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Seattle

• On June 1, the Seattle SuperSonics beat the Washington Bullets in five games to win the city's first (and to date only) NBA Championship.
• Microsoft officially moved its operations to Bellevue, Washington, planting the seed of the regional tech economy.
• Mt. St. Helens began showing increased seismic activity that would lead to the 1980 eruption.
• The Northwest Folklife Festival was firmly established as a major Memorial Day weekend regional gathering.

The United States

• The Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Pennsylvania (March 28) effectively ended new US nuclear-plant orders for a generation.
• The Iran hostage crisis began on November 4 when student militants stormed the US embassy in Tehran; 52 Americans would be held for 444 days.
• Sony released the Walkman, reshaping personal listening.
• ESPN launched on September 7, founding 24-hour cable sports.
• The Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" pushed hip-hop onto mainstream radio.
• Apocalypse Now and Kramer vs. Kramer dominated the year's cinema.

The World

• The Iranian Revolution: Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Tehran in February and remade the Middle East.
• Margaret Thatcher became Britain's first female prime minister in May.
• The Sandinistas overthrew Somoza in Nicaragua.
• China announced its one-child policy.
• Soviet forces crossed into Afghanistan on December 24, beginning a nine-year war that helped bring down the USSR.
• The decade ended on a hinge — the long aftershock of the 1960s giving way to the harder edges of the 1980s.