1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980
South Vietnamese troops invade Laos February 13 with U.S. air and artillery support to root out North Vietnamese supply depots but are driven out within 6 weeks after taking heavy casualties (see 1970). The Weather Underground claims responsibility for a violent explosion that rips through a ground-floor restroom in the Senate wing of the Capitol at Washington, D.C., March 1 (Capitol police begin checking all visitors for weapons). Conscientious objectors who seek draft exemption must show that they are opposed to all wars, not just to the Vietnam War, the Supreme Court rules March 8 in an 8-to-1 decision. A military tribunal convicts Lt. William Calley March 31 of premeditated murder in the case of 22 civilians killed at My Lai in 1968, it sentences him to life imprisonment, but President Nixon frees him April 6 pending further review of his guilt. Capt. Ernest Medina wins acquittal September 22. U.S. troop withdrawals from South Vietnam reduce the total to about 200,000, down from 534,000 in mid-1969. Nixon considers withdrawing altogether, but his national security adviser Henry Kissinger dissuades him on grounds that it may cost him reelection next year.
Australia's prime minister John Gorton resigns in March after losing a Liberal Party vote of confidence and is succeeded after more than 3 years in office by deputy Liberal Party leader William McMahon, 63, whose ministry will continue until late next year. Australia and New Zealand withdraw their forces from Vietnam by fall.
Czechoslovakia's Communist Party chief Gustav Husák repudiates the "Prague Spring" of 1968, saying, "In 1968 socialism was in danger in Czechoslovakia, and the armed intervention [by Warsaw Pact troops] helped to save it" (see 1969; 1975).
An agreement signed April 26 eases the travel restrictions between East and West Germany that have existed since the Berlin Wall was erected in 1961. East German Communist Party leader Walter Ulbricht resigns in May at age 78, having headed the Party for 25 years. He remains head of state but is succeeded as first secretary of the party by Erich Honecker, 58, whose corrupt and repressive regime will continue until 1989.
Hungarian Marxist-humanist Gyorgy Lukaks dies at Vienna June 4 at age 86.
Bernadette Devlin gives birth to a baby out of wedlock, loses Catholic support, but continues her aggressive political tactics in Britain's Parliament on behalf of Irish independence and draws a 9-month prison sentence (see 1969). Devlin will marry in 1973 and not stand for reelection in 1974 (see 1981).
Turkey's military presents a memorandum March 12 demanding a "strong and credible" government that will curb growing violence and implement reforms promised in the nation's 1961 constitution (see 1965). Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel promptly resigns, having retained office despite the defeat of his party at the polls in February of last year, but he resists any effort to make Gen. Faruk Gürler prime minister, and a series of weak caretaker governments will rule for the next few years, but Demirel himself will be prime minister from 1975 to 1977 and again in 1979 (see 1980).
Bahrain gains independence August 15 after nearly 110 years as a British protectorate (see 1861; oil, 1932). Sheik Isa bin Salman al-Khalifa, 38, has been king since 1961; he now becomes emir, and he will reign until his death in 1999.
Egyptian voters approve a new constitution by referendum September 11; it proclaims the Arab Republic of Egypt to be "a democratic, socialist state" with Islam as its state religion and Arabic its national language but recognizes private ownership as well as public and cooperative.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is created December 2 through a federation of the former Trucial States that have enjoyed British protection since 1820. Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Al-Nahyan, 53, is the first president of the UAE, whose capital is at Abu Dhabi (where oil was discover 13 years ago); grandson and namesake of the sheik who ruled Abu Dhabi from 1855 to 1909, he was appointed in 1946 as governor of Al-Ain, a settlement that dates to the fourth millennium B.C., and he will head the UAE until his death in 2004.
East Pakistan has widespread riots and strikes following the announcement March 1 of a delay in convening the new national assembly elected last year (see 1969; environment [cyclone], 1970). The Awani League has won 167 of the 313 seats to be filled, its strength is concentrated in Bengal, and its leader protests the delay. A strike cripples the key port of Chittagong, Bengali extremists murder many non-Bengalis, and Pakistan's president Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan flies to East Pakistan to negotiate with the Awami League's leader Mujibur Rahman. He denounces Rahman as a traitor and orders an invasion of Bengal March 25, his forces employ brutal measures in carrying out his orders, and millions of East Pakistani's pour into India. The East Bengal Regiment defects to Rahman's cause; Bengal separatists blow up major bridges, railroads, and communications lines; the separatists are subdued, but guerrillas resist the Pakistani army of occupation. India concludes a 20-year friendship pact with the Soviet Union in August to deter any Pakistani attack, Indian troops invade Bengal December 4, a third war over Kashmir begins in December between India and Pakistan but lasts only 2 weeks (see 1966; 1972), and Pakistani forces in Bengal surrender December 16. Yahya Khan resigns his presidency December 20 and is succeeded by his foreign minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, 43, who received his bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1950, studied law at Oxford, founded the Pakistan People's Party in December 1967, and was imprisoned after denouncing the old Ayub Khan regime. He places Yahya Khan under house arrest, nationalizes some key industries, and tries to impose taxes on the landed families (see 1973; Bangladesh, 1972).
Indonesia holds parliamentary elections, but although 10 political parties vie for seats President Suharto has banned all criticism of the government (see 1967).
Former Philippines president Carlos Polestico Garcia dies at Quezon City June 14 at age 74.
South Korean opposition leader Kim Dae Jung, 46, runs for president against military strongman Park Chung Hee, who portrays Kim as a radical who favors North Korea; a truck crashes into Kim's car during his campaign and injures him in what many believe is an assassination attempt, and Park wins reelection (see 1973).
Chinese defense minister Lin Bao (Lin Pao), 65, leads an abortive coup against Chairman Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) with support from members of the armed forces. Officially designated to succeed Mao, Lin is a veteran of the Long March that began in 1934 and has been a member of the Chinese Politburo since 1955, but he dies September 13 in a Mongolian plane crash while fleeing the retribution of Chairman Mao. The People's Republic is formally seated as a UN member November 15.
A military coup ousts Uganda's president Milton Obote January 25 while he is returning from a conference at Singapore (see 1968). Major Gen. Idi Amin, now 44, has heard that he was going to be arrested for misappropriating army funds and heads a military government that seizes power. A convert to Islam, Amin begins liquidating political opponents, will not permit the nation's former kings to return, and starts persecuting Asian businessmen, whose expulsion will wreck the nation's copper and cotton industries, but ethnic conflicts soon begin to disrupt the army, with Amin's Nubian supporters killing thousands of soldiers from the Acholi and Langi tribes (see 1972).
Liberia's president William V. S. Tubman dies at a London clinic July 23 at age 75 after 27 years in office (he underwent surgery to correct a prostate condition and developed hemorrhaging). Having moved his government from democratic rule to dictatorship, he is succeeded by his longtime vice president William R. (Richard) Tolbert Jr., 58, who will be inaugurated at Monrovia in early January of next year, restore some freedoms in a stable nation thriving on exports of iron ore, rubber, timber, coconuts, oranges, palm oil, and plantain but prove more corrupt and less capable than his predecessor; his inept administration will continue until 1980.
A communist coup ousts Sudan's prime minister Gaafar M. el-Nimeiri in July, but he wins election in September as the nation's first president (see 1970). He receives 98.6 percent of the vote in a plebiscite, and next year will establish the Sudanese Socialist Union, with himself as president, as he negotiates an end to 10 years of hostilities with the southern Sudan and grants the region autonomy (but see 1983).
The Republic of Zaire is created October 27. President Mobutu Sese Seko (formerly Joseph D. Mobutu) renames the Democratic Republic of Congo and has the Congo River renamed the Zaire (see 1966; 1996).
Former Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz dies in exile at Mexico City January 27 at age 54.
The massacre of at least 25 student demonstrators at Mexico City June 10 provokes sharp criticism by intellectuals of President Luis Eccheveria (see 1968). The students were marching peacefully in protest against the president's authoritarian policies when a government-sponsored paramilitary group attacked them with clubs and chains; journalist Fernando Benitez says, "We have to choose between Ecceveria and fascism," but no charges will be filed against Echeverria until July 2004.
Haiti's president François Duvalier dies at his Port-au-Prince presidential palace April 22 at age 64 after a dictatorship of nearly 14 years that have seen "Papa Doc's" Tontons Macoutes terrorize the populace, keeping the country illiterate and impoverished. Duvalier's son Jean-Claude, 19, is sworn in as "president for life" and will continue the policy of repression until his resignation early in 1986.
London assumes direct control of the Caribbean island of Anguilla in July under an act of Parliament following unsuccessful negotiations (see 1967; 1976).
Lawyer-diplomat Adolph A. Berle dies at New York February 17 at age 76; former New York governor and two-time Republican presidential candidate Thomas E. Dewey at Bal Harbour, Fla., March 16 at age 68; war hero Audie Murphy dies in the crash of a light plane near the summit of a peak in a wooded area west of Roanoke, Va., May 28 at age 47 while en route to Atlanta on a business trip (five other men are also killed in the crash). Murphy filed for bankruptcy 3 years ago.
The Twenty-Sixth Amendment to the Constitution ratified July 1 lowers the U.S. voting age from 21 to 18.
U.S. Supreme Court associate justice John Harlan resigns for reasons of health September 17 and retired Supreme Court justice Hugo L. Black dies at Bethesda, Md., September 24 at age 85. President Nixon announces October that he is appointing Milwaukee-born Assistant Attorney General William (Hubbs) Rehnquist, 47, to succeed Harlan (Nixon's 33-year-old counsel John W. [Wesley] Dean [III] has suggested Rehnquist's name) and Richmond lawyer Lewis F. Powell Jr., 64, to succeed Black. Both meet Nixon's standard as "strict constructionists" in their interpretation of the Constitution, but although Rehnquist graduated first in his class at Stanford Law School and clerked for former justice Robert Jackson, his racist and right-wing views produce a storm of criticism; opponents mount a filibuster, supporters win a two-thirds majority to invoke cloture (it will not be invoked again in this century), and the Senate confirms him by a vote of only 68 to 26. Powell wins easy confirmation and will serve until June 1987, but while he and other Nixon appointees will move to the center and sometimes even to the left, Rehnquist will remain staunchly committed to values that favor property owners, rendering judgments that are arguably not in the public interest (see 1986).
Former secretary of state Dean Acheson dies at his Sandy Spring, Md., farm October 12 at age 78; former United Nations undersecretary and 1950 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ralph J. Bunche at New York December 9 at age 67.
A Gay Rights Bill introduced January 6 by New York City Council members Carter Burden and Eldon Clingan is the first such bill ever proposed in America (see Stonewall Inn riot, 1969). It would prohibit discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation, but the measure will be bottled up in committee (see 1974).
Sen. Richard B. Russell (D. Ga.) dies of a respiratory illness at Washington's Walter Reed Army Medical Center January 21 at age 73, having consistently opposed racial integration and civil rights legislation since taking office in 1933 (a new Senate office building will be named in his honor).
The U.S. Supreme Court rules unanimously January 25 in Phillips v. Martin Marietta that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits "not only overt discrimination but also practices that are fair in form, but discriminatory in operation." A company may not deny employment to women with children of preschool age unless the same criteria apply to men, the Court rules. A law that permits one hiring policy for women and another for men is unconstitutional.
Wilmington, N.C., has racial violence beginning in late January with incidents of arson, dynamite explosions, and shootings. Black activists headed by United Church of Christ field director for racial justice Ben Chavis, 22, barricade themselves inside Mike's Grocery February 6, saying the police do not protect them from roving whites. A policeman shoots a black teenager that night and unknown assailants kill an armed middle-aged white man near the grocery store. A court early next year will convict Chavis and nine others of firebombing the store, and the ten will draw sentences of from 29 to 34 years despite international clamor for their release.
National Urban League executive director Whitney M. Young Jr. dies suddenly at Lagos, Nigeria, March 11 at age 49.
Mississippi-born civil rights leader M. (Moses) Carl Holman, 52, becomes president of the National Urban Coalition that he will head until his death in 1988. A former English and humanities professor at Atlanta's Clark College, Holman will forge alliances between the black and Hispanic communities, advocate economic development, job training, increased opportunities in education, employment, and housing, and help minority and female children develop mathematical, scientific, and computer skills.
The U.S. Supreme Court upholds busing of schoolchildren to achieve racial balance where segregation has official sanction and where school authorities have offered no acceptable alternative to busing (see 1965). The court hands down the unanimous decision April 20 in the case of Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education.
Federal authorities impose a strict busing plan on the Austin, Tex., school system in May; a federal judge rejects the plan in late July; Alabama's Gov. Wallace says the Nixon administration has done more than any preceding administration to desegregate public schools; and President Nixon publicly repudiates the Austin plan August 3; he orders that busing be limited "to the minimum required by law" (the busing ordered in Charlotte, N.C., is actually less sweeping than the one used to preserve segregation).
The Principality of Liechtenstein's male electorate votes February 28 to deny suffrage to women, but most Swiss cantons finally grant women the right to vote on the same basis as men.
A women's-rights demonstration at London March 6 brings out 4,000 marchers.
Pakistani troops methodically rape hundreds of thousands of Bengali women, many of whom commit suicide because their violation has made them unmarriagable.
The National Women's Political Caucus is founded by a nonpartisan group of U.S. women in July to seek more political power for women. Founders include Mississippi civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, now 54, who takes issue with some of the middle-class feminists, saying, "I got a black husband, six feet three, 240 pounds, with a 14 shoe, that I don't want to be liberated from. We are here to work side by side with this black man in trying to bring liberation to all people."
The Center for Non-Violent Social Change is founded at Atlanta by Coretta Scott King, widow of slain civil-rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King, who led a protest herself at Charleston 2 years ago.
Some 6,000 U.S. feminists stage a second March for Equality up New York's Fifth Avenue from 44th Street to Central Park's 72nd Street Mall August 26 carrying banners with slogans such as, "Crush Phallic Imperialism," "Pills for Men," "Woman Power," and "Sisterhood Is Powerful" (see 1970). Mayor John Lindsay proclaims Women's Rights Day, greets the city's first woman police captain, meets for an hour and a half with feminist leaders, some of them in the city government, and reportedly agrees to a "substantial increase" in the number of women in top city jobs, but lesbian groups will now take over the event and change its character.
Attica Correctional Facility at Attica, N.Y., is the scene of the bloodiest one-day encounter between Americans since the Indian massacres of the late 19th century. Inmates of the overcrowded prison discover inexplicable differences in sentences and parole decisions that appear to have a racial bias, outraged prisoners take over cell blocks beginning September 9 and kill several trusty guards. Gov. Rockefeller orders state police to move in September 13, and they retake the prison in 15 minutes, but only after killing 29 inmates and 10 hostages. More than 80 are wounded, the total death toll is 43. Rockefeller is called a murderer, and the Rockefellers come under the worst criticism since the Ludlow Massacre of 1914.
Two Belfast women are tarred and feathered November 10 for dating British soldiers.
The U.S. Apollo 14 space craft arrives on the moon February 5 carrying astronauts Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell, who remain on the lunar surface for 33 hours. Having secreted some golf balls and the head of a six-iron golf club, Shepard uses a makeshift club to drive a few balls for miles.
The People's Republic of China launches its second satellite March 3. Similar to last year's DFH-1, the Shi Jian 1 carries scientific instruments (a cosmic ray detector, an X-ray detector, and a magnetometer) instead of music (see 1975).
The orbiting Soviet laboratory Salyut I launched April 19 is the first space station, but her crew is killed June 30 when the spacecraft bringing them back to Earth depressurizes during re-entry.
Wall Street's Over-the-Counter Market becomes NASDAQ (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation System) beginning February 8. Stocks not listed on either the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) or American (formerly Curb) Exchange (Amex) have been traded since the 1920s by telephone or in person, with mimeographed price sheets left on the doorsteps of dealers as the only records of the previous day's trades. The NYSE and Amex use a single-specialist auction system, but the multitude of market makers in the O-T-C system has offered trading exposure that appealed to many new companies. NASDAQ makes over-the-counter trades visible immediately on cathode-ray tubes and is more advanced than the mimeographed price sheets used up to now or the trading reports of the Big Board or Amex (see 1982). About 27 percent of U.S. households are invested in the stock market one way or another.
Britain decimalizes her coinage system February 15, valuing the pound sterling at 100 "new pence" instead of 20 shillings (see 1968). The sixpence coin will be continued briefly before being phased out along with guineas, crowns, half-crowns, sovereigns, shillings, pennies, and threepence coins.
So-called "objective" criteria for hiring employees are actually discriminatory, the U.S. Supreme Court rules in a case involving a written examination for employment. The criteria are illegal, the court rules, since they result in a relative disadvantage to minorities without "compelling business interest," and future rulings will extend the concept to recruitment practices, job placement, transfers, and promotions. The 8-to-0 decision handed down March 8 in Griggs v. Duke Power Co. is the first major interpretation of the job bias provisions (Title VII) of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Chinese financier T. V. Soong dies at San Francisco April 24 at age 76, having made himself one of the world's richest men.
A strike involving 500 women workers begins May 5 at Elba, Ala., and continues to 8 months. A strike by 300 women at the Alliance Manufacturing Co. begins June 2 at Shenandoah, Va.
A "New Economic Policy" announced by President Nixon August 15 imposes a 90-day freeze on U.S. wages and prices, temporarily suspends conversion of dollars into gold, and asks Congress to impose a 10 percent import surcharge in an effort to strengthen the dollar as the Vietnam War increases inflationary pressures. West Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and the Netherlands have either revalued their currencies upward or floated them against the fixed value of the dollar, but while the European actions pave the way for more flexible exchange rates, the unlinking of the dollar from any gold value begins a breakdown of the international monetary system established by the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944.
Wall Street responds to President Nixon's economic message with enthusiasm. The Dow Jones Industrial Average makes a record 1-day leap of 32.93 points on a record volume of 31.7 million shares, but the AFL-CIO says it has "absolutely no faith in the ability of President Nixon to successfully manage the economy of this nation" and refuses to cooperate in the president's wage freeze.
The U.S. import tariff surcharge strikes a blow at Japan's economy, which has been growing at an average annual rate of 49.6 percent since 1952 as the Japanese pour their savings into capital goods. The yen is revalued in December.
Britain's Parliament votes October 28 to join the European Economic Community (see 1973).
U.S. imports top exports by $2.05 billion—the first trade deficit since 1888. President Nixon kills the 10 percent surcharge on imports December 20 and raises the official gold price, thus devaluating the dollar by 8.57 percent.
The average U.S. taxpayer gives the government $400 for defense, $125 to fight the war in Indochina, $40 to build highways, $30 to explore outer space, $315 for health activities ($7 for medical research).
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes December 31 at 890.20, up from 838.92 at the end of 1970.
Retail merchant J. C. Penney dies at New York February 12 at age 95, leaving an empire of 1,660 stores with annual sales of more than $4 billion, the largest nonfood retail enterprise after Sears, Roebuck.
Egypt's Aswan High Dam (Saad-el-Aali) begins generating power in January (see 1970). Moscow has financed the Nile River project, whose initial output is 2,100 megawatts.
The North Central Power Study produced by a group of U.S. utility companies with help from the Department of the Interior proposes strip-mining of coal in the northern Great Plains and constructing huge mine-mouth generating plants (21 in Montana alone), with a web of transmission lines to serve the Midwest and Pacific Coast, but environmentalists fight plans to exploit the Fort Union Coal Formation that contains an estimated 1.3 trillion tons of soft coal, most of it low-sulfur coal.
President Nixon announces a commitment July 4 to complete a liquid metal fast breeder nuclear reactor demonstration plant by 1980. He sends Congress what he calls the first comprehensive energy message by any president and calls the breeder reactor the best hope for economical clean energy (see 1972).
Rolls-Royce, Ltd. declares bankruptcy February 4, having lost huge sums developing a jet engine for a new Lockheed plane; the British government bails out Rolls-Royce to maintain national prestige and avoid loss of jobs.
The U.S. Senate votes 51 to 46 to stop all further federal funding of supersonic transport (SST) development. The March 24 vote comes 1 week after a similar vote in the House, Boeing lays off 62,000 workers at Seattle; environmentalists hail the congressional action that leaves Britain and France free to develop their Concorde SST without U.S. competition (see 1970; 1972).
Southwest Airlines begins operations in June with flights in the Dallas-Houston-San Antonio triangle. New Jersey-born Dallas lawyer Herb Kelleher, 40, has cofounded Southwest with backing from Cleveland-born entrepreneur Rollin (White) King, also 40; financial pressures soon oblige them to sell one of their four planes, Southwest pioneers 20-minute turnaround (rivals take 45 minutes) to maintain its original schedule with the remaining three planes, Kelleher will soon give his employees 15 percent ownership and battle other airlines in the courts to keep them from blocking his entry into the area, he will undercut competitors by eliminating frills, and Southwest will grow to be the nation's fifth largest commercial air carrier, with nearly 400 jets serving 60 cities and carrying more than 65 million passengers per year.
United Airlines becomes the first carrier to offer separate smoking and nonsmoking sections on its flights (see 1973).
A Japanese Boeing 727 collides in flight with an F-86 fighter jet over Morioka, Japan, July 30, killing 162; an Alaska Airlines Boeing 727 crashes in the Chilkoot Mountains near Juneau September 4, killing 111.
Aircraft designer Andrei N. Tupolev dies at Moscow December 23 at age 84.
The National Railroad Passenger Corp. (Amtrak) takes over virtually all U.S. passenger railroad traffic May 1 in a federally-funded effort to halt the decline in rail passenger service (see 1970). The takeover effectively ends service to many cities.
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers agrees May 13 to let U.S. railroads scrap the age-old "divisional rule" that has called 100 miles a day's work and required freight trains to stop every 100 miles to change crews. The rule has enabled diesel locomotive engineers to earn a day's pay in 150 minutes.
Automotive pioneer W. O. Bentley dies at Woking, Surrey, August 13 at age 82; automotive scion Georg von Opel suffers a heart attack while driving and dies at Frankfurt August 14 at age 59; tire manufacturer Alberto Pirelli dies at Casciano, Italy, October 19 at age 89.
The London Bridge built in 1831 opens October 10 at Lake Havasu City, Ariz. It has been carefully dismantled, transported in pieces to Arizona, and reassembled as a tourist attraction, all for about $15 million.
Munich's first subway opens October 19 with 10 underground stations, three surface stations. Completed 3 years ahead of schedule to relieve the central city's hopelessly congested streets, the U-Bahn extends from the Goetheplatz to the Kieferngarten; a connection to the Olympic Park that will open in May of next year; by the end of the century the three-line system will comprise 85.6 kilometers of rail, with some 90 stations, and ridership will average 900,000 per day.
The laser interferometer introduced by Hewlett-Packard enables microchip makers to obtain accurate measurements to within millionths of an inch (see computer, 1966).
The "floppy" disk for computers invented by Los Angeles-born IBM engineer Alan F. Shugart, 40, and some associates is a flexible eight-inch plastic disk coated with magnetic iron oxide that makes it easy to move data from one computer to another (see 1976).
The Kenbak-1 created by John V. Blankenbaker and advertised in the September issue of Scientific American for $750 uses standard medium- and small-scale integrated circuits, has 256 bytes of memory, relies on switches for input and lights for output, and has been designed to help teach programming. It is the first commercially available personal computer, but Kenbak Corp. will close in 1973 after selling only 62 machines.
The new Bowmar Brain electronic calculator is among the first to use an embedded microchip controller. Priced at $250, it can add, subtract, multiply, and divide (see Texas Instruments, 1972).
The 2,300-transistor Intel 4004 announced November 15 is the first commercially available microchip and the world's first microprocessor (see Intel, 1968). Expanding on a business contract with a Japanese calculator company, Intel engineers who include Rochester, N.Y.-born Marcian E. "Ted" Hoff, 34, and Italian-born physicist Federico Faggin, 27, a former Fairchild Semiconductor silicon designer, have worked with Japanese engineer Masatoshi Shima, 28, to develop the 4004, combining all the essential elements of a computer central processing unit on a single silicon chip. The chip's performance will have improved eightfold by 1974 (see 1972; Altair 8800, 1975; Compaq, 1986).
Theoretical physicist Stephen W. Hawking suggests that objects containing as much as 1 billion tons of mass but occupying only the space of a proton were formed following the "big bang" that created the universe (see 1969). Afflicted for nearly a decade by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease), Hawking will be increasingly disabled by the incurable condition but continue nevertheless to work in the field of general relativity and quantum mechanics, developing a theory of exploding black holes (see 1974).
Nobel chemist Robert B. Woodward announces the synthesis of the coenzyme cyanocobalamin (vitamin B12). Now 54, he has worked in collaboration with Albert Eschenmoser of Zürich's Federal Institute of Technology, the work has required a sequence of more than 100 reactions, and about 100 researchers at Harvard and Zürich have participated in the colossal effort.
Nobel chemist Theodor H. E. Svedberg dies at Orebro, Sweden, February 25 at age 86; crystallographer Dame Kathleen Y. Lonsdale at London April 1 at age 68; geneticist Albert H. Sturtevant at Pasadena, Calif., April 5 at age 78; physicist Igor Y. Tamm at Moscow April 12 at age 75; Nobel physicist and X-ray crystallographer Sir Lawrence Bragg at Ipswich, Suffolk, July 1 at age 81; University of Illinois chemist Roger Adams at Champaign, Ill., July 6 at age 82. He edited Organic Reactions from 1941 to 1968 and has done major work on such natural substances as chaulmoogra oil, gossypol, marijuana, and numerous alkaloids; archaeologist Carl Blegen dies at Athens August 24 at age 84, having found evidence to substantiate and date the sack of Troy in the 13th century B.C.; physicist and X-ray crystallographer John Desmond Bernal dies at London September 15 at age 70, having done research in molecular biology, the origin of life, and the composition of the Earth's crust as well as in atomic structure of solid compounds; Nobel biochemist Arne Tiselius dies at Uppsala October 29 at age 69.
Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières or MSF) is founded by a small group of French physicians in the belief that people everywhere have a right to proper medical care and that their needs supersede national borders. The first non-governmental organization both to provide emergency medical assistance and to bear witness in public to the plight of the populations it serves, MSF will grow in 30 years to have sections in 18 countries, employing upwards of 2,000 volunteer doctors, nurses, other medical professionals, logistics experts, water and sanitation engineers, and administrators, plus 15,000 locally-hired staff to provide medical aid to victims of armed conflict, epidemics, and man-made and natural disasters in more than 80 countries.
Chinese-born biochemist-endocrinologist Choh Hao Li, 57, at the University of California announces in January that he has synthesized the human growth hormone (HGH) somatropin produced by the pituitary glands. The synthetic hormone has roughly 10 percent of the growth-producing properties of the natural hormone but it has great potential for treating pituitary dwarf children, who have each required hormone extract obtained from the pituitary glands of 650 cadavers (see 2003).
A paper published in Nature by British pharmacologist John Vane, 44, and his colleagues at Wellcome Research Laboratories in Beckenham reports their discovery that aspirin and similar drugs produce their effects because they inhibit the biosynthesis of lipid mediators called prostaglandins. It will later be found that two enzymes play a role in the process, and one of these "cyclo-oxygenases" (Cox 1) is responsible for making the prostaglandins that protect the stomach and kidney from damage (see ibuprofen, 1983; Celebrex, 1999).
Soft contact lenses win FDA approval March 18. Invented in 1961 by Czech chemist Otto Wichterle, then 47, who used an Erector Set and a phonograph to create them out of the hydrophylic polymer HEMA (hydrogel-poly-hydroxethyl methacrylate) on his kitchen table, the $300 lenses are more comfortable than hard lenses, introduced in 1939, but are intended to last only a year. Within 30 years about 100 million people worldwide will be wearing soft lenses.
Cigarette smoking has become a cause of death comparable to the great epidemic diseases typhoid and cholera in the 19th century, says Britain's Royal College of Physicians in a sharply worded report.
The Ames test devised by New York-born University of California, Berkeley, biochemist and molecular biologist Bruce N. (Nathan) Ames, 43, will be used for decades to determine the carcinogenicity (cancer-causing potential) of chemicals by measuring the rate of mutation in bacteria after the introduction of a test substance.
Nobel biochemist Wendell M. Stanley dies at Salamanca, Spain, June 15 at age 66; Nobel physiologist Bernardo A. Houssay at Buenos Aires September 21 at age 84, having long since demonstrated the importance of the pituitary gland to sugar metabolism; Hadacol promoter Dudley J. LeBlanc dies at his Louisiana home October 22 at age 77.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists gives official approval to nurse-midwives, who deliver fewer than 20,000 babies per year (see 1990).
Cleveland surgeon George Crile Jr., 63, tells a Los Angeles conference on breast cancer that his studies have shown no difference in the 5-year survival rate between breast-cancer patients who have had radical mastectomies and those who have had "simple" mastectomies that left their chest muscles intact (70 percent of the women in both groups were alive after 5 years; see 1974; Halsted, 1889).
Researchers at the Anderson Tumor Institute in Texas isolate the cold-sore herpes virus from the lymph cell cancer known as Burkitts lymphoma. One form of herpes virus has been associated with the earliest stage of cervical cancer in women (see 1960).
U.S. physicians receive an FDA warning in November against administering DES (diethylstilbestrol) or related hormones to pregnant women (see 1970). Massachusetts General Hospital researchers have concluded that daughters of women who took the synthetic hormone to prevent miscarriage have an increased risk of clear-cell adenocarcinoma of the vagina.
The National Cancer Act signed into law by President Nixon December 24 authorizes appropriations of $1.5 billion per year by the National Cancer Institute to combat America's second leading cause of death; the massive effort will yield few practical results in the next few decades.
The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the "establishment clause" in the Constitution (First Amendment) in an 8-0 decision handed down June 28 in Lemon v. Kurtzman. Chief Justice Warren Burger's opinion says with regard to a Pennsylvania state law that permitted taxpayer support of parochial-school teachers' salaries, textbook purchases, and teaching supplies, "First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion; finally, the statute must not foster an excessive government entanglement with religion." The ruling institutes the Lemon test for analyzing statutes relating to church-state interaction.
Pioneer educational psychologist Sir Cyril Burt dies at London October 10 at age 88. His claims that intelligence is based on genetics rather than environment will soon come under attack with "revelations" that his 1966 paper was at best carelessly presented and very possibly based on fraudulent data.
British postal workers return to their jobs March 8 after a strike has halted mail deliveries for 47 days.
U.S. first-class postal rates rise to 8¢ per ounce May 19 (see 1968; 1974).
The U.S. Postal Service created last year by act of Congress begins operations July 1 with former postmaster general Winton M. Blount as board chairman; optimistic speeches hail the new, semi-independent corporation.
The "Pentagon Papers" excerpted in the New York Times beginning June 13 give details of U.S. involvement in Vietnam from the end of World War II to 1968. Former secretary of defense Robert S. McNamara commissioned the highly classified 3,000-page "History of the United States Decision-Making Process on Vietnam Policy" sometime in the middle of 1967, the Times has received a copy from former Defense Department official Daniel Ellsberg, 39, the Washington Post scrambles to get its own copy, Attorney General John Mitchell asks the Times to cease further publication on grounds that the information revealed will cause "irreparable injury to the defense interests of the United States," the Times "respectfully declines" but says it will abide by the decision of "the highest Court," and a federal judge puts the Times under a temporary restraining order, the first-ever order for prior restraint of the press. A friend of Ellsberg gives a copy of the study to the Washington Post's national editor Ben Bagdikian on the night of June 16, her lawyers warn Post publisher Katharine Graham against using the material lest it jeopardize the paper's efforts to go public, her managing editor Ben Bradlee receives a call from Assistant Attorney General William H. Rehnquist, who repeats what Mitchell told the Times, but the Post begins publishing the Pentagon Papers with Graham's approval June 18 and Judge Gerhard Gesell refuses that evening to grant a restraining order; a federal appeals court stops the Washington Post from publishing any more of the material, but the U.S. Supreme Court rules 6 to 3 June 30 against restraining publication on grounds of endangering national security. Ellsberg admits that he gave the study to the press and surrenders to federal authorities at Boston, a federal grand jury at Los Angeles indicts him on charges of stealing the secret 47-volume study showing that federal officials have consistently lied to the American people about Vietnam, Ellsberg and co-worker Anthony Russo are indicted December 29 for espionage and conspiracy.
Cigarette advertising on U.S. television ends at midnight January 1; it was supposed to have ended at the end of 1970 but has been postponed to allow tobacco companies to advertise on broadcasts of the Rose Bowl and other college football games (the companies pour money into the final hours; Philip Morris alone spends $12 million to air commercials in the half hour beginning at 11:30). Advertising of cigarettes on billboards and in magazines and newspapers increases.
All Things Considered debuts May 3 on U.S. Public Radio with daily in-depth news analyses and features.
Television pioneer Philo T. Farnsworth dies at Salt Lake City March 11 at age 64, having obtained more than 300 domestic and foreign patents but relatively little in the way of financial reward; the BBC's first general manager John C. W. Reith, 1st Baron Reith, dies at Edinburgh June 16 at age 81; radio-television pioneer David Sarnoff of RCA at New York December 12 at age 80.
The Internet system demonstrated publicly in October at the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C., links 29 nodes in what Bolt Beranek & Newman (BBN) calls an ARPANET network (see 1969). Brooklyn, N.Y.-born electrical engineer Robert Kahn, 34, left the faculty of MIT 6 years ago to join BBN, worked out ways to catch errors and prevent data-transmission traffic jams, and has persuaded his superiors to set up a nationwide network from the start rather than trying to perfect a system in the laboratory. BBN programmer Ray Tomlinson, now 30, has created a "Send Message" program that pioneers e-mail; surveying the keyboard of his Model 33 Teletype he has come up with the idea of pressing the "shift" and "2" keys together to launch the @ sign into cyberspace (he will develop it further for cross-ARPANET mail), the demonstration goes off with only one crash (on a computer operated by Brooklyn, N.Y.-born scientist Robert Metcalfe, 25), but by next year there will be three other methods of sending information—one in Europe, one in satellite transmissions, and a third in radio transmissions, each with a language of its own. Jonathan B. Postel has requested comments from technicians, whose informal suggestions are helping to lay the foundations for technical standards that will govern Internet operations. Robert Kahn will work with Vinton Cerf to create data "envelopes" that can be routed over a common network even if their contents are in different formats, and this transmission control protocol (TCP) will permit the metamorphosis of the ARPANET into the Internet; by 1975 there will be about 100 nodes connecting military research centers and government facilities worldwide. (Cerf, Leonard Kleinrock, and Defense Department executive Lawrence G. Roberts will all claim to have fathered the Internet; see 1985; CompuServe, 1979).
Pulse-code modulation inventor Alec Harley Reeves dies October 13 at age 69, having provided the basis for the Internet, compact disks, CD-ROMs, DVDs, digital radio and television, and mobile telephones.
The PhoneMate introduced by a U.S. company weighs 10 pounds, can screen calls, holds 20 messages on a reel-to-reel magnetic tape, and is the first commercially viable telephone answering machine (see Ansafone, 1960; voicemail, 1982).
Cartoonist E. Simms Campbell dies at White Plains, N.Y., January 27 at age 65; opinion research specialist Elmo Roper at Norwalk, Conn., April 30 at age 70; former Times of London proprietor John Jacob Astor, 1st Baron Astor of Hever, at Cannes July 19 at age 85, having maintained the paper's supremacy from 1922 until he sold his 90 percent interest in 1966.
Look magazine ceases publication October 19 after 34 years; other magazines shrink their formats to save postage in accordance with new postal regulations.
Nonfiction: A Theory of Justice by reclusive, Baltimore-born Harvard philosopher John (Bordley) Rawls, 50, who attacks utilitarianism, gives a systematic account of justice as fairness, outlines the properties of individual liberty (and limitations thereon), distinguishes between acceptable and unacceptable forms of social inequality, and revives liberal political philosophy (right-wing critics dismiss his arguments but his book will have sales of 200,000 copies); Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals by Saul Alinsky; On the Democratic Idea in America by New York-born "neoconservative" Irving Kristol, 52; Martin Luther King: A Critical Biography by Little Rock-born historian David Levering Lewis, 35; Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, An Indian History of the American West by Louisiana-born University of Illinois librarian Dorris Alexander "Dee" Brown, 63; American Counterpoint: Slavery and Race in the North-South Dialogue by C. Vann Woodward; Nat Turner and America's Black Past: A Study in Afro-American History by New York historian Eric Foner, 28; Stillwell and the American Experience in China by Barbara Tuchman; "The Prisoner of Sex" by Norman Mailer in the March issue of Harper's magazine is a book-length attack on the women's liberation movement; Confessions of a Workaholic: The Facts about Work Addiction by South Carolina-born theologian-writer Wayne E. Oates, 54, who coins a word; All Creatures Great and Small by Scottish veterinarian James Herriot (James Alfred Wight), 66; The Night Country by Loren Eiseley; Sex in the Marketplace: American Women at Work by Kentucky-born economist Juanita Kreps (née Morris), 51; The Liberated Woman and Other Americans (essays) by St. Paul, Minn.-born New York writer Midge Decter (née Rosenthal), 44, who 15 years ago married right-wing editor Norman Podhoretz; Hellas: A Portrait of Greece by Greek-born New York Times reporter Nicholas Gage (originally Nicholas Ngagoyeanes), 32; In the Shadow of Man by English primatologist Jane Van Lawick-Goodall, 38, who was picked by Louis S. B. Leakey in 1957 to study great apes because he believed that women were more patient and perceptive observers than men.
Novelist Clifford M. Irving's Swiss-born wife Edith (née Sommer) arrives at Zürich May 19 and opens an account at the Crédit Suisse bank under the name Helga Rosensweig Hughes, pretending to be the wife of the reclusive millionaire Howard Hughes. Her husband has received a $25,000 advance from the New York publishing house McGraw-Hill for an alleged "autobiography" of Hughes that he and Edith have produced at their 15-room house on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza, basing it on the draft of a manuscript by Hughes's longtime accountant Noah Dietrich. Now 41, Irving has produced letters allegedly written by Hughes and claims to have hundreds of such letters. McGraw-Hill announces December 7 that it will publish Hughes's autobiography (see 1972).
Medical historian Paul de Kruif dies at Holland, Mich., February 28 at age 80; historian Alan Nevins at Menlo Park, Calif., March 5 at age 80; historian Hans Kohn at Philadelphia March 16 at age 79; theologian Reinhold Niebuhr of cancer at Stockbridge, Mass., June 1 at age 78; Marxist philosopher György Lukács at his native Budapest June 4 at age 86; economist-educator-editor Alvin S. Johnson at Upper Nyack, N.Y., June 7 at age 96.
Fiction: Americana by New York novelist Don DeLillo, 34; Rabbit Redux by John Updike; The Tenants by Bernard Malamud; The Book of Daniel by New York-born Sarah Lawrence College teacher E. L. (Edgar Lawrence) Doctorow, 39, is based on the 1951 Rosenberg trial; Maurice by the late E. M. Forster; St. Urbain's Horseman by Mordecai Richler; Love in the Ruins: The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time near the End of the World by Walker Percy; Grendel by Batavia, N.Y.-born novelist John (Champlin) Gardner, 38; The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Louisiana novelist Ernest J. (James) Gaines, 38, who has written it from the viewpoint of a 110-year-old former slave; Birds of America by Mary McCarthy; Group Portrait with Lady by Heinrich Böll; The Winds of War by Herman Wouk; Books Do Furnish a Room by Anthony Powell; The Lathe of Heaven and The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula Le Guin; Message from Malaga by Helen MacInnes; The Erection Set by Mickey Spillane; Hail, Hail the Gang's All Here by Ed McBain (Evan Hunter); The Scarlatti Inheritance by New York-born TV actor-turned-novelist Robert Ludlum, 44.
Author Eric Hodgins dies at New York January 7 at age 71; science-fiction pioneer John W. Campbell at Mountainside, N.J., July 11 at age 61; author Philip Wylie at Miami, Fla., October 25 at age 69; novelist-playwright A. P. Herbert at London November 11 at age 81.
Poetry: The Sovereign Sun (Ho Helios ho heliatoras) and The Stepchildren (Ta heterothale) by Odysseus Elytis, who lived in Paris for a few years after the Greek military coup of 1967; Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow by Ted Hughes; Adventures of the Letter I by Louis Simpson; The Motorcycle Betrayal Poems by Whittier, Calif.-born poet Diane Wakoski, 34; A Perfect Circle by New York-born poet Linda Pastan (née Olenik), 39.
Poet Ogden Nash dies at Baltimore May 19 at age 68.
Juvenile: A Few Fair Days (stories) and A Long Way from Verona by Yorkshire-born writer Jane Gardam (née Pearson), 43; The Lorax by Dr. Seuss; The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine or the Hithering Thithering Djinn by Donald Barthelme; Then Again, Maybe I Won't and Freckle Juice by Judy Blume; Still Another Number Book by Martin S. Moskof and Seymour Chwast.
Painting: Young Bather with a Sand Shovel by Pablo Picasso; Amityville by Willem de Kooning; Shoot (artist shot in left arm by friend) by Boston-born conceptual artist Chris Burden, 25; Ocean Park No. 43 by Richard Diebenkorn, whose Santa Monica studio is in the Ocean Park part of town; Beer Glass (oil on canvas) by Elizabeth Murray; Candy Apples, Glass of Wine and Desserts, and Glass of Wine and Gougéres (all brush with black ink and watercolor) by Wayne Thiebaud. Painter-illustrator Rockwell Kent dies at Plattsburgh, N.Y., March 13 at age 88.
Sculpture: Cow With Yellow Face (flat sheets of steel with teats attached by steel loops) and Autumn Leaves (tapestry) by Alexander Calder; Les péréquations (vinyl and acrylic on polyester resin panel, polyester fiberglass) by Jean Dubuffet.
The body of photographer Diane Arbus is found in her Westbeth, New York City, apartment July 28. Dead at age 48, she has taken her own life after a career of photographing other people's traumatic experiences; Margaret Bourke-White dies of Parkinson's disease at her Connecticut home August 27 at age 65.
Theater: The Chapel Perilous; or, The Perilous Adventures of Sally Banner by novelist-playwright Dorothy Hewett, now 47, in January at Perth's New Fortune Theatre; The House of Blue Leaves by New York-born playwright John Guare, 33, 2/10 at New York's off-Broadway Truck and Warehouse Theater, with Anne Meara, Katherine Helmond, Margaret Linn, Harold Gould, 337 perfs.; And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little by Paul Zindel 2/25 at New York's Morosco Theater, with Estelle Parsons, Nancy Marchand, Julie Harris, 108 perfs.; Old Times by Harold Pinter 6/1 at London's Aldwych Theatre; Butley by English playwright Simon Gray, 35, 7/5 at London's Criterion Theatre, with Alan Bates; The Removalists by Australian playwright David Williamson 7/22 at Melbourne's Café La Mama; Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone? by St. Petersburg, Fla.-born playwright Terrence McNally, 31, 10/7 at New York's off-Broadway Eastside Playhouse, with Robert Drivas as a 30-year-old drifter, F. Murray Abraham as a taxi driver, 78 perfs.; The Changing Room by David Storey 11/9 at London's Royal Court Theatre, with a cast of 22 male actors; The Prisoner of Second Avenue by Neil Simon 11/11 at New York's Eugene O'Neill Theater, with Peter Falk, New York-born actress Lee Grant (originally Loyova Haskell Rosenthal), 39, Vincent Gardenia, 780 perfs.
Playwright-theater manager St. John Ervine dies at London January 24 at age 87; Broadway producer Leland Hayward suffers a stroke February 9, returns from New York Hospital to his Yorktown Heights, N.Y. home March 5, and dies there March 18 at age 68; actor House Jameson dies at Danbury, Conn., April 23 at age 68; director Tyrone Guthrie at Newbliss, Ulster, May 15 at age 70; playwright Clifford Goldsmith at Tucson, Ariz., July 11 at age 72; director-producer Michel Saint-Denis at London July 31 at age 73; actress Muriel Kirkland of emphysema at New York August 25 at age 68; playwright Samuel Spewack of blood cancer at New York October 14 at age 72; Dame Gladys Cooper at Henley-on-Thames November 17 at age 82.
Television: Masterpiece Theater (initially, The First Churchills) 1/10 on U.S. Public Television with journalist Alistair Cooke, now 62, as host; All in the Family 1/12 on CBS with Carroll O'Connor as Queens, N.Y., bigot Archie Bunker in a series devised by New Haven, Conn.-born producer Norman Lear, 48 (who has adapted the British series Till Death Do Us Part). Co-starring Jean Stapleton as Bunker's wife, Edith (he calls her "The Dingbat" but she shows a certain intuitive wisdom and—in a sharp departure from the usual sitcom formulas—will go through menopause), Sally Struthers as his daughter Gloria (who will be the victim of an attempted rape in one episode and will have a miscarriage), Rob Reiner as his liberal son-in-law, and Sherman Hemsley as his black neighbor, the show violates sacrosanct taboos against ethnic and bathroom humor (to 4/8/1979; 212 episodes); The Cat in the Hat 3/10 on CBS with animation based on Dr. Seuss drawings; The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour 8/1 on CBS with Sonny Bono and his wife, Cher (to 5/29/1974); Columbo 9/15 on NBC with Peter Falk (to 9/1/1978); McMillan and Wife 9/29 on NBC with Rock Hudson as San Francisco Police Commissioner Stewart McMillan, Susan Saint James as his wife, Sally, Nancy Walker (to 8/21/1977); The Electric Company in October (daytime) on PBS. Like Sesame Street, it is the product of Joan Ganz Cooney's Children's Television Workshop.
Films: Woody Allen's Bananas with Brooklyn, N.Y.-born comedian Allen (originally Allen Stewart Konigsberg), 35, New York-born actress Louise Lasser, 30; William Friedkin's The French Connection with Gene Hackman, Fernando Rey; Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show with Santa Barbara-born actor Timothy Bottoms, 20, Los Angeles-born actor Jeff Bridges, 22, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, Ellen Burstyn, Memphis-born actress Cybill Shepherd, 21, Los Angeles-born actress Eileen Brennan, 34. Also: Eric Rohmer's Claire's Knee with Jean-Claude Brialy, Aurora Cornu; Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange with Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee; Federico Fellini's The Clowns; Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist with Jean-Louis Trintignant, Stefania Sandrelli, Dominique Sanda; Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice with Dirk Bogarde; Floyd Mutrux's docudrama Dusty and Sweets McGee about heroin addicts in the Los Angeles area; Arthur Hiller's The Hospital with George C. Scott, Diana Rigg; Peter Brook's King Lear with Paul Scofield, Irene Worth; Alan J. Pakula's Klute with Jane Fonda as a call girl, Donald Sutherland; Jack Lemmon's Kotch with Walter Matthau; Roman Polanski's Macbeth with Jon Finch, Francesca Annis; Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller with Warren Beatty, Julie Christie; Louis Malle's Murmur of the Heart with Lea Massari; Paul Bogart's Skin Game with James Garner, Louis Gossett; Milos Forman's Taking Off with Lynn Carlin, Buck Henry, Linnea Heacock; Monte Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop with James Taylor, Warren Oates; Barbara Loden's Wanda with Loden, Michael Higgins; Blake Edwards's Wild Rovers with William Holden, Ryan O'Neal, Karl Malden, Lynn Carlin.
Motion picture pioneer G. M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson dies at Woodland Hills, Calif., January 20 at age 90; Harold Lloyd at Hollywood March 8 at age 76; Bebe Daniels of a cerebral hemorrhage at London March 16 at age 71; Edmund Lowe at Woodland Hills, Calif., April 21 at age 81 (he has been at the Motion Picture Country Home there for 20 years in failing health); director Herbert J. Biberman dies of bone cancer at New York June 30 at age 71; animation pioneer Ub Iwerks of a heart attack at Burbank, Calif., July 7 at age 70; actor Van Heflin at Hollywood July 23 at age 60 after suffering a massive stroke while swimming in his apartment house pool; actor Paul Lukas dies of heart failure at a Tangier, Morocco, hospital August 15 at age 80; Greek-born film pioneer Spyros P. Skouras of an apparent heart attack at his Mamoroneck, N.Y., home August 16 at age 78; Spring Byington at Hollywood September 7 at age 84; Pier Angeli is found dead from a barbituate overdose in her Beverly Hills apartment September 10 at age 39; silent film star Betty Bronson dies after a brief illness at Pasadena October 21 at age 64; Martha Vickers of cancer at Van Nuys, Calif., November 2 at age 46; Roy O. Disney (the late Walt's older brother) of a cerebral hemorrhage at Burbank December 20 at age 78.
Hollywood musical: Norman Jewison's Fiddler on the Roof with Chaim Topol as Tevye, violin on sound track by Isaac Stern.
Broadway and off-Broadway musicals: Follies 4/14 at the Winter Garden Theater, with Gene Nelson, Yvonne De Carlo, Alexis Smith, Dorothy Collins, choreography by Michael Bennett, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, songs that include "Broadway Baby," 521 perfs.; Godspell 5/17 at the Cherry Lane Theater, with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, songs that include "Day by Day," 2,605 perfs. counting Promenade and Broadhurst theaters; Jesus Christ Superstar 10/10 at the Mark Hellinger Theater, with Jeff Fenholt, music by London-born composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, 23, lyrics by Tim Rice, book by Tom O'Horgan, 711 perfs.; Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death 10/20 at the Ethel Barrymore Theater, with music and lyrics by Melvin Van Peebles, 325 perfs.; Two Gentlemen of Verona 12/1 at the St. James Theater (after 14 performances at the off-Broadway Public Theater), with Raul Julia, Clifton Davis, Diana Davila, New York-born actress Stockard Channing, 27, music by Galt MacDermot, lyrics by New York-born writer John Guare, 33, who has adapted the Shakespearean play, 627 perfs.
Onetime Broadway musical star Edith Day dies at London May 1 at age 75; Dennis King of a heart ailment at New York May 22 at age 73; former torch singer and Broadway musical star Libby Holman is found dead June 18 at age 67 in the front seat of her Rolls-Royce in the garage of her Connecticut mansion Treetops; onetime Broadway musical star Ann Pennington dies at New York November 4 at age 77.
Opera: Eve Queler conducts her Opera Orchestra in a concert performance of the 1643 Monteverdi opera L'Incoronazione di Poppea 2/2 at New York's Alice Tully Hall; Adriana Maliponte makes her Metropolitan Opera debut 3/19 singing the role of Mimi in the 1896 Puccini opera La Bohème; Owen Wingrave 5/16 at Aldwych, with Peter Pears as Sir Philip Wingrave, music by Benjamin Britten, libretto by Myfanwy Piper from an 1892 pacifist short story by Henry James.
Composer Igor Stravinsky dies at New York April 6 at age 88 and is buried at Venice near the grave of the late Sergei Diaghilev; onetime prima ballerina assoluta of the Maryinsky Theater Mathilda Kschessinska dies at Paris December 6 at age 99.
Helsinki's Finlandia Hall opens with a concert by the Helsinki Philharmonic. Architect Alvar Aalto, now 73, has designed the structure, whose concert hall seats 1,700 (a chamber music hall seats 340). The exterior is of Carrara marble, and the building will be enlarged in 1975 for other uses.
Washington's John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts opens September 8 with a performance of Leonard Bernstein's new Mass. When complete, the center will seat 6,100 in three halls.
Popular songs: Imagine (album) by John Lennon, whose lyric begins, "Imagine a world without religion"; Fly (album) by Yoko Ono, whose reggae-style song "Sisters O Sisters" is her first explicitly feminist creation; Ram by Paul McCartney includes "Long-Haired Lady"; Every Picture Tells a Story (album) and A Nod's as Good as a Wink to a Blind Horse (album) by London-born singer-songwriter Roderick David "Rod" Stewart, 26, whose solo album An Old Raincoat Won't Let You Down was released 2 years ago (he has joined the British bluesy rock group Faces and gains wide popularity for his single "Maggie Mae"); "I Remember the Year Clayton Delaney Died" by Tom T. Hall; "What's Going On?" by Washington, D.C.-born soul singer-songwriter Marvin Gaye Jr., 32, who asks why so many young black men are dying in Vietnam and in U.S. racial violence; Songs of Love and Hate (album) by Leonard Cohen includes "Famous Blue Raincoat"; Tapestry (album) by Brooklyn, N.Y.-born singer-songwriter Carole King (Carole Klein), 29, includes her songs "It's Too Late" and "You've Got a Friend" (it will have sales of more than 13 million copies by 1983); "Take Me Home, Country Roads," and "Poems, Prayers, and Promises" by Roswell, N.M.-born singer-songwriter John Denver (Henry John Deutschendorf Jr.), 27, who 4 years ago wrote "Leaving on a Jet Plane" for Peter, Paul and Mary and has written "Take Me Home" with help from Bill and Taffy Danoff; Australian-born British vocalist Olivia Newton-John, 21, records Bob Dylan's song "If Not For You"; "I Don't Know How to Love Him" by Australian singer-songwriter Helen Reddy, 29; "Shaft" theme by Isaac Hayes (for Gordon Parks's film); Tumbleweed Connection (album) by Elton John; "Lonely Days" by the Bee Gees; Bonnie Raitt (album) by Los Angeles-born singer-guitarist Raitt, 22; "You're Looking at Country" by Loretta Lynn; Dolly Parton records "Coat of Many Colors" and has her biggest hit to date; We Sure Can Love Each Other (album), Greatest Hits Vol. II (album), and We Go Together (album, with husband George Jones, 40) by Tammy Wynette.
The Doors' lead singer Jim Morrison dies of a probable drug overdose at Paris July 3 at age 27; former drummer and bandleader Ben Pollack is found hanging in his Palm Springs, Calif., home June 7 at age 67; jazz trumpeter and vocalist Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong dies at New York July 6 at age 71; former bandleader and clarinetist Ted Lewis at New York August 26 at age 79.
Former heavyweight champion Charles "Sonny" Liston is found dead at his Las Vegas home January 5 at age 36. A coroner says he died a week earlier, possibly of a heroin overdose, possibly of heart and lung failure, possibly murdered by underworld figures.
Quarterback Johnny Unitas leads Baltimore to a 16-13 victory over Dallas January 17 at Miami in Super Bowl V. Now 37, Unitas will retire from football in 1974.
New York's Off-Track Betting Corp. (OTB) is created April 8 as legislation takes effect legalizing off-track betting in an effort to take business away from organized crime and produce revenues for the city and state. But the "numbers game" based on smaller bets will continue to flourish, fattening the profits of underworld syndicates.
Cricketer Learie Constantine, Baron Constantine of Maraval and Nelson, dies at London July 1 at age 69.
John Newcombe wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Evonne Goolagong, 20, (Australia) in women's singles (she is the daughter of an aboriginal sheep shearer); Stanley Roger "Stan" Smith, 24, (U.S.) wins in men's singles at Forest Hills, Billie Jean King in women's singles (she becomes the first woman in any sport to take home more than $100,000 in a single season).
The Pittsburgh Pirates win the World Series, defeating the Baltimore Orioles 4 games to 3.
Washington, D.C., loses its major league baseball team at year's end. The Senators become the Texas Rangers, and Washington will not have another team in this century.
Spanish bullfighter Antonio Ordóñez retires at age 39, having appeared in more than 1,000 corridas and killed more than 2,000 bulls.
Golfer Jack Nicklaus wins his second PGA championship.
Golfer (and golf-course designer) Bobby Jones dies at Atlanta December 18 at age 69. Confined to a wheelchair since 1948 by the rare and painful spinal ailment syringeomyelia that degenerates motor and sensory nerves, he has borne up stoically.
Belgian-born U.S. dress designer Diane (Simone Michelle) von Furstenberg, 24, opens a one-woman business based on her simple, body-hugging shirt-dress that she will build into a worldwide business marketing not only ready-to-wear clothing but also cosmetics, handbags, scarves, shoes, and sunglasses.
Fashion designer Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel dies at Paris January 10 at age 87, having said, "Fashion is made to become unfashionable." She has left her mark with easy-to-wear jersey dresses, suits, shoulder bags, and shoes, to say nothing of a world-famous perfume.
U.S. cigarette sales reach 547.2 billion despite the new ban on radio and television advertising. Loews Corp. acquires the 211-year-old P. Lorillard tobacco company as Laurence and Preston Tisch diversify, having prospered from hotels and theaters (they will sell Loews theaters in 1985).
Two congressmen return from a visit to Vietnam and report that 10 percent of U.S. servicemen are addicted to heroin (see 1969); drug abuse is rampant, they say, and veterans are bringing the problem home to U.S. cities. President Nixon sends his aide Egil "Bud" Krogh to investigate but then appoints him head of a "plumbers unit" to plug leaks in the White House following publication of the Pentagon Papers. Nixon announces in June that his administration will give drug abuse top priority, using interdiction, eradication, and law enforcement but placing primary emphasis on treatment centers to help free addicts of their habit (see 1972).
The U.S. Supreme Court weakens its 1966 Miranda decision in a 5-to-4 decision handed down February 24. It rules that although a suspect's statement is inadmissible as evidence if the arresting police officers have not advised the suspect of his or her rights, the prosecution may still use the statement to contradict the defendant's testimony in a trial.
New York's 400-bed Women's Detention Center closes June 13 for reasons of overcrowding. Arrests of women for major crimes have increased steeply all over America.
Berkeley, Calif., women organize the Bay Area Women Against Rape in response to discriminatory treatment of rape victims by police departments, hospitals, and courts. Similar groups will spring up across the country in the 1970s.
The Crips is founded by Los Angeles toughs who include Stanley "Tookie" Williams, 17, who will be condemned to death in 1981 for the fatal shootings of four unresisting victims in motel and convenience-store holdups (he will spend nearly 7 years in solitary confinement and will still be on death row in 2005). The violent street gang will grow to have affiliates in more than 40 states.
New York hoodlum Joseph Gallo recruits blacks to fill in the depleted ranks of the Mafia. Gallo has rebelled from the leadership of Joseph Colombo, who helps organize an Italian-American Unity Day parade June 28 at New York's Columbus Circle, is shot three times by a black gunman and left crippled; an unidentified gunman immediately kills Colombo's assailant, but there is disagreement as to whether the assailant was in the pay of Joey Gallo, reputed Mafia leader Carlo Gambino, or someone else. At least 27 people are killed in the aftermath of the Colombo shooting.
Onetime U.S. crime boss Joe Adonis dies at Ancona, Italy, November 6 at age 69.
Chicago's Standard Oil of Indiana building is completed. The 1,107-foot structure is taller than the 4-year-old John Hancock Center but will be dwarfed in 3 years by the 1,450-foot Sears Tower.
An earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Richter scale rocks Los Angeles February 10, killing 51, injuring 880.
Arches National Park is established in eastern Utah by act of Congress (see 1929); covering 73,379 acres of red-rock country, the former national monument overlooks the gorge of the Colorado River (see Glen Canyon Dam, 1966). Capitol Reef National Park is established in southern Utah; covering 241,904 acres in the 100-mile Waterpocket Fold, it contains deep canyons and a host of arches, monoliths, pinnacles, and spires that include a dome-shaped white rock said to resemble the dome of the U.S. Capitol Building at Washington, D.C.
Ontario's Pukaska National Park is established along 50 miles on the northeastern coast of Lake Superior. The province's largest national park, it covers 725 square miles of Canadian Shield wilderness that is home to beaver, black bear, fisher, lynx, marten, mink, moose, muskrat, white-tailed deer, and woodland caribou.
Greenpeace is founded by three environmentalists who heard 2 years ago that the United States was planning to test nuclear weapons on the island of Amchitka off the Alaskan coast and organized the "Don't Make a Wave" Committee at Vancouver under the leadership of U.S. composite-materials researcher James Bohlen, now 45, Philadelphia lawyer Irving Stowe, and Canadian law-school graduate Paul Cote. Bohlen and Cote have found an aging 80-foot boat, Stowe has organized a benefit concert that raised $17,000, they rename the boat and their committee Greenpeace, stay with Cree tribespeople, and make headlines as journalists cover efforts by the "Rainbow Warriors" to help save the environment from disasters. Greenpeace will grow to become Greenpeace International, with 2.5 million members in 43 groups in 30 countries by the end of the century working to protect forests and oceans, resist nuclear testing, end the nuclear age, stop global warming, eliminate persistent organic pollutants, and oppose genetically-engineered crops.
New York's governor Nelson A. Rockefeller signs legislation May 26 repealing the 1912 law that has prohibited sales of oysters in the state from May 15 to August 31. The English oyster (Ostrea edulis) tastes gritty in the summer months because it keeps its young within its mantle cavity at that time of year, but the American oyster (Crassostrea virginica) discharges its eggs directly into the water. Pacific Coast oysters have always been sold all year round, and other states have dismissed the myth that oysters are only good in the "R" months. Modern refrigeration methods have long since made the 1912 law obsolete, and Long Island oysters have for many years been shipped to buyers across the country during the months when they could not legally be sold within New York State borders, but the national harvest of oysters has declined to barely 50 million pounds, down from 150 million early in the century.
Ethiopia has drought that will continue until 1973. The resulting famine will take some 1.5 million lives despite international relief efforts.
Food shortages in Chile impel many women to support right-wing military commander Augusto Pinochet in his efforts to oust the socialist Allende regime. The women launch a "March of the Empty Pots" demonstration, Chile's communist newspaper says the CIA has organized the revolt, and President Allende announces December 28 that the government will take over food distribution (see politics, 1973).
The National Bureau of Standards reports early in the year that U.S. women's body measurements have grown from the 34-25-36 of size 12 in 1939 to 35-26-37, based on data from the Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Air Force, and mail-order houses. The upper arm of a misses size 10 measures 10.12, up from 9.6 in 1939, and the upper thigh measures 20.25, up from 19.5 "at maximum girth."
Magazine publisher J. I. Rodale (Prevention, Organic Gardening) suffers a fatal heart attack June 7 at age 72 while participating in the taping of an ABC-TV talk show with host Dick Cavett at New York. A cover story in the New York Times Magazine June 6 quoted him as saying he would live to be 100 unless he was run down by a "sugar-crazed taxi driver" (he has written a book entitled Natural Food, Sugar, and the Criminal Mind). Medical associations have included Rodale Press health books in their "quackery" exhibitions, but circulation of Organic Gardening and Farming magazine began skyrocketing in 1968, adding young readers, many of them in the hippie movement, to its traditional base of elderly gardeners, and is now close to 700,000 (it jumped by 40 percent last year alone). Rodale's bookish son Robert, 41, takes over the $9 million Emmaus, Pa.-based family empire and will change the thrust of the organic-food movement to emphasize environmental concerns rather than health claims, but Prevention will continue to depend on advertising from makers of vitamin supplements that are now sold at thousands of "health-food" stores coast to coast.
The Food and Drug Administration orders the removal from stores of vitamin C pills containing sodium ascorbate (instead of ascorbic acid) without mentioning the fact on their labels. Last year's Linus Pauling book on vitamin C has created such a demand that manufacturers have trouble obtaining enough ascorbic acid and even some so-called rose-hip supplements contain undeclared amounts of sodium ascorbate.
The U.S. Geological Survey reports that cadmium levels in drinking water are "dangerous" at Birmingham and Huntsville and above acceptable limits at Hot Springs, Little Rock, East St. Louis, Shreveport, Cape Girardeau, St. Joseph, Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, and Pottsville.
The FDA advises Americans to stop eating swordfish. The advisory issued in early May follows a study of more than 853 swordfish samples: 811 had an average mercury content of one part per million and 8 percent had levels above 1.5 parts per million. Swordfish caught between 1878 and 1909 turn out to have about the same mercury content, and few people can afford to eat enough swordfish to make the mercury content a real danger (average per capita consumption is two ounces per year).
Botulism kills New York banker Samuel Cochran Jr., 61, who enjoys Bon Vivant brand vichyssoise soup the evening of June 29 at his Bedford Village home and dies late the following evening at nearby Mount Kisco. The FDA shuts down the Bon Vivant plant at Newark, N.J., and the company is forced into bankruptcy after 108 years in business. Campbell Soup Co.'s Paris, Tex., plant recalls its chicken vegetable soup in mid-July after finding botulinum contamination.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest is founded at Washington, D.C. by consumer activist Michael F. Jacobson, 28, with fellow scientists Albert Fritsch and James Sullivan. Jacobson with a doctorate in microbiology from MIT, joined Ralph Nader's Center for Study of Responsive Law last year, but has resigned to start CSP, which will concentrate on food safety and nutrition with support from foundations and some 240,000 dues-paying members. Jacobson will become executive director in 1977, riling the food industry by singling out specific products (e.g., Campbell's soups, movie-theater popcorn popped in coconut oil, Häagen-Dazs ice cream) that are high in saturated fats, sodium, sugar, or nitrites, while raising public awareness that will have desirable effects in improving many products, sometimes through Food and Drug Administration rulings, sometimes through voluntary action, sometimes even through federal legislation (see 1972).
Alcoholics Anonymous cofounder Bill Wilson dies of pneumonia at Miami January 24 at age 75, having repeatedly asked for a drink on his deathbed after 37 years of sobriety; his identity is finally revealed after more than 35 years of anonymity.
The Chicago Union Stock Yards that opened Christmas Day 1865 close July 30 as meat packers continue to move their slaughterhouses closer to their source of supply. Operations at the Stock Yards peaked in 1924 and have been declining ever since.
Annual U.S. beef consumption reaches 113 pounds per capita, up from 85.1 pounds in 1960. Consumption will peak at 128.5 pounds in 1976 as Americans eat more than 50 billion hamburgers, paying more than $25 billion for beef in various forms, but a beef shortage this year raises prices, and that reduces consumption.
Hamburger Helper is introduced by General Mills, whose technicians have developed the dried mix of pasta, cheese, and "specially blended seasonings" during a meat shortage to help the homemaker stretch a pound of hamburger into a satisfying meal for five. Demand quickly exceeds supply of what was originally to be called Betty Crocker Casserole, demand will remain high even when meat prices fall, and the new product will enjoy so much success that other companies will introduce competing products and General Mills will add variations.
Cookbooks: Diet for a Small Planet by Pendleton, Ore.-born San Francisco nutritionist Frances Lappé (née Moore), 27, gives recipes for Roman Rice and Beans, Masala Dosai (Indian filled pancakes), curried rice, sukiyaki, enchiladas, and Brazilian feijoada. Creative combinations of beans, nuts, grains, and dairy products provide all necessary protein, Lappé says, and she scolds the Western world for living so high on the "food chain," saying westerners must eat less meat if the rest of the world is to survive; The Anarchist Cookbook by New York bookstore clerk William Powell, 21, who wrote the 160-page book 2 years age. It has a section on cooking with illegal drugs, giving recipes for "hash brownies" (they contain powdered hashish) and "pot loaf" (made with 1½ cups of marijuana); it also gives step-by-step directions for making bombs at home but contains serious errors.
McDonald's opens a total of 312 new restaurants, almost all of them in the continental United States (see 1970; 1972).
The first Japanese McDonald's opens at Tokyo July 20 in 500 square feet of ground-floor space (formerly the handbag department of the Mitsukoshi department store in the Ginza) with a compact kitchen and stand-up customer counters. McDonald's has formed a joint venture with importer Den Fujita, 45, whose interest will make him a billionaire; by the time he dies in 2004 there will be some 3,800 Japanese McDonald's restaurants.
Chez Panisse opens August 28 in a former plumbing-supply store at 1517 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, Calif., with a three-course dinner—paté maison, duck with olives, and almond tart—for $3.95. University of California, Berkeley, French cultural studies major and Montessori schoolteacher Alice Waters, 27, has borrowed $10,000 from her parents in New Jersey to start the restaurant, whose philosophy is to use only the freshest, finest-quality ingredients and prepare them simply, without fancy sauces. Waters will change the menu for her five-course dinner every day.
Nearly 350 French women declare that they have had abortions and demand that the procedure be legalized. The women include writer Simone de Beauvoir and actresses Catherine Déneuve and Jeanne Moreau (see 1972).
The Dalkon Shield is introduced for contraception by A. H. Robbins, Inc., which acquired rights to it in June 1970. An intrauterine device invented by Johns Hopkins gynecologist Hugh J. Davis, 44, and engineer Irwin Lerner, it gains quick acceptance: more than 4 million of the IUDs will be sold by 1975, producing an international outbreak of pelvic infections, miscarriages, congenital birth defects, and maternal deaths (see 1974).
U.S. sales of DES continue to climb, despite the FDA warning against their use by pregnant women, as marketers promote use of the steroid as a "morning-after" pill that can prevent implantation of a fertilized egg in the womb.
The hormone LHRH isolated by Polish-born U.S. biochemist Andrew (Victor) Schally, 44, is essential to human ovulation.
An official Chinese document calls in July for a limitation of two children per family (the limit heretofore has been three). America's population is a fraction of China's but one American is comparable to at least 25 Chinese or Indians in terms of using natural and irreplaceable resources and contaminating air and water with chemical waste. Some environmentalists point out that on this basis the U.S. population is by some measures effectively more than 4 billion.
1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980
