1. Jamaica is elected to serve on the United Nations Security Council for the first time.

2. A slim majority kept the hangman on the payroll in Jamaica, when the first conscience vote on the retention of the death penalty was held. The statute was barely retained as Members of Parliament debated on the subject of hanging.

3. In 1979 a Jamaican, Maria Ziadie, became one of the first women in the Western hemisphere to become a commercial jet airline pilot when she was hired by Air Jamaica 1968 Ltd as a B727 Second Officer.

4. Bob Marley and The Wailers released an album called Survival, but Marley wanted to call it Black Survival.

5. Cross Keys High School in Manchester, Jamaica was founded.

6. Bob Marley was interviewed on television by Dylan Taite in New Zealand. He spoke about the language of patois, Rastafarianism, and its use of marijuana.

7. Jamaica’s Debbie Campbell won Miss Jamaica World in 1979 and went to the international competition and placed third.

8. Jamaica The Maternity Leave Act Act Number 44 was created.

9. Jamaican anthropologist Edith Clarke died in 1979. Clarke authored My Mother Who Fathered Me: A Study of the Family in Three Selected Communities in Jamaica in 1957, which was foreworded by the late Prof Rex Nettleford.

10. International Monetary Fund increased its lending to Jamaica and new limits for the Extended Fund Facility were set at US$428 million to cover the cost of severe floods and the increased priced of oil. The economy continued to perform poorly even though the island followed the Fund’s basic guidelines.