The Rats’ best album? We can probably argue all day on that one, but it is a great album and was released this month back in 1979.
We’ve previously posted an anniversary review of the album, so I thought this year, we’d look at what the world was like in October 1979 ….
U.S. President Jimmy Carter announced that Soviet troops were present in Cuba.
The Blake Edwards film 10, with Dudley Moore and Bo Derek was released.
The use of home video recorders to record television broadcasts was made legal in the US.
The Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and his East German counterpart Erich Honecker signed a 10-year mutual support treaty.
The USSR carried out several nuclear tests.
The Nobel Prize was awarded to Godfrey Hounsfield and Allan MacLeod Cormack for their independent invention of CT scanners. Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace prize.
Typhoon Tip/Typhoon Warling became the most powerful tropical cyclone ever recorded, with the lowest barometric pressure (870 millibars) and the largest diameter – 1,380miles 2,200 km) across.
At least 75,000 people took part in the first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.
A pair of tsunamis killed 23 people along the French Riviera.
Fleetwood Mac got a star in Hollywood.
Twenty-one people were killed and 32 injured in France when their bus was hit by a train. The group had been returning to Spain after a pilgrimage to Lourdes.
Czechoslovakia convicted a number of human rights activists including playwright Vaclav Havel. Havel later became the first President of the Czech Republic.
The Chinese Society of Astronautics was founded.
The BBC sitcom Terry and June was broadcast in the UK for the first time.
Catalonia and the Basque Country gained limited self-government in Spain.
The People's Republic of China declared it would return to the Olympic Games for the first time since 1958.
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines became independence from the UK after 352 years.
Birmingham, Alabama, elected its first African-American Mayor.
How much do you feel the world has changed since 1979?
Do any of those news items bring back memories…..or where you just into the music??
That is the best post
I remember buying this album in Luton and being very dissapointed with it.I of course got to like it but (for me) without Mondays and Someone its behind In The Long Grass as a complet album.Always found it way to na na na and ohh ohh.Always thought Windchill Factor was better than Diamond Smiles as the choice for the second single and the cover pointless.
Smash Hits June 1979
Not sure what it says about me (fairly damning I suspect) but the only things on that list I remember ‘from the time’ are 10 (saw that at Purley Astoria and wasn’t overly impressed as I recall) and Terry and June, mainly because they also lived in Purley (as much as the Goods ever lived in Surbiton). To be honest I thought T&J came earlier but probably just blurred with Happy Ever After. Anyone remember the episode with the Hut Sut song? Simple times. I remember Palace beat Ipswich 4-1 around same time to go top of the league for first and only time, and I remember buying the album. Not best one for me but each to their own. Fairly sure One Step Beyond and Setting Sons were around same time too. Sad to say all that is far more emblazoned on my memory than any of the list of momentous events worldwide you mention.
Rats Smash Hits October 1979