Hondo High School (Class of 1981)
These were the days: 1977-1981
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You may feel incredibly old after reading this page!
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1977
Events worth mentioning
January 20 - President Jimmy Carter succeeds Gerald Ford, inaugurated as the 39th President of the United States.
February 4 - Fleetwood Mac's Grammy-winning album, Rumours is released.
May 25 - Star Wars opens in cinemas [I saw it two days later].
May 26 - George Willig climbed the South Tower of the World Trade Center.
[Interesting in this day and age].
August 12 - NASA space shuttle makes its first test flight off the back of a jetliner.
August 20 - Voyager program: The United States launches the Voyager 2 spacecraft.
September 3 - The Commodore PET begins shipping [an 8-bit 6502 based computer, forerunner of the VIC-20 and Commodore C64]
September 5 - Voyager 1 is launched.
December 14 - Saturday Night Fever is released, which bring Disco into the forefront of culture.
Born
July 1 - Liv Tyler, actress [now I'm feeling old]
Those whom we lost...
January 29 - Freddie Prinze, American actor and comedian (b. 1954) "Chico and the Man"
May 10 - Joan Crawford, actress
August 16 - Elvis Presley, American singer and actor (b. 1935)
August 19 - Groucho Marx, American actor and comedian (b. 1890)
October 14 - Bing Crosby, American singer and actor (b. 1903)
October 20 - Members of the American rock group Lynyrd Skynyrd killed in a plane crash:
Cassie Gaines (b. 1948)
Steve Gaines (b. 1949)
Ronnie Van Zant (b. 1948)
Movies that were big
Star Wars
Smokie and the Bandit
A Star is Born
King Kong
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
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1978
Events worth mentioning
February 15 - Serial killer Ted Bundy is captured in Florida.
February 16 - The first computer bulletin board system is created (CBBS in Chicago, Illinois).
June 19 - Comic Strip Garfield debuts in newspapers.
November 17 - The Star Wars Holiday Special airs on CBS.
November 18 - Jonestown mass suicide: In Jonestown, Guyana, Jim Jones leads his Peoples Temple in a mass murder-suicide; 913 die, including 276 children.
December 25 - Vietnam launches a major offensive against the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia. [ Suggested movie - "The Killing Fields" ]
Eagles' Hotel California was nominated for a Grammy award.
Fleetwood Mac's Rumours was nominated for a Grammy award.
Acorn Computers Ltd is founded. [A small 6502-based computer board that morphed into a near-PC].
[What kills me - in order to access a Commodore PET in High School, you had to have a reading deficiency to use their rudimentary software...]
[But I did learn to type on an IBM Selectric in Mrs. Woerndell's class!!!]
Those whom we lost...
January 13 - Hubert H. Humphrey, U.S Vice President and Senator (b. 1911)
September 7 - Keith Moon, English drummer (The Who) (drug overdose) (b. 1947)
December 8 - Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel (b. 1898)
December 10 - Ed Wood, American filmmaker (b. 1924) "Plan 9 from Outer Space"
 
There is a movie about him, he was drummed as the worst film producer of all time. Had a few cross-dressing ventures...
Movies that were big
Superman
Grease
Saturday Night Fever
Animal House
Jaws 2
Revenge of the Pink Panther
The Deer Hunter
Battlestar Galactica (yes, the pilot was in theaters).
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1979
Events worth mentioning
January 7 - Vietnam and Vietnam-backed Cambodian insurgents announce the fall of Phnom Penh, Cambodian capital, and the collapse of the Pol Pot regime.
- Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge retreat to Thailand
January 13 - YMCA sues the Village People for libel because of their song of the same name
February 14 - Following her 1972 sex reassignment surgery, musician Wendy Carlos legally changes her name from Walter. She later revealed this information in an interview in the May 1979 issue of Playboy magazine.
[ I include this because this individual was the most prominent of the founders of professional synthesizer music. The album "By Request" and "Switched-on Back" heralded a new era in music. Synths were considered ground-breaking during this time, not many could use them sucessfully and they were hardware-intensive. Those that could be programmed were exceedingly difficult to operate. They've definitely come a long way since the mid 1970's.]
March 4 - U.S. Voyager I photo reveals Jupiter's rings
March 5 - Voyager I's closest approach to Jupiter at 172,000 miles
March 28 - Nuclear power plant accident at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, releases radiation
May 9 - Unabomber bomb injures Northwestern University graduate student John Harris
June 18 - Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev sign the SALT II agreement in Vienna.
July 11 - NASA's first orbiting space station Skylab begins its return to Earth, after being in orbit for 6 years and 2 months.
August 22 - Led Zeppelin releases their album "In Through The Out Door".
September 1 - The American Pioneer 11 becomes the first spacecraft to visit Saturn, when it passes the planet at a distance of 21,000 km.
November 4 - Iran hostage crisis begins: 3000 Iranian radicals, mostly students, invade the United States embassy in Tehran and take 90 hostages (53 of whom are American).
They demand that the United States send the former Shah back to Iran to stand trial.
December 3 - Eleven fans are killed during a stampede for seats before The Who concert at the Riverfront Coliseum (now known as the U.S. Bank Arena) in Cincinnati, OH.
VisiCalc becomes the first spreadsheet program. [It was one of the first practical business-usable programs available and has grown into what is now Microsoft Excel.]
The first usenet experiments were conducted by Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis of Duke University.
[ I find this interesting because the concept of the Internet was still in the BBS range-of-thinking. ]
Born
February 21 - Jennifer Love Hewitt, American actress and singer [well, sort of]
March 30 - Norah Jones, American musician
April 12 - Claire Danes, American actress
April 19 - Kate Hudson, American actress
October 4 - Rachael Leigh Cook, actress
Those whom we lost...
January 3 - Conrad Hilton, American hotelier (b. 1887)
February 2 - Sid Vicious, English musician (Sex Pistols) (drug overdose) (b. 1957)
June 11 - John Wayne, American actor (b. 1907)
July 10 - Arthur Fiedler, American conductor (b. 1894)
July 12 - Minnie Riperton, American singer (b. 1947)
July 29 - Bill Todman, American game show producer (b. 1916)
[ "This has been a Mark Goodson, Bill Todman Production" heard after every game show
during the era: Match Game, Family Feud, The Price is Right to name a few. ]
August 17, Vivian Vance, actress (Ethyl Mertz in "I Love Lucy" series)
November 29 - Zeppo Marx, American actor and comedian (b. 1901)
Movies that were big
Every Which Way But Loose
Rocky II
Alien
Amityville Horror
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Moonraker
Kramer vs. Kramer
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1980
Events worth mentioning
January 7 - President Jimmy Carter authorizes legislation giving $1.5 billion in loans to bail out Chrysler Corporation. [Remember the "K" cars?]
March 21 - President Jimmy Carter announces that the United States will boycott the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.
April 24-April 25 - Operation Eagle Claw, a commando mission in Iran to rescue American embassy hostages, is aborted after mechanical problems ground the rescue helicopters.
- Eight United States troops are killed in a mid-air collision during the failed operation.
May 18 - Mount St. Helens erupts in Washington killing 57 and causing US$3 billion in damage
June 1 - Comedian Richard Pryor is badly burned trying to freebase cocaine. [ "Is my face on fire again?" ]
June 10 - Unabomber bomb injures Percy Wood, president of the United Airlines in Lake Forest, Illinois
September 30 - Digital Equipment Corporation, Intel and Xerox introduce the DIX standard for Ethernet,
which was the first implementation outside of Xerox, and the first to support 10 Mbit/s speeds.
[ Another interesting quirk - the transmit speed was miles ahead of most of the available computers of the time whose clock speeds were around 1 to 2MHz.
Most of them could barely transmit at 9600 baud on RS-232 serial, the phone standard would be 300 baud until about 1982 or 83.]
[ The DEC was a set of 16-bit computers running at about 16 MHz, although they were hard to program, their performance was
miles ahead of the pack. ]
December 8 - John Lennon is murdered by gunshot outside his New York apartment, by Mark Chapman. [A very sad day - I remember seeing this on TV very clearly]
 
Born
February 12 - Christina Ricci, American actress
June 17 - Venus Williams, American tennis player
July 7 - Michelle Kwan, American figure skater
July 10 - Jessica Simpson, American singer
December 18 - Christina Aguilera, American singer
Those whom we lost...
January 29 - Jimmy Durante, American actor, singer, and comedian (b. 1893)
March 31 - Jesse Owens, American athlete (b. 1913)
July 24 - Peter Sellers, English actor (b. 1925)
August 14 - Dorothy Stratten, Canadian model (murdered) (b. 1960)
November 7 - Steve McQueen, American actor (b. 1930)
November 22 - Mae West, American actress (b. 1893)
December 8 - John Lennon, British singer, songwriter, and guitarist (The Beatles) (murdered) (b. 1940)
[ Imagine... ]
Unknown date - Otto Frank, Father of Jewish diarist Anne Frank
The Diary of Anne Frank
Movies that were big
Airplane!
Ordinary People
Raging Bull
The Blues Brothers
Caddyshack
Fame
Flash Gordon
The Fog
Friday the 13th
Nine to Five
Urban Cowboy
The Big Red One
The Blue Lagoon
The Elephant Man
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1981
Events worth mentioning
January 20 - Ronald Reagan succeeds Jimmy Carter as President of the United States of America.
Minutes after Reagan becomes president, Iran releases 52 American hostages that had been held captive for 444 days and the Iran hostage crisis ends.
March 6 - After 19 years hosting the CBS Evening News Walter Cronkite signs off for the last time.
March 30 - President Ronald Reagan is shot in the chest outside a Washington, D.C., hotel by John Hinckley, Jr.. Two police officers and James Brady are also wounded.
April 12 - The first launch of a Space Shuttle: Columbia launches on the STS-1 mission, returning to Earth on April 14
April 18 - Rock band Yes splits up (regrouping in 1983). [That album in 83 would have "Owner of a Lonely Heart", best selling YES of all time]
June 5 - The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that five homosexual men in Los Angeles, California have a rare form of pneumonia seen only in patients with weakened immune systems (these were the first recognized cases of AIDS).
June 12 - Major League Baseball goes on strike, forcing the cancellation of 38 percent of the schedule.
August 1 - MTV (Music Television) is launched. [Video Killed the Radio Star finally comes of age]
November 12 - The Space Shuttle Columbia, piloted by Joe Engle and Richard Truly, lifts off for its second mission (STS-2).
Computer and Video Games (magazine) begins publication.
The De Lorean DMC-12 automobile begins production [My favorite car - now Back to the Future has some hope ;-)
Born
January 28 - Elijah Wood, American actor and music producer
January 31 - Justin Timberlake, American musician
February 17 - Paris Hilton, American model, heiress, and socialite
April 28 - Jessica Alba, American actress
June 9 - Natalie Portman (Natalie Herschlag), actress
December 2 - Britney Spears, American singer [well, that's the claim anyway]
December 3 - Brian Bonsall, American actor
Those whom we lost...
February 9 - Bill Haley, American musician (b. 1925) [of Bill Haley and the Comets - "Rock Around the Clock" and "See Ya' Later, Alligator"]
November 25 - Jack Albertson, American actor (b. 1907) [The other half of "Chico and the Man", "Willie Wonka..." "Poseidon Adventure" many TV guest roles.]
November 29 - Natalie Wood, American actress (drowned) (b. 1938)
Movies that were big
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Superman II
Stir Crazy
Nine to Five
Stripes
For Your Eyes Only
Chariots of Fire
On Golden Pond
Mad Max 2
Omen III
Mommie Dearest
Taps
Time Bandits
Cannonball Run
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