessions after closing Peter Cat. To find a fresh style, he drafted passages in English on his old typewriter — forcing short sentences and limited vocabulary — then translated them back into Japanese. The book won the Gunzou Prize for new writers.
• 1979 – 1984 Imprisoned After the Revolution Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, imprisoned for four and a half years without ever being formally charged with a crime.
• 1979 Rehab and Hiatus Entered rehabilitation for substance abuse, leading to a three-year hiatus for the band. 'In the late '70s, I entered rehab,' Beard later told CBS. The break allowed him to get clean and would ultimately extend his career by decades.
• 1979 The Book of Laughter and Forgetting Published The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, which brought him international literary fame and led to his Czechoslovak citizenship being revoked.
• 1979 The Jura Question Creation of Canton Jura The newest Swiss canton was created following a series of plebiscites and a long-standing separatist movement.
• 1979 Elvis Costello releases Armed Forces Oliver's Army His biggest UK hit.
• 1979 Fall of Phnom Penh ends Khmer Rouge rule Vietnamese forces topple Pol Pot's government Vietnamese troops and Cambodian rebels captured Phnom Penh on 7 January 1979, ending nearly four years of Khmer Rouge rule under Pol Pot. The invasion ousted the genocidal Democratic Kampuchea regime and installed the People's Republic of Kampuchea. Remnants of the Khmer Rouge retreated to the Thai border and continued fighting for years.
• 1979 – 2001 Aaliyah (1979-2001) Died 25 August 2001, aged 22 Aaliyah Haughton was an American singer and actor whose blend of R&B and hip-hop, on albums such as her self-titled 2001 release, made her a defining figure of the era. She had begun a film career with Romeo Must Die. She was killed with eight others when an overloaded plane crashed after a video shoot in the Bahamas.