April 23, 1979

● The ageing American Skylab space station, which had been slowly sinking back towards Earth, would begin its final plunge between June 15 and 22 that year, according to a Johnson Space Centre engineer. Charles Harlan, who was the flight director that mapped the 80-tonne space station’s progress, said that when the 118-feet Skylab was within 24 hours of entering the atmosphere, JSC scientists would be able to predict where its debris would land.

● British Airways and Chinese aviation authorities held talks on the possibility of establishing air services between London and Beijing. A senior BA official said the airline’s service to Beijing was likely to be routed through Hong Kong.

April 24, 1979

● Two American film producers said they had offered the role of a kidnapped US president to former leader Richard Nixon. In the script, which the producers said had been sent to Nixon, the character would be kidnapped from a Beijing toilet and replaced by a genetically engineered double. The Hong Kong-based production company, CIC Productions, said Nixon would have 23 scenes in their suspense-action film, Falcon’s Ultimatum.

● A couple had the shock of their lives when their kitchen floor gave way and they found themselves in a neighbour’s kitchen a floor below. The couple were cooking when their kitchen, which was an extension to a three-storey pre-war building in Sai Ying Pun, collapsed. They suffered back and leg injuries.

April 25, 1979

● Chinese authorities reduced the outflow of legal immigrants to Hong Kong. About 6,900 arrivals had crossed the border so far that month, compared with 10,300 a month before. One measure taken by the Chinese government to slow numbers was the introduction of one-year exit permits to some applicants.

April 26, 1979

● Four siblings who set up a horse manure and gopher-killing business two years earlier had made so much money that they decided to buy a coastal village in northern California and turn it into a recreation centre. The siblings, aged between 11 and 15, set up the firm to market horse manure from stables owned by their father. Their success story was publicised across national television networks and newspapers, and even Hollywood courted them with an offer to appear on the silver screen.

● An abandoned railway tunnel in Manhattan was suspected to be an organised crime network’s private graveyard for its victims. The New York Daily News said police thought as many as 60 dismembered victims of an Irish-American gang, the Westies, might be buried in the tunnel. The paper claimed dismemberment was a trademark of the Westies, as one of them was trained as a butcher.

Virginity tests, Chateau Piddle wine and refugee ‘profiteering’: past headlines

April 27, 1979

● Local businessmen might soon be able to pick up a telephone and call factories on the other side of the border directly. The Hongkong Telephone Co. was studying the possibility of direct telephone communication between the city and factories in Shenzhen.

● An 83-year-old Dutch woman recently learned that she had been pregnant for half a century without knowing it. Doctors who operated on her for stomach pains removed a calcified fetus, which should have developed into a baby born sometime in the 1920s. The fetus had only grown to about four months of age.

April 28, 1979

● Doctors in Leeds fought to save the life of a baby girl after an abortion. They performed the abortion on the 23-week-old fetus after the mother came into contact with a carrier of German measles, which could cause blindness and brain damage in unborn babies. Medical staff subsequently decided to save the baby when it was found to be breathing, even after the termination had been carried out.

Remember A Day looks at significant news and events reported by the Post during this week in history