January 9 » Hallam Tennyson, 2nd Baron Tennyson, son of the poet Alfred Tennyson, becomes the second Governor-General of Australia.
February 14 » The United States Department of Commerce and Labor is established (later split into the Department of Commerce and the Department of Labor).
July 20 » The Ford Motor Company ships its first automobile.
September 27 » The Wreck of the Old 97, an American rail disaster that became the subject of a popular ballad.
October 6 » The High Court of Australia sits for the first time.
December 17 » The Wright brothers make the first controlled powered, heavier-than-air flight in the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
Day of death January 3, 1979
The temperature on January 3, 1979 was between -17.7 °C and -2.5 °C and averaged -7.5 °C. There was -0.1 mm of rain. There was 0.2 hours of sunshine (3%). The partly clouded was. The average windspeed was 1 Bft (weak wind) and was prevailing from the south-southwest. Source: KNMI
In The Netherlands , there was from Monday, December 19, 1977 to Friday, September 11, 1981 the cabinet Van Agt I, with Mr. A.A.M. van Agt (CDA/KVP) as prime minister.
January 16 » The last Iranian Shah flees Iran with his family for good and relocates to Egypt.
January 30 » A Varig Boeing 707-323C freighter, flown by the same commander as Flight 820, disappears over the Pacific Ocean 30 minutes after taking off from Tokyo.
September 16 » The Sugarhill Gang were formed and rappers delight was released.
October 18 » The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) begins allowing people to have home satellite earth stations without a federal government license.
December 9 » The eradication of the smallpox virus is certified, making smallpox the first of only two diseases that have been driven to extinction (rinderpest in 2011 being the other).
December 16 » Libya joins four other OPEC nations in raising crude oil prices, which has an immediate, dramatic effect on the United States.
When copying data from this family tree, please include a reference to the origin: Charles Olson, "Olson's Tree", database, Genealogy Online (https://www.genealogieonline.nl/olsons-tree/P14077.php : accessed January 8, 2026), "William Lygon, 8th Earl of Beauchamp, Viscount Elmley (1903-1979)".
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