ARPANET officially switches to the TCP/IP protocol suite, often regarded as the birth of the modern Internet.
A team at the Pasteur Institute including Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier reports the virus later named HIV, the cause of AIDS.
IBM introduces the IBM PC, whose architecture becomes the de facto standard for personal computers for decades.
The World Health Assembly officially declares smallpox eradicated, the first human infectious disease to be wiped out.
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin sign US-brokered accords, leading to the 1979 Egypt–Israel peace treaty.
NASA launches Voyager 1 to study Jupiter and Saturn; it later becomes the first human-made object to reach interstellar space.
Vietnam becomes the 149th member state of the United Nations.