Chronopin: upcoming release dates, events and other important dates

Sally Schmitt opened the restaurant in a stone building in Napa Valley in 1978 and built her menus around local, seasonal produce. Thomas Keller bought it in 1994 and it now holds three Michelin stars.

From 1 January 1979 Washington recognised the People's Republic as the sole legal government of China and withdrew recognition from Taipei, ending thirty years in which the United States had treated the Republic of China on Taiwan as the government of all China.

Four weeks after relations began, Deng Xiaoping stood on the South Lawn for a full arrival ceremony — the first visit to Washington by a leader of Communist China. He went on to charm Congress and the press, and to be photographed in a ten-gallon hat at a Texas rodeo.

Three months after breaking relations with Taipei, Congress wrote the substitute into law: an unofficial relationship run through the American Institute in Taiwan, arms 'of a defensive character', and a declared US capacity to resist any resort to force against Taiwan. It has governed the question ever since.

The World Health Assembly certified that smallpox had been wiped from the earth - the only human disease ever eradicated. The last natural case had been in Somalia in 1977, and the campaign that found it had traced and vaccinated outwards from every case for a decade.

An earthquake at 8:32 a.m. local time dropped the volcano's weakened north face away in the largest subaerial landslide on record, uncorking a lateral blast toward Spirit Lake. Fifty-seven people were killed.

Tokyo Movie Shinsha's Tomorrow's Joe 2 continues the boxing manga adaptation, following a downhearted Joe Yabuki as he wanders away from the gym before an old rival helps pull him back into the ring.

Launched as the William J. DeLancey and later renamed Paul R. Tregurtha, the Great Lakes' longest ship began hauling cargo with its maiden voyage on 10 May 1981.

The CDC's weekly report carried five cases of Pneumocystis pneumonia in previously healthy young men in Los Angeles, two of them already dead. It is the first published account of what became AIDS, four years before the virus behind it was agreed on.

The Daicon III Opening Animation screens at the Nihon SF Taikai convention in Osaka, the first of two self-funded fan short films that a young Hideaki Anno, Hiroyuki Yamaga, and Takami Akai made under the amateur group Daicon Film before founding Gainax.

In September 1982, Volvo Trucks built the first Volvo-branded truck ever assembled in North America, a Volvo F7, at its newly acquired New River Valley plant in Dublin, Virginia. The factory has produced every Volvo truck sold in North America ever since.

The Antonov An-124 Ruslan, still one of the largest cargo aircraft ever built, first flew over Kyiv on 26 December 1982, years before it entered airline service.

The first Spago opened in 1982 on the Sunset Strip and made Wolfgang Puck a name outside kitchens, largely by putting the wood-fired pizza oven where the dining room could see it and topping the pizzas with smoked salmon rather than tomato. The restaurant later moved to Beverly Hills, where it still trades, and the brand grew into a group.

Topcraft's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind releases in Japanese theaters, Hayao Miyazaki's post-apocalyptic adventure adapting his own manga about Princess Nausicaä's struggle to bridge humanity and a poisoned, insect-guarded wilderness.

Studio Ghibli's Castle in the Sky opens in Japanese theaters, Hayao Miyazaki's adventure following orphaned engineer's apprentice Pazu and a girl named Sheeta as they search for the legendary floating city of Laputa.

A limnic eruption released 100,000-300,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from a crater lake in northwestern Cameroon. Heavier than air, the cloud rolled downhill and suffocated everyone and everything within 25 km.

A biker-gang OVA following Eguchi Yousuke, leader of a high-school motorcycle gang who moonlights in the school's handicrafts club, and the misfits who ride with him.

Alain Passard bought the rue de Varenne dining room where he had once cooked as a young chef from its owner Alain Senderens in 1986, and reopened it under his own sign as Arpège - a musical name, from a family of musicians. He later did something close to unthinkable for a three-star French kitchen and took red meat off the menu, rebuilding the cooking around vegetables from his own gardens.

The driverless Docklands Light Railway opens to passengers, giving London's redeveloping docklands a low-cost automated metro built largely on disused rail viaducts.

The direct-to-video Legend of the Galactic Heroes begins release, an epic space-opera OVA chronicling the war between the Galactic Empire and the Free Planets Alliance through rival commanders Reinhard von Lohengramm and Yang Wenli.

Grave of the Fireflies opens in Japanese theaters, a Studio Ghibli war drama following two orphaned siblings, Seita and his young sister Setsuko, struggling to survive in the final months of World War II.

My Neighbor Totoro follows sisters Satsuki and Mei as they settle into a new countryside home and discover Totoro, a gentle forest spirit only children can see.

TMS Entertainment's Soreike! Anpanman, based on Takashi Yanase's picture books, began its decades-long run on Nippon TV, making the bean-bun superhero Japan's defining preschool anime.

Gainax's Gunbuster (Top wo Nerae!), the directorial debut of Hideaki Anno, follows aspiring pilot Noriko Takaya as she trains to crew a giant robot defending Earth from an advancing alien species.

The six-episode OVA Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket begins release, following a boy on the neutral space colony Side 6 whose fascination with the One Year War turns serious once Zeon commandos infiltrate his home searching for a hidden Federation mobile suit program.