Vietnam invades Khmer Rouge Cambodia and installs a pro-Vietnamese government.

Jim Jones and hundreds of his Peoples Temple followers commit mass suicide in Guyana. In 1977, Jones, an American pastor, had led his followers to South America, where he established a farming commune called Jonestown in the remote northwestern part of Guyana. On November 14, 1978, U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan traveled to Jonestown with a group of journalists to investigate the commune. Four days later, Jones—whom some cult members believed to be the personification of God—ordered an ambush on the runway as the delegation was attempting to depart. The congressman and four others were killed. That same evening, Jones and his followers orchestrated a mass suicide. In a clearing in Jonestown, hundreds drank a fruit-flavored mixture of cyanide and sedatives. Those who attempted to escape were pursued and killed by Jones’ lieutenants. The final death toll was 913, including 276 children. Jones died from a gunshot wound to the head, probably fired by himself.

Bill Gates and Paul Allen move their small company from Albuquerque to Seattle. They take a photo before leaving, which will become famous. On the long drive to Washington State, Gates receives three speeding tickets, two of them from the same police officer…

John Paul II (Carol Wojtyla) is Pope

Launch of Pioneer Venus 2, which enters orbit around Venus; it includes five different atmospheric probes that explore the atmosphere in five different regions of the planet.

General Wilbur Creech takes over Tactical Air Command. This marks a momentous cultural shift for the US Air Force, compared to the days of Curtis LeMay, when the “bombers” dominated strategy. Generals with fighter pilot backgrounds, who had experienced firsthand the mistakes made by the bombers during the Vietnam War, are now in charge. Creech promotes a policy of streamlined, decentralized decision-making and independent judgment. This completely transforms air combat for the American side. During the Vietnam War, 1,737 American aircraft are shot down. Over the next quarter century, fewer than 30 aircraft were lost in all the conflicts in which the US Air Force was involved (Iraq, Kuwait, Kosovo, Libya, Afghanistan, etc.).

Unimation introduces PUMA (Programmable Universal Machine for Assembly)

Dr. Giulio Devita, editor of the Italian version of the book The Ultra Secret, wants to delve deeper into the issue of the Italian defeat at Matapan and discovers that the interceptions of Italian Enigma by the British at Bletchley Park allowed the Royal Navy to intercept and neutralize the fearsome Italian Royal Fleet off Cape Matapan on March 28, 1941. It was the last naval battle fought by the Italians.

Vietnam joins COMECON, the economic bloc led by the USSR

Communist coup in Afghanistan

The Via Fani ambush (or Via Fani massacre) was a bloody terrorist attack carried out by Red Brigades militants on the morning of March 16, 1978, on Via Mario Fani in Rome. The attack was aimed at killing members of Aldo Moro’s security detail and kidnapping the prominent Christian Democrat politician. This tragic, bloody act during the Years of Lead, successfully carried out by the Red Brigades, was the first act in the kidnapping of the politician, which concluded 55 days later with the discovery of Moro’s body in the trunk of a red Renault 4 on Via Michelangelo Caetani, having been killed by the Red Brigades. Decades later, Barbara Balzerani, the only woman present on the day of the attack, was released after a life sentence (under the provisions of the Gozzini law); Her then-partner, Mario Moretti, sentenced to six life sentences, has been on semi-liberty since 1997 and works for a cooperative that helps prisoners; Valerio Morucci, released in 1994 despite a life sentence, lives in Rome and works as an IT consultant; Adriana Faranda, Morucci’s former partner, after dissociating herself from the Red Brigades, obtained a sentence reduction and has been free since 1994; semi-liberty was also granted to Raffaele Fiore and Franco Bonisoli; Prospero Gallinari, one of the perpetrators of the massacre, died in 2013; Alessio Casimirri has never been in prison, despite a life sentence; the man, who escaped to South America, runs a restaurant in Nicaragua and married a local woman, thus acquiring citizenship—an insurmountable obstacle to the extradition that Italy has sought for years.

Israel occupies southern Lebanon

Salyut 6 mission. It will be occupied for 676 days.

Wernher von Braun died in Alexandria, Virginia, at the age of 65. He had been diagnosed with intestinal cancer two years earlier. Per aspera ad astra.

NASA makes the first drafts of the Jupiter Orbiter Probe mission, which will later become the Galileo mission.

The Apple II, the first fully integrated personal computer with both software and hardware, is priced at $1,298. It will sell 100,000 units in three years.

Salyut 6 cosmonauts remain in orbit for 6 months

Ronald Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard M. Addelman of MIT devise a practical implementation of the idea known as RSA, the encryption and decryption algorithm based on the fact that decomposing a large number into its prime factors is a so-called intractable problem.

Ronald Rivest, Adi Shamir, Leonard Adleman, of MIT, realize that prime numbers are the ideal basis for cryptography

US Congress approves funding for the Space Telescope born from a proposal by Lyman Spitzer

In 1967, Charles Misner assumed that the Universe was originally chaotic, but that friction and other factors later brought uniformity and homogeneity, leading to the current observed isotropy. Barrow and Matzner demonstrated in 1977 that this friction would have generated far too much heat, for which no evidence has been found.