1975: Information and Much More from Answers.com
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The Privacy Act of 1974 signed into law by President Ford January 1 gives U.S. citizens the right to request, inspect, and challenge their own federal files; effective September 27, the law bars government agencies from keeping secret records on individuals or collecting information that is not relevant and necessary for them to carry out agency functions. It also provides adequate safeguards to protect records from unauthorized access and disclosure, keeps agencies from sharing information on individuals, and bars them from disclosing personal information except under court order or in certain other limited circumstances (see 1974). President Ford calls former CIA director Richard Helms into the Oval Office January 5 and tells him, "Frankly, we are in a mess." Helms defends Operation Chaos: "The basic allegation—that we spied on dissidents, stemmed from the charge to me to discover if there was any foreign connection to the dissidents. If you get a name, of course you make a record and open a file in case it is relevant thereafter." Ford says he plans no witchhunt, "but in this environment I don't know if I can control it." He informs Helms that he is appointing a blue ribbon panel headed by Vice President Rockefeller to investigate the agency's domestic operations. Sen. Frank (Forrester) Church, 50 (D. Idaho) chairs a Senate Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (the House of Representatives also appoints such a committee), CIA director William E. Colby supplies the Church Committee with details of the agency's efforts to sabotage Chile's economy, Sen. Goldwater (R. Ariz.) and other right-wing politicians attack Colby for cooperating with the Church Committee.
Nixon cronies John Mitchell, H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and Robert Mardian draw prison sentences of up to 8 years each February 21 for their part in covering up White House involvement in the 1972 Watergate break-in.
The Rockefeller Commission report reveals excesses committed by the CIA, and the president dismisses Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger and CIA director William E. Colby November 2. The Senate confirms former congressman and Nixon administration cabinet member Donald H. (Harold) Rumsfeld, 43, as secretary of defense November 11; the Chicago-born navy air veteran takes office November 20, and his Nebraska-born, Wyoming-raised White House colleague Richard B. (Bruce) Cheney, 34, becomes Ford's chief of staff, a position he will hold until January 1977. The Church Committee's hearings go on and will continue for 18 months (see 1976).
Hanoi promotes Gen. Van Tien Dung, 56, commander in chief in January; a veteran of the 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu against the French, he launches a 55-day offensive in the spring and his North Vietnamese troops close in on Saigon. President Thieu resigns April 21 after denouncing the United States (now 52, he flees to Taiwan but will establish residence in Surrey, England); Thieu's vice president Tran Van Huong takes over but resigns a week later, and Gen. Duong van Minh surrenders the city April 30 as U.S. helicopters complete evacuation of 1,373 Americans and 5,595 Vietnamese (a single Chinook helicopter reportedly lifts off 142 refugees in one load). Gen. Dung's "Great Spring Victory" ends the 30-year war that has cost at least 1.3 million Vietnamese and 56,000 U.S. lives, to say nothing of $141 billion in U.S. aid. Congress appropriates $405 million to resettle 130,000 refugees in America, but more than 14 percent of the population has been killed or wounded in the south alone. The war leaves millions of people homeless, and the new communist bureaucracy is poorly equipped to deal with the problems of recovery. The Ho Chi Minh government takes over all of Vietnam and arrests anyone who might lead an opposition group. It places between 200,000 and 340,000 persons—including all former military officers, political figures, and most of South Vietnam's intelligentsia—in prison camps, and sends more than 1 million people who are considered potentially disloyal to "New Economic Zones," where food is scarce, disease is rampant, and thousands will die. Included are all relatives of those imprisoned. More than 1.2 million (the "boat people") will try to leave the country in makeshift craft that will in many cases sink in the open sea, drowning an estimated 600,000.
Nationalist China's Chiang Kai-shek dies of a heart attack at Taipei April 5 at age 87 after 26 years as president of the Republic (Taiwan). His widow, now 78, retires to New York, where she will have a large Manhattan apartment plus a 36-acre Long Island estate at Lattingtown; Chiang's diabetic son (by a previous wife) Chiang Ching-kuo, 64, continues as premier and will assume the presidency in 1978, continuing the repressive rule that has brooked no dissent since the takeover of the island from Japan in 1945.
Cambodia's Lon Nol government falls April 16, ending a 5-year war with the communist Khmer Rouge. Headed by revolutionist Pol Pot and others of peasant origin, the new regime takes Phnom Penh April 17 and sends out trucks with men who announce through bullhorns that U.S. planes are about to bomb the city and everyone must leave. Military vans equipped with loudspeakers go out the next day and urge doctors, technicians, and other professionals in Phnom Penh to turn out for "reconstruction;" all who respond are murdered, as are all who refuse to leave their homes. Now 50, Pol Pot empties the capital of its nearly 3 million residents in 72 hours, marching them off to rural communes; he launches a wholesale slaughter of intellectuals, dissidents, political enemies, and peasants guilty of "mistakes," separating families, abolishing marriage, money, religion, and formal education, and putting everyone over age 10 to work in the fields as he initiates an experiment in agrarian communism that will prove disastrous.
Khmer Rouge forces seize the U.S. merchant ship Mayaguez May 13; U.S. Navy and Marine units move in for a rescue operation May 15, sustain 38 casualties, but recover ship and crew. Phnom Penh's Lycee Tuol Svay Prey is turned into the Tuol Sleng extermination camp in December under the command of Khmer Rouge lieutenant And Duch as Pol Pot pursues a cold-blooded policy aimed at destroying all vestiges of the bourgeoisie (books and private property are outlawed) with an aim to creating a new, collectivist, classless society; monitored by gun-toting illiterates, the nation will be more purely Marxist (and more corrupt) than anything in China or the USSR.
Former Japanese prime minister (and 1974 Nobel Peace Prize winner) Eisako Sato dies of a stroke at Tokyo June 3 at age 74.
The Comoros in the Indian Ocean proclaim independence July 6 after 89 years of French colonial rule. One island, Mayotte, has a Christian majority and remains French.
New Delhi has massive demonstrations against the Indira Gandhi government March 6 as at least 100,000 people march through the city. India's high court rules June 11 that Gandhi used corrupt practices to gain election to Parliament in 1971, that her election was invalid, and that she must resign. Gandhi vows to remain in office and has more than 750 political opponents arrested. Anti-government violence breaks out at New Delhi June 30, Gandhi announces steps to reduce prices, reduce peasants' debts, and achieve fairer distribution of land in an appeal for political support, but she suppresses dissent and imposes strict press censorship.
Bangladesh has political unrest in the wake of last year's disastrous famine, prime minister Mujibur Rahman assumes the presidency in January and imposes tighter controls to maintain order, but he is ousted and killed at Dacca August 15 at age 55 in a coup d'état. Most of his family members are also killed.
Papua New Guinea attains independence September 16 after 74 years of Australian trusteeship.
Australia's British-appointed governor general dismisses Prime Minister Gough Whitlam November 11, ousts the Labor Party that has held power since 1972, and installs a caretaker government headed by Liberal Party leader (John) Malcolm Fraser, 45, whose appointment wins electoral approval in December and who will hold office until 1983. The Whitlam government has been marked by administrative blunders, unemployment, and rising inflation, it has lost the parliamentary support needed to pass spending bills, and jurist Sir Garfield (Edward John) Barwick, 72, has advised the governor general to take the action, the first time in 200 years that the British crown has exercised its right to remove an elected prime minister. Publisher Rupert Murdoch and his newspaper Australian have discarded any pretense of objectivity in their support of Fraser, whose views are more right-wing than those of Whitlam. (Fraser will have laws on television-station ownership changed at Murdoch's request, permitting Murdoch to maintain residence abroad.)
Laos becomes a "people's democratic republic" December 2 as the Pathet Lao leader Prince Souphanovong, 73, ends the 600-year-old monarchy, makes his half-brother Souvanna Phouma an "adviser," and forces King Savang Vatthana to abdicate after nearly 25 years of U.S. efforts to block a takeover by the indigenous communists of the Oregon-sized nation of 3.4 million. Souvanna Phouma has been prime minister since 1962, but communist leader Kaysone Phomvihan, 54, now becomes prime minister and will rule the country until his death in 1992. Savang Battana and his queen, Khamphouis, will be allowed to die in a detention camp (reportedly in 1981), while Phomvihan keeps Laos closely allied with Vietnam and isolated from Western influence (see 1991).
Indonesian troops invade East Timor December 6 with the tacit approval of President Ford and Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, who left Indonesia December 5 after visiting with President Suharto. A short-wave radio reports that troops are gunning down women and children in the streets (using arms obtained from U.S. aid in violation of U.S. law). Exiles escaping from the mountainous island 400 miles off the Australian coast will appeal to the United Nations, but the Indonesians seal off the country and will prevent UN observers from visiting guerrillas, who will continue resistance in the jungles for 24 years. One third of the country's 600,000 people will be killed or starved to death in a genocide that will receive almost no attention elsewhere in the world (see human rights, 1991).
Iran and Iraq agree at Algiers March 6 to fix their border where it was set in 1947. Iran takes over half the Shatt Al-Arab estuary formed by the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers about 100 miles from the Persian Gulf. Iraq has conceded the territory in return for Iran's promise to stop supporting Kurdish rebels in Kurdistan, but Iraqi nationalists vow to regain full control of the 40-mile long waterway (see 1980).
Saudi Arabia's king Faisal ibn Abd al Aziz ibn Saud is assassinated March 25 at age 69 by his U.S.-educated nephew Faisal Musad Abdel Aziza, 27, who is beheaded within 3 months. Arrested by Colorado authorities in 1969 for selling drugs, the prince was released after confessing. Faisal is succeeded after an 11-year reign by his brother ibn Abdul Aziz Khalid, 61, who will rule until 1982, continuing Faisal's relatively moderate policies within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
The United Nations General Assembly votes November 10 to approve an Arab-inspired resolution defining Zionism as "a form of racism and racial discrimination." Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan says the United States will never "acquiesce in this infamous act," but the resolution carries 72 to 35, with 32 abstentions.
Lebanon dissolves into civil war after 5 years of often bloody confrontations between Lebanese and Palestinian refugees (see 1970). The Palestine Liberation Organization has used refugee camps as bases for guerrilla attacks on Israel, and there have been reprisals. Christians take up arms against leftist "Islamo-Progressivists" and violence escalates as both sides begin using artillery; Yasir Arafat has headed the PLO since 1968 and pledges that his people will not involve themselves in Lebanon's affairs, but President Frangieh accuses the PLO in mid-December of violating its agreements and bringing on the civil war which is wrecking Beirut. Palestinian guerrillas more radical than the PLO invade an OPEC conference at Vienna December 21, kill three, and seize 81 hostages, including 11 OPEC ministers (see 1976).
West Germany's Baader-Meinhof gang ends its hunger strike February 5 and goes on trial at Stuttgart in May (see 1974). Baader has lost 46 pounds, Meinhof 28, and court physicians confirm that prison conditions have endangered the lives of the defendants (see 1976).
Former Czech president Antonín Novotny dies of a blocked artery in a state sanitorium at Prague January 28 at age 70. President Ludvík Svoboda retires, largely for reasons of health (he is 79), and Premier Husák becomes president himself with approval from Moscow. Former Soviet premier Nikolai Bulganin dies at Moscow February 24 at age 79.
The Helsinki Accord formalizes détente between East and West. Adopted August 1 by delegates from 35 nations and the Vatican's secretary of state, the declaration issued by the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) emphasizes the inviolability of frontiers, full support for the United Nations, and mutual respect for "sovereign equality and individuality ." The participants renounce "threat or use of force" and subversion in settling international disputes, but the Soviet Union still has at least 10 armored divisions in Poland (see 1976). Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger meets with China's anti-Soviet vice premier Deng Xiaoping, 71, at Beijing October 21, Deng denounces the Helsinki agreement in no uncertain terms, and when Kissinger meets with Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) the same day, Chairman Mao asks him about the ownership of the New York Times and Washington Post, making it sound like he may have listened to anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists.
Former Greek dictator George Papadopolous goes on trial for treason (see 1974); now 59, he issues a signed statement that he led the 1967 coup to save Greece from communism and civil war, but is convicted of insurrection as well as treason and sentenced to death. The sentence is reduced to life imprisonment.
Former Irish president Eamon de Valera dies of bronchial pneumonia and cardiac failure in a Dublin nursing home August 29 at age 92; former French premier Guy Mollet of a heart attack at Paris October 30 at age 69.
A new civilian government takes office in Portugal following a general election in April for the Constituent Assembly that has brought out 92 percent of eligible voters, a record for any western European nation (see 1974); José Batista Pinhiero Azevedo becomes prime minister to Gen. Francisco da Costa Gomes, who remains president; former president Antonio de Spínola flees to Brazil (he will not return until next year), the Cape Verde Islands and Mozambique gain independence in July, remaining African colonies gain independence later in the year, nearly 1 million people in the former colonies flee to Portugal, strikes and violence ensue, the new government nationalizes banks, transport, heavy industries, and media, farm workers in the south expropriate the latifundias and set up communal farms, but moderate military leaders crush a pro-communist coup in the army November 25 and restore order; the leader of last year's coup Ernesto Melo Antunes visits Washington to confer with President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger, the White House announces an $85 million package of emergency economic aid, and Melo Antunes becomes foreign minister (see 1976).
Spain's Generalissimo Francisco Franco dies at El Ferrol November 20 at age 82 after a 36-year dictatorship (see 1974). Premier Carlos Arias Navarro announces the news of Franco's death, and Prince Juan Carlos Alfonso Victor Maria de Borbon, 39, is proclaimed king to succeed his late grandfather Alfonso XIII (see 1931). Arias Navarro will resign next year, and the prince will reign as Juan Carlos I (see elections, 1977).
Peru has a military coup d'état August 29 that ousts president Juan Velasco Alvarado after 7 years in power. His regime's reluctance to broaden political participation has produced popular discontent, as have the president's frequent illnesses, a mounting foreign debt incurred to finance copper and petroleum projects and agrarian reforms, and a decline in copper prices and fish meal exports; a new junta headed by Velasco Alvarado's prime minister and war minister Gen. Francisco Morales Bermudez seizes power and will adopt moderate right-wing policies, dissolving the National Agrarian Confederation, denationalizing the state fishing enterprise, and encouraging more foreign investment (see 1980).
The U.S. Army reports May 2 that women are joining its ranks in record numbers, but although their numbers have tripled in 4 years to 35,000 they still account for only 4.5 percent of the total 780,000. Maj. Gen. Jeanne M. Holm predicts that women will soon fly air force fighter planes, serve aboard navy warships, and even participate in combat (see 1993).
A prototype of the Apache attack helicopter built by Hughes Helicopter, Inc. (later McDonnell Douglas Helicopter) makes its maiden flight in September. The U.S. Army has canceled its contract to buy Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne helicopters based on experience gained in Vietnam. The two-seat YAH-64 beats out a Bell YAH-63 in an army-sponsored competition, and Hughes next year will receive a full-scale contract to develop the machine that will go into production at Mesa, Ariz., in 1984. Highly maneuverable, able to fly at speeds up to 192 miles per hour with a range of 260 miles, the heavily armed chopper has a single rotor 48 feet in diameter driven by two 1,900-shaft-horsepower GE turbojet engines.
Gen. Anthony C. McAuliffe (ret.) dies of leukemia at Washington, D.C., August 11 at age 77; Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Earle Gilmore Wheeler at Frederick, Md., December 18 at age 67.
President Ford is threatened by a pistol-pointing woman September 5 as he approaches the California State Capitol at Sacramento; agents pull the gun from the hand of Lynette Alice "Squeaky" Fromme, 26, who turns out to be a follower of cult leader and murderer Charles Manson (see crime, 1969). Ford comes under actual fire September 22 as he steps out of the St. Francis Hotel at San Francisco; activist Sara Jane Moore, 45, a former FBI informant, has fired the shot, which misses the president.
Cape Verde in the South Atlantic west of Senegal gains independence July 5 after 480 years of Portuguese colonial rule (see 1974). Aristides Pereira is president.
Mozambique gains independence June 24 after 470 years of Portuguese rule. A Marxist government takes power with Maoist Samora Moises Machel, 42, as president.
Former Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie dies August 27 at age 83 in the Menelik Palace at Addis Abbaba where he has been held in confinement since September of last year.
The People's Republic of Angola is proclaimed November 11 as the last Portuguese African colony gains independence, but South African forces have begun a covert invasion in October with CIA backing to support the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), headed by Jonas Malheiro Savimbi, 41. South Africa and the United States fear that a communist takeover would jeopardize Angola's oil production, but Cuba's Fidel Castro decides November 4 to send in troops to support the 19-year-old pro-Soviet People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in resisting non-Marxist rivals for the power of Angola's president Aghostino Neto. Castro uses his own money to finance the Cuban troops, Moscow will agree reluctantly in January of next year to arrange for no more than 10 plane loads of Cuban troops, but Cuba will ultimately deploy some 30,000 troops to support the MPLA (see 1979).
Dahomey changes her name to Benin November 30 to commemorate the African kingdom that flourished in the 17th century (see 1972).
Morocco invades Spanish Sahara after an International Court of Justice ruling in November that the people of Western Sahara have a right to self-determination and independence. Mauritania occupies the southern part, Spain withdraws, Algeria protests.
Surinam (Dutch Guiana) becomes an independent republic November 25 after 160 years of Dutch rule. Creole prime minister (and former banker) Henck (Alphonsus Eugène) Arron, 39, has led the new nation to independence after 2 years of negotiation, but unemployment is high, the country's economy is in a perilous state, and 40,000 people leave for the Netherlands, having chosen to remain Dutch citizens. Arron will be reelected prime minister in 1977 (but see 1980).
The United Nations proclaims the start of Woman's Year January 1. Uganda sends Bernadette Olow to Rome January 10, and she becomes the first female envoy to the Vatican.
Angola grants women the right to vote on the same basis as men (see Portugal, 1976).
The American Civil Liberties Union wins a $12 million damage suit January 16 in behalf of 1,200 clients whose rights were violated in 1971 when they were arrested during antiwar demonstrations at Washington, D.C.
The Supreme Court reverses its 1961 decision with regard to all-male juries, ruling 8 to 1 January 21 in Taylor v. Louisiana that "it is untenable to suggest these days that it would be a special hardship for each and every woman to perform jury service or that society cannot spare any women from their present duties . . . If it ever was the case that women were unqualified to sit on juries, or were so situated that none of them should be required to perform jury service, that time is long past." The Sixth Amendment stipulates that a defendant has the right to a jury drawn from a fair cross section of the community, and a Louisiana law allowing women automatic exemption from jury duty violates that amendment, the Court declares. (The ruling has little practical effect since all states, including Louisiana, have repealed statutes exempting women from jury duty, although in some states women are treated differently from men.)
Congress votes July 28 to extend the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and broaden it to include Spanish-speaking Americans and other "language minorities."
The satellite Aryabhata launched by India April 19 is that country's first. Scientists have used a former Soviet intercosmos rocket to get the satellite into near Earth orbit carrying three payloads, one each for X-ray astronomy, solar physics, and aeronomy (see 1979).
The first U.S.-Soviet space linkup takes place July 18. Astronauts Thomas P. Stafford, Donald K. Slayton, and Van D. Brand exchange visits 140 miles above Earth with cosmonauts Aleksei A. Leonov and Valery N. Kubasov, whose Soyuz spacecraft lands safely in the Soviet Union July 21. The Apollo astronauts splash down in the Pacific 3 days later, ending the Apollo missions.
The People's Republic of China launches its third satellite (and first recoverable satellite) November 26 (see 1971). The Fanhui Shi Weixing is retrieved 3 days later (see 1981).
Economic recovery begins in much of the world despite higher oil prices and continued high unemployment. Japan announces that her Gross National Product dropped by .08 percent in fiscal 1974, the first decline in "real" terms since the end of World War II. When the inflation rate subsides, the Japanese government announces a program of spending for public works, aid to small and medium sized business, and a lowering of the bank rate to catapult the nation out of recession, but a new 10 percent increase in OPEC prices dampens optimism.
Argentina's president Isabel Perón agrees July 8 to raise wages in order to stop a general strike.
British unemployment reaches 1.25 million in August. Prime Minister Wilson says November 5 that government aid to industrial development and rejuvenation must take precedence over social welfare programs such as nationalized health and subsidized housing. Parliament enacts a Sex Discrimination Act November 12 to go into effect simultaneously with an Equal Pay Act, requiring that women receive equal compensation to that of men performing similar work. The law gives British employers 5 years to upgrade women's wages and salaries, but many will reclassify jobs to keep women's pay lower; a high percentage of women are in traditional "women's jobs" that offer no prospect for promotion or pay increase.
Hourly wages for U.S. production workers average $6.22, up from $3.15 in 1965, and $3.20 in Britain, up from $1.13, but productivity (output per worker) is twice as high in the United States as in Britain. Hourly wages average $7.12 in Sweden, up from $1.86; $6.46 in Belgium, up from $1.32; $6.19 in West Germany, up from $1.41; $4.57 in France, up from $1.19; $4.52 in Italy, up from $1.10; $3.10 in Japan, up from 48¢.
U.S. investors fail to respond to the first opportunity they have had to buy gold since 1933. Gold prices fall when the expected U.S. "gold rush" does not materialize, dropping to below $140 per ounce by October, down from $174.50 in the London market January 2.
The VISA credit card replaces the BankAmericard introduced in 1958 (it has been called VISA in some countries for several years).
New York City narrowly avoids defaulting on its bonds. "FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD," headlines the Daily News October 30. Legislation passed by the House of Representatives 275 to 130 December 15 and signed by President Ford December 18 includes a special federal loan of nearly $2 billion for the city.
Baruch College business-school professor Donna Shalala, 34, serves as director and treasurer of New York City's Municipal Assistance Corporation (MAC) as the city attempts to deal with a fiscal crisis.
The Age Discrimination in Employment Act passed by Congress November 28 strengthens an earlier law against age discrimination in the workplace.
Wall Street's fixed commission rate ends May 1 by order of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Institutional investors (bank trust departments, insurance companies, and the like) begin negotiating lower rates, some will enjoy rates up to 90 percent lower than those paid at fixed rates, many brokers and dealers will be forced out of business in the next two years or will survive only by merging, and the change will encourage more individual investors to buy mutual funds. The reduction in the cost of doing business will make more money available for investment purposes. Brokerage houses will cut back on services to compensate for the loss in revenue.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes December 31 at 858.71, up from 616.24 at the end of 1974.
Tungsten lamp filament (and X-ray tube) inventor William D. Coolidge dies at Schenectady, N.Y., February 3 at age 101.
Discovery of oil and gas in the Pine View Field of Summit County, Utah, near the Wyoming border early in the year focuses attention on the Overthrust Belt, a 2,300-mile-long geological fold stretching from Montana south through Arizona. It will prove to be a major new energy source with an estimated 9.73 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (and possibly more than 20 trillion) plus at least 1 billion barrels of crude oil—30 percent of the crude oil reserves in Alaska's Prudhoe Bay.
North Sea oil pumping begins June 11 but provides for only a negligible part of Britain's oil needs (see 1969). Oil supplies 42 percent of British energy, coal 30 percent, natural gas 17 percent, nuclear and hydroelectric power 11 percent.
The Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1976 signed into law by President Ford December 22 sets gasoline mileage standards for automobiles and establishes a Strategic Petroleum Reserve that is to hold 1 billion barrels of oil underground in Louisiana and Texas caverns. The maximum capacity will actually be 727 million barrels, by May 2005 the SPR will have 690.7 million barrels, and its maximum daily draw-down capacity will be 4.3 million.
The Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific founded in 1852 files for bankruptcy March 18 as trucks and barges continue to take business away from U.S. railroads.
The Tanzara (Great Uhuru) Railway opens to traffic in July; completed by Chinese engineers, it links Kapiri Mposhi, Zambia, with Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 1,162 miles (1,850 kilometers) away, and collects $18 million in revenue from 530,000 tons of freight in its first 6 months. Soviet and Western engineers have refused to touch the project, but 45,000 black Africans and 15,000 People's Republic of China technicians have driven the railroad through some of Africa's roughest, most remote country, building 300 bridges, 23 tunnels, 147 stations.
New York City transit fares rise from 35¢ to 50¢ September 1 (see 1972; 1980).
Japan's Kanmon Bridge is completed across the Shionoseki Strait to link Honshu with Kyushu (see Seto Great Bridge, 1988).
Egypt's Suez Canal reopens June 5, just 8 years after the outbreak of the 6-day Arab-Israeli War. Its closing has been of great financial benefit to the late Aristotle Onassis, who has died of pneumonia at Neuilly-sur-Seine outside Paris March 15 at age 69, leaving the bulk of his vast fortune to his daughter Christina (his tankers were large enough to voyage around the Cape of Good Hope).
The Great Lakes ore carrier Edmund Fitzgerald sinks 17 miles from her destination at White Fish, Minn., November 10 as 60-mile-per-hour winds whip up 15-foot waves on Lake Superior in what many call the worst autumn storm in 35 years. The largest ship on the lakes when she was launched in 1958, the ore carrier had a steel hull 729 feet long and was carrying 26,000 tons of iron-ore pellets, but the winds knocked out her radar antenna and she has gone down with all hands, including her captain, officers, and more than 24 crewmen. Officers monitoring her movements by radar from the ship Arthur M. Anderson suggest that she may have strayed too close to shore, perhaps to seek calmer waters. The tragedy will lead to improved standards for ship-to-shore communications on the Great Lakes and a requirement that ships have two separately operated radar sets before leaving port.
Aviation pioneer Lloyd Stearman dies at Northridge, Calif., April 3 at age 76.
A U.S. Air Force Galaxy C-58 crashes April 4 after taking off from Saigon (most of the 172 killed are Vietnamese children); an Eastern Airlines Boeing 727 from New Orleans encounters strong winds on its approach to New York's Kennedy Airport June 24, hits some steel light stanchions within half a mile of the runway, and crashes, killing 113 and severely injuring the other 11 aboard in the worst single-aircraft disaster thus far in U.S. history; a chartered Boeing 707 carrying Moroccan workers home from a vacation in France crashes August 3 on a mountain outside Agadir, killing 188; a Czech airliner crashes while landing at Damascus August 20, killing 126 of 128 aboard.
A bomb explosion at New York's La Guardia Airport December 29 kills 14 and leaves 70 injured. The device has been planted in the baggage-claim area of the main terminal.
The Honda Civic introduced in Japan has a CVCC engine that combines high fuel efficiency with low emissions (see U.S. production, 1982).
The Altair 8800 microcomputer that appears on the cover of the January issue of Popular Electronics magazine is the first personal computer (PC) based on a microprocessor chip set and marks the beginning of what will become a vast industry. Florida-born engineer H. Edward "Ed" Roberts, 32, heads Micro Instrumentation Telemetry Systems (MITS) of Albuquerque, N.M., and has named the PC for the destination of the starship Enterprise in the TV series Star Trek, and although his $400 machine has limited practical value, Roberts is swamped with orders and will soon be shipping his computers at the rate of 2,000 per month. He lets it be known that he will award a contract to anyone who can come up with a BASIC programming language for the machine. Seattle-born Paul (Gardner) Allen, 23, volunteers his services, Roberts hires him as director of software, and Allen enlists the support of his 20-year-old boyhood friend William Henry "Bill" Gates III, who wrote his first computer program at age 13, scored a perfect 800 on his math SAT, and is now a Harvard junior. Gates drops out of Harvard at the end of the term to become a MITS consultant, and the two youths show the six-foot-six, 300-pound Roberts that their program works (see Microsoft, 1976).
Rifle inventor David Marshall "Carbine" Williams dies of bronchial pneumonia at Raleigh, N.C., January 8 at age 74, having received some 70 patents.
The Metric Conversion Act signed by President Ford December 23 moves the United States toward the metric system (see 1801). Compliance is voluntary, and few Americans take the law seriously, but the Pentagon and U.S. industries selling or manufacturing abroad have already adopted the metric system.
German-born cellular and molecular biologist Günter Blobel, 39, at New York's Rockefeller University discovers how protein molecules get sorted into different compartments within cells. He has earlier found that it is newly-made proteins which carry signals through cells and now reproduces the action of the protein molecule outside a cell, proving that it is the protein, not the cell, which houses the information.
Archaeologist Mary Leakey announces October 30 at Washington, D.C., that she has uncovered jaws and teeth of 11 skeletons 25 miles south of Tanzania's Olduvai Gorge that date back 3.75 million years and have human characteristics (see 1959; 1978).
Scientist Sir Julian Huxley dies at London February 14 at age 87; nuclear physicist John R. Dunning at Key Biscayne, Fla., August 25 at age 67; Nobel physicist Sir George Paget Thomson at Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, September 10 at age 83; Nobel geneticist Edward L. Tatum at New York November 5 at age 65; archaeologist (and Libyan oil concessionaire) Wendell Phillips of a heart attack at Arlington, Va., December 4 at age 54.
The first laboratory-produced monoclonal antibodies open a new era in diagnostic and therapeutic medicine. Following up on a suggestion by London-born Danish immunologist Niels K. Jerne, 63, Argentine-born immunologist César Milstein, 48, and Munich-born immunologist Georges J. F. Köhler, 29, have developed the technique for producing the pure uniform, antibodies at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge, England, injecting a mouse with the target protein and causing the animal to develop thousands of the antibodies produced by the body to fend off viruses and other "foreign" substances. B-cells (blood cells that produce antibodies) can easily be harvested from the mouse's spleen; each B-cell makes only one type of protein molecule, and a promising one can be selected for use as the basis of an intravenous therapeutic drug for diagnosing and treating cancer, Crohn's disease, lymphoma, rheumatoid arthritis, or some other disease. Although costly, not always effective, and not totally without side effects, drugs based on monoclonal antibodies will find widespread use in determining whether particular proteins are present in cells, forcing immune-system cells to make pure antibodies against a chosen antigen, and neutralizing toxins produced by deadly bacteria.
Karen Ann Quinlan goes into coma April 15 after drinking alcohol mixed with small doses of Librium and Valium. The 21-year-old Landing, N.J., woman will be kept alive in a respirator until 1985, even after her respirator is turned off June 10, 1976, following a court battle. She will be fed by a nasal tube and given antibiotics to ward off infections despite the fact that there is no hope of recovery, and her much-publicized case will raise continuing arguments about the right to die.
Chemist Percy L. Julian dies of cancer at Waukegan, Ill., April 19 at age 76, having synthesized not only cortisone but also progesterone and testosterone (his house was bombed and burned after he moved to the all-white suburb of Oak Park, so he became an active fund raiser for the NAACP).
Lyme Disease is identified at Lyme, Conn. Transmitted primarily by the bite of a tick found on white-tailed deer, white-footed field mice, and other animals, the bacterial infection can lead to serious neurological, cardiac, or arthritic complications. It will spread quickly throughout most of the northeast and Middle Atlantic states, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the West Coast.
Mexican authorities begin spraying illegal marijuana fields with the broad-leaf weed herbicide paraquat in a $35 million U.S.-funded program to wipe out the narcotic plant, whose use is increasing among young Americans. Harvesters will market the weed after it has been sprayed, the Center for Disease Control at Atlanta will issue warnings that cannabis tainted with paraquat may cause irreversible lung damage, no case of paraquat poisoning will ever be confirmed, demonstrations by pot smokers at Washington will force the government to cut off support for the program in October 1979.
In the United States 725,000 hysterectomies take place, only 20 percent of which can be justified as treatment for cancer and other life-threatening disorders. More wombs are removed than tonsils, and the U.S. rate is two and a half times that in Britain, four times that in Sweden. The U.S. rate has increased 25 percent since 1970; most of the procedures are performed on women who have excessive fears of pregnancy or are worried about developing uterine or ovarian cancer.
Exiled Hungarian primate Josef Cardinal Mindszenty dies at Vienna May 6 at age 83.
The World Council of Churches elects two women pastors at Nairobi December 6.
The U.S. Supreme Court rules 5 to 4 January 22 in Goss v. Lopez that students may not be temporarily suspended from school for misconduct without some attention to due process unless their presence poses a physical threat. But the Court rules October 20 that spanking and paddling do not violate the Fourteenth Amendment provided that teachers first give children fair warning.
The U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare releases new regulations June 3 designed to equalize opportunities for women in schools and colleges.
The 99-year-old U.S. Coast Guard Academy at New London, Conn., admits its first women students (see West Point, Annapolis, 1976).
Boston schools reopen September 8 with heavy police protection against demonstrators who oppose busing to achieve integration (see 1974). After a year of boycotts, protests, and occasional acts of violence, Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. has developed a citywide plan for the coming school year, one that covers 3,000 more students than the 18,000 covered in last year's plan (see 1985).
The U.S. Government decides to use fiber optics instead of copper wire to link the computers in its NORAD (North American Defense Command) headquarters at Cheynne Mountain, Wyo., to reduce interference (see Corning, 1970; Chicago telephones, 1977).
The Sony Betamax is the first consumer video recorder (see 1965). Priced at $789 (as much as $900 for a hi-fi version), it employs a four-bit microchip, and Japanese companies will soon own the VCR industry. Universal Pictures will sue Sony for copyright infringement next year, the Supreme Court will rule in Sony's favor in 1984, but VHS technology will replace the Betamax.
The first plain-paper facsimile ("fax") machine is introduced (see 1921; 1990).
Broadcast news journalist Morgan Beatty dies in Antigua July 4 at age 72.
CanWest Global Communications has its beginnings in a struggling Pembina, N.D., television station acquired by Manitoba-born tax lawyer and politician Israel H. Asper, 43, and three partners. Asper jokes that he got his start by removing chewing gum from the seats of his family-owned movie theater at Minnedosa, 125 miles west of Winnipeg (his parents emigrated to the prairie after fleeing pogroms in the Ukraine some 50 years ago); he and his partners dismantle the station's transmitter over the Labor Day weekend and move it with other gear to Winnipeg, promptly go on the air, will acquire the struggling Toronto-based Global TV Network next year, and will go on to own more than 60 newspapers in addition to controlling broadcasting properties in Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand (see Black, 1996).
New York's public television station WNET launches the MacNeil Report October 20 featuring Montreal-born BBC journalist Robert "Robin" McNeil, 44, in a half-hour news show that follows the networks' news shows but devotes all its time to one subject, does not talk down to its audience, and makes "talking heads" something other than a pejorative. Other PBS stations soon pick up the show, which will be joined by Wichita-born journalist James "Jim" Lehrer, now 41, and become the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour in 1983 (MacNeil will retire in 1995, and the show will become the Jim Lehrer News Hour).
Conservative Digest begins publication at Washington, D.C., under the aegis of direct-mail veteran Richard Viguerie to promote a right-wing agenda (see 1965). Now 41, Viguerie has organized political action committees that have secured the election of congressmen and senators sympathetic to his views; he will whip up indignation at Supreme Court rulings such as the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and encourage religious fundamentalists to involve themselves in politics.
Soldier of Fortune magazine begins publication at Boulder, Colo., where retired U.S. Army colonel Robert K. Brown, 42, edits the supermarket tabloid whose target readers are mercenaries (or mercenary wannabes) and anyone else fascinated by combat and conflict.
Cartoonist Otto Soglow dies at New York April 3 at age 74; veteran Washington correspondent May Craig at Silver Spring, Md., July 15 at age 86.
The U.S. first-class postal rate goes to 13¢ per ounce December 31 (see 1974; 1978).
The Khmer Rouge communists who seize Phnom Penh April 17 kill all but three of the 60 librarians at Cambodia's National Library and burn at least 80 percent of the books, wiping out much of what is known about the country's past in their determination to start anew in what they call Year Zero. The most valuable works were inscribed on palm leaves that decayed in the tropical humidity and had to be recopied every few years by Buddhist monks.
Nonfiction: Breach of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon by Theodore H. White; The First Casualty: From the Crimea to Vietnam: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist, and Myth Maker by Australian-born Sunday Times feature writer Phillip Knightley, 46; The Great War and Modern Memory by Pasadena, Calif.-born Rutgers University English professor Paul Fussell, 51; Reflections on Language by Noam Chomsky; After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation by George Steiner; Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made by Brooklyn, N.Y.-born University of Rochester historian Eugene D. (Dominick) Genovese, 45; Portraits from the Americans: The Democratic Experience by Daniel J. Boorstin, now 60, who is appointed Librarian of Congress and will hold that position until 1987; Passage to Arrarat by London writer Michael J. Arlen, 44; The Great Railway Bazaar by Medford, Mass.-born writer Paul Theroux, 34; Sociobiology: The Modern Synthesis by Birmingham, Ala.-born Harvard zoology professor Edward O. (Osborne) Wilson (Jr.), 46; Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals by Peter Singer, whose views create a controversy and help fuel an animal-rights movement; Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape by New York feminist Susan Brownmiller, 40; On Photography by Susan Sontag.
Author and former presidential adviser Raymond Moley dies at Phoenix, Ariz., February 18 at age 88; economist-author Alvin H. Hansen at Alexandria, Va., June 6 at age 87; ethnographer Sir J. Eric S. Thompson at Cambridge September 9 at age 76; historian Arnold Toynbee at a York, England, nursing home October 22 at age 86; educator-novelist Lionel Trilling of cancer at New York November 6 at age 70; Guinness Book of Records cofounder Ross McWhirter is shot dead by IRA gunmen outside his Middlesex home November 25 at age 50, having offered a £50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of IRA terrorists (the four perpetrators are arrested at London in early December, will be sentenced to life imprisonment in 1977, and released in April 1999); philosopher Hannah Arendt dies of a heart attack at New York December 4 at age 69.
Fiction: Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow; Ragtime by E. R. Doctorow; JR by William Gaddis; World of Wonders by Robertson Davies completes his "Deptford Trilogy"; Hearing Secret Harmonies by Anthony Powell; The Periodic Table (Il Sistema Periodico) by Primo Levi; Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel García Márquez; Conversation in the Cathedral by Mario Vargas Llosa; Guerillas by V. S. Naipaul; The Cockatoo by Patrick White; Shōgun by James Clavell; Terms of Endearment by Larry McMurtry; Looking for Mr. Goodbar by Judith Rossner is based on the story of Roseann Quinn, a 27-year-old schoolteacher who was killed by a man whom she took home from a singles bar; Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala; Burger's Daughter by Nadine Gordimer; First Love, Last Rites (stories) by English author Ian (Russell) McEwan, 27, includes "Last Day of Summer" and "Conversations with a Cupboardman"; Angels at the Ritz and Other Stories by William Trevor; The Eagle Has Landed by English novelist Jack Higgins, 46; Salem's Lot by Stephen King; Last Bus to Woodstock by Oxford crime writer (Norman) Colin Dexter, 44, introduces Detective Chief Inspector Morse; The Dreadful Lemon Sky by John D. MacDonald; Where Are the Children? by Bronx, N.Y.-born novelist Mary Higgins Clark, 43, who was widowed 11 years ago and obliged to support her five children (she has received a $3,000 advance for the suspense novel, which will go into at least 70 printings, and by the end of the century Clark will have earned more than $150 million from this and 17 other bestsellers).
Novelist-journalist-painter Carlo Levi dies at Rome January 4 at age 72; P. G. Wodehouse on Long Island February 14 at age 93; Nobel novelist Ivo Andric at Belgrade March 13 at age 82; Per Wahlöö near Malmo, Sweden, June 23 at age 49; detective novelist Rex Stout at Danbury, Conn., October 27 at age 88; novelist Elizabeth Taylor at Penn, Buckinghamshire, November 19 at age 63.
Poetry: The Fate of Felicity Fark in the Land of the Media by Clive James; Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror by John Ashbery; Sadness and Happiness by Long Branch, N.J.-born poet Robert Pinsky, 34; The Freeing of the Dust by Denise Levertov; House, Bridge, Fountain, Gate by Maxine Kumin; The Awful Rowing Toward God by the late Anne Sexton; Aspects of Eve by Linda Pastan.
Poet Alain Grandbois dies at Quebec March 18 at age 74; Nobel poet-diplomat Saint-John Perse at Presq'ile-de-Giens, France, September 20 at age 88.
Juvenile: Cat by Norwalk, Conn.-born San Francisco cartoonist B. (Bernard) Kliban, 41, who has been selling cartoons to Playboy magazine for $25 each. His book has sales of 450,000 copies and his cat pictures will be seen on countless calendars and T-shirts; Rumble Fish by S. E. Hinton; Strega Nona by Meriden, Conn.-born author-illustrator Tomie dePaola, 41; Pyramid by David A. Macaulay; Sir Toby Jingle's Beastly Journey by Wallace Tripp.
Author John R. Tunis dies at Essex, Conn., February 4 at age 85; Constance Green at Annapolis, Md., December 15 at age 78.
Painting: Weeping Women, The Barber's Tree, and five other encaustic cross-hatched works by Jasper Johns; Whose Name Was Writ in Water by Willem de Kooning; Emerald (Hoarfrost) by Robert Rauschenberg; Cubist Still Life with Lemons, a "commercialized" reinterpretation of Picasso by Roy Lichtenstein; Morro Da Viuva II, Montenegro, and other brightly colored aluminum reliefs by Frank Stella; stage sets for a production of the 1951 Stravinsky opera The Rake's Progress at Glyndebourne by David Hockney. Thomas Hart Benton dies at Kansas City January 19 at age 85; Fairfield Porter at Southampton, N.Y., September 18 at age 68.
Sculpture: Three Piece Reclining Figure: Draped (bronze) by George Moore. Sculptor Dame Barbara Hepworth dies in a fire at her Cornwall studio in St. Ives May 20 at age 72. She has been ill with throat cancer.
Minamata by photojournalist W. Eugene Smith, now 56, is a photo-essay depicting people in a Japanese village who have been crippled or disfigured by mercury wastes from a local chemical company (see environment, 1953).
Documentary photographer Walker Evans dies at New Haven, Conn., April 10 at age 71.
Theater: The Ritz by Terrence McNally 1/20 at New York's Longacre Theater, with Rita Moreno, Jerry Stoller, 406 perfs.; Mariage Blanc (Biale Melzenstwo) by playwright Tadeusz Rócewicz 1/24 at Warsaw's Tatr Maly; Comedians by English playwright Trevor Griffiths, 39, 2/20 at the Nottingham Playhouse; Same Time, Next Year by Canadian playwright Bernard Slade, 44, 3/13 at New York's Brooks Atkinson Theater, with Ellen Burstyn, Charles Grodin, 1,444 perfs.; No Man's Land by Harold Pinter 4/23 at London's Old Vic Theatre, with Sir John Gielgud, Sir Ralph Richardson, Michael Feast, Terence Rigby; The Taking of Miss Janie by Philadelphia-born playwright Ed Bullins, 39, 5/4 at New York's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, with Hilary Jean Beane, Diane Oyama Dixon, 42 perfs.; Absent Friends by Alan Ayckbourn 7/23 at London's Garrick Theatre, with Richard Brier, Peter Bowles; Otherwise Engaged by Simon Gray 7/30 at the Queen's Theatre, London, with Alan Bates, Jacqueline Pearce, Julian Glover; Yentl by Leah Napolin and Isaac Bashevis Singer 10/23 at New York's Eugene O'Neill Theater, with Hy Anzell, Tovah Feldshuh, 223 perfs.
Actor Robert Shaw finds the body of his wife, Mary Ure, 42, upon returning to his London home March 3; actress Francine Larrimore dies at New York March 7 at age 76; actress Mary Philips at Santa Monica, Calif., April 22 at age 74; Broadway stage designer Donald Oenslager at his summer home near Bedford, N.Y., June 21 at age 73; playwright R. C. Sherriff at London November 13 at age 79 (he had become a Hollywood screenwriter); playwright-novelist Thornton Wilder of a heart attack at his Hamden, Conn., home December 7 at age 78; actor William Lundigan of an apparent heart attack in his Hollywood apartment December 20 at age 61.
Television: Baretta 1/17 on ABC with Robert Blake (as a tough cop based on Fort Lauderdale, Fla., police officer David Toma), Tom Ewell (to 5/18/1978); The Jeffersons 1/18 on CBS with Sherman Hemsley and Isabel Sanford, who got their start on All in the Family in 1971 and pioneer the mixed-marriage sitcom (to 7/23/1985); Barney Miller 1/23 on ABC with Hal Linden, Abe Vigoda (to 5/20/1982); Ryan's Hope 7/7 on ABC (daytime) with Kate Mulgrew, 21, as Mary Ryan Renelli, Ilene Kristen as Delia Reid Ryan in a soap opera created by Brooklyn writers Paul Avila Mayer and Claire Labine (to 1/3/1989): Welcome Back, Kotter 9/9 on ABC with Brooklyn, N.Y.-born actor Gabe Kaplan, 30, as history teacher Gabe Kotter at Brooklyn's "James Buchanan" Remedial High School (actually New Utrecht High), Englewood, N.J.-born actor John Travolta, 21, Connecticut-born actor Ron Palillo, 21, Lawrence-Hilton Jacobs, New Jersey-born actor Robert Hegyes, 24 (to 6/8/1979); Starsky and Hutch 9/10 on ABC with Cambridge, Mass.-born actor Paul Michael Glaser, 30, as undercover police officer Dave Starsky, Chicago-born actor David Soul (David Solberg), 30, as his partner Ken Hutchinson (to 5/15/1979); Phyllis 9/18 on CBS with Cloris Leachman (to 3/13/1977); Fawlty Towers 9/19 on BBC-2 with John Cleese as hotel proprietor Basil Fawlty, Prunella Scales as his wife, Sybil, Connie Booth as the waitress Polly, Andrew Sachs as the Spanish waiter Manuel (to 10/25/1979); NBC's Saturday Night Live 10/11 with New York-born actor Chevy Chase, 32, Chicago-born comedian John Belushi, 26, Detroit-born comedienne Gilda Radner, 31, Wilmette, Ill.-born comedian Bill Murray, 25, Ottawa-born comedian Dan Aykroyd, 23; One Day at a Time 12/16 (daytime) on CBS with Chuck McCann, Santa Monica, Calif.-born actress Bonnie Franklin, 31 (to 9/2/1984).
Ozzie Nelson dies of liver cancer at his Hollywood Hills home June 3 at age 68; Rod Serling after open heart surgery at Rochester, N.Y. June 28 at age 50; Gang Busters radio show creator Phillips H. Lord at his Ellsworth, Me., summer home October 19 at age 73.
Films: Richard Brooks's Bite the Bullet with Gene Hackman, Beverly Hills-born actress Candice Bergen, 29, James Coburn; Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Fox and His Friends with Fassbinder; Werner Herzog's Every Man for Himself and God Against All with Bruno S. as Kaspar Hauser; Steven Spielberg's Jaws with Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss; Robert Altman's Nashville with Keith Carradine, Detroit-born comedienne Lily Tomlin, 36, Shelley Duvall; Milos Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher; Lina Wertmuller's Swept Away with Giancarlo Giannini, Mariangela Melato. Also: Claude Lelouch's And Now My Love with Swiss-born actress Marthe (née Marte) Keller, 30, André Dussolier; Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon with Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson; Claude Lelouch's Cat and Mouse with Michele Morgan, Serge Reggiani; John Schlesinger's The Day of the Locust with Donald Sutherland, Karen Black, Burgess Meredith, William Atherton; Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon with Al Pacino; Joan Micklin Silver's Hester Street with Steven Keats, Carol Kane; Jan Kadar's Lies My Father Told Me with Yossi Yadin; Volker Schlondorff's The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum with Margarethe von Trotta; John Huston's The Man Who Would Be King with Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Christopher Plummer; Arthur Penn's Night Moves with Gene Hackman, Jennifer Warren; Melvin Frank's The Prisoner of Second Avenue with Jack Lemmon, Anne Bancroft; Frank Perry's Rancho Deluxe with Jeff Bridges, Sam Waterston, Elizabeth Ashley; Joseph Losey's The Romantic Englishwoman with Michael Caine, Glenda Jackson; Michael Ritchie's Smile with Bruce Dern, Barbara Feldon, Michael Kidd; Satsuo Yamomoto's Solar Eclipse (Kinkanshoku).
Pierre Fresnay dies of a respiratory ailment January 9 at Neuilly-sur-Seine at age 77; director George E. Marshall at Los Angeles February 14 at age 84; silent film "vamp" Dagmar Godowsky at New York February 13 at age 78; director George E. Marshall at Los Angeles February 17 at age 84; Susan Hayward at Beverly Hills March 14 at age 53 after suffering a seizure related to a brain tumor; Larry Parks of a heart attack at his Studio City home April 13 at age 60; Frederic March of cancer at Los Angeles April 14 at age 77; Richard Conte of heart attack at Los Angeles April 15 at age 65; Moe Howard, last of the Three Stooges, of lung cancer at Hollywood May 4 at age 78; James Robertson Justice at King's Somborne, England, July 2 at age 70; director Pier Paolo Passolini is found bludgeoned to death near Ostia, Italy, November 2 at age 53 (a teenager is held on murder charges); comedian Godfrey Cambridge of a heart attack on the set at Hollywood November 29 at age 43; director William A. Wellman of leukemia at Los Angeles December 9 at age 79; Arthur Treacher of a heart ailment at Manhasset, N.Y., December 14 at age 81.
Stage musicals: The Wiz 1/5 at New York's Majestic Theater, with Geoffrey Holder, Stephanie Mills, music and lyrics by Charlie Smalls, songs that include "Ease on Down the Road," book based on L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz, 1,666 perfs.; Shenandoah 1/7 at New York's Alvin Theater, with music by Gary Geld, lyrics by Peter Udell, 557 perfs.; Chicago 6/3 at New York's Forty-Sixth Street Theater, with Chita Rivera, Gwen Verdon, Jerry Orbach, music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, 922 perfs.; Teeth 'n' Smiles 9/2 at London's Royal Court Theatre, with Helen Mirren, book by David Hare, music and lyrics by Tony Bicát; A Chorus Line 10/19 at New York's Shubert Theater (after 101 perfs. at the off-Broadway Public Theater plus previews), with choreography by Michael Bennett, music by Marvin Hamlisch, lyrics by Edward Kleban, 36, 6,137 perfs.
Former Gilbert and Sullivan operetta star Martyn Green dies at Hollywood, Calif., February 28 at age 75; former London musical star Phyllis Dare at Brighton March 11 at age 84; Josephine Baker of a stroke at Paris April 12 at age 68, leaving 12 adopted children whom she has called her "rainbow tribe"; former London musical star Zena Dare dies at Brighton April 27 at age 88; Larry Blyden sustains injuries in an automobile accident near Agadir, Morocco, May 31 and dies at Agadir June 6 at age 49; composer Robert Stolz dies at Berlin June 27 at age 94, having written the music for about 60 operettas and more than 1,000 songs.
Opera: Beverly Sills makes her Metropolitan Opera debut 4/7 singing the role of Pamira in the 1826 Rossini opera Le Siège de Corinth; Canadian soprano Lois McDonall, 36, makes her London debut at Covent Garden as a solo voice in the 1919 Strauss opera Die Frau ohne Schatten; Elizabeth Harwood makes her Metropolitan Opera debut 10/15 singing the role of Fiordiligi in the 1790 Mozart opera Così Fan Tutte; Oklahoma-born soprano Leona Mitchell, 26, makes her Metropolitan Opera debut 12/15 singing the role of Micaëla in the 1875 Bizet opera Carmen; Filipina soprano Evelyn Mandac, 30, makes her Metropolitan Opera debut 12/19 singing the role of Loretta in the 1918 Puccini opera Gianni Schicchi.
Tenor Richard Tucker dies at Kalamazoo, Mich., January 8 at age 60; composer Sir Arthur Bliss at London March 27 at age 83; modern dance pioneer Charles Weidman at New York July 15 at age 73; composer Dmitri Shostakovich at Moscow August 9 at age 69; dancer John Kriza is found dead in the Gulf of Mexico near Naples, Fla., August 18 at age 56, an apparent drowning victim.
Discothèques enjoy a resurgence unequaled since the early 1960s in major U.S. and European cities. Highly formula-conforming disco records by Van McCoy, Donna Summer, The Bee Gees, and others will dominate popular music until 1979.
Popular songs: Born to Run (album) by Freehold, N.J.-born singer-composer Bruce Springsteen, 26, whose energetic anthems to his blue collar background will make him one of the decade's most influential rock stylists; "Feelings" by Brazilian-born singer/songwriter Morris Albert (M.A. Kaiserman), who will lose a lawsuit for plagiarism filed in 1988 by French songwriter Louis Gaste (Gaste will be awarded 88 percent of royalties); "The Hustle" by Washington, D.C.-born songwriter Van McCoy, 35; Frampton (album) by English songwriter-singer-guitarist Peter Frampton, 25; There's No Place like America Today (album) by Curtis Mayfield; Toys in the Attic (album) by Aerosmith includes the single "Sweet Emotion"; "Love Will Keep Us Together" by early 1960s pop star Neil Sadaka, now 36, lyrics by Howard Greenfield; Blood on the Tracks (album) and "Tangled Up in Blue" by Bob Dylan; One of These Nights (album), On the Border (album) and "Lyin' Eyes" by Los Angeles rock guitarist Glenn Frey and drummer Don Henley of The Eagles (Frey, Henley, guitarist Don Felder, 28, and bass guitarist Randy Meisner) who popularize the California Sound—pop music with country and western influence; "Jive Talkin'" by The Bee Gees; "I'm Not in Love" by Graham Gouldman, 29, and Eric Stewart, 30, of the British pop group 10cc (Gouldman, Stewart, Lol Creme, 28, and Kevin Godley, 29); The Captain and Tennille (Montgomery, Ala.-born musician Toni Tennille, 32, and her husband, Daryl Dragon, 33) score a hit singing, "Love Will Keep Us Together"; "I Still Believe in Fairy Tales" by Tammy Wynette.
Singer Umm Kulthum Ibrahim dies of a cerebral hemorrhage at Cairo February 3 at age 77; country music legend Bob Wills of bronchial pneumonia at Fort Worth, Texas, May 13 at age 70; tango composer Anibal Troilo of heart disease at Buenos Aires May 18 at age 60; composer Leroy Anderson of lung cancer at his Woodbridge, Conn., home May 18 at age 66; songwriter Haven Gillespie of cancer at Las Vegas March 14 at age 87; jazz drummer Arthur James "Zutty" Singleton at New York July 14 at age 77; jazz alto saxophonist Julian "Cannonball" Adderley suffers a stroke while performing July 17 and dies at Gary, Ind., August 8 at age 47; bandleader Vincent Lopez dies in a North Miami Beach nursing home September 20 at age 80; songwriter Joseph A. McCarthy of cancer at New York November 7 at age 53; songwriter Noble Sissle at his Tampa, Fla., home December 17 at age 86; film composer Bernard Hermann in his sleep at Hollywood December 24 at age 64.
Pittsburgh beats Minnesota 16 to 6 at New Orleans January 12 in Super Bowl IX.
Former International Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage dies in West Germany May 8 at age 87.
Japanese mountaineer Junko Tabei, 35, arrives at the summit of Everest May 16 and becomes the first woman ever to scale the world's highest peak.
Arthur Ashe, now 32, wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Billy Jean King in women's singles; Manuel Orantes, 26, (Spain) wins in men's singles at Forest Hills, Chris Evert in women's singles.
U.S. tennis racquet sales peak at 9.2 million units; they will fall to 5 million by 1978.
Golfer Jack Nicklaus wins his fourth PGA championship and his fifth Masters Tournament.
New Zealand miler John Walker, 23, runs the mile in 3 minutes, 49.4 seconds August 12 at Göteborg, Sweden, beating Roger Bannister's 1954 mark by 10 seconds.
Muhammad Ali retains his world heavyweight boxing title September 30 by knocking out former champion Joe Frazier in the 14th round at Manila (the "Thrilla in Manila"). Former champion Ezzard Charles has died of amytrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease) at Chicago May 27 at age 53; former light-heavyweight champ Georges Carpentier dies of a heart attack at Paris October 27 at age 81.
The Cincinnati Reds win the World Series, defeating the Boston Red Sox 4 games to 3.
Veteran baseball manager Casey Stengel has died of lymphatic cancer at his Glendale, Calif., home September 29 at age 85; Nellie Fox dies of cancer at Baltimore December 1 at age 47.
The arbitration panel that made Jim "Catfish" Hunter a free agent last year rules December 23 that Montreal Expos pitcher Dave McNally, 33, and Los Angeles Dodger pitcher Andy Messersmith, 30, are no longer bound by their contracts and are free to negotiate with other teams. The ruling strikes at baseball's reserve clause which has allowed a team owner to renew contracts unilaterally on a yearly basis and has prevented a player who rejected the contract from playing for any other team (see 1976). Hunter signs a 5-year contract with the Yankees at $200,000 per year plus $2.5 million in bonuses, insurance, and lawyer fees.
Mississippi-born Chicago Bears running back Walter Payton, 21, begins a 12-year National Football League career in which he will play 190 games, average 88 yards per game, and rush for 110 touchdowns.
Aim toothpaste is introduced by Lever Brothers, whose fluoridated gel supplements Pepsodent and the Close-Up brand introduced in 1969. Aim and Close-Up will have 17.3 percent of the U.S. market by 1981, but competition from Procter & Gamble will prevent Lever from making any profit on the products.
Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani, 39, establishes a company under his own name at Milan to produce clothing, initially for men.
Couturiere Madeleine Vionnet dies at Paris March 2 at age 98; Revlon's Charles Revson of cancer at New York August 24 at age 68.
Computer-game pioneer Nolan Bushnell makes an arrangement with Sears, Roebuck to sell his 3-year-old Atari "Pong" game through Sears stores (but see 1976).
Bobby Fischer relinquishes his world chess title at year's end (see 1972). Soviet grand master Anatoly Karpov, 23, succeeds as world champion.
The Clean Indoor Air Act passed by the Minnesota state legislature requires all public places to have smoke-free areas, but enforcement will prove difficult. Arizona banned smoking in public places in May 1973, declaring smoking a public nuisance and a health hazard. It extended the ban last year, but tobacco industry lobbyists work to prevent passage of more such laws and to defeat popular referenda on smoking in public places, warning voters against "Big Brother" (see Fiction, 1949).
An unknown gunman shoots onetime Chicago mob boss Sam "Momo" Giancana to death in the basement kitchen of his suburban Oak Park, Ill., home June 19 at age 65; a subordinate of Mafia kingpin Anthony "Tough Tony" Accardo, Giancana is reputed to have shared a mistress with the late President Kennedy and to have participated in a CIA plot to assassinate Cuba's President Castro, he refused to testify before a federal grand jury and returned to the United States last year after 9 years in Mexico. He was scheduled to go before a Senate investigating committee to answer questions about his relationship to the CIA.
Two Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents are murdered on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation June 26. Oglala Sioux tribal police had warned them not to enter private property, American Indian Movement (AIM) members had objected to the agents' harassment, AIM member Joe Stuntz is found shot between the eyes but his murder is not investigated, AIM leader Leonard Peltier, 27, flees to Canada to escape prosecution but is captured and extradited, he will be tried in 1977, a federal court will convict on the basis of what AIM will call false testimony, but although the FBI has produced no proof of his guilt he will still be in prison at Leavenworth, Kansas, in 2005.
Former International Brotherhood of Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa dines with two Mafia figures July 30 at the posh Bloomfield Hills, Mich., restaurant Machus Red Fox and disappears at age 61, presumably having been murdered.
FBI agents at San Francisco apprehend Patricia Hearst September 18 along with remnants of the Symbionese Liberation Army (see 1974). She is held on bank robbery charges.
London model Norman Scott, 35, walks his Great Dane bitch Rink along a Somerset road the night of October 24, an airline pilot who has driven him to the scene shoots the dog and tries to shoot Scott, and the gun jams. Scott charges that Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe, 46, has paid the pilot £5,000 to kill him and thus end rumors of an old homosexual relationship that are endangering Thorpe's political career (see 1979).
The body of English prostitute Wilma McCann is discovered October 30, and newspapers run headlines about the "Yorkshire Ripper" that recall memories of the 1888 murders committed by "Jack the Ripper" (see 1981).
Architect and city planner Clarence S. Stein dies at New York February 7 at age 88.
An earthquake registering 7.4 on the Richter scale destroys the town of Haicheng 400 miles northeast of Beijing February 4, but state seismologists have predicted the quake, and while at least 1,300 are killed at Lianing the government has evacuated nearly 1 million people and there are no fatalities at Haicheng; a quake in Turkey September 6 measures 6.7 and kills 2,300.
Costa Rica establishes Tortuguero National Park on her Caribbean coast to protect the nesting area of the endangered green turtle (Chelonia mydas) as well as leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea), hawksbill (Caretta caretta), and loggerhead (Eretmochelys imbricata) turtles. Mobile, Ala.-born herpatologist Archie Carr, now 66, has promoted efforts to save the turtle and create the park, which covers 18,946 acres of land and about 52,000 hectares of marine area in a wetland region whose rivers, canals, and lagoons provide easy access to flora and fauna.
Voyageurs National Park in northern Minnesota is designated as such by act of Congress. Embracing 219,128 acres of forested lake country, it covers an area used as a trade route by 18th-century French-Canadian fur traders.
New York's City Council enacts a "Pooper Scooper" law following a campaign waged largely by activist Fran Lee (Mrs. Samuel Weiss), 65, a former actress and onetime kindergarten teacher. Dog owners are required by the law to clean up the mess left by their pets, and peer pressure makes most owners cooperate.
The Toxic Substances Control Act signed by President Ford October 12 requires phasing out all production and sale of PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) within 3 years. The measure imposes strict technology requirements on the chemical industry and will oblige smaller firms to quit production. PCBs have been linked to cancer and birth defects, and Congress has voted 319 to 45 August 23 to adopt the tough new environmental law.
Appalachian Trail founder Benton Mackaye dies at his Sherley Center, Mass., home December 12 at age 96.
Maine oystermen begin cultivating the European oyster Ostrea edulis, which grows faster than American varieties and fetches higher prices. York Harbor Export Co. will harvest its first crop in 1978 and be producing 500,000 oysters per year within a decade, by which time the Ostrea edulis will also be under cultivation in coastal waters of the Northwest, where aquaculturists in some places will be harvesting Olympia oysters (Crassostrea lurida) as well.
United Fruit Co. president Eli M. Black throws himself through the window of his office in New York's Pan Am Building February 3 and plummets 44 floors to his death at age 53. The company has lost its leadership in the banana business to Castle & Cook, earnings have declined, and those executives who have not quit have been fomenting an insurrection against Black. Improper payments by United Fruit to foreign governments will come to light to help explain Black's suicide.
Agricultural economist Wolf Ladejinsky dies of a stroke at Washington, D.C., June 3 at age 76.
July 17 and 18 the worst frost of the century destroys 1.5 billion Brazilian coffee trees, well over half the nation's total. Most of the harvest has been completed, but Brazil is the world's largest producer, world consumption has exceeded production in 8 of the past 10 years, other producing countries halt exports in anticipation of higher prices, coffee futures soar, and the Black Frost drives up retail coffee prices by 20¢/lb within 2 weeks.
India's wheat crop is 24.1 million metric tons, up from 12.3 in 1965.
President Ford lifts an embargo on grain sales to Poland October 10, and Moscow agrees October 20 to buy 6 to 8 million tons of U.S. wheat and corn per year, with a minimum of 6 million tons per year through 1981 (see 1980) embargo.
Eat Your Heart Out by Texas Observer editor and self-styled populist Jim Hightower, 32, is a critique of U.S. agribusiness and a defense of small-scale organic farming.
The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs issues a report March 2 estimating that only 38 percent of eligible food-stamp recipients receive the stamps and 20 million eligible Americans do not (see nutrition, 1974). The number of recipients has risen to 17.9 million as of January 31, with 2 million new recipients joining in December and January as economic recession creates unemployment. A congressional Joint Economic Committee study shows that as of November 1973 the average food-stamp recipient had a monthly income of only $364, of which 80 percent was drawn from federal and state programs for the poor. More than 70 percent of heads of participating families were not in the workforce. Both reports charge that the food-stamp program is badly administered, distributing more stamps than it should in some instances and not reaching those most in need of help (see Dietary Goals, 1977).
Bacteriologist Alice Evans dies following a stroke at Alexandria, Va., September 5 at age 94, having seen pasteurization of milk and fruit juices become almost universally adopted to prevent outbreaks of brucellosis and other diseases.
The Amana Touchmatic Radarange is the first microwave oven with a microchip that permits programming of meals (see 1967).
U.S. soft drinks edge past coffee in popularity and will pass milk next year.
Dayton, Ohio, engineer Ermal C. Fraze obtains a patent for an improved push-in, pull-back tab opener for aluminum cans that eliminates the problem of discarded tabs (see 1963). Now 62, Fraze sells exclusive rights to Alcoa.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issues a ruling that potato-chip products not made from fresh potatoes must be labeled "potato chips made from dried potatoes" (see Pringles, 1969). The ruling is to take effect in 1977, but the sales appeal of fabricated chips will have declined by that time and regular potato chips will be far more popular.
Japan's population reaches nearly 112 million October 1, up from 56 million in 1920. China has at least 843 million, India 615, the USSR 255, the United States 213.
Cambodia's population of 7 to 9 million will decline to 4.8 million by 1980 as Pol Pot's communist regime starves and brutalizes the people. Under normal circumstances, the population would have increased by about 15 percent.
Britain's birthrate falls to 12.2 per 1,000, lower even than in the depths of the Great Depression in 1933, but while average family size has decreased the number of women bearing children has actually increased.
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