- A journey back through time to look at significant news and events reported by the South China Morning Post from this week in history
The double execution of a woman convicted of adultery in Iran, someone stealing a footpath in Australia and China training astronauts for the first time made the headlines 40 years ago this week.
January 6, 1980
● Office rent increases of nearly 100 per cent in one of Central's major commercial buildings, Melbourne Plaza, were set to drive many small tenants out. Commercial rents had become so high in the business district that an increasing number of businessmen were thinking of renting residential flats for their operations. The rent hikes might also result in an exodus of small companies moving to Singapore and the Philippines.
January 7, 1980
● A man in Cape Town was badly injured when his wife drove off to go shopping and towed him from the roof where he had been fixing tiles. As a safety measure the luckless husband had tied a rope around his waist and fastened it to something secure " the bumper of his wife's vehicle.
● A woman convicted of adultery was given a second execution in a hospital morgue in northwest Iran when it was found she had survived a firing squad, Pars news agency reported. The woman was transferred to the morgue after being shot by the squad but several hours later, when she showed signs of life, the local revolutionary court ordered a guard to shoot her again.
January 8, 1980
● A Japanese delegation attending the Consumer Law Seminar in Hong Kong called for a worldwide ban on a chemical found in many drugs used for curing diarrhoea and dysentery. It warned that the chemical, Clioquinol, could cause amnesia, paralysis and blindness.
January 9, 1980
● Chinese vice-premier Deng Xiaoping called on the world, and especially the United States, to form an alliance to oppose Soviet expansionist policies which he said "will never change." He made the appeal at a meeting with US defence secretary Harold Brown in Beijing.
● Hong Kong merchants had been buying up Macau's commemorative silver coins to mark the opening of the Macau-Taipa Bridge in large quantities. It was not for collection purposes, but for smelting because of the surging price of the precious metal. Coin dealers in the enclave said 20-pataca coins, each contained 11.7g of pure silver, had all vanished from circulation several months before.
January 10, 1980
● Sixty-three people were beheaded in Saudi Arabia for their part in the attack on the Grand Mosque in Mecca in November 1979. The government announced that the executions were carried out at dawn in eight cities under a decree issued by King Khalid. The Grand Mosque was seized by armed civilians calling for the overthrow of the House of Saud two months before.
January 11, 1980
● Hong Kong was "well-shaped" to handle the world uncertainties in the 1980s, the acting governor, Sir Jack Cater, said. He attributed the city's stability to the local population by saying: "We are fortunate in having a hardworking, sensible community. Our entrepreneurs and industrialists are flexible."
● The mysterious Carrian Group, which had been openly moving into the city's real estate sector for several months, took Gammon House off Hongkong Land's hands for HK$998 million. The deal between the leading property investment group and Extrawin Ltd, a member of the Carrian network, was completed the day before. Hongkong Land bought Gammon House from Jardine Matheson in December 1978 for HK$715 million.
January 12, 1980
● A 1,000-yard footpath through a new housing development in Perth, Australia, was stolen. Local police said the 3,300 freshly-laid concrete slabs disappeared a week before.
● China was training astronauts in apparent preparations for manned space flights, according to daily Shanghai paper Wenhui Bao. The newspaper said the astronaut trainees had been undertaking simulated flights, centrifugal tests and experiments in impact, shock waves and weightlessness.
Remember A Day looks at significant news and events reported by the Post during this week in history
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