Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in the history of California, takes his place on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on January 9, 1978. The first and, for years, most visible openly gay politician in America, Milk was a longtime activist and pioneering leader of San Francisco’s LGBT community.

On January 11, 1978, Toni Morrison wins the National Book Critics Circle Award for Song of Solomon. The award brought the writer national attention for the first time, although she had already published two moderately successful books, The Bluest Eye (1969) and Sula (1973). Morrison went on to win the Pulitzer in 1988 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.

On January 27, 1978, Richard Chase, who becomes known as the “Dracula Killer,” murders Evelyn Miroth and Daniel Meredith, as well as Miroth’s 6-year-old son and another woman, in Sacramento, California. Chase sexually assaulted Miroth with a knife before killing her and mutilating her body. He removed some of the organs of the body and filled them with blood before taking them with him. Meredith was found shot in the head.

February 1, 1978: Antislavery crusader and Civil War veteran Harriet Tubman becomes the first African American woman to appear on a U.S. postage stamp, the first in the Post Office's Black Heritage Series. Tubman's appearance on stamps was emblematic both of the progress made in recognizing African Americans' contributions to American history and of the ongoing effort to put abolitionists on equal footing with slaveowners in the nation's historical canon.

A classic “Nor’easter” storm that brought a severe blizzard to New England finally subsides on February 8, 1978, and the region begins to dig out from under several feet of snow. Over the previous 72 hours, some areas of Rhode Island and Massachusetts had received as many as 55 inches of snow.

The U.S. Air Force launches Navstar 1, the world’s first operational GPS satellite, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. GPS begins as a military technology, but expands to transform industries from aviation to communications.

On February 23, 1978, Grammy voters make history by failing to settle on a winner for the year's Best Song. Instead, Barbra Streisand’s “Love Theme from A Star Is Born (Evergreen)” and Debby Boone’s “You Light Up My Life” were both awarded the Best Song Grammy—the first tie in that category in Grammy history.

On March 2, 1978, news outlets report one of history’s most famous cases of body-snatching: Sometime in the middle of the previous night, two men had stolen the corpse of the revered film actor Sir Charles Chaplin from a cemetery in the Swiss village of Corsier-sur-Vevey, located in the hills above Lake Geneva, near Lausanne, Switzerland.

The rise of the action-adventure blockbuster was on the horizon, but on April 3, 1978, the small-scale romantic comedy triumphs over the big-budget space extravaganza. At the 50th annual Academy Awards, held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, Woody Allen’s Annie Hall won the Oscar for Best Picture, beating out George Lucas’ Star Wars.

On April 13, 1978, opening day at Yankee Stadium, the New York Yankees give away thousands of Reggie! bars to fans, who naturally toss them onto the field after star outfielder Reggie Jackson homers in his first at-bat. The grounds crew cleans up the goodies, delaying the game for five minutes.

Soviet aircraft force a Korean Air Lines passenger jet to land in the Soviet Union after the jet veers into Russian airspace. Two people were killed and several others injured when the jet made a rough landing on a frozen lake about 300 miles south of Murmansk.

On April 22nd, 1978, international reggae superstar Bob Marley headlines the One Love Peace Concert at the National Stadium in Kingston, Jamaica. The lineup included 16 reggae acts (including Marley) with a common goal: to restore peace to the Caribbean island nation, a former British colony then roiling with political strife.

On April 22, 1978, "Saturday Night Live" showcases the worldwide television debut of the Blues Brothers—the not-quite-real, not-quite-fake musical creation of SNL cast members Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi.

Afghanistan President Sardar Mohammed Daoud is overthrown and murdered in a coup led by procommunist rebels. The brutal action marked the beginning of political upheaval in Afghanistan that resulted in intervention by Soviet troops less than two years later.

On May 5, 1978, area residents line up outside a renovated gas station in Burlington, Vermont, for the grand opening of Ben & Jerry’s Homemade. Opened by childhood friends Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the store sells soups, crêpes and pottery, but it is their homemade ice cream, made with locally sourced cream and butterfat and flavorful chunks of nuts, cookies, fruit and candy, that become the main attraction.

On May 9, 1978, the body of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro is found, riddled by bullets, in the back of a car in the center of historic Rome. He was kidnapped by Red Brigade terrorists on March 16 after a bloody shoot-out near his suburban home. The Italian government refused to negotiate with the extreme left-wing group, which, after numerous threats, executed Moro on May 9. He was a five-time prime minister of Italy and considered a front-runner for the presidency of Italy in elections due in December.

On June 25, 1978, activists hoist a vibrant rainbow flag in the midst of the festivities for San Francisco’s Gay and Lesbian Freedom Day parade. According to its creator, Gilbert Baker, the crowd immediately recognized the flag’s significance: “It completely astounded me that people just got it, in an instant like a bolt of lightning—that this was their flag,” he later said. “It belonged to all of us.” This was the rainbow Pride flag, now an ubiquitous symbol of queer pride and liberation.

On July 5, 1978, a Regional Transportation District (RTD) bus stops at the intersection of Colfax Avenue and Broadway in Denver, Colorado. As passengers board, a group of people in wheelchairs position themselves in front of the bus, preventing it from leaving the stop. When a second bus arrives behind it, more people in wheelchairs position themselves behind that bus and refuse to leave, trapping the buses between them. For the next 24 hours, 19 disabled activists known as the “Gang of 19” keep the buses where they are, making a powerful statement about the accessibility of transportation in the city and all over America.

On July 11, 1978, a truck carrying liquid gas crashes into a campsite, crowded with vacationers, in San Carlos de la Rapita, Spain. The resulting explosion killed more than 200 people; many others suffered severe burns.

On July 13, 1978, Ford Motor Company chairman Henry Ford II fires Lee Iacocca as Ford’s president, ending years of tension between the two men.

On July 15, 1978, the “Longest Walk”—a 2,800-mile trek for Native American justice that had started with several hundred marchers in California in California—ends in Washington, D.C., accompanied by thousands of supporters. The intent of the event was to call attention to issues affecting Native Americans, such as a lack of jobs and housing, and legislation before Congress that could dramatically change their rights.

On July 25, 1978, Louise Joy Brown, the world’s first baby to be conceived via in-vitro fertilization (IVF) is born at Oldham and District General Hospital in Manchester, England, to parents Lesley and Peter Brown. The healthy baby was delivered shortly before midnight by caesarean section and weighed in at five pounds, 12 ounces.

On July 28, 1978, National Lampoon’s Animal House, a movie spoof about 1960s college fraternities starring John Belushi, opens in U.S. theaters. Produced with an estimated budget of $3 million, Animal House became a huge, multi-million-dollar box-office hit, spawned a slew of cinematic imitations and became part of pop-culture history with such memorable lines as “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”

On August 10, 1978, three teenage girls die after their 1973 Ford Pinto is rammed from behind by a van and bursts into flames on an Indiana highway. The fatal crash was one of a series of Pinto accidents that caused a national scandal during the 1970s.

The Double Eagle II completes the first transatlantic balloon flight when it lands in a barley field near Paris, 137 hours after lifting off from Presque Isle, Maine. The helium-filled balloon was piloted by Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson and Larry Newman and flew 3,233 miles in the six-day odyssey.

On August 26, 1978, Frankie Valli’s “Grease”—reached the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100. the second chart-topping hit from the album of the same name.

On September 15, 1978, boxer Muhammad Ali defeats Leon Spinks at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans to win the world heavyweight boxing title for the third time in his career, the first fighter ever to do so. Following his victory, Ali retired from boxing, only to make a brief comeback two years later. Ali, who once claimed he could “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,” left the sport permanently in 1981.

At the White House in Washington, D.C., Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin sign the Camp David Accords, laying the groundwork for a permanent peace agreement between Egypt and Israel after three decades of hostilities. The accords were negotiated during 12 days of intensive talks at President Jimmy Carter’s Camp David retreat in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland. The final peace agreement—the first between Israel and one of its Arab neighbors—was signed in March 1979. Sadat and Begin were jointly awarded the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts.

A Pacific Southwest Airlines jet collides in mid-air with a small Cessna over San Diego, killing 144 people on September 25, 1978. The wreckage of the planes falls into a populous neighborhood, doing extensive damage on the ground.

On October 5, 1978, Isaac Bashevis Singer wins the Nobel Prize in Literature. Singer wrote in Yiddish about Jewish life in Poland and the United States, and translations of his work became popular in mainstream America as well as Jewish circles.

On November 11, 1978, a stuntman on the Georgia set of “The Dukes of Hazzard” launches the show’s iconic automobile, a 1969 Dodge Charger named the General Lee, off a makeshift dirt ramp and over a police car. That jump, 16 feet high and 82 feet long (its landing totaled the car), made TV history. Although more than 300 different General Lees appeared in the series, which ran on CBS from 1979 until 1985, this first one was the only one to play a part in every episode: That jump over the squad car ran every week at the end of the show’s opening credits.

On November 18, 1978, Peoples Temple founder Jim Jones leads hundreds of his followers in a mass murder-suicide at their agricultural commune in a remote part of the South American nation of Guyana. Many of Jones’ followers willingly ingested a poison-laced punch while others were forced to do so at gunpoint. The final death toll at Jonestown that day was 909; a third of those who perished were children.

Former Board of Supervisors member Dan White murders Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk at City Hall in San Francisco, California on November 27, 1978.

In an effort to prop up an unpopular pro-Soviet regime in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union signs a “friendship treaty” with the Afghan government agreeing to provide economic and military assistance. The treaty moved the Russians another step closer to their disastrous involvement in the Afghan civil war between the Soviet-supported communist government and the Muslim rebels, the Mujahideen, which officially began in 1979.

On December 11, 1978 half a dozen masked robbers raided the Lufthansa Airlines cargo building at JFK Airport in New York, making off with more than $5 million in cash ($21 million in today's dollars) and almost $1 million in jewelry. To this day, the Lufthansa heist, as it is known, is considered one of the greatest in U.S. history.

In one of the most dramatic announcements of the Cold War, President Jimmy Carter states that as of January 1, 1979, the United States will formally recognize the communist People’s Republic of China (PRC) and sever relations with Taiwan.

On December 22, 1978, John Wayne Gacy confesses to police to killing over two dozen boys and young men and burying their bodies under his suburban Chicago home. In March 1980, Gacy was convicted of 33 sex-related murders, committed between 1972 and 1978, and given the death penalty.