The following events occurred in September 1978:
September 1, 1978 (Friday) Home Theater Network (HTN), the second pay television film channel in the U.S., premiered as a lower-priced ($3.75 per month) competitor to the existing Home Box Office (HBO). Initially shown on New England Cablevision in Portland, Maine, and on for four hours a day, HTN limited its telecasts to films with a "G" or "PG" rating. Unable to increase its viewership sufficiently to meet its expenses, HTN would continue until its shutdown on January 31, 1987. The Speedway bombings, random explosions of homemade bombs, began in the Indianapolis suburb of Speedway, Indiana, at 9:50 in the evening with a blast from inside a trash container outside the Hi-Fi Buys store in the Speedway Shopping Center, where windows and a car windshield were shattered, followed 10 minutes later by one in a dumpster behind the Speedway motel and a third at 10:45 in a residential neighborhood. Born: Adam Yahiye Gadahn, American-born terrorist member of al-Qaeda; as Adam Pearlman in rural Oregon (killed in drone strike, 2015)
September 2, 1978 (Saturday) The crash of an Airwest Airlines twin-engine Otter airplane killed 11 of the 13 people on board after plunging into the harbor while attempting to land on Vancouver Island in Canada. All of the passengers were Japanese tourists. The airplane broke into two on impact, floated briefly, and then sank in of water. Somerset County defeated Sussex County to win the Gillette Cup, the annual knockout tournament championship of first-class cricket in England, played at Lord's in London. College football in the U.S. opened with a new level, Division I-AA, consisting of eight lower-level teams from the former Division I (Bucknell, Florida A&M, Lafayette, Lehigh, Nevada, Northeastern, Northwestern State, and Portland State) and the formerly Division I Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC), and 35 of the better teams from Division II's Big Sky Conference, Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC), Ohio Valley Conference, and the Yankee Conference (now defunct). Died: Fred G. Meyer, 92, German-born American grocery store entrepreneur and founder of the Fred Meyer store chain Charles F. Blair Jr., 69, pioneering American aviator, military officer in the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Air Force, founder and owner of the Antilles Air Boats commuter airline, was killed in the crash of Antilles Air Boats Flight 941, along with three of his 10 passengers.
September 3, 1978 (Sunday) Air Rhodesia Flight 825, with 52 passengers and four crew, was shot down by missile fired by the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) after taking off from the resort of Victoria Falls to Salisbury in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe. Of the 56 people on board, 38 were killed immediately when the Vickers Viscount impacted near the town of Karoi. The ZIPRA guerrillas then hunted the 18 survivors and killed 10 of them. The other eight had managed to escape the ZIPRA terrorists' attention. The crash of an Air Guinee flight to the Guinean capital of Conakry killed 15 of the 17 people on board. The Ilyushin Il-18 was approaching Conakry at the end of a flight from Moscow in the Soviet Union.
Pope John Paul I was formally installed as the 263rd pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, with ceremonies taking place at St. Peter's Square in Rome before a crowd of 250,000 people, and an estimated one billion television viewers worldwide. Kilkenny GAA won the championship of Ireland's National Hurling League at Croke Park in Dublin, defeating defending champion Cork GAA, 1-15 to 2-8 (equivalent to 18 to 14). Mountaineers Glenn Woodsworth and Carol Evenchick became the first persons to climb to the top of Canada's Tsaydaychuz Peak, a mountain in the Pattullo Range of the Hazelton Mountains in British Columbia. Born: Carmen Amariei, Romanian team handball player with 182 appearances for the Romanian women's team; in Cluj Napoca Died: Karin Molander, 89, Swedish film actressFandango. Biography: Karin Molander
September 4, 1978 (Monday) Anna University was established in India at Madras (now Chennai) and named in honor of C. N. Annadurai, who had been the Chief Minister of Madras State and Tamil Nadu until his death from cancer in 1969. The wreckage of the American paddle steamer boat Phoenix was discovered in New York's Lake Champlain exactly 159 years after her sinking on September 4, 1819. with Seven people were killed at a Labor Day festival in the U.S. town of Derry, Pennsylvania, and 13 seriously injured, when a Hughes 269-C helicopter stalled while flying at low altitude over the parking lot of the St. Joseph's Church. Born: Wes Bentley, American film and TV actor known for American Beauty; in Jonesboro, Arkansas Died: Leonora Cohen, 105, English suffragette and women's rights activist
September 5, 1978 (Tuesday) Hosted by U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Israel's Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egypt's President Anwar Sadat opened discussions on a treaty at the U.S. presidential retreat at Camp David in Maryland. The only "open university" in Thailand, Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University (STOU) was created. It would begin classes on December 1, 1980. U.S. Congressman Daniel Flood, who had represented his district in Pennsylvania for 27 years, was indicted by a federal grand jury on three counts of perjury on charges of lying about receiving illegal payoffs from persons benefiting from legislation that he had sponsored. Although re-elected in November, Flood would resign halfway through his term in January 1980. Born: Chris Hipkins, 41st Prime Minister of New Zealand from January to November, 2023; in Hutt Valley Died: Nikodim Rotov, 48, Russian Orthodox Church archbishop and the Metropolitan of Leningrad and Novgorod, collapsed and died of a heart attack while at a papal audience with Pope John Paul I. Joe Negroni, 37, American rock and roll singer, died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Joe Glick, 75, American boxer and former world welterweight champion
September 6, 1978 (Wednesday) In the U.S., scientists at the City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, California, announced that they had been able to make "a biological carbon copy of the molecule for the human insulin hormone and possibly be able to mass produce insulin for treatment of persons with diabetes. Born: Homare Sawa, Japanese footballer with 205 caps for the Japan women's national team; in Fuchū, Tokyo Mathew Horne, English comedian and TV actor known for Gavin & Stacey; in Burton Joyce, Nottinghamshire Died: Adolf "Adi" Dassler, 77, German cobbler, inventor and entrepreneur who founded the athletic shoe and sportswear company Adidas Willi-Peter Stoll, 28, West German terrorist with the Red Army Faction, suspected of direct involvement in the kidnapping and murder of Hanns Martin Schleyer, was shot to death after police in Düsseldorf spotted him at the Shanghai Chinese Restaurant. Stoll pulled a pistol when asked for his identification and was shot at the scene.
September 7, 1978 (Thursday) Bulgarian defector Georgi Markov was fatally poisoned by a Bulgarian intelligence agent who approached him at a street corner in London and used an umbrella to inject a pellet into Markov's leg. Markov died four days later. An autopsy found a platinum pellet, smaller than the head of a pin and shown by a microscope to have small holes within it.
Keith Moon, 32, English musician and drummer for The Who, died of an overdose of the sedative clomethiazole, having ingested 32 pills. Moon's death took place inside apartment 12 of 9 Curzon Place in London, the same flat where Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas had died in 1974 at the age of 32.
September 8, 1978 (Friday) Iranian Army troops killed 122 rioters in Tehran and wounded 4,000 others after firing on the crowd. Died: Ricardo Zamora, 77, Spanish footballer and goalkeeper who managed the Spain national team from 1920 to 1936
September 9, 1978 (Saturday) Simultaneous attacks were started across Nicaragua by the Sandinistas, a rebel organization attempting to end decades of rule of the Central American nation by the Somoza family, led by President Anastasio Somoza. The Sandinistas took control of the cities of Masaya and Esteli. By Wednesday, the group had control of northern Nicaragua and its three largest cities, Leon, Esteli and Chinandega. Nicaragua's National Guard suppressed the rebellion by September 20 at the cost of more than 1,000 lives. The Soviet space probe Venera 11 was launched from Baikonur at 8:25 in the morning local time (0329 UTC) to explore the planet Venus, and would land there on December 25, returning data for 95 minutes. Born: Gina Gogean, Romania artistic gymnast, world champion in the vault (1994, 1996); floor exercise (1995, 1996, 1997), and the balance beam (1997); in Câmpuri Died: Jack L. Warner, 86, Canadian-born American film mogul who operated Warner Bros. from 1918 to 1973 Hugh MacDiarmid, 86, Scottish poet Sylvia Ashby, 70, British-born Australian market researcher and pollster James Alexander Cowan, 76, Canadian public relations consultant
September 10, 1978 (Sunday)
An error at the start of the Italian Grand Prix caused an accident involving ten cars which killed driver Ronnie Peterson and injured Vittorio Brambilla.
September 11, 1978 (Monday) New Jersey became the first of only 16 U.S. states to ratify the District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment, a proposed 27th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would have given the District of Columbia two U.S. Senators and at least one U.S. Representative, without making D.C. the 51st state. Without 38 states having ratified by the deadline on August 22, 1985, the D.C. Voting Rights Amendment failed. The vote to ratify was 59 to 12 in the state assembly and 27 to 5 in the state senate. Born: Ed Reed, American NFL player, 2004 NFL Defensive Player of the Year, holder of the NFL record for career interception yards (1,590), NFL interception leader 2004, 2008 and 2010), enshrined at the Pro Football Hall of Fame; in St. Rose, Louisiana Else-Marthe Sørlie Lybekk, Norwegian team handball star with 215 caps for the Norway women's national handball team, 2008 gold medalist; in Gjøvik Dejan Stanković, Serbian footballer with 103 caps for the Yugoslavian, and later the Serbian national team; in Belgrade, SR Serbia, Yugoslavia Ben Lee, Australian actor and singer known for The Rage in Placid Lake; in Sydney Died: Janet Parker, 40, British medical photographer at the University of Birmingham became the last human being to die from smallpox after having become ill from smallpox 25 days earlier. Valerian Gracias, 77, Indian Roman Catholic Cardinal and Archbishop of Bombay since 1950 Georgi Markov, 49, Bulgarian novelist, journalist and dissident, died of blood poisoning after being assaulted on September 7. Ronnie Peterson, 34, Swedish Formula One race car driver, died the day after being injured in a crash at the 1978 Italian Grand Prix. Curtis Shake, 91, American jurist who served as the presiding judge in the IG Farben trial as part of the Nuremberg trials of 1947 and 1948.
September 12, 1978 (Tuesday) For the first time since World War I, Greek warships were allowed by Turkey to pass through the Dardanelles and the Bosporus straits as two Greek Navy destroyers visited the Black Sea port of Odessa in the Soviet Union. The Declaration of Alma Ata was signed in the capital city of the Kazakh SSR in the Soviet Union, providing the core document on primary health care practices and paving the way for what is now the Kazakhstan healthcare system.