page_title: December 1980
section_title: December 4, 1980 (Thursday)
hierarchical_section_title: December 1980 / December 4, 1980 (Thursday)
context_page_description: The following events happened in December 1980:
context_section_description: Portugal's Prime Minister Francisco de Sá Carneiro was killed in a plane crash along with Defense Minister Adelino Amaro da Costa and five other people.   Sá Carneiro had on his way to Oporto to campaign for General Antonio Soares Carneiro, three days before the presidential election in which President Antonio Ramalho Eanes was running for re-election.  The twin engine Cessna 421 crashed into a house in Camarate shortly after taking off from Portela Airport in Lisbon .  Initially ruled to be an accident, the crash would later become the subject of several murder investigations and, the statute of limitations having expired on criminal charges in 2005, several people have come forward saying that they were part of a conspiracy to assassinate Sá Carneiro and da Costa by planting a bomb on the aircraft.
  A fire at a hotel in Harrison, New York killed 13 of the top executives of Arrow Electronics Corporation and 11 executives of the Nestlé USA, Inc., the American subsidiary of the Swiss-based conglomerate Nestlé SA. The blaze broke out on the third floor of the Stouffer's Inn, where several conference rooms were hosting meetings.   Seven victims were found in a walk-in closet that they had confused for a fire exit during their escape, and three others were located at a fire exit that had been locked with a deadbolt.  Although the guest bedrooms had sprinkler systems, the same feature had not been installed in the conference rooms.
  In the Gang of Four trial in Beijing, the widow of the late Chairman Mao Zedong, Jiang Qing, confessed on the witness stand that she had ordered the 1968 persecution of China's head of state Liu Shaoqi during the Cultural Revolution.    Liu had been expelled from the Chinese Communist Party and was imprisoned and tortured, before dying of pneumonia the following year.  Liu's widow, Wang Guangmei, had spent more than 10 years in solitary confinement until being released after the death of Mao.
  Speakers of the Xhosa language in South Africa voted in favor of making their area the semi-independent Republic of Ciskei, the fourth of South Africa's Bantustans or "homelands".    With a capital at Kingwilliamstown, Ciskei would have a population of two million people, of which only 600,000 lived within its boundaries.  The 1.4 million non-white designated people who lived and worked in the "white areas" outside of Ciskei were declared no longer eligible for South African citizenship, but would still be entitled to the limited residential and employment rights that had been set aside by the South African government for non-whites classified as black or as mix-race coloured.   The nominally independent nation would exist until April 27, 1994, and then re-incorporated into South Africa as apartheid gave way to majority rule.  Ciskei and the other Xhosa-speaking Bantustan, Transkei, are now part of the Eastern Cape Province.
  One of the most popular films of 1981, Superman II, was first shown in theaters as it premiered in Australia. Sydney Morning Herald critic Meaghan Morris recommended that viewers see the film "in a hurry before some insensitive soul tells you all and spoils the surprises", and praised it for allowing Superman to "come to terms with his sexuality" and for its "series of hilarious one-liners" to help make the adventure saga "one of the funniest films of the year".   With Christopher Reeve reprising his dual role as Clark Kent and Superman, the film was released in the UK four months later on April 9, and in the United States on June 19, 1981. 
  In the small town of Saxonburg, Pennsylvania, police chief Gregory B. Adams was beaten and then shot to death by Donald Eugene Webb after being pulled over in a parking lot.   The killing was only the second in the history of Saxonburg and the first there since 1942.  Webb was then placed on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List, remaining there for more than 25 years, but was never apprehended.  In 2017, Webb's remains were found in Dartmouth, New Hampshire at the home of his wife, who had kept him hidden until he died of a stroke on December 30, 1999.  Before
caption: the Ciskei flag