John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John were in love and Garfield was born – but those weren't the only factors that made 1978 a year to remember. A study suggests that global well-being peaked in the late 1970s, and has been slowly falling ever since.
It was led by Ida Kubiszewski of the Australian National University in Canberra, whose team focused on the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), a modified version of gross domestic product (GDP). Whereas GDP only represents monetary wealth, GPI takes into account environmental and social costs – like pollution, crime and inequality.
Read more about Kubiszewski's finding in our in-depth report. Here, we review some of the events that made 1978 special.
SCIENCE
• The first baby conceived by IVF, Louise Brown (pictured below), is born in London. Her mother, Lesley Brown, had been trying to have a child for nine years, but her blocked fallopian tubes made a natural conception impossible.
• Richard Dawkins and John Krebs compare evolution to an arms race for the first time at a Royal Society meeting. Read New Scientist's account on page 919 of our Christmas double issue from that year.
• New Scientist, costing 35 pence, reports the discovery of a moon orbiting Pluto (pictured below), suggesting that Pluto should be reclassified as a "minor planet"
• Robert Wilson (below left) and Arno Penzias (below right) bag the physics Nobel for discovering the cosmic microwave background radiation, the first direct evidence of the big bang
TECHNOLOGY
• The first online forum – the Computerized Bulletin Board System or CBBS – goes online in Chicago. The system relies on a dial-up modem, and was designed when computer programmers Ward Christensen and Randy Suess were house-bound by a blizzard in 1978. One user at a time can post messages
• Sony builds a prototype of the Walkman (pictured below), the first portable stereo. It was designed by engineer Nobutoshi Kihara for Sony's co-chairman Akio Morita, who wanted to listen to operas during his trans-Pacific flights. The much-loved consumer version was launched in 1979.
FILM
• Annie Hall (standing below) beats Star Wars in the race for Best Picture at the Oscars
• Grease (pictured below) is the biggest grossing film, ahead of Superman
MUSIC
• The Bee Gees' Stayin' Alive and Y.M.C.A. by the Village People (pictured below) are two of the year's biggest hits
MILITARY
• US President Jimmy Carter halts production of the neutron bomb. He also legalises brewing beer at home
ADVENTURE
• Ben Abruzzo, Larry Newman and Maxie Anderson complete the first transatlantic balloon flight (pictured below) in 137 hours and 6 minutes
AND FINALLY…
• The comic strip Garfield (who is lounging below) is published for the first time
• Transparent plastic trousers are briefly in vogue
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