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Tehran, Iran. Only ten days after the Shah’s flight, the remnants of his government and army completely disintegrated.

Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky publish The Prospect Theory, in which they identify, and verify through scientific experiments, the presence of two systems in the human intellect: System 1 (automatic and fast, involuntary), and System 2 (capable of complex reasoning, but requiring time and concentration).

The cost per mile for air travel is $0.35 (2015 dollars). It will gradually decrease to $0.15 in 2009.

Harvard professor Ezra Vogel publishes the book “Japan as Number One,” in which he predicts that Japan will become the world’s leading economy within a few years. This doesn’t materialize; in fact, the very next year, in 1980, Japan’s growth rate plummets and never recovers

Peak global energy per capita: 11.15 barrels of oil equivalent (boe)

Sony launches the Walkman. It quickly sells 385 million units, making it one of the most popular consumer devices in history.

The Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt, attended by Jimmy Carter, provide for the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied Sinai and formal Egyptian recognition of the State of Israel. On March 27, 1979, the Peace Treaty between Israel and Egypt was signed.

Venera 12 launches and lands on Venus, but lens cap melts and prevents the first color images of the planet from being collected.

Between 1978 and 1981 (at least), a complicated international triangulation allowed Colonel Gaddafi to keep his fleet of CH-47 and Lockheed C-130 helicopters in working order. At the center of the operations was the Officine Aeronavali company in Venice. A member of the Italian judiciary,

Cambodia. Conflict with Vietnam. The Khmer Rouge clears the eastern part of the country.

Alessandro Pertini President of the Italian Republic

In Middle Egypt the Codex Tchacos is discovered, the third part of which is the Gospel of Judas

The Red Brigades kill Aldo Moro

In Kentucky, a group of speleologists discovered a connection between a huge cave system and Mammuth Cave, thus discovering the most extensive cave system: 150 km; human remains and mummified bodies dating back more than 2000 years were found up to 20 km deep in

Mario Andretti, Formula 1 world champion with Lotus. Peterson dies in a horrific accident at Monza.

Giacomo Agostini retires from racing. In the history of the World Championship, he won 160 podiums in 187 races, valid for the world title, in which he participated. His palmares also boasts 311 official race wins, 18 national titles and he is, among the great

China. Deng Xiaoping returns from his second exile. And he will complete his radical economic reform program.

California. West Coast Computer Show. Launch of the Apple II, the first globally popular personal computer: 6 million will be sold over the next 16 years.

Two Boeing 747s collide on the runway in the Canary Islands. More than 500 people die. A few days later, it emerges that a certain Lee Fried, from North Carolina, had delivered this exact prediction in a sealed envelope to the dean of the local

Last recorded case of smallpox, thanks to vaccination in more than 150 countries worldwide. In the 20th century, smallpox, in its two forms (Variola major and Variola minor), killed more than 300 million people.

Wilson, Gazzaniga, LeDoux, after a commissurotomy (separation of the cerebral hemispheres) on a patient, manage to teach language even to the right hemisphere which manifests its own consciousness separate from the left (the right wants to be a pilot, the left a designer!)

Indro Montanelli was shot in the leg by the Red Brigades.

Jimmy Carter at the White House

10 deaths in Italy due to terrorism

Soyuz 23 (Russian: Союз 23, Union 23) returned to Earth, but landed on partially frozen Lake Tengiz in Kazakhstan, the first manned splashdown in the Soviet space program. The capsule sank beneath the surface of the frozen lake, and recovery took nine hours due to

H.H. Kornhuber and colleagues performed experiments (electroencephalogram) on the reaction times to consciously move a finger on one’s own initiative: they found 1.5 s of accumulation of potential before moving the finger; since it is evident that consciousness is actually faster than 1.5 s, they

Carl Woese of the University of Illinois divides life into 23 major divisions, which are grouped into three domains: Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukaria; Bacteria (several thousand species) differ from Archaea (175 species) (microscopic species, however, constitute more than 80% of the planet’s biomass) in the

Montreal Olympics

The Constitutional Court rules that the monopoly on Italian television networks (by RAI), decreed by the fascist government in 1924, is unconstitutional.

Arkady Shevchenko, the Soviet Union’s top UN representative, joins the CIA; after his wife’s assassination by the KGB, he later seeks asylum in the United States and becomes an American citizen.

Werner Karl Heisenberg dies in Munich; on his deathbed he declared: “When I stand before God, I will ask him two questions: why relativity and why turbulence; I think he has an answer to the first question…”

China. Zhou Enlai dies. Deng Xiaoping is again removed from all his posts.

George H.W. Bush is appointed director of the CIA

After a date with Tony Provenzano and Tony Giacalone, James “Jimmy” Riddle Hoffa, a powerful and controversial union leader from 1957 to 1971, disappears. His body was never found. He was declared legally dead in 1982. Hoffa was implicated in mafia organizations. His story was

After the Apollo-Soyuz mission and before the first Space Shuttle mission, the Soviets launched 21 Soyuz missions compared to 0 American ones (manned in Earth orbit).

Kissinger reports the decision to interrupt and cancel the MATADOR project, which, continuing the work begun by Project Azorian (the recovery of the Soviet submarine K-129), promised to recover what remained on the seabed. The Hughes Glomar Explorer had already been modified, upgraded, and tested,

Venera 10 launches, transmitting more black-and-white panoramas of Venus for 65 minutes.

Francisco Franco dies and the monarchy is restored

Jubilee celebrated by Paul VI

Civil war breaks out in Lebanon: left-wing Muslims face right-wing nationalist Christian militias,

Rome. Bozzini and Mosconi patented creso wheat, produced in “gamma fields” with radioactive cesium, which randomly alters the genetics of the wheat arranged in a radial pattern around the sample. The most promising specimens are then selected. The experiments are conducted by Barilla in collaboration

Australian ecologist Robert May writes a short article for Nature highlighting and demonstrating that the equations commonly used to (correctly) model changes in animal and plant populations in nature can, and quite often do, exhibit chaotic behavior. The main tool May uses is the logistic

In the US, bromide salts, previously used as generic sedatives (so much so that bromide still frequently appears in jokes about sexual performance failures), are being withdrawn from the market due to dangerous side effects known to be associated with the diagnosis of bromism.

Colonels in Greece attempt to assassinate Archbishop Makarios, leader of Cyprus, but he manages to escape; the junta appoints extremist Samson as president; alarmed Turks invade the northern part of the island.

NASA launched Helios I toward the Sun, to orbit it at just a third of Earth’s distance. It remained active until 1982. In 1976, Helios II was also launched, carrying a newly discovered gamma-ray detector.

Ethiopia: Haile Mariam Menghitsu chooses Moscow-backed socialism

The U.S. Congress adopts the Trade Reform Act, which includes the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which establishes the United States’ commitment to the Soviet Union’s respect for the right of Jews to emigrate. This amendment will soon become a stumbling block in relations between the two countries

The American probe Pioneer 11 makes its flyby of Jupiter just 19 months after launch. It takes the first close-up photographs of the Great Red Spot and one of the planet’s poles, as well as close-up photographs of Io. It then heads for Saturn.

The German Federal Bank is coming to Italy’s aid, providing a loan with interest rates equal to those of US bonds, amounting to $2 billion for two years. The Italian Treasury is guaranteeing the loan with its gold reserves. The agreement will be renewed for

Gerald Rudolph Ford sworn in as President of the United States of America

The famous Israeli “psychic” (actually a magician), Uri Geller, was shown 100 drawings in sealed envelopes, under controlled conditions at Stanford University. For three days, Geller tried to guess their contents. Without success. Stanford used a “double-blind” system. The results were published in the journal

Steve Jobs drops out of expensive Reed College and returns to his parents in Los Altos, California. He finds a job at Atari, a video game company. When Jobs arrives in the Atari lobby, wearing sandals and with long hair and smelling of sweat, they

KAWASAKI, under license from Unimation, establishes machines for arc welding motorcycle frames

ASEA commercializes the IRb6 electric-actuated robot

AL (Assembly Language). This language, unique to WAVE, was the precursor to VAL, a commercial Unimation language developed by V. Scheinmann and B. Shimano.

Sofia, Bulgaria. An alleged attack on Enrico Berlinguer in Sofia in 1973 emerged in 1991 (such as in the newspapers L’Unita’ and Panorama). It was a bizarre car accident that occurred in Sofia while the secretary of the Italian Communist Party, following a visit to

George Gray invents the biphenyl liquid crystal LCD, which makes it possible to implement stable liquid crystal solutions even under normal pressure and temperature conditions.

DeWitt and Neill Graham publish the book The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, including both versions of Hugh Everett’s thesis.

At the height of the Cold War, the USSR managed to purchase 30% of the US wheat harvest on the open market within a few weeks, through front men, taking advantage of the US government’s agricultural export ingenuity. A similar operation would be achieved again

The Watergate scandal erupts

Palestinian attack on Israeli athletes’ delegation at the Munich Olympics: the victims are 11 athletes, 1 German agent, and 5 terrorists; one Israeli athlete is shot dead immediately, another is killed while trying to escape the hotel and left to bleed out on the floor

Laugardalshöll Arena, Reykjavik, Iceland. Robert James Fischer, aka Bobby Fischer, becomes the new World Chess Champion, defeating Soviet player Boris Spassky 12.5 to 8.5, who retired in the 22nd game (there would have been 24). The American champion initially refused to participate in the match,

Atari’s Alcorn completes the Pong game. It’s built in hardware, meaning it doesn’t have a microprocessor. Atari will sell it to bars and pubs. It will average $40 a day per installation. Each machine costs Atari $280 and sells for $900.

Meeting in Beijing between Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong

The FermiLab particle accelerator is completed and operating at full capacity (200 GeV)

The first Grumman F-14 Tomcat lands on the aircraft carrier Forrestal.

Vietnam. American Air Force planes dropped 24 bombs on the Thanh Hoa Bridge, which until then had withstood, because it had never been directly hit, 638 previous bombings: a monument among hundreds of craters to the carelessness of 20th-century bombing. This time, the 750-pound M-117

Airline accident death rate: peaks at 6 per 1 million passengers per year (0.0006%/year). Will progressively decline to 0-0.2 (0.00002%/year) from 2010 onwards.

The book “The Limits to Growth,” using a Matlhusian model, predicts that the world will run out of gold in just 29 years, silver in 42, gold and oil in 50, and aluminum in 55. In reality, reserves of all these raw materials will be

Japanese soldier found hiding in Guam. Farmers in Guam discovered Shoichi Yokoi, a Japanese sergeant who, unaware of the end of World War II, had been hiding in the jungle for 28 years. An American possession in the western Pacific, Guam had been attacked and

George Kukla of Columbia University, studying glacial deposits in the countries of the Soviet bloc, comes to the conclusion, in a letter to President Nixon, that the next ice age could arrive much sooner than expected, due to the possible slowing of the Gulf Stream.

A few weeks after Pitts and Tuck’s Galaxy Game at Stanford, Nolan Bushnell produced Computer Space for just $1,000. It debuted at the Dutch Goose bar in Menlo Park near Palo Alto. He quickly sold 1,500 units. The video game industry was launched! Shortly thereafter,

Intel announces a “microprogrammable computer on a chip”: the Intel 4004 (2300 transistors), a 4-bit microprocessor; it was developed by Italian Federico Faggin and Americans Marcian Hoff and Stan Mazer. (US Patent #3,821,715). Pioneer 10 will be equipped with an Intel 4004: launched on March

The third Soviet N-1, the rocket intended to carry the Soviets to the Moon, also explodes on launch. But after just seven seconds, it begins to roll uncontrollably on its axis. At 40 seconds, it breaks apart and crashes to the ground. At this point,

Bangladesh becomes independent from India

During the Indo-Pakistani war in Dhaka, in a cement quarry, Mujib Rahman’s Muslims massacred 800 Hindus and left them abandoned to the vultures.

Rocketdyne, a division of North American Rockwell, has been awarded contract NAS8-40000 for the development of the space shuttle main engine (SSME), beating Pratt & Whitney and Aerojet.

Moon. On February 9th, the Soviet Lunokhod rover (launched the previous November) survives an eclipse in which the temperature drops from +150°C to -100°C and back to +136°C in 3 hours. On October 4th, 1971, Polonius’s heart fails, his temperature drops, and he dies. He

USSR. Luna 16: Launched on September 12, 1970, by a Proton. It made a gentle moon landing at 2.5 m/s on September 20 (the Black September incident involving three planes taken hostage by Palestinian fedayeen distracted Western attention). The swivel arm plunged into the ground,

The IMAX film technique is introduced