1976: Information and Much More from Answers.com
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1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980
China's Premier Zhou Enlai (Chou en-Lai) dies of cancer at Beijing (Peking) January 8 at age 77 and is succeeded by his former minister of public security Hua Guofeng, 54. Dogmatic Maoists revile Zhou and take away wreaths honoring him, Beijing has a riot April 5 as 100,000 people fill the main square of Tienanmen to join or watch a public protest against those who neglect the memory of Premier Zhou. Chairman Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) dies of Parkinson's disease at Beijing September 10 at age 82. His widow, Jiang Qing, is imprisoned early in October along with other "radicals" in her "Gang of Four" (Shanghai boss Zhang Chunqiao, 59; propagandist Yao Wenyuan, 45; and agitator Wang Hongwen, 41) for having undermined the Party, government, and economy. Shanghai crowds attack effigies of Jiang Qing.
South Korean opposition leaders who include Kim Dae-jung issue an Independence Day Declaration for Democratization March 1, touching off pro-democracy demonstrations in many parts of the country (see 1973). Kim will be sentenced to 5 years' imprisonment and remain behind bars until 1978, when he will be placed once again under house arrest (see 1979).
Cambodia's Prince Norodom Sihanouk resigns April 2, and Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot becomes prime minister (see 1975; 1978).
The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is officially proclaimed July 2 with its capital at Hanoi (see 1975). Ton Duc Thang, now 88, is president of the republic, Le Dung (Le Duan) becomes secretary-general of the Communist Party, and Saigon is renamed Ho Chi Minh City (see 1978).
Thailand's military regains power in October with support from the king after 2 years of constitutional government (see 1973). Citing potential dangers from the new communist regimes in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, Thai military leaders scrap the constitution that was promulgated last year, abolish the parliament, and install an extreme right-wing government (see 1977).
A UN Security Council resolution calls for an independent Palestinian state and for total Israeli withdrawal from Arab territories occupied since 1967. The United States vetoes the resolution January 27; another U.S. veto February 25 blocks a resolution deploring Israeli policies in Jerusalem and in occupied Arab lands.
Civil war continues in Lebanon and threatens to involve Libya, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the world powers. Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi supplies the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) with arms and money. Syria's president Hafez al-Assad intervenes April 9 under an Arab League mandate to oppose the PLO's Yasir Arafat, and Syrian troops will occupy much of Lebanon for more than 25 years. Israeli military commander Lieut. Gen. David Eleazar dies of a heart attack at Tel Aviv April 15 at age 50. U.S. Ambassador Francis E. Meloy Jr., 59, is assassinated at Beirut June 17 and Washington advises all Americans to leave Lebanon. Lebanon's 19-month civil war ends in mid-November with the Syrian army in control; 35,000 have been killed, the once-beautiful city of Beirut is in ruins, and unrest continues (see 1978).
Pro-Palestinian terrorists hijack a Paris-bound Air France A-300 Airbus over Greece June 27 and force its pilot to land at Bengazi, Libya; Uganda's dictator Idi Amin invites the hijackers of Flight 139 to land at Entebbe Airport outside Kampala, where they demand the release of 53 prisoners being held in Israel, Kenya, and Europe (see Uganda, 1972; 1979). They release 47 women, children, and sick people June 29, release another 100 July 1, but hold 98 passengers and 12 crew members hostage. Airborne Israeli commandos fly 2,500 miles to Kampala, storm the plane at Entebbe early on the morning of July 4, rescue almost all the hostages, kill the 10 hijackers along with perhaps 20 Ugandan soldiers, and escape with only two casualties, including Soviet emigrée Ida Borowlcz, 56, who was shot dead by an Arab gunman while lying on the floor in the airport.
Israel signs an accord with Egypt October 10, agreeing to withdraw from 1,900 square miles of Sinai territory within 5 months; agitation continues over Israeli occupation of other Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian lands.
Mozambique closes her borders with Rhodesia March 3, saying that a state of war exists (see 1974). Rhodesia's prime minister Ian D. Smith orders scores of raids on guerrilla camps in Mozambique, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger says at Lusaka, Zambia, April 27 that Rhodesia must achieve black majority rule within 2 years, and he announces a stiffening of U.S. economic and political sanctions against Rhodesia.
Marxist intellectual Robert Mugabe, 52, joins forces with Joshua Nkomo in a Patriotic Front, Mugabe basing his operations in Mozambique and relying on China for arms while Nkomo's smaller force receives better weapons from Moscow. Ian Smith agrees September 24 to accept a plan for black rule in Rhodesia based on a temporary biracial government with majority rule by 1978 (see 1978).
Spain withdraws from Spanish Sahara in February. Morocco annexes two-thirds of the phosphate-rich country April 14, Mauritania has tried to annex the other one-third, but a guerrilla group has proclaimed the region independent February 27 and has obtained Algerian support.
Transkei gains nominal independence from South Africa October 26. The Organization of African States and a UN Special Committee call the new state a sham since South Africa has declared 1.3 million Xhosa tribespeople Transkei citizens and deprived them of South African citizenship.
Britain's prime minister Harold Wilson resigns March 16 amidst strained relations with the nation's trade unions. Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st viscount of Alamein, dies at Islington March 24 at age 88. Foreign Secretary (Leonard) James Callaghan, 64, heads a new Labour ministry beginning April 5, but he holds power only through an uneasy alliance with the Liberal Democratic Party and will hold office only until 1979.
Violence continues in Ulster as it has since 1969 (see 1973). The British ambassador Christopher T. E. Ewart Biggs and his aide are killed July 22 by a land mine beneath their car. A British soldier in Belfast shoots in the head an Irish Republican Army getaway car driver August 10, the car jumps a curb and crushes three small children to death, critically injuring their mother. The woman's sister Mairéad Corrigan, 32, a secretary, goes on TV a few hours later to denounce the IRA, becoming the first Catholic woman in Ulster who has dared challenge the gunmen. She meets Betty Williams, 33, who lives a few blocks from the scene of the tragedy and has also witnessed it; the two begin organizing the People's Peace Movement, and within 2 weeks they have some 30,000 Protestant and Catholic women behind them demanding the end to the violence in Northern Ireland. Corrigan and Williams will receive a Nobel Peace Prize next year.
Ulrike Meinhof hangs herself in her cell at Stuttgart's Stammheim Prison May 9 at age 42 after nearly 44 months in prison as West Germany's Baader-Meinhof gang trial continues (see 1975). Meinhof's burial in West Berlin a week later attracts a crowd of 4,000, many of them sympathizers wearing masks or with their faces painted white (see 1977).
Italy's prime minister Aldo Moro forms his fifth Christian Democratic Party-led coalition government February 12, it collapses April 30, former prime minister Giulio Andreotti forms his third government July 29, but politician Bettino Craxi, 42, becomes leader of the Socialist Party and reorganizes it, crushing its left wing, routing his rivals, and adopting a rose for the party symbol in place of the hammer and sickle (see 1983).
Socialists win Portugal's parliamentary elections, enabling their Lisbon-born leader Marío (Alberto Nobre Lopes) Soares, 51, to form a minority government (see 1975). Gen. António Ramalho Eanes is elected president in June, succeeding Gen. Francisco da Costa Gomes, whose drift from the left to the center he has endorsed.
Bernhard of the Netherlands resigns all his military and political posts August 26 after accusations that he was involved in a Lockheed bribery scandal.
Swedish voters end 44 years of socialist rule September 19. A conservative coalition headed by sheep-raiser Thorbjorn Falldin, 50, rallies the public against the Social Democratic Party's nuclear power program and against a plan that would give labor unions control of all business within 20 years. Author Astrid Lindgren of Pippi Longstocking fame has published a newspaper satire suggesting that her income is being taxed at the rate of 102 percent and some credit her with the defeat of the ruling party.
The Seychelles in the Indian Ocean gain independence June 29 after 166 years of British colonial rule.
Former Japanese naval air commander Mitsuo Fuchida dies at Kashiwara May 30 at age 73; former Imperial Navy admiral Shigetaro Shimada at Tokyo June 7 at age 92.
Japanese authorities arrest former prime minister Kakuei Tanaka July 26 on charges that he accepted a $1.6 million bribe from Lockheed Aircraft Corp. (see 1974). A U.S. Senate subcommittee on multinational corporations disclosed February 4 that Lockheed paid $7 million to a Japanese rightist with both political influence and underworld connections. Tanaka is indicted August 16 along with former officers of the Marubeni Trading Corp. Japan's Liberal-Democratic Party loses its parliamentary majority in the December elections, but although Tanaka will receive a jail sentence he will use appeals and claims of ill health to avoid serving time and will continue to exercise behind-the-scenes power for another decade.
Britain grants the Caribbean island of Anguilla a constitution of its own February 10 (see 1971). Anguilla will formally sever her 98-year-old ties with Saint Kitts and Nevis in 1980.
Argentina has a bloodless coup March 24 after months of terrorist attacks, robberies, and murders (see 1974). Public officials and legislators have left office, scoffing openly at Juan Perón's widow and her ministers. A military junta headed by Lt. Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla arrests Isabelita Perón and declares martial law. She will be imprisoned for 5 years on charges of having abused public property and will settle in Madrid after her release. The new regime promises economic reconstruction, national unity, and eventual return to constitutional processes, but right-wing elements of the army embark on a wave of terrorism, taking dissenters into custody and killing thousands who will simply disappear (they will be called desaparecidos—the disappeared ones) (see 1977).
Mexican voters elect former secretary of finance José López Portillo, 56, president July 4. Lame-duck president Luis Echeverria Alvarez uses the last 5 months of his presidency to stabilize the nation's economy and bolster his populist image, thereby securing a power base among Mexico's peons although many hate him as the man who ordered the October 1968 massacre. His hand-picked successor is tall, handsome, and outgoing, but he has overseen the fumbling economic policy that has led to inflation, a devaluation of the peso, loss of jobs, and a flight of capital, he has few supporters in the ruling PRI, and in his inaugural address December 1 he distances himself from Echeverria.
Uruguay's military junta overthrows President Juan Maria Bordaberry in September as leftist guerrillas (los Tupamaros) battle government authorities (see 1973). Lawyer and legal scholar Aparicio Méndez, 72, is installed as president and immediately issues a decree depriving all politicians who took part in the 1966 and 1971 general elections of their political rights for 15 years (the decree affects thousands of people). The first non-elected president of Uruguay in this century, Méndez will remain in office until September 1981, despite accusations that he has illegally detained and tortured political prisoners (see 1980).
Former Brazilian president Juscelino Kubitschek dies near Resende August 22 at age 73; former Brazilian president João Goulart of a heart attack in exile at Mercedes, Argentina December 6 at age 58.
President Ford appoints a successor January 30 to former CIA director William E. Colby, who was dismissed late last year: former Texas oilman George H. W. Bush will head the agency until January of next year. A 661-page report signed by nine of the 11-member Senate committee headed by Frank Church concludes that U.S. intelligence operations were often without merit and initiated without proper authorization. Presidents have applied pressure to have the CIA and National Security Agency produce estimates that would support their policies, and the agency has been guilty of illegal and unethical activities (see 1977).
California's governor Ronald Reagan campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination, denouncing the Ford administration's signing of last year's Helsinki accord because it put "America's stamp of approval on Russia's enslavement of the captive nations," giving away "the freedom of millions of people—freedom that was not ours to give." Secretary of State Henry Kissinger calls Reagan "trigger-happy," and the Republicans nominate President Ford. The Supreme Court has ruled January 31 that parts of the 1974 Election Reform Act were unconstitutional, handing down decisions in several landmark cases, notably Buckley v. Valeo, which declared mandatory limitations on campaign spending to be limitations on free speech (the rulings will fuel an explosion in the growth of contributions from special interests and enhance the advantage that incumbents enjoy over underfunded challengers). Former postmaster general and Democratic Party leader James A. Farley has died at New York June 9 at age 88.
Democrats nominate former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter in their convention at New York's Madison Square Garden. Now 52, James Earl Carter Jr. is a Naval Academy graduate. He campaigns with a "born again" Christian religious fervor, capitalizes on the widespread distrust of Republicans in the wake of the Watergate affair, and wins widespread black support. Carter and Ford face off September 23 before a live audience at Philadelphia's Walnut Street Theater in the first televised presidential debates since 1960 and Ford makes the mistake of saying, "I don't believe the [Yugoslavians, Romanians, or] Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union." Carter wins the presidential election with 297 electoral votes to 240 for President Ford; he receives 51 percent of the popular vote to Ford's 48 percent and will be the first Southerner to hold the presidency since Zachary Taylor. Carter's wife, Rosalynn (née Smith), 46, has taken an active role in the campaign and will be a participant in the new administration.
Congresswoman Bella Abzug (D. N.Y.) gives up her seat to seek her party's nomination for the U.S. Senate but narrowly loses to onetime Harvard professor Daniel Patrick Moynihan, now 49, who will hold office until 2000.
Chicago's mayor Richard Daley dies of a heart attack December 20 at age 74, having dominated Illinois politics for more than 2 decades.
Former UN Human Rights Commission president (and chief author of the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights of Man) René Cassin dies at Paris February 20 at age 88.
China's new leadership releases more than 100,000 political prisoners.
India's Supreme Court upholds the right of Prime Minister Ghandi's government to imprison political opponents without legal hearings. The court hands down a 34 to 1 ruling April 29 amidst charges that political prisoners are being tortured.
Argentina's new military government suppresses dissent with a massive program of "disappearances." A group of armed men enter the Buenos Aires home of former Ministry of Justice lawyer Emilio Fermin Mignone, 54, at 5 o'clock on a May morning, show army identification, and arrest Mignone's daughter Monica, 24. He tells her to go along with them and says he will seek her release in court, but he will never see her again. Despite writs of habeas corpus, he and his wife, Angélica, can discover nothing about her whereabouts, the Church is of no help, and Mignone will become a leader of the Permanent Assembly of Human Rights, an umbrella organization formed shortly before the March coup. Mignone founds the Center for Legal and Social Studies, whose employees will compile records on those missing and tortured, filing suits to determine accountablity. His wife will help to found the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo; it will hold vigils near the Presidential Palace, holding up posters bearing the names of the disappeared (see 1981).
Former Chilean ambassador to the United States Orlando Letelier, 44, dies in a car-bomb blast at Washington, D.C., September 21 along with researcher Ronni Moffitt, 25. Letelier has been an outspoken critic of Chile's president Augusto Pinochet, who overthrew President Allende in 1973, and of the Chilean secret police, who have "disappeared" or murdered thousands of other critics. U.S. State Department officials in Chile have been protesting the Pinochet regime's record of killing and torture since last year.
The Soweto township 10 miles southwest of Johannesburg explodes in racial violence June 16 as 10,000 students protest the teaching of the Afrikaans language and go on a rampage. Riot squads restore order in 11 townships but only after 176 people (including two whites) have been killed, 1,139 (including 22 police officers) injured. The language requirement is revoked July 6. Winnie Mandela has been arrested and rearrested many times since 1969 for breaking her banning order; she is relocated to the outskirts of the Orange Free State town of Brandford and forced to live under primitive conditions but will be back in court within 2 years for breaking her ban but will be given a suspended sentence (see 1978; 1986).
The All-Japan Buraku Liberation Movement (Zenkoku Buraku Kaihō Undō) is organized to supplement the work of two existing groups aimed at removing discrimination against Japan's "untouchables" (see 1960).
An International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women opens March 8 at the Palais des Congrès, Brussels. Delegates include Egyptian physician-novelist Nawal el-Saadawi, 45, whose writings have addressed the social and political factors that oppress women (she has taken a radical view of sexual taboos in Arab society; see 1981).
Asian Women in Solidarity is founded by Kyoto-born journalist and feminist Yayori Matsui, 42, of Asahi Shimbun, who has worked out of Singapore. The grass-roots organization campaigns against the "sex tourism" that has exploited young Asian women and will lead to the establishment at Tokyo in 1985 of the Asia-Japan Women's Resource Center (see Violence Against Women in War, 1998).
Portugal grants women the right to vote on the same basis as men (see Spain, 1931; Angola, 1975).
President-elect Carter appoints New York City's Human Rights Commission head Eleanor Holmes Norton, 39, to head the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; she becomes the EEOC's first woman chair.
Boston Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey dies at Boston July 9 at age 73, leaving 15,000 acres of wildlife preserve to the state of South Carolina with a $10 million trust fund to maintain it.
The unmanned U.S. space vehicle Viking 1 lands on Mars July 20 and transmits the first pictures from the planet's surface; Viking 2 arrives on Mars in September.
Blacks and other minorities are entitled to retroactive job security, the U.S. Supreme Court rules March 24.
The 140,000-member Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA) merges with the 360,000-member Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America to form the ACTWU and launches the most intensive boycott ever undertaken by organized labor (see 1974); it begins a massive organizing drive at J. P. Stevens plants, 79 of them in the South.
Half of all British mothers are now in the nation's workforce, up from 10 percent in 1900.
Vietnamese merchants resist the economic policies of the new Socialist Republic; many of them are ethnic Chinese in the newly renamed Ho Chi Minh City, and they avoid cooperating with the government's programs, especially assignment to "new economic zones" in the countryside (see politics, 1978).
South Korea introduces state-led economic policies and the government asks Daewoo Industrial Group founder Kim Woo Choong, now 40, to take over a debt-ridden heavy-industry company (see Daewoo, 1967). The company will show a profit within a year, Kim will take over a shipyard company in 1978, a home-appliance company in 1983, and Daewoo will grow to manufacture ships, motorcars, and television sets, erecting buildings, managing hotels, and selling securities
Mexico devalues the peso August 31, allowing it to float after being pegged for 22 years at 12.5 to the U.S. dollar. By week's end, the peso has fallen to more than 20 per dollar. Thousands of U.S. and other foreign investors, attracted by interest rates of up to 12 percent, have bought more than $1 billion worth of fixed-interest peso bonds and sustain losses. Mexico had a $3.7 billion trade deficit in 1975, her foreign debt is $18 billion, her inflation rate is 45 percent. Devaluation quadruples prices of goods imported from the United States. Mexican labor unions call off a nationwide strike set for September 24 and accept a 23 percent emergency wage increase to compensate for inflationary increases caused by devaluation. They warn that they will make new wage demands unless prices are controlled; 18 international banks meet at New York October 1 to arrange an $800 million Eurodollar loan to help Mexico's economic development. Inflation will be down to a 20 percent rate by mid-1977.
Federal Trade Commission figures show that the 451 largest U.S. companies control 70 percent of the nation's manufacturing assets, up from about 50 percent in 1960, and earn 72 percent of the profits, up from 59 percent.
Industrialist Howard Hughes Jr. dies of a stroke aboard a chartered plane en route to Houston April 5 at age 70, leaving a fortune of $2 billion but no valid will; financier Floyd Odlum dies at Indio, Calif., June 17 at age 84.
The New York Stock Exchange has a record 44.5-million-share day February 20 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average peaks at 1014.79 September 21, short of the 1051.70 high reached January 11, 1973, but a high that will not be seen again for 6 years. The Dow closes December 31 at 1004.65, up from 852.41 at the end of 1975, having gained nearly 18 percent for the year, most of the rise coming in a big January spurt with volume averaging 40 million shares per day. Daily volume for the year averages 21 million.
Venezuela nationalizes 21 oil companies, most of them subsidiaries of U.S. companies. President Carlos Andrés offers $1.2 billion in compensation, and although production declines by 2.2 percent the revenues from nation's oil wells are $9.9 billion.
Oil baron Jean Paul Getty dies at his Sutton Place, Surrey, home June 6 at age 83, leaving an estate valued at more than $1 billion (see art, 1997).
Four new U.S. nuclear power reactors begin commercial production of electricity.
Regularly scheduled Air France and British Airways commercial supersonic Concorde flights begin January 21 between Paris and Rio and London and Bahrain, respectively. Both airlines begin Concorde service to Washington, D.C., May 24, but the cost of developing and building the supersonic jet has been astronomical, it uses 20 percent more fuel than a conventional jet, its payload is much smaller, it creates a sonic boom that shatters windows, it can only be flown over water, and it will never produce a profit (see crash, 2000).
Pan Am begins nonstop New York-Tokyo service April 26 using Boeing 747s.
A chartered 707 hits a mountain near Agadir, Morocco, August 3, killing 188; a British Airways Trident collides with a Yugoslav DC-9 in flight near Zagreb September 10, killing 176 in history's worst mid-air collision; a bomb explodes aboard a Cuban DC-8 near Barbados October 6 and the plane crashes, killing 73; an Indian Caravelle jet crashes after takeoff from Bombay October 12, killing 95; a Bolivian 707 cargo jet crashes October 13, killing the crew of three plus 97, mostly children, on the ground at Santa Cruz, Bolivia; an Egyptair 707 explodes and crashes at Bangkok December 25, killing 81, including many on the ground; an Aeroflot TU-104 crashes at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport December 28, killing 72.
Aviation pioneer Clarence D. Chamberlin dies at Shelton, Conn., October 30 at age 83.
A $6.4 billion Railroad Revitalization and Reform Act signed into law by President Ford February 5 is followed March 30 by a $2.14 billion measure designed to improve rail service on the Boston-New York-Washington, D.C. line.
Consolidated Rail Corp. (Conrail) begins operations May 1 with 88,000 freight workers as the U.S. federal government tries to maintain service on lines served by the now bankrupt Penn Central, Ann Arbor, Boston & Maine, Central of New Jersey, Erie Lackawanna (bankrupt since 1972), Lehigh and Hudson Valley, and Reading. Railroads carry less than 37 percent of U.S. freight. Until 1981 Conrail will carry New York area commuters in addition to freight (see 1997).
Washington, D.C., inaugurates its $5 billion Metro subway March 27 with a 4.6-mile line that will grow to have 75 miles by next year, reaching the city's Maryland and Virginia suburbs. Chicago architect Harry Weese, now 60, has worked in partnership with the system's engineers to design subterranean stations with soaring vaulted ceilings of coffered concrete, unencumbered by columns. Fares vary according to distance traveled, the stations will be kept free of graffiti, and the system will be extended to about 100 miles.
Brussels opens its first subway September 20.
A Cadillac convertible rolls off the assembly line at Detroit April 21; it will be the last production model U.S. convertible for more than 5 years (see 1965).
The First Altair Computer Conference opens at Albuquerque, N.M., to promote the Altair 8800 introduced last year. Priced at $379 in its basic version, it requires extra memory boards and other add-ons if it is to be used for anything useful or entertaining, the add-ons may double its price, and its open architecture allows others to make innovations of their own (it also invites competition) (see 1977).
Microsoft Corp. is founded at Albuquerque by computer whiz Bill Gates and his friend Paul Allen with the stated aim of creating a software business separate from any hardware company (see 1975; 1977).
Apple Computer Co. is founded April 1 in a California garage to produce personal computers. Stephen G. Wozniak, 25, and Steven P. Jobs, 21, are college dropouts who have spent 6 months designing the crude prototype for Apple I, using ideas, including the mouse, picked up from visits to Xerox Corp. technologists at their Palo Alto Research Center (Xerox Parc). Jobs was permitted to audit Stanford physics classes while still in high school, he has been experimenting with computer circuits for years, his father has told him to produce something that could be sold and do it within 30 days or get a job, and he has persuaded Wozniak that they could make the simple computer (essentially some microchips screwed to a piece of plywood) for $20 and sell it for $40. Jobs has raised $1,500 with help from Apple cofounder Armas Clifford "Mike" Markkula Jr., 33, he and Wozniak have agreed to pay the Stanford Research Institute $45,000 for a lifetime license to the mouse technology, and Wozniak uses the 4,000-transistor MOS Technology 6502 microchip as the basis for Apple II, which is marketed in a wooden cabinet (see 1977).
The first floppy-disk drive for small computers is shipped in September by Shugart Associates (see 1971; Seagate Technology, 1979).
The 8,500-transistor Zilog Z80 is introduced by the California company whose eight-bit microchip will dominate small computers for the rest of the decade (see 1974).
Guidelines issued June 23 by the National Institutes of Health end a voluntary moratorium on recombinant DNA research in effect since 1974 but ban certain forms of genetic experimentation and tightly regulated others lest they create virulent new organisms that may take a deadly toll. The NIH wants to prevent transfer of drug-resistant properties to dangerous bacteria and release of synthetic genetic material. The Cambridge, Mass., City Council votes July 7 to place a 3-month moratorium on recombinant DNA research at Harvard, whose officers have approved plans for a genetics research laboratory to explore possible cures for cancer, production of rare hormones, and self-fertilizing plants that would increase world food production.
MIT researcher Har Gobind Khorana reports August 28 that his team has successfully constructed a bacterial gene, complete with regulatory mechanisms, and has implanted it in a living cell, where it has functioned normally (see 1966). Defying efforts by the National Academy of Sciences to ban genetic manipulation of e. coli (see 1974), they have produced a tyrosine transfer RNA gene from Escherichia coli bacterium nucleotides (the four basic chemicals of the genetic code), a breakthrough in genetic engineering.
The Selfish Gene by Nairobi-born Oxford zoologist (Clinton) Richard Dawkins, 35, states that natural, Darwinian selection took place not only on the level of the species or the individual but also among genes that used the bodies of living things to increase chances of their own survival. Dawkins debunks illusions about social biology.
The International Council of Scientific Unions announces October 14 that it has formed a nongovernmental Committee of Genetic Experimentation to produce uniform regulations for recombinant DNA research.
Genentech is founded by University of California, San Francisco, biochemist Herbert W. Boyer, 40, and venture capitalist Robert Swanson, 28 (an MIT-trained chemist), whose first commercial gene-splicing product is somatostatin, a brain protein.
Theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg dies at Munich February 1 at age 74; Nobel biochemist Jacques Monod at Cannes May 31 at age 66; Nobel chemist Lars Onsager at Coral Gables, Fla., October 5 at age 72.
Zaire has an outbreak of what is diagnosed as Ebola virus, one of a family of viruses that produces high fever and severe bleeding: nearly 600 people are infected, and 90 percent of them die in the first known attack of the deadly virus (see 1995; Sudan, 1979).
A "swine flu" epidemic threatens the United States, President Ford warns March 24, and he orders a nationwide inoculation program lest there be a repeat of the influenza epidemic that killed half a million Americans in 1918. Army recruit David Lewis, 19, of Ashley Falls, Mass., has died at Fort Dix, N.J., February 6, four other soldiers have been hospitalized, and although there have been no more deaths the Centers for Disease Control has advised the White House to undertake the mass inoculation effort as a precaution. Insurance companies refuse to provide coverage to vaccine manufacturers, the government agrees to assume liability for claims in the event of adverse effects, Congress appropriates $135 million August 12, more than 4 million people per week are receiving the shots by late October, more than 6 million by mid-November, but the program is suspended December 16 following reports from more than 10 states that some of those inoculated have developed the rare paralytic affliction Guillain-Barre syndrome. Some 48 million Americans have received shots, but only six cases of swine flu are recorded versus 535 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome, 25 of them fatal. Hundreds of lawsuits are filed against the government.
Neurosurgeon Wilder G. Penfield dies of abdominal cancer at Montreal April 5 at age 85.
The FDA approves use of Inderal, a beta-blocker effective in treating high blood pressure.
The Medical Device Amendments to the 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act enacted by Congress May 28 give the FDA authority to regulate three classes of such devices and bar sale of any that are not proved safe and effective.
Members of the American Legion gathered in July at Philadelphia's 72-year-old Bellevue-Stratford Hotel for the bicentennial (and the Legion's annual meeting) come down with a mysterious respiratory ailment that will come to be known as "Legionnaire's disease." Centers for Disease Control investigators focus on air conditioners at the hotel, they will isolate the bacterium responsible early next year, it will prove to be a rare form of pneumonia, Legionnaire's disease will eventually kill 34 of the 221 veterans affected, and federal agencies worldwide will require stringent cleaning and hygienic measures for large-scale air-conditioning systems and cooling towers.
Asia is free of smallpox for the first time in history, the World Health Organization reports November 13 (see 1972; 1977).
The California division of the American Cancer Society persuades nearly 1 million of the state's 5 million smokers to quit for 24 hours November 18. Randolph, Mass., anti-smoking activist Arthur P. Mullaney asked his neighbors 5 years ago to give up cigarettes for 1 day and donate to a high-school scholarship fund the money they would have spent on smokes (see Great American Smokeout, 1977).
Right-wing preacher Gerald L. K. Smith dies of pneumonia at Glendale, Calif., April 15 at age 78.
Bavarian student Anneliese Michel dies of starvation July 1 at age 23 after months of ritual by "exorcists" Wilhelm Rens, 65, Ernst Alt, 38, and the woman's parents Josef Michel, 59, and Anna, 45. Bishop Josef Stangl approved the exorcism to rid the epileptic Anneliese of "demons" at the recommendation of Jesuit priest Adolf Rodewiyk of Frankfurt and appointed Renz and Alt to carry out the ritual.
A general convention of the Episcopal Church, the House of Bishops, and the House of Lords announces September 16 that it has approved the ordination of women as priests.
Chinese universities reopen following the death of Mao Zedong. Most closed at the start of the Cultural Revolution in 1966; those that remained open admitted students on political rather than academic grounds, scholars were sent to work in the countryside, and library acquisitions were halted. Academic degrees were abolished as an invidious status distinction, they will not be reintroduced until 1980, and only 1 percent of college-age men and women will be able to attend college as compared to nearly 50 percent in America.
The U.S. Military Academy at West Point and U.S. Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs admit their first women cadets (see Coast Guard Academy, 1975). West Point accepts 119 women cadets July 7 after 174 years of male-only enrollment.
New York's multicollege City University of New York (CUNY) levies tuitions for the first time (see 1849). CUNY adopted an open-admissions policy in 1970 under pressure from blacks, Hispanics, and community groups; its enrollment has swelled from 174,000 to 268,000, mostly black and Hispanic, and its faculty has grown from 7,800 to 12,800. Budget cuts will reduce enrollment to 172,000 by 1980 and the faculty will be cut by some 3,000, but by fall of 2004 enrollment will be 2,180,134 and admission standards will be higher.
The 89-year-old Harvard Law Review names Lynn, Mass.-born Law School student Susan (Rachel) Estrich, 24, its first woman president.
The Kurzweil Reading Machine introduced with a press conference January 12 enables visually impaired people to read without Braille (see Hall machine, 1892). MIT graduate Raymond Kurzweil, now 28, started Kurzweil Computer Products in 1974 to pursue studies in pattern recognition. He and some colleagues tried to teach a computer to identify printed or typed characters regardless of typestyle or printing quality, and they came up with the first "omni-font" Optical Character Recognition technology. Sitting by chance beside a blind man on a plane, Kurzweil realized that the most promising application for OCR would be a machine that could read printed and typed documents out loud, so with financing from the National Federation of the Blind he and his associates developed the first CCD flat-bed scanner and the first full text-to-speech synthesizer; they have combined the three technologies to create the first print-to-speech reading machine, and although it initially costs $50,000 the price will come down. Eastman Kodak will acquire Kurzweil's company in 1981.
The first word-processing program for personal computers goes on sale under the name Electric Pencil, but PCs are still in their infancy. Dedicated word processors made by Wang Laboratories begin to revolutionize offices with work stations that share central computers (see 1974; technology [Wang], 1951).
Fax (facsimile transmission) machines gain ground as second-generation technology cuts transmission time from 6 minutes per page to 3. The devices translate a printed page or graphics into electronic signals, transmit them over telephone lines, and print out signals received from other fax machines thousands of miles (or one block) away. Government offices, law enforcement agencies, news agencies, publishers, and banks are the major users. Prices fall for machines, but quality remains poor (see 1982).
U.S. citizens' band radio sales reach 11.3 million units with a retail value of over $3 billion.
Sony Corp. demonstrates a one-inch video tape recorder (VTR) at Chicago; engineers at the 49-year-old Victor Co. of Japan (JVC) invent the VHS video format.
South Korea gets her first domestically-made color TV sets. They are made by Lucky Goldstar (later Goldstar Electronics) and Samsung (see 1977).
Atlanta's WTBS superstation is founded by local sportsman-entrepreneur Robert Edward "Ted" Turner III, 37.
New York television journalist Barbara Walters, 44, accepts a 5-year contract from American Broadcasting Company to co-host the network's nightly news program for $1 million per year. Despite the remark of a former NBC News president in 1971 that "audiences are less prepared to accept news from a woman's voice than from a man's," Walters has successfully been co-anchoring NBC's morning Today Show. Indianapolis-born WMAQ-TV Chicago television news co-anchor Jane Pauley, 26, succeeds Walters as news co-anchor of the Today show, a position she will hold until 1990.
The Spanish newspaper El País (The Country) begins publication at Madrid May 4. Founded by José Ortega Spottorno, son of the philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, the new liberal-left tabloid has as its editor-in-chief Juan Luis Cebrián, 31.
Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles dies at Phoenix June 13 at age 47—11 days after a bomb ripped through his car in a local hotel parking lot. Bolles had been investigating fraudulent land deals and an underworld group associated with Arizona dog racing.
Mexico City newspaper editor Julio Schere Garcie and 200 staff members are ousted July 8 in an apparent government effort to silence Excelsior, the nation's only outspoken opposition newspaper.
Publisher Roy H. Thomson, Lord Thomson of Fleet, dies of a stroke at London August 4 at age 82. His 52-year-old son Kenneth R. Thomson inherits the title and his father's vast media empire, whose properties include the Times of London (see Murdoch, 1981) and will soon include the Toronto Globe and Mail (see 1980).
Publisher Rupert Murdoch pays $30 million in November to acquire the New York Post. The city's oldest continuously-published daily, the Post has been New York's only afternoon paper since 1967, but owner Dorothy Schiff, now 73, is tired of losing money on it. Murdoch has built up a worldwide empire of 83 newspapers and 11 magazines with strong emphasis on scandals, sex, crime, and sports. His lurid 2-year-old tabloid weekly The Star competes with The National Enquirer (see 1952) and is his most lucrative property; his (second) wife, Anna Maria (née Torv), tells him that if he puts topless women on page three of the Post she will leave him, because she does not want her children to see it, so Murdoch, now 45, contents himself with giving the paper a more right-wing editorial tone and replacing one fourth of its staff with reporters whom he has previously employed on his other tabloids.
Nonfiction: Revolution, Reform, and Social Justice by Sidney Hook; The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism by Daniel Bell, who tries to define the relationship in society between science, technology, and capitalism; On Writing Well by Yale writing teacher William Zinsser, now 53, whose book will have sales of nearly 1 million copies in the next 22 years; Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream by Brooklyn, N.Y.-born Harvard professor Doris (Helen) Kearns, 33, who last year married Washington insider Richard Goodwin; Blind Ambition by former White House counsel John Dean, now 37; The Russians by Scottish-born New York Times reporter Hedrick (Laurence) Smith, 43; The People's Republic by New York-born journalist Orville H. (Hickok) Schell, 36; Who's Who in 20th Century Literature by Martin Seymour-Smith; Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution by poet Adrienne Rich, who writes, "Probably there is nothing in human nature more resonant with charges than the flow of energy between two biologically alike bodies, one of which has lain in amniotic bliss inside the other, one of which has labored to give birth to the other. The materials are here for the deepest mutuality and the most painful estrangement"; The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality by Shere D. Hite; The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts by Los Angeles-born writer Maxine Hong Kingston, 35; Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life by Gail Sheehy; Scoundrel Time (autobiography) by Lillian Hellman, now 71, who sues Mary McCarthy for libel after McCarthy says that "every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'." Hellman will die in 1984 before the case comes to trial; Spirit-controlled Woman by Christian fundamentalist Beverly LaHaye (née Beverly Jean Ratcliffe), 38, who calls the clitoral orgasm a myth and says, "All married women are capable of orgasmic ecstasy. No Christian woman should settle for less," but, "The woman who is truly Spirit-filled will want to be totally submissive to her husband . . . This is a truly liberated woman. Submission is God's design for women" (see religion [Concerned Women for America], 1979); The Grass is Greener Over the Septic Tank by Erma Bombeck.
Philosopher-scholar Lin Yutang dies at Hong Kong March 26 at age 80; historian Samuel Eliot Morison of a stroke at Boston May 18 at age 88; philosopher Martin Heidegger of an infection at Messkirch, West Germany, May 26 at age 86 (he has lied about his sympathies for the Nazi regime); sociologist Paul F. Lazarsfeld at New York August 30 at age 75; historian James Warner Bellah of a heart attack at Los Angeles September 22 at age 77; author Patrick Dennis (Edward E. Tanner III) of cancer at New York November 6 at age 55.
Fiction: Roots by Alex Haley; Meridian by Georgia-born novelist Alice Walker, 32; Henry and Cato by Iris Murdoch; The Kiss of the Spider Woman by Argentinian novelist Manuel Puig, 44; Les Flamboyants by French novelist Patrick Grainville, 29; The Farewell Party (Valcik ma rozloucenou) by Milan Kundera; The Pinch Runner Memorandum (Pinchi ranna chōsho) by Kenzaburo Oe; Sadler's Birthday by London-born novelist Rose Tremain (née Home), 33; (The Lost Salt Gift of Blood (stories) by Saskatchewan-born Cape Breton Island writer Alistair MacLeod, 40; Small Ceremonies by Oak Park, Ill.-born Canadian novelist Carol Shields (née Warner), 41; Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? by Oregon-born short-story writer Raymond Carver, 37; The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin; Storm Warning by Jack Higgins; Searching for Caleb by Anne Tyler; 1876 by Gore Vidal; Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood; Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy; A Piece of My Heart by Mississippi-born novelist Richard Ford, 32; Your Day in the Barrel by New York-born novelist Alan Furst, 35; Trinity by Leon Uris; Chilly Scenes of Winter by Washington, D.C.-born novelist Ann Beattie, 29; Family Feeling by Helen Yglesias; Ordinary People by Detroit-born novelist Judith (Ann) Guest, 45; Kinflicks by Tennessee-born novelist Lisa Alther (née Reed), 32; A Sea-Change by New York novelist Lois Gould, 38 (whose mother is fashion designer Jo Copeland); The Stepdaughter by British novelist Caroline (Lady Caroline Hamilton-Temple) Blackwood, 45; Interview With the Vampire by New Orleans novelist Anne Rice (née O'Brien), 34, who has turned a short story into a novel in 5 weeks; Raise the Titanic by Aurora, Ill.-born California advertising man-turned-novelist Clive (Eric) Cussler, 45, features the derring-do adventures of his hero Dirk Pitt; No Quarter Asked by Iowa-born pulp novelist Janet (Ann) Dailey (née Haradon), 32, is the first of more than 80 Harlequin paperback romances that she will write. Her books will outsell those of any other woman author except Barbara Cartland; Agent in Place by Helen MacInnes; Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less by English novelist Jeffrey Archer, 36, who was elected to Parliament at age 29, lost all his money in a crooked Canadian investment and was left $630,000 in debt, resigned from the House of Commons 2 years ago, rented a room, and began a new career as novelist.
Dame Agatha Christie dies at her Wallingford home January 12 at age 85; John Dickson Carr of cancer at Greenville, S.C., February 27 at age 69; Richard Hughes of leukemia near Harlech, Wales, April 28 at age 76; humorist-author Edward Streeter at New York March 4 at age 84; novelist-politician André Malraux after a relapse of lung cancer at Paris November 23 at age 75.
Poetry: Divine Comedies by James Merrill; Searching for the Ox by Louis Simpson; Hello by Arlington, Mass.-born poet Robert (White) Creeley, 50; The Afterlife by California poet Larry Levis, 39; Tapping the White Cane of Solitude by Vienna-born U.S. poet Franz Wright, 23, whose father is the poet Stephen Wright; The Gates by Muriel Rukeyser, now 63; Instructions to the Double by Port Angeles, Wash.-born poet-novelist Tess Gallagher (née Bond), 33.
Poet Louis Sissman dies of Hodgkin's disease at Still River, Mass., March 10 age 48.
Juvenile: Arthur's Nose by Erie, Pa.-born author Marc (Tolon) Brown, 29 (about an aardvark); Underground by David A. Macaulay; Zia by Scott O'Dell; Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Jackson, Miss.-born author Mildred (Delois) Taylor, 33; A Summer in the South by James Marshall; Granfa' Grig Had a Pig and Other Rhymes without Reason from Mother Goose by Wallace Tripp (illustrator); Desert Notes:Reflections in the Eye of a Raven by Port Chester, N.Y.-born Oregon author Barry (Holstun) Lopez, 31.
Author Munro Leaf dies of cancer at Garrett Park, Md., December 21 at age 71.
Painting: Skull (silkscreen) by Andy Warhol; Portrait of Andy (Warhol) by Andrew Wyeth; Corpse and Mirror by Jasper Johns; Our Family in 1976 by Bronx, N.Y.-born painter Alfred Leslie, 49; The Red Scarf by Alex Katz; Falcon Avenue, Seaside Walk, Dwight Street, Jarvis Street, Greene Street (baked enamel on silk screen grid, enamel on 80 steel plates) by California-born artist Jennifer Bartlett (née Losch), 35; Beginner by Elizabeth Murray, who was Bartlett's best friend at Mills College in the early 1960s; Imperfect Indicative (collage of charcoal and paper on linen) by Lee Krasner. Josef Albers dies of heart failure at New Haven March 24 at age 88; Max Ernst at Paris April 17 at age 84 after a stroke; Mark Tobey at Basel April 24 at age 85; graphic designer, muralist, illustrator, and restaurant critic Jerome Snyder at his native New York May 2 at age 60; Man Ray of a lung infection in his studio at Paris November 18 at age 86.
Sculpture: Running Fence (nylon, steel poles and cable, 24½ miles long, 18 feet high) by Bulgarian-born U.S. artist Christo (Javacheff), 40, who has sold original drawings and collages of his plan to raise the $2 million needed for labor, materials, a 450-page environmental impact report, and legal fees in connection with 17 public hearings in California's Marin and Sonoma counties plus 3 superior court sessions; Batcolumn (grey-painted Corten steel, 100 feet tall) by Claes Oldenburg for Washington's new Social Security Administration building; The Corridor, Walk-Don't Walk, and Appalachian Farm Couple—1936 (all plaster of paris) by George Segal, who begins painting his casts in vivid colors; Death Ship U.S.S. Franklin Arising from an Oil Slick (pine, ebony, enamel) by H. C. Westermann; White Cascade (a 28-ton mobile) by Alexander Calder, whose work is installed at Philadelphia but who dies of a heart attack at New York November 11 at age 78.
Photographer Imogen Cunningham dies at San Francisco June 24 at age 93, having taught at the Art Institute of San Francisco almost to the end; photographer Minor White dies at Boston June 24 at age 67.
Theater: American Buffalo by Dubuque-born playwright David Mamet, 28, 1/26 at New York's off-Broadway St. Clement's Theater (it opened at Chicago in late November of last year), with Robert Duvall, John Savage as foul-mouthed punks, 135 perfs.; Knock Knock by Jules Feiffer 2/24 at New York's Biltmore Theater, with Lynn Redgrave, John Heffernan, 38 perfs.; Streamers by David Rabe 4/2 at New York's off-Broadway Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, with Terry Alexander, Peter Evans, Dorian Harewood, Michael Kell, Mark Metcalf, Les Roberts, 478 perfs.; Dirty Linen and New-Found Land by Tom Stoppard 4/5 at London's Almost Free Theatre; Duck Hunting (Utinoi Okhoty) by Soviet playwright Aleksandr Vanpilov 4/25 at Riga's Academy Theater of Latvia; The Runner Stumbles by Detroit-born playwright Milan Stitt, 34, 5/18 at New York's off-Broadway Little Theater, with Stephen Joyce, Nancy Donohue, Austin Pendleton in a drama based on an April 1911 trial of a priest accused of murdering a nun, 191 perfs.; California Suite by Neil Simon 6/10 at New York's Eugene O'Neill Theater, with Tammy Grimes, George Grizzard, 445 perfs.; For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/ When the Rainbow is Enuf by Trenton, N.J.-born playwright Ntozake Shange (née Paulette Williams), 27, 9/15 at New York's Booth Theater (after 120 perfs. at the Public Theater), with Trazana Beverly, Laurie Carlos, Rise Collins, Aku Kadogo, June League, Paul Moss, and Shange, 867 perfs. (total); A Texas Trilogy (Lu Ann Hampton Laverty Oberlander, The Oldest Living Graduate, and The Last Meeting of the Knights of the White Magnolia) by Albuquerque-born actor-playwright Preston Jones, 40, 9/22 at New York's Broadhurst Theater, with Fred Gwynne, Henderson Forsythe, Diane Ladd, 22 perfs. in repertory; Destiny by English playwright David Edgar 9/22 at Stratford-upon-Avon's Other Place theater; Dusa, Fish, Stas, and Vi by feminist English playwright Pam (originally Iris Pamela) Gems (née Price), 51, 12/2 at London's Hampstead Theater.
Actress Margaret Leighton dies of sclerosis at Chichester, England, January 13 at age 53; playwright Eddie Dowling at Smithfield, R.I., February 18 at age 81; stage designer Joe Mielziner of a stroke at New York while returning to his apartment at the Dakota March 15 at age 74; actor Paul Ford at Mineola, N.Y., April 12 at age 74; Dame Sybil Thorndike of a heart attack at London June 9 at age 93; Broadway producer Kermit Bloomgarden of a brain tumor at his New York home September 20 at age 73; Broadway columnist Leonard Lyons of Parkinson's disease in his New York apartment October 7 at age 70; Dame Edith Evans in her sleep at Cranbrook, Kent, October 14 at age 88.
Television: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman 1/6 on non-network stations with Louise Lasser, Greg Mullavey, Mary Kay Place, Claudia Lamb, Graham Jarvis in a Norman Lear daily soap opera intended to parody soap operas (to 3/10/1977); Laverne and Shirley 1/27 on ABC with Penny Marshall, Cindy Williams as brewery workers Laverne DeFazio and Shirley Feeney in a spinoff of Happy Days (to 5/10/1983, 178 episodes); Family Feud (quiz show) 7/12 on ABC with host Michael Dawson (to 6/14/1985); The Duchess of Duke Street 9/4 on BBC is a series based on the late Rosa Lewis; The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin 9/8 on BBC with Leonard Rossiter; The Muppet Show in September (daytime) on PBS with combination marionettes and puppets devised by Greenville, Miss.-born puppeteer James Maury "Jim" Henson, 29, whose Kermit the Frog and the Cookie Monster have appeared on Sesame Street. Miss Piggy, created by Frank Oz for the new show, will attract a wide following, and Henson's programs will reach 235 million viewers in 100 countries; Charlie's Angels 9/22 on ABC with Jaclyn Smith (as Kelly Garrett), Kate Jackson (as Sabrina Duncan), Texas-born model Farrah Fawcett-Majors, 29 (she will be replaced next year by Cheryl Ladd as Sabrina's younger sister Kris Munroe) as Police Academy detectives (to 8/19/1981); Alice 9/29 on CBS with Linda Lavin (to 3/19/85, 200 episodes); Quincy M.E. 10/3 on NBC with Jack Klugman (to 3/23/1983); Wonder Woman 12/18 on ABC with Linda Carter playing the role in a series based on the 1940s comic-strip character (to 9/11/1979 on CBS).
Films: Alan J. Pakula's All the President's Men with Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Jason Robards; Martin Ritt's The Front with Woody Allen, Zero Mostel (about black listing of alleged communists in the 1950s); Luchino Visconti's The Innocent with Giancarlo Giannini, Laura Antonelli, Jennifer O'Neill; Marcel Ophuls's documentary The Memory of Justice about the Nuremberg trials after World War II; Sidney Lumet's Network with Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch, William Holden, Robert Duvall; Lina Wertmuller's Seven Beauties with Giancarlo Giannini; François Truffaut's Small Change with Geory Desmouceaux, Philippe Goldman. Also: Hal Ashby's Bound for Glory with Keith Carradine as Woody Guthrie; Bruce Beresford's Don's Party with John Hargreaves; Alain Tanner's Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 with Myriam Boyer, Jean-Luc Bideau; Wim Wenders's Kings of the Road with Rudiger Vogler; Elia Kazan's The Last Tycoon with Robert De Niro; Gordon Parks's Leadbelly with Roger E. Mosley as the legendary folk singer, convict, and 12-string guitar player Huddie Ledbetter; Jeanne Moreau's Lumière, with Moreau, Francine Racette, Lucia Bose, Caroline Cartier; Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth with David Bowie, Rip Torn; Blake Edwards's The Pink Panther Strikes Again with Peter Sellers; John G. Avildsen's Rocky with Sylvester Stallone; Don Siegel's The Shootist with John Wayne, Lauren Bacall; Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver with Robert De Niro, Cybill Shepherd, Harvey Keitel; Roman Polanski's The Tenant with Polanski, Isabelle Adjani.
Actor Roger Livesey dies of bowel cancer at Watford, England, February 5 at age 69; Lee J. Cobb of a heart attack at his Woodland Hills, Calif., home February 11 at age 64; Sal Mineo is stabbed to death by an unknown assailant at Hollywood February 12 at age 37; Luchino Visconti dies of cancer at his villa in Rome March 17 at age 69; Richard Arlen of emphysema at North Hollywood March 28 at age 75; Sir Carol Reed of a heart attack at London April 25 at age 69; actor-writer Alan Baxter at Woodland Hills, Calif., May 8 at age 68; Paramount Pictures chairman emeritus Adolph Zukor at Los Angeles June 10 at age 103; cameraman James Wong Howe of cancer at West Hollywood July 12 at age 76; director Fritz Lang at his Beverly Hills home August 2 at age 85; Alastair Sim of cancer at London August 19 at age 75; screenwriter Dalton Trumbo of heart failure at his Hollywood home September 10 at age 70 (he had surgery for lung cancer in April 1973); Romney Brent dies at Mexico City September 24 at age 74; Jean Gabin at Paris November 15 at age 72; Rosalind Russell of breast cancer at her Beverly Hills home November 28 at age 69; actor Jack Cassidy in a fire at his Los Angeles home December 12 at age 49.
Hollywood musical choreographer Busby Berkeley dies near Palm Springs, Calif., March 14 at age 80.
Broadway musicals: Pacific Overtures 1/11 at the Winter Garden Theater, with Kobe-born actor Mako (originally Makoto Iwamatsu), 42, as recitor, book by John Weidman about the opening of Japan to the West in 1853, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, 193 perfs.; Bubblin' Brown Sugar 3/2 at the ANTA Theater, with music and lyrics by Danny Holgate, Emme Kemp, and Lillian Lopez plus old songs by Duke Ellington, Noble Sissle, Eubie Blake, Andy Razaf, Fats Waller, and others, 766 perfs.; Your Arms Too Short to Box with God 12/22 at the Lyceum Theater, with Vinnette Carroll, music and lyrics by Alex Bradford, additional music and lyrics by Micki Grant, 427 perfs.
Opera: Adriana Maliponte makes her London debut at Covent Garden in February singing the role of Nedda in the 1892 Leoncavallo opera Pagliacci; Tatiana Troyanos, now 37, makes her Metropolitan Opera debut 3/8 singing the role of Octavian in the Strauss opera Der Rosenkavalier of 1911; Einstein on the Beach 11/21 at New York's Metropolitan Opera House (after 29 European performances) with electronic music by Baltimore-born avante-garde composer Philip Glass, 39, staging by Robert Wilson.
Coloratura soprano Lily Pons dies at Dallas February 13 at age 71; soprano Maggie Teyte at London May 26 at age 88; soprano-lieder singer Lotte Lehmann at Santa Barbara August 26 at age 88; composer Benjamin Britten of heart failure at Aldeburgh, England, December 4 at age 63.
First performances: Sirius by Karlheinz Stockhausen 7/18 at the Smithsonian Insititution in Washington, D.C.; Symphony No. 1 by Gian-Carlo Menotti 8/4 at Saratoga, N.Y.
Conductor Rudolf Kempe dies at Zürich May 11 at age 65; cellist Gregor Piatigorsky of cancer at Los Angeles August 6 at age 73; pianist-teacher Rosina Lhévinne of a stroke at Glendale, Calif., November 9 at age 96; composer Walter Piston at Belmont, Mass., November 12 at age 82.
Popular songs: Bellavia (album) by Rochester, N.Y.-born flügelhornist-pianist-composer Charles Frank "Chuck" Mangione, 35; Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (album) by Gainesville, Fla.-born singer-songwriter Petty, 22, includes the single "Breakdown"; "I Write the Songs" by former Beach Boys arranger Bruce Johnston; "All by Myself" by Cleveland-born singer-songwriter Eric Carmen, 27; "Disco Lady" by H. Scales, L. Vance, and Don Davis; Frampton Comes Alive (album) and "Show Me the Way" by Peter Frampton, who gains phenomenal popularity but whose youthful following will largely outgrow him within 3 years; Fleetwood Mac (album) by the English rock group Fleetwood Mac (drummer Mick Fleetwood, 34; bass guitarist John McVie, 31; singer Stevie Nicks, 28; and guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, 29); Bread and Roses (album) by Judy Collins includes the feminist title song; "Love Hangover" by London-born songwriter Pam Sawyer, 38, and Marilyn McLeod, 34; Linda Ronstadt records "Down So Low" by Madison, Wis.-born songwriter Tracy Nelson, 32; "Ruby" by Helen Reddy; "Love to Love You Baby" by Boston-born singer-songwriter Donna Summer (Donna Gaines), 27, who first gained fame as a disco singer in Munich; Ramones (album) by the 2-year-old group founded by Virginia-born Queens, N.Y., punk rocker Dee Dee Ramone (originally Douglas Glen Colvin), 24, and three companions.
Punk rock gains favor among England's working class youth with its highly amplified, politically rebellious style. U.S. bands performing at New York's CBGB's and Max's Kansas City rock clubs will develop this new-wave rock with its back-to-basics approach.
Songwriter Friedrich Hollander dies at Munich January 18 at age 79; singer-actor Paul Robeson at Philadelphia January 23 at age 77 (he suffered a stroke in December); orchestra leader-arranger Percy Faith dies of cancer at Los Angeles February 9 at age 67; society bandleader Meyer Davis of cancer at New York April 5 at age 83; jazz cornetist Robert Leo "Bobby" Hackett of a heart attack at his West Chatham, Mass., home June 7 at age 61; songwriter Johnny Mercer at Belair, Calif., June 25 at age 66; Connee Boswell of stomach cancer at New York October 11 at age 68; songwriter Ned Washington of a heart attack at Los Angeles December 20 at age 75.
Pittsburgh wins Super Bowl X at Miami January 18, beating Dallas 21 to 17.
Football legend Ernest Alonzo "Ernie" Nevers dies at San Rafael, Calif., May 3 at age 72, having been on the 1925 All-America team and played professional ball until 1931.
Brooklyn-born matador Sidney Franklin dies at New York April 6 at age 72.
Björn Borg, 20, (Swed), wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Chris Evert in women's singles; Jimmy Connors wins in men's singles at Forest Hills, Evert in women's singles. Former German tennis star Freiherr (Baron) Gottfried von Cramm is killed in an automobile accident outside Cairo November 8 at age 66 (he was sent to the Eastern Front in 1941, survived the war, and played well into the 1950s).
Sportswriter-author Paul Gallico dies at Monaco July 15 at age 78.
Soviet athletes win 142 medals at the Olympic Games held at Innsbruck and Montreal, East Germans 109, Americans 104, but 28 African nations boycott the games. Dayton, Ohio-born Morehouse College junior Edwin (Corley) Moses, 20, wins the 400-meter hurdles, partly because he takes only 13 steps between hurdles instead of the usual 14. Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci, 14, earns the first 10 in the history of sport, goes on to win seven 10s, and takes three gold medals. Chicago-born figure skater Dorothy Hamill, 29, has won her event in the winter Olympics at Innsbruck, but the games leave Montreal stuck with $1 billion in debts.
A U.S. district court judge at Kansas City upholds last year's arbitration panel ruling on free agents February 4, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals at St. Louis upholds the federal judge's ruling March 9, and the first draft of free agents is held November 4 at New York's Plaza Hotel.
The Cincinnati Reds win the World Series, shutting out the New York Yankees.
Liz Claiborne fashions are introduced January 19 by New York fashion designer Elisabeth Claiborne, 46, and her husband, Arthur Ortenberg (they have two other partners), whose affordable, casual, mix-and-match sportswear separates for working women will break new ground. Born and raised in Brussels (her father was a banker from New Orleans), Claiborne returned with her family to the United States before the Nazis invaded Belgium in 1940, studied art in Europe after the war, worked on Seventh Avenue for designer Tina Lesser beginning in 1950, had a series of other bosses, and has been a top dress designer since the 1960s, but has waited until her son and two stepchildren finished college before introducing her own label. The Ortenbergs will build a company with 3,400 employees before they retire from active management in June 1989 with stock valued at nearly $100 million.
Shoe designer Charles Jourdan dies at Paris the night of February 12 at age 92; fashion designer Mainbocher (Main Russo Bocher) at Munich, West Germany, December 27 at age 86.
Computer-game pioneer Nolan Bushnell sells Atari to Warner Communications (see 1975). Other companies have entered the field with full-color games and interchangeable cartridges that have made Bushnell's "Pong" game obsolete (see 1978).
The British conglomerate B.A.T. Industries created July 23 merges the 74-year-old British-American Tobacco Co. Ltd. with the Tobacco Securities Trust Company, Ltd. that it set up in 1928.
Philip Morris introduces Merit low-tar cigarettes with a $40 million advertising budget and captures another 1.5 percent of the U.S. market.
Capital punishment does not constitute "cruel and unusual punishment," the U.S. Supreme Court rules in a 7-to-2 decision handed down July 2 (Gregg v. Georgia). The Court held in 1972 that the death penalty was unconstitutional, with Justice Thurgood Marshall citing evidence that the death penalty did not deter crime. Congress and most states have drafted new death penalty laws for murderers, and the Court upholds such laws in Georgia, Florida, and Texas (see Gilmore, 1977).
New York's .44-caliber killer claims his first victim early in the morning of July 29. A man who will prove to be David Berkowitz, 24, of Yonkers approaches an Oldsmobile double-parked in front of a Bronx apartment house and opens fire with a .44-caliber Bulldog revolver on medical technician Donna Lauria, 18, who has just returned from a Manhattan discothèque with her friend Jody Valenti, 19, a nurse; Berkowitz begins a 12-month career in which he will terrorize the city, killing five women and one man, leaving seven wounded (see 1977).
Fort Worth police arrest Texas oilman T. (Thomas) Cullen Davis, 43, August 3 on charges of having killed his 12-year-old stepdaughter, wounded his estranged second wife, killed her boyfriend Stan Farr in the 14,000-square-foot mansion where the couple had lived, and wounded a neighbor's wife. Priscilla Davis (née Wilborn), 33, filed for divorce in 1974, a judge ordered Cullen to move out and pay Priscilla $3,500 per month in living expenses, he has increased the amount August 2 to $5,000 plus $27,000 to pay bills she had accumulated plus $25,000 for her legal expenses; she claims that she came home with Farr that night after dining at a restaurant and having a few drinks at a nightclub, only to find a man in the kitchen dressed in black and wearing a shoulder-length black wig. She swears the man was Davis, her neighbors agree. But Davis has a net worth of between $250 million and $400 million, he hires a top lawyer, an Amarillo jury will return a verdict of not guilty, and a woman juror at the ensuing victory party will be heard to say, "Rich people don't kill their wives; they hire someone else to do it." Davis will remarry, win acquittal in two further trials, become a born-again Christian, and be a major supporter of right-wing causes such as the John Birch Society.
Crime boss Carlo Gambino dies of cancer (by some accounts of a heart attack) at his Long Island summer home October 15 at age 74. He has lived with his family in a modest house at 2230 Ocean Avenue, Brooklyn; his wife, Catherine, died of cancer in 1971; and he has gratified his vanity only to the extent of having a CG-1 license plate on his gray Oldsmobile. Although Gambino has developed 25 groups whose 800 men steal cargo from New York airports, infiltrate the truckers' union to profit from almost every garment sold on Seventh Avenue, keep construction costs high by rigging prices on the cement used in buildings, and control dozens of other rackets, including loan sharking, numbers running, and prostitution, Gambino himself has never served a day in prison. His funeral attracts people from all over the country, and the low-profile "don" is succeeded as head of the Gambino crime family by his first cousin (and brother-in-law) Paul Castellano, 61, a Brooklyn-born butcher's son who has interests in legitimate meat businesses but gets most of his income from the rackets (see 1985).
Onetime underworld boxing boss Paul John "Frankie" Carbo dies of diabetes at Miami Beach November 7 at age 72.
Boston's Quincy Market reopens August 26, just 150 years after Josiah Quincy opened it, as Baltimore developer James Rouse, 62, restores the historic heart of the city. In addition to more than 25 suburban shopping malls, Rouse has built America's only "new city" (Columbia, Md.). He will reopen a second Quincy building next year and a third in 1978 while working on a mall for downtown Philadelphia and one for New York's South Street Seaport.
Toronto's CN Tower opens October 1 on Lake Ontario. Commissioned by the Canadian National Railway to symbolize Canada's industry and built in 40 5-day weeks by 1,537 workers, the $63 million, 181-story tower with its communications antennae rises 1,815 feet (553.33 meters), it has 1,776 metal steps to supplement its elevators, its observation platforms and restaurants attract thousands of visitors, and it will continue into the 21st century as the world's tallest free-standing structure.
The Los Angeles Bonaventure Hotel designed by John Portman opens at Figueroa and 5th Streets with five bronze glass towers.
Detroit's 1,500-room Detroit Plaza hotel opens in the city's $337 million Renaissance Center.
Architect-city planner-furniture designer Alvar Aalto dies at Helsinki May 11 at age 78; real estate mogul William Zeckendorf Jr. of a stroke at New York September 30 at age 71.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency orders U.S. Steel to close its Gary, Ind., coke plants January 1 because emissions violate clean air standards established in 1970 (see 1977).
A California drought forces compulsory water rationing February 1 in Marin County north of San Francisco. Water prices go up 40 percent March 1; critics complain that too much water is being used for irrigation, especially of rice fields (see 1977).
Canadian lumberman-philanthropist H. R. Macmillan dies at Vancouver February 9 at age 90.
An earthquake in Guatemala February 4 registers 7.5 on the Richter scale and leaves an estimated 23,000 dead and 1 million homeless; a quake in northeastern Italy May 6 measures 6.5 and kills 1,000; a quake June 25 in West Irian (New Guinea) registers 7.2 and leaves 5,000 to 9,000 missing and presumed dead in resultant landslides; the worst earthquake in modern history shatters 20 square miles around Tangshan, China, July 28. Registering 8.0 on the Richter scale (a second tremor measures 7.9), it leaves 242,000 dead (earlier estimates are as high as 655,000); a quake on Mindinao in the Philippines August 16 registers 7.9 on the Richter scale and kills up to 8,000, many of them in the ensuing tidal wave (the disaster temporarily quells a rebellion by the Muslim majority); a quake in northwestern Iran on the Soviet border November 24 kills an estimated 5,000. Measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale, it is the worst in the region since 1939.
An explosion at the Icmesa chemical factory in Seveso, north of Milan, July 10 releases a poisonous cloud of dioxin. Italian authorities evacuate 739 residents, but not until 13 days later. Thousands of rabbits, chickens, and dogs die after eating dioxin-coated vegetables; children develop skin rashes; the evacuees are shunned; nobody will return to Seveso for 16 months except decontamination experts; and fears will linger that exposure to the dioxin may lead to liver disease, nervous disorders, stillbirths, birth defects, even cancer.
The Soviet Union establishes the Wrangel Island State Reserve in the Arctic Ocean. Occupying 700,000 hectares (1,730,000 acres), it has wildlife that include polar bears, reindeer, and walruses.
The Mountain States Legal Foundation founded by Colorado brewing magnate Joseph Coors begins a "Sagebrush Rebellion" against environmental laws (see politics [Heritage Foundation], 1973). The new foundation will file lawsuits to limit the rights of labor unions, minorities, homosexuals, and pro-choice groups while supporting the rights of property owners (see Reagan, 1980).
The Federal Land Policy and Management Act adopted by Congress October 21 repeals a 110-year-old law granting a right-of-way for construction of canals, ditches, and roads across public lands not reserved for public uses; the new law does not terminate valid existing "highways," and the issue will remain controversial.
The U.S. Department of Transportation issues an order November 18 requiring airlines to muffle 1,000 noisy plane engines that exceed decibel levels established after they were built.
The Liberian tanker Argo Merchant runs aground December 16 off Nantucket, spilling heavy crude oil into the Atlantic. The vessel's bow splits in half the next day, spilling more, 180,000 barrels are lost, but strong winds move the slick away from resort areas.
President Ford signs legislation April 13 to extend U.S. jurisdiction over fishing rights to 200 miles offshore, effective March 1, 1977, and to ban fishing of 14 species unless they are shown to be in surpluses beyond the capacity of the U.S. fishing fleet. Japan's foreign ministry says it regrets the unilateral U.S. action. Iceland has broken diplomatic relations with Britain over cod-fishing rights. Moscow imposes a 200-mile limit on foreign fishermen December 10.
Plant geneticist Trofim D. Lysenko dies in the Soviet Union November 20 at age 78.
Poland's prime minister Piotr Jaroszewicz announces in March that food prices will be increased. They have been frozen for the past 5 years, but Jaroszewicz announces in late June that prices will rise as much as 100 percent to pay farmers for their produce. Nationwide strikes and violence ensue, and the price increases are promptly rescinded, but Communist Party leader Edward Gierek announces in July that higher food prices are unavoidable. The party newspaper Trybuna Ludu cautions in August that Poland's small-plot farm structure has fallen 15 years behind other eastern European communist countries, where collectivized farms dominate agricultural production, and 20 years behind the West, but concedes that the strikes have arisen from "grave miscalculation" by communist planners (see 1990; meat rationing, 1980; hyperinflation, 1989).
East Germany has a catastrophic grain harvest following a drought and suffers resulting food shortages.
La Leche League International Inc. has 2,868 groups in 42 countries working to "help mothers who wish to breast-feed their infants" and encourage breast-feeding (see 1956). By 1993 56 percent of U.S. mothers will be breast-feeding their newborns, with encouragement from physicians and pediatricians as well as from La Leche, but as more and more U.S. mothers breast-feed their babies with unqualified, doctrinaire advice about giving "only the breast during baby's first month," and as hospitals increasingly discharge new mothers sooner after delivery and without supervision at home, more days-old babies will be returned to hospitals dehydrated and starved. Too weak to suck, they will be treated for "insufficient milk syndrome," sometimes with intravenous sustenance.
Nobel pathologist George H. Whipple dies at Rochester, N.Y., February 1 at age 97, having helped to pioneer effective treatment of pernicious anemia; vitamin K pioneer Henrik Dam dies at Copenhagen April 17 at age 81; goiter-prevention pioneer David Marine at Lewes, Del., November 26 at age 96.
The Food and Drug Administration bans Red No. 2 dye in January, citing new concern that it may be carcinogenic, but does not order a recall of foods containing Red No. 2, the nation's most commonly used food coloring (see 1960). The maker of Red No. 2 challenges the ban, a U.S. appeals court blocks the FDA's action, the FDA gets permission from the court to ban Red No. 2 effective February 12, and Chief Justice Warren Berger refuses to postpone the ban. Many food manufacturers have been switching to Red No. 40, but Michael F. Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest urges the FDA and National Cancer Institute to persuade FDA commissioner to ban Red No. 40 and recall products containing it.
The Proxmire Amendment to the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act signed into law April 22 limits the Food and Drug Administration's authority to regulate dietary supplements (see 1973). Sponsored by Sen. William Proxmire, 60 (D. Wis.), the amendment says that such supplements should be treated neither as drugs nor as food additives, that the public is entitled to be given information about health in conjunction with the sale of such supplements, but no regulatory action can be taken against manufacturers of supplements except in cases where a clear risk to public health exists (see 1992).
Nissin Foods (USA) introduces Oodles of Noodles, a bag type ramen product containing fried noodles with a soup packet (see 1972).
The 13-year-old French hypermarket chain Carrefour creates a sensation in April by stripping about 50 basic food products (biscuits, milk, oils, pastries) of brand names and selling them at rock-bottom prices. Critics call the move socialistic, but it wins more customers for Carrefour and helps it grow; the company expanded at an annual percentage rate of 50 percent between 1965 and 1971, opening stores as large as 25,000 square meters (270,000 square feet) (see 1999).
New York City launches a Greenmarkets program that will grow to have 20 outdoor food markets selling direct from producer to consumer.
The artificial sweetener sucralose is discovered at London's Queen Elizabeth College by scientists who replace three hydrogen-oxygen groups of the sugar molecule with three chlorine atoms, creating a new sugar substitute. Tate & Lyle researchers participate in the discovery (see 1998).
Perrier Water is introduced in U.S. markets (see 1863). Although consumers prefer cheaper brands like Canada Dry Club Soda in blind taste tests, Perrier sales will reach $177 million in a decade as fitness-minded Americans switch from alcoholic beverages.
California wines beat French wines in a blind taste test conducted May 24 in the enclosed courtyard of the Paris Inter-Continental Hotel.
New York's Windows on the World restaurant opens on the top (107th) floor of the 3-year-old south tower of the World Trade Center with views of the Statue of Liberty, Staten Island Ferry, and other sights far below. Joseph H. Baum heads up the entire food-service operation at the World Trade Center; a Wall Street luncheon club during the week, Windows will be better known for its views than for its cuisine.
New York's Tavern on the Green reopens August 31 in Central Park under the management of Warner LeRoy, 42, son of Hollywood producer-director Mervyn LeRoy and a partner in the East Side restaurant Maxwell's Plum, who offers $2.85 hamburgers, chicken sandwich on potato bread for $2.50, rack of lamb for $24.50 or steak châteaubriand. Opened originally in 1934 on the site of the park's former sheepfold, Tavern on the Green was run for a few years in the 1960s by Restaurant Associates (until executives called it Tavern in the Red). LeRoy will add more and more glitz to the place in the next 18 years as the Tavern on the Green becomes a major tourist attraction.
The U.S. fast-food chain Au Bon Pain has its beginnings in a pastry-shop company founded by the French oven manufacturer Paviallier (see 1978).
India announces a plan February 25 to penalize parents who have more than two children.
The three largest U.S. marketers of sequential birth-control pills announce February 25 that they are withdrawing their products as a result of "new evidence" linking the pills to endometrial cancer. Sold under names such as Oracon, Ortho-Novum SQ, and Norquen, the products account for about 10 percent of all oral contraceptives sold in America.
Beijing (Peking) announces that China's birthrate has fallen to 12.6 per 1,000, down from 26 per 1,000 in 1970, but few people believe the figures (see 1978).
The U.S. Supreme Court rules 6 to 3 July 1 that a 1974 Missouri law requiring a husband's consent for a first-trimester abortion is unconstitutional (Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth). The court rules November 8 that a law blocking use of Medicaid funds for abortions is unconstitutional (but see 1977).
The Hyde Amendment to the Health, Education, and Welfare appropriations bill clears Congress by a 256-to-114 vote September 16 and bars use of federal funds for abortions "except where the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were brought to term." From 250,000 to 300,000 U.S. women received Medicaid-funded abortions in 1975, critics call the new legislation discriminatory and unconstitutional, supporters, including Rep. Henry Hyde, 52 (R. Ill.), contend that the government should not use tax revenues to fund operations that a substantial percentage of Americans consider immoral (see 1980).
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