* 1911 – Feodor Felix Konrad Lynen, German biochemist, Nobel laureate ( d. 1979 )

* 1979 – Sam Atwell, Australian actor

* 1979 – Christine Smith, American model and actress

* 1979 – Lord Frederick Windsor, British financial analyst

* 1907 – Hardie Gramatky, American author and animator ( d. 1979 )

* 1979 – Claire Danes, American actress

* 1979 – Jordan De Jong, American baseball player

* 1979 – Elena Grosheva, Russian gymnast

* 1979 – Mateja Kežman, Serbian footballer

* 1979 – Jennifer Morrison, American actress and model

* 1979 – Paul Nicholls, English actor

* 1979 – Cristian Ranalli, Italian footballer

* 1979 – Gerardo Torrado, Mexican footballer

* 1979 – A Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb kills British World War II admiral Louis Mountbatten and three others while they are boating on holiday in Sligo, Republic of Ireland.

* 1886 – Rebecca Clarke, English composer and violist ( d. 1979 )

* 1979 – Giovanni Capitello, American actor and producer

* 1979 – Tian Liang, Chinese diver

* 1979 – Sarah Neufeld, Canadian violinist ( Arcade Fire and Bell Orchestre )

* 1979 – Aaron Paul, American actor

* 1979 – Rusty Smith, American speed skater

* 1979 – Francesco Bellotti, Italian cyclist

* 1979 – Megumi Okina, Japanese actress and singer

* 1929 – Abdi İpekçi, Turkish journalist ( d. 1979 )

* 1979 – Michael Kingma, Australian basketball player

* 1979 – Tony Stewart, American football player

* Anastasio Somoza Debayle ( 1925 – 1980 ), Nicaraguan dictator ( ruled 1967 – 1979 )

After the Nicaraguan Revolution resulted in the overthrow and exile of the Somoza's government in 1979, Ortega became a member of the ruling multipartisan Junta of National Reconstruction and was later elected president, serving from 1985 to 1990.

* 1979 – ABC News correspondent Bill Stewart is shot dead by a Nicaraguan soldier under the regime of Anastasio Somoza Debayle.

Sandino was assassinated in 1934 by the Nicaraguan National Guard (), the US-equipped police force of Anastasio Somoza, whose family ruled the country from 1936 until they were overthrown by the Sandinistas in 1979.

Anastasio (" Tachito ") Somoza Debayle () ( 5 December 1925 – 17 September 1980 ) was a Nicaraguan leader and officially the 73rd and 76th President of Nicaragua from 1 May 1967 to 1 May 1972 and from 1 December 1974 to 17 July 1979.

He also appeared in another 1983 film, the Hollywood production Under Fire set during the 1979 Nicaraguan Revolution, this time being portrayed by actor René Enriquez.

While countries like Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay were dictatorships that censored elements of Nueva canción in in the late 1970s and early 1980s the Sandinista movement that rose to power with the Nicaraguan Revolution in 1979 welcomed Nueva canción, and several artist gave support to the movement like Mercedes Sosa and Silvio Rodríguez who played in the Abril en Nicaragua concert in 1983.

It was bombed during the siege of León by airplanes of Nicaraguan Air Force in 1979, due was made of adobe was easily destroyed unlike other churches, which, being built of brick and stone quarry, endured the fighting.

* Anastasio Somoza Debayle, Nicaraguan president ( 1st term: 1967 – 1972, 2nd term: 1974 – 1979 ); overthrown by the Sandinistas.

Carter also tried to place another cap on the arms race with a SALT II agreement in 1979, and faced the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the Nicaraguan Revolution, and the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan.

Although President Jimmy Carter tried to place another limit on the arms race with a SALT II agreement in 1979, his efforts were undermined by the other events that year, including the Iranian Revolution and the KGB-backed Nicaraguan Revolution, which both ousted pro-US regimes, and his retaliation against Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in December.

This was supported by the US SWP but the Nicaraguan Revolution intervened in 1979 and instead the OCRFI eventually united with Nahuel Moreno's group to form the Parity Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International.

Beginning in 1979, the recently installed Nicaraguan government initiated the country's first widespread effort to educate deaf children.

The Nicaraguan Revolution ( Spanish: Revolución Nicaragüense or Revolución Popular Sandinista, also RPS ) encompassed the rising opposition to the Somoza dictatorship in the 1960s and 1970s, the campaign led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front ( Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, FSLN ) which led to the violent ousting of that dictatorship in 1979, and the subsequent efforts of the FSLN, which governed from 1979 until 1990, to reform the society and economy of the country along socialist lines.

A member of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, a party he has since left, he was Nicaragua's minister of culture from 1979 to 1987.

William D. " Bill " Stewart ( 1941 – June 20, 1979 ) was an American journalist with ABC News who was summarily murdered by Nicaraguan government National Guard (" Guardia ") forces while reporting on the Nicaraguan Revolution as Sandinista rebel forces were closing in on the capital city of Managua in 1979.

On June 20, 1979, Stewart was traveling in a press van in the eastern slums of the capital city of Managua with his camera and sound crew when they were stopped at a roadblock run by the Nicaraguan Guardia ( lit.

When the Somoza government was overthrown in 1979, Blandón fled to the United States, and then raised money for the Nicaraguan Democratic Force ( FDN ), a Contra group.

The Nicaraguan National Guard was featured in three major film productions, all set during the 1979 Nicaraguan Revolution, the first being the 1980 German movie The Uprising shot on location at Nicaragua.