Ex-Congressman Myers, first to be expelled in 119 years
Michael "Ozzie" Myers, U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania, was expelled from the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 376 to 30, becoming the first U.S. Congressman to be expelled since 1861.[6] In 1861, U.S. Congressmen John B. Clark and John W. Reid of Missouri, and Henry C. Burnett of Kentucky, had been expelled by the House in absentia after joining the Confederate Army.[7] The move came after surveillance showed him accepting a $50,000 bribe in the Abscam operation. The videotape also showed Myers telling the offerer of the bribe, "Money talks and bullshit walks!".
Former Foreign Minister Arnaldo Forlani agreed to attempt to form a new coalition government as the new Prime Minister of Italy, after a meeting with President Sandro Pertini.[8]
Roberto Viola, the former Argentine Army commander, was selected as the new President of Argentina by the South American nation's ruling three-member military junta.[9]
A terrorist bomb injured 50 people, four fatally, in a Jewish synagogue in Paris, shortly after the Sabbath started at sunset. Outrage over the attack and against other acts of anti-Semitism brought more than 100,000 protest marchers in Paris four days later.[10]
The Housing Act 1980 was given royal assent, wherein the five million English and Welsh residents of public housing council houses were eligible to purchase their homes under a "Right to Buy" program. Families that had rented a government-built house or a flat (an apartment) for at least three years were eligible to buy the homes, many of which had been defective, at a discount of at least one-third of fair market value for a house and 44% for a flat. The discount for 20-year tenants was 50 percent.
Died: Gustav Wagner, 69, Austrian-born Nazi German officer and deputy commander of the Sobibor extermination camp, committed suicide in Brazil, two years after efforts began to have him extradited.