The Nation 1978

The backlash to Anita Bryant and her brand of anti-gay intolerance saw San Francisco, California defeat the Briggs Initiative to outlaw gay teachers and the election of openly gay County Supervisor Harvey Milk. Giving equality to gays was too much for Supervisor Dan White who assassinated Milk and and Mayor George Moscone. Dianne Feinstein replaced Moscone to become California's first woman mayor where she served for 10 more years. Harvey Milk George Moscone In Memory

Serial killer Ted Bundy was arrested in Pensacola, Florida. He admitted to killing 30 women before he was executed in 1989. Ted Bundy Story.

Hustler Magazine publisher Larry Flynt and his lawyer Gene Reeves were victims of a sniper outside a courtroom in Lawrenceville, Georgia. White supremacist Joseph Paul Franklin later confessed from prison for another crime that he did it because he was outraged by an interracial photo shoot in Hustler magazine. Larry Flint has been paralyzed from the waist down since. Larry Flint vs Joseph Franklin

Women's Suffrage was honored with minting of the Susan B. Anthony dollar. It became exceedingly unpopular as it was too close in size to a quarter and the hendecagon edge which was to help differentiate it was fake. The massive surplus at the mint finally dissipated with technology as they were clinked our in change machines. It was considered another failure of President Carter. Susan B. Anthony dollar

Cleveland, Ohio becomes the first major American city to go into default since the Great Depression, under the youngest mayor in America Dennis Kucinich. Kucinich stands up to both the power company and the mafia.

Nobel prizes 1978

Physics - Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa, Arno Allan Penzias, Robert Woodrow Wilson
Chemistry - Peter D. Mitchell
Medicine - Werner Arber, Daniel Nathans, Hamilton O. Smith
Literature - Isaac Bashevis Singer
Peace - Mohamed Anwar Al-Sadat and Menachem Begin
Economics - Herbert Simon

"The People's Republic of China, separated so long from the outer world by an instinctive xenophobia and an admixture of reclusive Maoism, in 1978 began its Great Leap Outward, or what Peking's propagandists call the New Long March. The Chinese, their primitive economy threadbare and their morale exhausted by the years of Mao Tse-tung's disastrous Cultural Revolution, hope to have arrived by the year 2000 at a state of relative modernity, and become a world economic and military power. " Read the cover story from 1978

The World 1978

The Year of Three Popes - With the demise of Pope Paul VI after a long sickness, Pope John Paul I called the "Smiling Pope" was elected and passed away in his sleep 30 days later. The College of Cardinals named Karol Wojtyla as Pope John Paul II known as the Polish Pope. The Three Popes of 1978

President Jimmy Carter brokers and signs the Camp David Accords with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egypt's Anwar Sadat who both received the Nobel Peace Prize. In effect the accords removed Egypt from the fray in the Middle East. The Camp David Accords.

Guyana Massacre Newsreel

Cult leader Jim Jones moved the legally challenged Peoples Temple cult from San Francisco to Jonestown, Guyana. When Congressman Leo J. Ryan visited he was assassinated causing Jones to call for mass suicide by Kool Aid laced with cyanide of 918 of his followers including 270 children. The Peoples Temple.

The Class of 1978