1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980
President Nixon resigns in disgrace August 9, becoming the first U.S. chief of state ever to quit office. The Supreme Court has ruled 8 to 0 July 24 that Nixon must turn over 64 White House tape recordings to a special prosecutor (see 1973). The House Judiciary Committee has voted July 30 to adopt three articles of impeachment, charging Nixon with obstruction of justice, failure to uphold laws, and refusal to produce material that the committee had subpoenaed.
President Gerald R. Ford is sworn in August 9 and says, "The long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men . . . I am acutely aware that you have not elected me by your ballots, and so I ask you to confirm me as your president with your prayers." Nixon tries to take his White House papers with him, but Ford has the truck stopped (Congress adopts legislation authorizing seizure of the materials on behalf of the American people and ordering publication of those parts that do not concern state secrets or purely personal matters).
President Ford names former New York governor Nelson A. Rockefeller vice president under terms of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment and 1 month later grants Nixon a "full, free, and absolute pardon" for all federal crimes that Nixon "committed or may have committed or taken part in" while in office, noting that he has taken the action to spare Nixon and the nation further punishment in the Watergate scandal (presidential press secretary J. F. terHorst resigns in protest, and Ford's action angers millions of Americans, but it will later be hailed as a courageous act taken in full knowledge that it will doom any chance of Ford's being elected president in 1976). President Ford asks Congress to appropriate $850,000 to facilitate Nixon's transition to private life; Congress trims the grant to $200,000.
The Election Reform Act passed by Congress 355 to 48 just hours before President Nixon's resignation limits to $1,000 the amount that any individual may contribute to a candidate for federal office, limits to $20 million what any presidential candidate may spend on a bid for election or reelection, provides for a $1 tax check-off on individual federal income tax returns to provide federal funding of presidential elections, and contains other provisions to minimize the impact of large company campaign contributions and thus prevent the kinds of abuses that characterized the Watergate scandal (see law, 1972). Most Republicans have opposed public funding of elections; the new law says political groups such as the Heritage Foundation may contribute no more than $5,000, a candidate no more than $50,000. The legislation crowns efforts by Common Cause, the private citizens' group founded in 1970, but the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 permitted labor unions as well as corporations to have political action committees (PACs), and PACs will raise large amounts of money for candidates, thereby blunting the effects of the new law, which does not bar corporations and affluent individuals from contributing vast sums of "soft money" to political parties (see Supreme Court decisions, 1976).
Washington, D.C., voters elect their first government in more than 100 years. Mayor Harold E. Washington was appointed mayor in 1967 and wins popular election; he will be sworn in early next year by Justice Thurgood Marshall and serve through 1978.
Britain's Conservatives lose the general elections February 28 in the midst of a coal miners' strike that has forced the nation to go on a fuel-conserving 3-day work week (see commerce [strike], 1972). National Union of Mineworkers president Joe Gormley is credited with bringing down the Heath government. Former prime minister Harold Wilson has called for nationalization of North Sea oil, his Labour Party has won 301 seats to 296 for the Conservatives, Edward Heath resigns, and a second Wilson ministry begins March 5, the first in 45 years to lack a majority in the House of Commons. Parliamentary leader Richard Crossman dies at London April 5 at age 66. Labour retains power in the general elections October 10, winning 319 seats to 276 for the Conservatives, but inflation (19.1 percent for the year) and economic decline continue to plague Britain.
France's president Georges Pompidou dies of cancer at Paris April 2 at age 62. Former finance minister Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, 48, is elected May 19 to continue the Gaullist regime that has ruled since 1958, narrowly defeating the leftist François Mitterand.
Portugal has a coup d'état April 25 in what will be called the "revolution of the carnations" (because joyful soldiers slip red carnations into the barrels of their guns). A leftist military junta of young officers led by Major Ernesto Melo Antunes, 40, takes power from Premier Marcelo Caetano, now 68, who has been dictator since the late Premier Antonio de Oliveiro Salazar suffered a stroke in 1968. (Caetano flies to Brazil, where he will head the Institute of Comparative Law at Rio de Janeiro's Gama Filho University.) Melo Antunes and his fellow officers form a Council of the Revolution to supervise the restoration of democracy after 41 years of authoritarian rule, but the new civilian government soon falls apart and the officers of the Armed Forces Movement asks Gen. António (Sebastião Ribeiro) de Spínola, 64, to be president; his regime takes office in July, abolishes the secret police, releases political prisoners, and resumes diplomatic relations with Moscow for the first time since 1917, raising fears in the NATO alliance that communists in the new Lisbon government will leak secrets. Spínola resigns in September and is succeeded by Gen. Francisco da Costa Gomes, 60, who fought liberation movements in Mozambique from 1965 to 1969 but now recognizes that decolonization is inevitable; he will remain president until 1976 (see 1975).
West Germany's chancellor Willy Brandt resigns in early May following revelations that his close aide Gunther Guillaume has been an East German spy. Now 60, Brandt won the Nobel Peace prize 3 years ago and continues to be chairman of the SPD, but Helmut Schmidt, 55, becomes chancellor in a coalition government headed by SPD and Free Democrat leaders.
Hitler Youth founder Baldur von Schirach dies at Munich August 8 at age 67; he was released from Spandau Prison in 1966.
West German terrorists Bernd Andreas Baader, 31, and Ulrike Meinhof, 40, of the notorious Baader-Meinhof gang begin their third hunger strike September 13 at Düsseldorf's Schwalmstadt Prison and Cologne's Ossendorf Prison; 40 other prisoners join the strike. Captured in June 1972 after a series of bank robberies and bombings, the leftist Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Faction, or RAF) members have led one of several gangs that are disrupting West Germany. RAF militant Holger Meins, 33, dies November 9 after 5 weeks of forced feeding. Four youths carrying flowers call on the president of West Berlin's court of appeals November 10, Judge Gunter von Drenkmann opens his front door, and he is shot dead (see 1975).
Former Soviet Army marshal Georgi K. Zhukov dies at Moscow June 18 at age 78. He has been hailed as the "Eisenhower of Russia."
Diplomat Charles "Chip" Bohlen dies of cancer at Washington, D.C., January 1 at age 69; U.S. Air Force general Carl Spaatz (ret.) at Washington July 14 at age 83; Army Chief of Staff Gen. Creighton W. Abrams of complications from lung surgery at Washington September 4 at age 59.
Israel and Egypt sign a disengagement agreement January 18 after negotiations by U.S. Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger (see 1973). Israel withdraws from the west bank of the Suez Canal, Egypt reoccupies the east bank, and a UN buffer zone is created between the two. Golda Meir wins reelection as prime minister March 10 but resigns a month later, citing schisms within her own Labor Party with regard to military planning errors. Israel agrees in June to withdraw from Syria and from part of the Golan Heights (see Lebanon, 1975).
Greek Cypriot troops overthrow the Makarios government July 15, Athens denies any link to the uprising, Archbishop Makarios arrives at New York and charges the Greek military regime with complicity in the coup. Former anti-communist Cypriot guerrilla fighter Col. Georgio Grivas has died at Limassol January 28 at age 75. Turkish forces invade Cyprus July 20, vowing to restore Makarios and defend the island's ethnic minority. Greece mobilizes troops, Moscow puts 40,000 men on alert, the UN Security Council calls for a halt in hostilities, but heavy fighting continues. Greece's military junta resigns July 23 after 7 years in power, former premier Constantine Caramanlis returns from exile to head the first civilian government at Athens since 1967, he announces in mid-August that Greece will not go to war to stop the Turkish invasion but will not negotiate under pressure. U.S. Ambassador Rodger P. Davies is shot dead August 19 during a Greek Cypriot demonstration outside the U.S. embassy at Nicosia; President Ford vetoes a bill that would have cut off military aid to Turkey. Former dictator George Papadopolous is arrested with 19 others and charged with treason (see 1975). Archbishop Makarios returns to Nicosia December 7, Turkish forces occupy 45 percent of the island, and tensions continue.
Black Panther cofounder Huey Newton flees to Cuba after being accused of killing a 17-year-old Oakland prostitute (he will ultimately be acquitted). He names his lover, Elaine Brown, 31, as the new leader of the Party; she joined the Panthers in 1968 and will head it until 1977.
Former Algerian nationalist leader Ahmed Messali Hadj dies at Paris June 3 at age 75.
Angola, Mozambique, and Portuguese Guinea redouble efforts to regain independence following the change at Lisbon. Portuguese Guinea becomes Guinea-Bisseau September 10.
Somalia's Marxist government signs a treaty of friendship and cooperation with Moscow, the first black African nation to do so, and Somalia becomes a Soviet satellite (see 1969; 1977).
Ethiopia's army seizes Addis Ababa in late June. Emperor Haile Selassie, now 82, is deposed September 12 after a 44-year reign interrupted by the Italians from 1936 to 1941, and the new Soviet-dominated regime announces December 20 that Ethiopia will become a socialist state directed by one political council (see 1977).
Rhodesia releases Joshua Nkomo from prison after 10 years of confinement, but Ian Smith's efforts to make peace come to naught and Nkomo goes into exile in Zambia (see 1976).
The U.S. Army grants a parole to Lieut. William L. Calley Jr., who has been serving a 10-year term for his part in the My Lai massacre of 1968 in South Vietnam but has served no prison time, only house arrest.
Militant radical Jane Alpert, now 29, gives herself up November 14, 4 years after jumping bail in connection with 1969 bombings at New York.
Grenada gains independence February 7 after more than 200 years of British rule. Prime Minister Eric M. Gairy curbs civil liberties to reduce violence on the Caribbean island (see 1979).
France gives her Caribbean island of Martinique the status of a région September 5 (see 1946).
Argentine dictator Juan Perón dies at Buenos Aires July 1 at age 78 (see 1973). His vice president (and third wife), Maria Estela (Isabel) Martinez de Perón, 43, becomes the hemisphere's first woman chief of state (but see 1976).
New Delhi announces May 18 that India has conducted a successful test of a 10- to 15-kiloton atomic device in the Rajasthan desert near Pokaran, joining the United States, the USSR, Britain, France, and China in the world nuclear club. Ottawa protests the underground Indian test and suspends Canadian aid to India's atomic energy program (see energy, 1956). Paris and Washington agree to supply Iran with nuclear reactors, but the Indian test dramatizes the need to halt the proliferation of fissionable materials and nuclear weapons technology.
India annexes the Himalayan kingdom of Sikkim, ending a 330-year-old dynasty and alarming the 10-year-old king of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, whose late father died 2 years ago while on safari in Kenya.
Former Pakistani president Mohammad Ayub Khan dies near Islamabad April 19 at age 67. A car carrying President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's vigorous parliamentary critic Ahmad Raza Kasuri is ambushed November 11 at Lahore (see 1973). Kasuri is unhurt, but his father is killed; the perpetrators turn out to be members of the Bhutto government's security agency (see 1977).
Japan's prime minister Kakuei Tanaka resigns November 26 in the face of financial scandals (see 1972). Charged with having received a bribe from Lockheed Aircraft, he is publicly disgraced, his Liberal-Democratic Party has barely survived the July 7 elections, it is feared that the party will break up if either of the two leading candidates is chosen to succeed the 56-year-old Tanaka, and the Diet names 67-year-old Takeo Miki prime minister December 28 (see 1976).
The New York Times runs a front-page story December 22 under the banner headline, "Huge CIA Operation Reported in U.S. Against Anti-War Forces, Other Dissidents in Nixon Years" (see 1967). Written by Seymour M. Hersh, the article about the Central Intelligence Agency's Operation Chaos concludes that the laws are "fuzzy" with regard to the agency's powers with regard to domestic surveillance of Americans (see 1975).
Vietnamese women at Saigon observe International Women's Day March 8 by demonstrating against the government.
French publisher Françoise Giroud is named in July to the newly-created cabinet post of Secretary of State for the Condition of Women in France. Now 58, she works to prohibit sex discrimination, permit working women to sign tax returns with their husbands, police the stereotyping of women as sex objects in advertising, secure better retirement and social security benefits for women, and increase childcare services and maternity leave.
Greek parliamentary elections in November see 34 women candidates vying for seats in the 300-member body; two women won seats in the last election, in 1964, but although Greek women have an activist tradition that dates to ancient times, a network of laws continues to keep the institution of male supremacy intact: a woman still needs a dowry to get married because she is considered a burden on her husband, and a woman must obey the man who heads the household.
Holocaust rescuer Oskar Schindler dies of liver failure at Hildesheim outside Frankfurt-am-Main October 9 at age 66, having abandoned his wife and mistress in Argentina 16 years ago to divide his time between Germany and Israel, where he has been honored and cared for by his "Schindlerjuden."
Economic recession deepens in the world following last year's hike in oil prices by major petroleum producers. Inflation meanwhile raises prices in most of the free world. Double-digit inflation is worst in Israel, India, Brazil, and Japan.
The U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) rises by 12.2 percent following last year's 8.8 percent increase. Increases averaged less than 2.4 percent in the 25 years from 1948 to 1972, and the CPI actually declined in 1949 and 1954, but it will go up another 7 percent next year, 4.8 percent in 1976, and 6.8 percent in 1977.
British coal miners strike February 10 with communist encouragement after a month's-long slowdown has forced the nation to adopt a 3-day work week. The workers return to the pits March 6 after winning a 35 percent wage increase that gives underground workers $122 per week, up from $85, and surface workers $73, up from $58. The National Coal Board boosts prices 28 percent in September. Coal workers reject proposals for incentives to boost productivity.
J. P. Stevens textile workers in seven mills at Roanoke Rapids, N.C., vote August 28 for representation by the Textile Workers Union of America. The TWUA lost an election at Roanoke Rapids in 1958, but 1,685 of the 3,133 employees now endorse the union, thanks in part to organizing efforts by millhand Crystal Lee Sutton (née Jordan), 34. Textiles have accounted for 30 to 50 percent more sales than southern agricultural products and provide one out of four jobs in five southern states (40 percent of North Carolina's labor force is employed in the mills), yet this has been the only major U.S. industry not organized. Charges of unfair labor practices will continue to be filed against J. P. Stevens, which continues to harass and dismiss union supporters in its 83 U.S. plants (see 1976).
The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) signed into law by President Ford September 2 establishes the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC) to guarantee workers' benefits in private pension plans (see Studebaker, 1963). Questionable loans from its pension fund by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters to some Las Vegas casinos and the administration of some other large pension funds have created concerns that Congress has addressed. Promoted by Sen. Jacob Javits (R. N.Y), the law supersedes "any and all State laws insofar as they may now or hereafter relate to any employee benefit plan," provides for regulation of such plans by the Department of Labor, insures private pension benefits, and establishes tax-deductible Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs), whose assets will total $26 billion by 1981, $400 billion by 1989 (see 401[k] plans, 1978). Sen. Javits calls ERISA "the greatest development in the life of the American worker since Social Security." The men and women "of our labor force will have much more clearly defined rights to pension funds," says Ford, "and greater assurances that retirement dollars will be there when they are needed" (but see Enron, 2001).
The 4-year-old Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issues a rule October 4 regarding exposure to vinyl chloride, estimating that it will cost industry $1 billion to comply. Industry estimates that the cost will be as much as $94 billon, but the actual cost will be $278 million (see cotton dust, 1978).
Japanese women workers average 53.9 percent as much pay as men. Comparable figures: 86.7 percent for French women, 80.1 percent for Australian, 77 percent for Danish, 69.9 percent for West German, 63.3 percent for Swiss, 60.7 percent for British. The Japanese average is lowered considerably by the fact that so many women quit after marriage or when they have their first child.
Dreyfus Liquid Assets is the first money-market fund advertised to the public. Launched in February, it permits small U.S. investors to enjoy the same high rates of interest heretofore available only to individuals and institutions rich enough to buy financial instruments in denominations of $100,000 and more. Investors can write checks on their money-market funds, which will number more than 100 by 1980.
Bank examiners declare New York's Franklin National Bank insolvent September 8, the biggest such failure in U.S. history. Many larger banks receive no interest on outstanding loans. Sicilian financier Michele Sindona, 53, is a director of Franklin National's parent company, he has served as consultant to the Vatican, Christian Democratic Party leader has called him the "savior of the lira," but his own Banca Privata Italiana and Banca Unione collapse (see 1980).
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average bottoms out December 9 at 570.01 and closes December 31 at 616.24, down from 850.86 at the end of 1973.
World oil prices escalate in the wake of last year's action by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). OPEC crude oil prices quadruple to $11.56 per barrel in January and remain at $11.25 per barrel by year's end, up from $2.50 at the beginning of 1973. The steep and sudden rise in energy costs creates a huge balance-of-payments deficit in many industrial states, fuels inflation worldwide, wipes out economic progress in many developing countries, and concentrates petrodollars in a few sparsely populated Middle Eastern countries, whose leaders gain increased clout in their dealings with Europe and the United States. Efforts increase to find new sources of energy as higher coal prices bring a boom to depressed coal-mining areas.
The Energy Reorganization Act signed into law by President Ford October 11 creates a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to replace the Atomic Energy Commission established in 1946 (see 1973). Charged with licensing construction of new reactors and overseeing their operation, the NRC takes over the AEC's responsibility for assuring the safety of civilian nuclear materials with regard to public health and the environment. Ford appoints New York-born executive Frank (Gustave) Zarb, 39, federal energy administrator November 25 (see 1975).
Nuclear fuel facility laboratory technician Karen (Gay) Silkwood, 28, dies in an automobile crash near Oklahoma City November 13 on her way to meet with a New York Times reporter and a union official. She had planned to document her allegations that Kerr-McGee Nuclear Corp. has falsified quality-control reports on fuel rods and that 40 pounds of highly dangerous plutonium are missing from the Kerr-McGee plant near Crescent, Okla. Investigators find high levels of radiation in Silkwood's apartment.
Oilman H. L. Hunt dies at Dallas November 29 at age 85, having contributed lavishly to right-wing political causes.
Solar power remains far too costly and inefficient to compete with power from electric utilities. Budapest-born physicist Joseph Lindmayer, 45, has devised a silicon photovoltaic cell 50 percent more efficient than anything previously made and last year founded Solarex, Inc., believing that solar cells were ripe for further development.
A nationwide 55-mile-per-hour highway speed limit act signed by President Nixon January 2 makes federal aid for highways conditional on state enforcement of the new speed limit. Nixon had requested a 50 mph limit, and although motorists in western states routinely exceed the speed limit and jeopardize federal highway funds, the new law will conserve 3.4 billion gallons of fuel per year. Highway fatalities fall to 45,196, down from 54,052 last year, but will climb to 50,700 by 1979 as motorists flout the law.
Automotive pioneer Errett L. Cord dies at Reno, Nev., January 2 at age 79.
The Jeep Cherokee introduced by American Motors is a four-wheel-drive vehicle that soon has sales of 6,000 cars per month as it woos drivers away from conventional station wagons.
The Airbus A300B assembled at Toulouse, France, begins to challenge Boeing for the world jet aircraft market. Airbus Industrie is a consortium of government-owned British and French aircraft makers with some private German companies and a 4 percent Spanish participation.
A Pan American 707 crashes January 31 while landing at Pago Pago, Samoa, killing 97 out of 101 aboard; a Turkish DC-10 crashes outside Paris March 3, killing 346; a TWA 727 crashes outside Upperville, Va., December 1, killing 92; a chartered Dutch DC-8 carrying Indonesian Muslims home from Mecca crashes at Colombo, Sri Lanka, December 4, killing all 191 aboard.
The first terminal of Charles de Gaulle Airport opens March 8; located 12 miles north of Paris at Roissy, it relieves pressure on Le Bourget and Orly.
Alexander P. de Seversky dies at New York August 24 at age 80; Charles A. Lindbergh of cancer on the Hawaiian island of Maui August 26 at age 72.
The Cunard liner QE2 bound from New York to St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands is crippled before dawn off Bermuda April 1 when her three boilers break down, leaving her adrift for 36 hours before engineers abandon efforts at emergency repairs; her 1,632 passengers are transferred to Bermuda, leaving most of her 940-member crew aboard.
Prague's first subway opens May 9 with nine stations. A three-mile east-west line will open in the summer of 1978 to supplement the initial 4½-mile north-south line, and the system will grow to have 50 stations serving more than 50 kilometers of track.
Seoul's first subway line opens August 15 to serve the South Korean capital. By 1993 the city's system will have more than 278 kilometers of track and be carrying 1.4 billion passengers per year.
Kyoto's Minato Ohashi Bridge is completed—the world's third longest cantilever bridge (510 meters). The Kuronoseto Bridge completed at Nagashima in Kyushu is the world's fourth longest continuous truss bridge (300 meters).
The eight-chip Z-80 microprocessor introduced by Zilog outperforms the Intel 8080 microchip introduced in 1972. Former Intel scientist Federico Faggin has founded Zilog and developed the Z-80 (see 1971); (see 1976). Motorola introduces the 6800 microprocessor but decides to exit the business as Japanese competitors undercut U.S. prices.
Intel engages Monterey, Calif., computer instructor Gary Kildall, 32, to write programming tools for its 4004 microprocessor and discusses with him its more advanced microchips (see 1972); Kildall proposes writing a high-level language that will permit a user to issue English-like commands to the chip instead of communicating with it in Os and 1s. Kildall will build the control program for microprocessors (CP/M) to keep track of peripherals such as a monitor or disk drive and set up his own firm, Intergalactic Digital Research, to own the software (see IBM, 1981).
Xerox Corp. engineers invent a built-in mouse for computers, but external devices, including trackballs, will be the norm for all except laptop models (see 1973; Apple, 1976).
Rifle inventor John C. Garand dies at Springfield, Mass., February 16 at age 86; computer pioneer (and Raytheon Corp. cofounder) Vannevar Bush suffers a stroke and dies of pneumonia at his Belmont, Mass., home June 28 at age 84.
The National Academy of Sciences urges a temporary worldwide ban on certain types of genetic manipulation, especially experiments involving the bacterium Escherechia coli found in the human digestive tract, lest scientists create a virulent e. coli organism more deadly and more resistant than any found in nature (see 1976; medicine, 1885).
Physicist Stephen W. Hawking extrapolates from the predictions of quantum theory the proposal that black holes emit subatomic particles until they exhaust their energy and, ultimately, explode (see 1971). He works to expand knowledge of the properties of black holes and their relationship to the laws of quantum mechanics and classical thermodynamics.
New York-born physicist Martin L. (Lewis) Perl, 47, at Stanford University uses the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center's new particle accelerator to record frontal collisions between electrons and their antiparticles, positrons. By 1977 experiments will have shown that the collisions form heavy leptons that will later be called tau particles (see 1956) and that they decay in less than a trillionth of a second into neutrinos and either an electron or a muon. Perl will also discover the antitau—a subatomic particle which decays into neutrinos and either a positron or an antimuon.
A Brookhaven National Laboratory team headed by Michigan-born physicist Samuel C. C. (Chao Chung) Ting, 38, and a Stanford Linear Accelerator Center team headed by physicist Burton Richter detect what they call the J/psi particle, a new subatomic particle whose existence supports the theory that there is a fourth quark, the "charmed" quark, in addition to the up, down, and strange quarks found earlier (see Gell-Mann, Zweig, 1964; Z particle, 1973). Believed to be composed of a "charmed" quark and its antiquark, the J/psi particle has a mass three and a half times as large as that of a proton and is the first of a new class of massive, long-lived mesons.
Physicist Satyendra Nath Bose dies at his native Calcutta February 4 at age 80; Nobel physicist Patrick M. S. Blackett at London July 13 at age 76; nuclear physicist Sir James Chadwick at Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, July 24 at age 82.
The computed axial tomography (CAT) scanner developed in England by EMI, Ltd. (formerly Electrical Musical Instruments, Ltd.) gains wide use not only for diagnosing brain damage but also for whole-body scanning. Built with money earned from sales of Beatles records, the device assembles thousands of X-ray images into a single, remarkably detailed picture of the body's interior. It revolutionizes diagnostic medicine by eliminating a good deal of exploratory surgery, but one scanner costs upwards of $500,000 (see MRI, 1982).
The "Heimlich maneuver" described in the June issue of Emergency Medicine by Cincinnati surgeon Henry (Jay) Heimlich, 54, will save thousands of people from choking to death on food: Place heel of hand on victim's abdomen slightly above the navel and well below the ribs; use other hand to press with sharp upward thrusts until obstructing food pops out. The inventor of a drain for chest wounds that saved thousands of lives in the Vietnam War, Heimlich says so-called "cafe coronaries" are easily distinguished from heart attacks—the victim cannot speak, turns blue, and collapses. Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation will only push the food farther down, oxygen deprivation may cause permanent brain damage before an ambulance can get the victim to a hospital, hence the need for prompt use of the Heimlich maneuver.
U.S. insurance companies raise rates on malpractice policies, forcing up physicians' fees and hospital rates. More companies will hike rates next year and some will stop writing malpractice policies as the unique U.S. tort system boosts healthcare costs.
The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) signed into law by President Ford September 2 restructures nearly all employer-sponsored medical and disability insurance plans and actually strips employees of rights to file suit in state courts against health maintenance organizations and insurance companies for damages stemming from malpractice or denial of treatment that a physician has deemed medically necessary (see 2004).
A preliminary report on a nationwide study confirms the 1971 findings of George Crile, equating recurrence rates in women who have had radical versus those who have had "simple" mastectomies: incidence of breast cancer will increase in the next 20 years, but use of the Halsted radical procedure will virtually disappear and "lumpectomies" will be performed more often.
Nobel pharmacologist and physiologist Earl W. Sutherland Jr. dies at Miami, Fla., March 9 at age 58; anesthesiologist-medical researcher Virginia Apgar at New York August 7 at age 65, having participated in the births of 17,000 babies and seen her 1952 score system come into almost universal use.
A group of retired bishops at Philadelphia's Church of the Advocate names Betty Schiess and 10 other women deacons to the Episcopal priesthood July 29 (see 1969); a banner displayed in front of the church reads, "In Christ there is neither male nor female."
South Carolina evangelist Jim Bakker, 34, founds the Praise the Lord (PTL) television ministry that will become a multimillion-dollar religious empire (see 1987).
The Great School Boards, New York City: 1805-1973 by local activist Diane Ravitch (née Silvers), 36, says that city schools have always had trouble educating the children of poor immigrants and that schools cannot solve all the problems of society. While good schools can provide a pathway "from the gutter to the university" for the talented few, they can do little to assure that no Americans will live under conditions that can be called "the gutter."
Worchester, Mass.-born Federal District Court judge W. (Wendell) Arthur Garrity, Jr., 54, rules June 21 that the Boston School Committee has deliberately segregated schools by race (see 1972); he adopts a plan calling for exchange of students in black Roxbury and white South Boston, the plan covers 18,000 students, but buses carrying blacks to South Boston September 12 encounter white mobs shouting, "Nigger, go home!" Violence ensues, and in October Gov. Francis W. Sargent calls out the National Guard to prevent a race war (see 1975).
Word processors with cathode-ray tube displays and speedy printers begin to replace typewriters as the economic recession encourages business managers to automate offices. The IBM Selectric typewriter introduced in 1961 was given a magnetic tape and turned into a primitive word processor in 1964, but IBM's machine has cost $10,000, compared to $600 for a regular office typewriter, and has actually cut productivity because secretaries sat back and watched it type. Vydek is first to introduce a text-editing computer with a CRT screen and printer. By 1976 impact printers with bi-directional "daisy wheels" will be printing documents at 30 to 55 characters per second, versus 15 for the typing ball on a power typewriter, while secretaries key in material for other documents.
The U.S. first class postal rate rises March 2 to 10¢ per ounce; higher rates for lower-class mail forces magazines to downsize (see 1971; 1975).
Some 50 women's groups from the tri-state area picket the New York Times March 4 to protest the paper's refusal to use the designation "Ms." when so requested, employ terms such as "spokesperson" and "chairperson," or give more than sporadic coverage to women's news except on the Family/Style page or in the back pages. The Times will not begin using "Ms." until the mid-1980s—long after other major papers have done so.
Japanese newspapers ignore the story of Prime Minister Tanaka's corruption until foreign publications circulating in Japan pick up facts uncovered by a Japanese monthly magazine. Tanaka's conviction on accepting bribes from coal-mining interests early in his career was later overturned, but he has been a notorious wheeler-dealer and has steadily increased his wealth through construction and real estate operations while in office, yet none of the major dailies has investigated his personal finances nor his innovative use of political contributions.
Employees of the South Korean newspaper Dong-A Libo go on strike to protest censorship and the presence of Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) agents in newspaper offices. The government of President Park Chung Hee threatens to close down the paper, but publisher Kim Sang-Man, 64, uses his international contacts to bring pressure on the Park government, which withdraws the KCIA agents but orders a complete commercial advertising boycott, bringing the country's most influential paper close to bankruptcy until intellectuals and blue-collar workers rally to the paper's support by buying large-space advertising.
Peru's president Velasco Alvarado expropriates the country's leading newspaper La Prensa. It has been edited by former prime minister Pedro Gerado Beltrán, now 77, who has owned it since 1934.
Knight-Ridder Newspapers is created as publisher John S. Knight, 79, merges his Akron Beacon Journal and 15 other papers with those of the 82-year-old Ridder chain (see 1903).
People magazine begins publication March 4 at New York. Time, Inc., has started the new 35¢ weekly in a bid to recoup circulation lost when LIFE ceased weekly publication late in 1972, and although many in the company sneer at publisher Andrew Heiskell for "dumbing down" LIFE, People will turn a profit within 18 months.
High Times magazine begins publication at New York in late summer with advertising from E-Z Wider and JOB rolling papers. San Diego "Yippie" Thomas King "Tom" Forcade, 29, has started the magazine with $20,000 allegedly derived from drug smuggling, his stories refer to marijuana as a "medical wonder drug," he ridicules the Drug Enforcement Administration, and he will shoot himself to death in November 1978 following the fatal crash of his best friend's plane on a smuggling mission.
Radio and television pioneer Ernst F. W. Alexanderson dies at Schenectady, N.Y., May 14 at age 97.
A U.S. Freedom of Information Act passed by Congress November 21 over President Ford's veto assures broader public access to public information.
Oakland Tribune publisher (and former U.S. senator) William F. (Fife) Knowland dies of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his summer home near Guerneville, Calif., February 23 at age 65; columnist Stewart Alsop dies of leukemia at Washington, D.C., May 26 at age 60; former Collier's editor William L. Chenery at Monterey, Calif., August 18 at age 90; journalist-author Walter Lippmann at his native New York December 14 at age 85; journalist-author Amy Vanderbilt at New York December 27 at age 66 from injuries sustained in a fall from a second-floor window.
Nonfiction: The Ultra Secret by former British intelligence officer Frederick W. Winterbotham, 76, reveals World War II secrets of cracking the German code; All the President's Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post (see communications, 1972); The Ascent of Man by Polish-born English mathematician-humanist Jacob Bronowski, 66; The Lives of a Cell by New York biologist Lewis Thomas, 60; The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who is arrested by the KGB and expelled from the Soviet Union (he will take up residence in Vermont); Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Brooklyn, N.Y.-born Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick, 36, who invokes classical 19th-century theory to argue that capitalist states should play only a minimal role in human affairs; Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek by Pittsburgh-born writer Annie Dillard (née Doak), 29; The Civil War: Red River to Appomattox by Shelby Foote; Working by Studs Terkel is about the Great Depression; All Aboard with E. M. Frimbo by veteran New Yorker magazine editor and railroad buff Roger E. M. Whitaker, now 75, who joined the magazine in 1926, established its fact-checking department soon afterward, wrote "Talk of the Town" pieces under the name "The Old Curmudgeon," reviewed nightclub entertainers in articles signed "Popsie," signed his football commentaries "J. W. L.," and has covered 2,748,636.81 miles by rail gathering material for his pieces about train travel; God with Running Nose (Hanatarashigami) (autobiography) by Japanese writer Sei Yoshino (née Wakamatsu), 74, whose book about the hardships of farming on reclaimed land wins a prize established by a famous critic; Conundrum by British writer Jan (born James Humphrey) Morris, 47, who writes, "I was three or perhaps four when I realized that I had been born into the wrong body, and should really be a girl" (Morris has had a sex change operation).
Author Jacob Bronowski dies in a Long Island, N.Y., automobile accident August 22 at age 66.
Fiction: The Sacred and Profane Love by Iris Murdoch; Ebony Tower by John Fowles; The Honorary Consul by Graham Greene; The Fat Man in History (stories) by Australian author Peter Carey, 31; Something Happened by Joseph Heller; Centennial by James Michener; Theophilus North by Thornton Wilder, now 77; Look at the Harlequins by Vladimir Nabokov, now 75; Life Is Elsewhere (Zivot je jinde) by Milan Kundera, who will emigrate next year to France; The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum by Heinrich Böll; The Killer Angels by Jersey City, N.J.-born Florida novelist Michael (Joseph) Shaara (Jr.), 45, is about the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863; Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone, now 37, who went to Vietnam as a freelance reporter 2 years ago; Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Minneapolis-born philosopher Robert M. (Maynard) Pirsig, 46; Jaws by New York-born novelist Peter Benchley, 33; Celestial Navigation by Anne Tyler; The War Between the Tates by Alison Lurie; The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer; Dusklands by South African novelist J. M. (John Michael) Coetzee, 34; Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (stories) by Grace Paley; Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You (stories) by Alice Munro; Carrie: A Novel of a Girl with a Frightening Power by Maine novelist Stephen (Edwin) King, 26; The Dogs of War by Frederick Forsyth; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré; Winter Kills by Richard Condon; Cogan's Trade by George V. Higgins; The Rhinemann Exchange by Robert Ludlum; Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith; Fletch by Gregory Mcdonald, now 37, whose wry detective series will gain wide popularity; The Godwulf Manuscript and God Save the Child by Springfield, Mass.-born Northeastern University English professor Robert B. (Brown) Parker, 42, introduce the Boston detective Spenser; 52 Pick-Up by Detroit advertising copywriter-turned-novelist Elmore Leonard, 51.
Novelist-short story writer H. E. Bates dies at Canterbury, Kent, January 29 at age 68; Miguel Asturias at Madrid June 9 at age 74; Georgette Heyer at London July 4 at age 71; Nobel novelist-poet-playwright Pär Lagerkvist at Stockholm July 11 at age 83; Jacqueline Susann of cancer at New York September 21 at age 53; publisher-author-playwright John C. Farrar at New York November 5 at age 78; Eric Linklater at Aberdeen November 7 at age 75.
Poetry: Conjunctions and Disjunctions by Octavio Paz; The Dolphin by Robert Lowell; High Window by Philip Larkin; The Death Notebooks by Anne Sexton; Laguna Woman: Poems by University of Arizona, Tucson, English instructor Leslie Marmon Silko, 26.
Poet-critic John Crowe Ransom dies at Gambier, Ohio, July 3 at age 86; Anne Sexton at Weston, Mass., October 4 at age 45 in an apparent suicide (she has had terminal cancer).
Juvenile: The Stupids Step Out by Evanston, Ill.-born author Harry Allard, 46, illustrations by James Marshall; All the Way Home by James Marshall; City: A Story of Roman Planning and Construction by David A. Macaulay; A Child in Prison Camp by Canadian-born Japanese author-illustrator Shizuye Takashima, 46, who as a teenager in 1942 was interned for 4 years with her family in a "relocation facility."
Painting: 256 Colors by Gerhard Richter; Corpse and Mirror (oil, encaustic, diptych collage on canvas) by Jasper Johns; Dancers by Roy Lichtenstein; Bread and Butter by Larry Rivers; Paysage de Ticouleur à la Marionette by Jean Dubuffet. David Afaro Siqueiros dies at Mexico City January 6 at age 77; Moses Soyer at New York September 3 at age 74.
Sculpture: The Destruction of the Father (mixed media) by Louise Bourgeois; Coyote: I Like America and America Likes Me by Joseph Beuys, who makes his first visit to the United States and instead of mounting a conventional exhibit fences himself in for a week with a live coyote at his dealer's gallery; Trans-Fixed (artist crucified on Volkswagen "beetle") by Chris Burden.
California's Norton Simon Museum has its beginnings as processed food tycoon-art collector-corporate raider Simon takes over the financially troubled Pasadena Art Museum along with its collection of contemporary art and acquires the rights to occupy an existing structure, which he will fill with Botticellis, Cézannes, Corots, Goyas, Guardis, Monets, Rembrandts, Rubenses, Zurbaráns, and other treasures.
Two farmers digging a well in March just outside Xian in western China discover terra cotta soldiers and horses (see 210 B.C.). A severe drought has prompted the local commune leader to send the men to dig for water; Yang Quanyi, 46, and Yang Zhifa, 36, will both claim to have been the first to unearth the life-size figures six feet underground, and the site will ultimately prove to contain 6,000 such figures plus terra cotta arrows, swords, and other artifacts.
Theater: The Island by Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona 1/2 at London's Royal Court Theatre; Short Eyes by New York-born former heroin addict and Sing Sing parolee Miguel Piñero, 27, 1/3 at New York's Riverside Church Theater, with a cast of former prison inmates ("The Family") in a brutal story of life in prison, 102 perfs.; Knuckle by English playwright David Hare, 26, 3/4 at London's Comedy Theatre, with Edward Fox, Kate Nelligan; Thieves by Herb Gardner 4/7 at New York's Broadhurst Theater, with Dick Van Patten, Marlo Thomas, Irwin Corey, 312 perfs.; Bad Habits by Terrence McNally 5/5 at New York's Booth Theater (after 96 perfs. at the Astor Place Theater), with Cynthia Haris, Doris Rafelo, Emory Bass, J. Frank Luca, 273 perfs.; The Churchill Play by Howard Brenton 5/8 at Nottingham Playhouse; Travesties by Tom Stoppard 6/10 at London's Aldwych Theatre, with John Wood, Tom Bell as James Joyce, Frank Windsor as Lenin, Maria Aitken, 39 perfs. in repertory; The Force of Habit (Die Machet der Gewohnheit) by novelist-playwright Thomas Bernhard 7/27 at the Salzburg Festival; All Over Town by Murray Schisgal 12/29 at New York's Booth Theater, with Barnard Hughes, Cleavon Little, 233 perfs.
Actress Patricia Collinge dies at New York April 10 at age 81; Blanche Yurka at New York June 6 at age 86; Katherine Cornell of pneumonia at her Vineyard Haven, Mass., home June 8 at age 81; playwright George Kelly at Bryn Mawr, Pa., June 18 at age 87; Edna Best at Geneva September 18 at age 74.
Television: It Ain't Half Hot Mum 1/3 on BBC with Michael Bates as Ranji Ram, Windsor Davies, George Layton, Donald Hewlett, Melvyn Hayes, Don Estelle as members of the Royal Artillery at Deolah, India, in a series that makes fun of racial stereotyping (to 9/3/1981); Wheel of Fortune 1/6 on NBC with co-hosts Chuck Woolery and Susan Stafford in a game show devised by Merv Griffin, with Pat Sajak replacing Woolery and Vanna White joining Sajak in November 1982; Happy Days 1/15 on ABC with Ron Howard, Henry Winkler (to 7/19/1984); Dad's Army 1/28 on BBC with James Beck (to 9/7/1976); Good Times 2/1 on CBS with Esther Rolle, Jon Amos, Jimmie Walker (created by Norman Lear) (to 8/1/1979); The Rockford Files 9/13 on NBC with James Garner (to 7/25/1980); Chico and the Man 9/13 on NBC with Freddie Prinze, 20, Jack Albertson, now 64 (to 7/1/1978); Kolchak: the Night Stalker 9/13 on ABC with Darren McGavin, Simon Oakland (to 8/30/75; 20 episodes) (see 1972); Little House on the Prairie 9/17 on NBC with former Bonanza co-star Michael Landon, 37, Katherine MacGregor, Melissa Gilbert, Alison Arngrim in a saccharine series set in the 1870s, based on the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, and designed to compete with the CBS program The Waltons that has been on the air since April 1972 (to 2/6/1984 and in syndicated reruns for more than 15 years thereafter); Good Morning America 11/3 on ABC in a revision of a show launched in January as AM America to vie with NBC's Today show.
TV emcee and columnist Ed Sullivan dies at New York October 13 at age 73.
Films: Harold Pinter's Butley with Alan Bates, Jessica Tandy; Roman Polanski's Chinatown with Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston in a film about the machinations behind California landowners and the Los Angeles water supply; Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation with Gene Hackman; Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather II with Al Pacino, Robert De Niro; Louis Malle's Lacombe, Lucien with Pierre Blaise; Claude Sautet's Vincent, François, Paul and the Others with Yves Montand, Michel Piccoli, Gérard Depardieu, 26, Stephane Audran. Also: Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore with Ellen Burstyn, Kris Kristofferson, 38; Federico Fellini's Amarcord with Bruno Zanin; Ted Kotcheff's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz with Richard Dreyfuss; Joe Camp's Benji with Peter Breck; Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles with Gene Wilder, Brooks, Cleavon Little, Madeline Kahn; Akira Kurosawa's Dersu Uzala with Maxim Munzuki, Yuri Solomin; Peter Davis's Vietnam war documentary Hearts and Minds; Bob Fosse's Lenny with Dustin Hoffman as the late Lenny Bruce; Robert Aldrich's The Longest Yard with Burt Reynolds, Eddie Albert (Edward Albert Heimberger), now 66; Maximilian Schell's The Pedestrian with Gustav Rudolf Sellner, Peter Hall, Schell; Luis Buñuel's The Phantom of Liberty with Jean-Claude Brialy, Monica Vitti; Alain Resnais's Stavisky with Jean-Paul Belmondo; Steven Spielberg's Sugarland Express with Washington, D.C.-born actress Goldie Hawn, 28, William Atherton; Joseph Sargent's The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three with Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam; Robert Altman's Thieves Like Us with Keith Carradine, Houston-born actress Shelley Duvall, 25; Mel Brooks's Young Frankenstein with Gene Wilder.
Hollywood pioneer Samuel Goldwyn dies at Los Angeles January 31 at age 94; director Marcel Pagnol of cancer at Paris April 18 at age 79; comic straight man Bud Abbott, penniless, of cancer at Woodland Hills, Calif., April 24 at age 78; Agnes Moorehead of lung cancer at Rochester, Minn., April 30 at age 67; Otto Kruger of a stroke at Woodland Hills September 6 on his 89th birthday; Walter Brennan of emphysema at Oxnard, Calif., September 21 at age 80; director Vittorio De Sica following lung surgery at Paris November 13 at age 73; onetime actor Johnny Mack Brown at Woodland Hills, Calif., November 14 at age 70; director Anatole Litvak at Neuilly, France, December 15 at age 72; comedian Jack Benny of pancreatic cancer at his Beverly Hills home December 26 at age 80.
Hollywood musical: Jack Haley Jr.'s That's Entertainment with Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby, Gene Kelly, Peter Lawford, Liza Minnelli, Donald O'Connor, et. al. in scenes from old musicals.
Film opera: Ingmar Bergman's The Magic Flute with Ulric Cold, Irma Urrila, music by Mozart.
Opera: Spanish tenor José (Maria) Carreras, 27, makes his Metropolitan Opera debut 11/18 singing the role of Cavaradossi.
Composer Darius Milhaud dies at Aix-en-Provence, France, June 22 at age 82, having written 15 operas; violin virtuoso David Oistrach dies of a heart attack at Amsterdam October 24 at age 65.
Broadway and off-Broadway musicals: Let My People Come 1/8 at the Village Gate, with music and lyrics by Earl Wilson Jr., 31, songs that include "Dirty Words," "Give It to Me," and "Whatever Turns You On"; the sexually-oriented show will move uptown to the Morosco Theater 7/27/1976, 1,167 perfs.; Lorelei 1/27 at the Palace Theater, with Carol Channing, Columbus, Ohio-born actress-comedienne Dody Goodman in a revised version of the 1949 musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, 321 perfs.; The Magic Show 5/28 at the Cort Theater, with Doug Henning, music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, 1,859 perfs.
Broadway impresario Sol Hurok dies at New York March 5 at age 85 following a visit to Andres Segovia.
Bread & Roses is founded by Palo Alto, Calif.-born folk singer (Margarita) Mimi Fariña (née Baez), 29, to provide free live music for senior citizens, prison inmates, psychiatric patients, and abused and neglected children. A sister of Joan Baez, Fariña is the widow of the late counterculture novelist-songwriter Richard Fariña.
Popular songs: Band on the Run (album) and "Jet" by former Beatles singer-composer Paul McCartney for his back-up group Wings (McCartney, his wife, Linda, and Denny Laine, now 30); "Feel like Makin' Love" by Kansas City-born songwriter Eugene McDaniels, 39; "A Pirate Looks at Forty" by Mississippi-born Key West songwriter Jimmy Buffet, 27; "The Way We Were" by New York-born composer Marvin Hamlisch, 30, lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman (title song for film); "Behind Closed Doors" by Oklahoma-born songwriter Kenny O'Dell (Kenneth Gist Jr.), 33; "I Honestly Love You" by Australian composer Peter Allen, lyrics by Brooklyn-born songwriter Jeff Barry, 35; "(You're) Havin' My Baby" by Paul Anka; "Rhinestone Cowboy" by Flint, Mich.-born songwriter Larry Weiss, 33; "Hey Joe (Version)/Piss Factory" by Chicago-born rock singer-songwriter-poet Patti Smith, 28, et al. features a monologue written by Smith for Patty Hearst (her "Piss Factory" is a spoken reminiscence of her experiences on a New Jersey production line); Kogen (album) by Japanese composer-pianist Toshiko Akiyoshi, 44, and her husband, Lew Tabakin, a tenor saxophonist and flutist with whom she started a large Los Angeles rehearsal band last year (it will be the leading big band in jazz by 1980); Another Lonely Song (album, co-written with Billy Sherrill and N. Wilson), We're Gonna Hold On (album, with George Jones), and Woman to Woman (album) by Tammy Wynette; Highly Prized Possession (album), Love Song (album), and "He Thinks I Don't Care" by Anne Murray.
Jazz composer Duke Ellington dies at New York May 24 at age 75. He has been hospitalized with lung cancer since April; former Ellington band baritone saxophonist Harry H. Carney dies at New York October 8 at age 64.
Miami beats Minnesota 24 to 7 at Houston January 13 in Super Bowl VIII.
James Scott "Jimmy" Connors, 21, (U.S.), wins in men's singles at Wimbledon and Forest Hills, Christine Marie "Chris" Evert, 19, (U.S.) in women's singles at Wimbledon, Billy Jean King at Forest Hills. A Long Way, Baby: Behind the Scenes in Women's Pro Tennis by New York journalist Grace Lichtenstein (née Rosenthal), 32, is an exposé (see Virginia Slims tournament, 1970).
The U.S. yacht Courageous retains the America's Cup, defeating Australian challenger Southern Cross 4 to 0.
West Germany wins the World Cup in football (soccer), defeating the Dutch 2 to 1 at Munich.
U.S. college baseball teams begin using hollow aluminum bats as soaring prices for ash from America's diminishing forests make traditional wooden bats too costly for athletic budgets (a team has typically gone through 350 wooden bats per season). Batting averages for college players will rise from about .266 to more than .300 (professional teams will continue to use wooden bats).
Hank Aaron breaks Babe Ruth's career home run record April 8 at Atlanta, hitting his 715th off a pitch by Al Downing of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Little League Baseball announces June 12 that its teams will be open to girls.
The Oakland Athletics win the World Series, defeating the Los Angeles Dodgers 4 games to 1.
Oakland pitcher Jim "Catfish" Hunter, 28, becomes a free agent December 16 when a three-man arbitration panel rules that Athletics owner Charles O. Finley, 56, has not honored his contract to pay Hunter $100,000 (see 1975).
Muhammad Ali regains the world heavyweight boxing crown October 20 by knocking out George Foreman in the eighth round at Kinshasa, Zaire. Ali calls himself, "the greatest" and charms sportswriters by boasting that he "floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee." He will hold the title until February 1978.
Romanian-born English bridge expert Rixi Markus (originally Erika Scharfstein), 64, becomes the first woman grandmaster.
"Streaking" becomes a popular U.S. fad as male and female college students dash naked between dormitories.
Fashion designer Anne Klein dies at New York March 19 at age 51 (see 1968). She entered the international market last year by forming a partnership with the Japanese firm Takihyo Co. Her protégée Donna Karan (née Faske), 26, has worked for Klein since 1967 and steps in, working with her co-designer Louis dell'Olio to keep the Anne Klein name alive (see 1984); couturier Edward Molyneux dies at Monte Carlo March 23 at age 82.
Post-It notes have their beginnings as 3M chemical engineer Arthur Fry, 43, notes that slips of paper on which he has written reminders fall out of his Presbyterian Church hymnal at choir practice. He recalls that his colleague Spencer Silver has accidentally developed a weak adhesive which is strong enough to hold papers together but unresistant to their being pulled apart. Silver has not known what to do with the adhesive, but Fry applies it to one edge of a small piece of paper, sends it to his boss, and suggests that it might at least be used for bookmarks. A variety of uses will soon suggest themselves, and 3M will eventually market Post-It notes in 27 sizes, 18 colors, and 56 shapes.
San Francisco black militants calling themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army (members include Nancy Ling Perry, 27, Emily Harris [née Schwartz], 27, and Harris's husband, William, 29) kidnap publishing heiress Patricia Hearst, 19, February 5 and demand $2 million in ransom. They then demand $230 million in free food for the poor of California. A San Francisco bank robbery April 15 nets $10,960, and an automatic camera at the bank records Hearst holding a submachine gun for the robbers (see 1975).
Michigan adopts a revised sexual-assault code and becomes the first state to shift in rape cases from an emphasis on the victim's actions to those of the attacker.
Former United Mine Workers president W. A. "Tony" Boyle is convicted April 9 of having ordered the New Year's Eve 1969 killing of his rival Joseph A. "Jake" Yablonski, who was found slain with his wife and daughter at their Clarksdale, Pa., home early in 1970. Boyle will win acquittal on appeal, but another court will find him guilty again early in 1978.
"Zebra" killings terrorize San Francisco for 179 days as black fanatics armed with .32 Baretta handguns and other weapons shoot whites at random in the streets.
Montoneros guerrillas at Buenos Aires kidnap grain merchants Juan and Jorge Born September 9, demanding $65 million in ransom. They release Juan after 3 months but will not release Jorge until June of next year following payment of the full amount demanded.
Philadelphia architect Louis I. Kahn returns from India and is found dead of a heart attack in the men's room of New York's Pennsylvania Station March 17 at age 73, but nobody identifies his body until it has been in the city morgue for 3 days. It later develops that in addition to his legitimate daughter he has fathered a son and daughter with two other women.
Man-made chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) propellants accelerate the depletion of the ozone layer in the stratosphere, says an article in Nature magazine by Mexico City-born U.S. chemist Mario Molina, 31, and Ohio-born chemist F. (Frank) Sherwood Rowland, 47 (see Crutzen, 1970). Working at the University of California, Irvine, they have conducted experiments on pollutants in the atmosphere, discovered that CFC gases rise into the stratosphere, and suggest that ultraviolet radiation up there breaks them into their component elements—chlorine, fluorine, and carbon, with each chlorine atom capable of destroying 100,000 ozone molecules before becoming inactive.
A tornado hits Xenia, Ohio, April 3, cutting a quarter-mile swath through the Dayton suburb, killing 34, and causing $500 million property damage.
The Disaster Relief Act signed into law by President Nixon May 22 establishes the process of presidential disaster declarations (see Flood Insurance Act, 1968; FEMA, 1979).
A cyclone destroys Darwin, Australia, December 25, forcing virtual abandonment of the city.
An earthquake in China's Sichaun and Yunnan provinces May 11 registers 7.1 on the Richter scale and leaves at least 10,000 dead; a quake in northern Pakistan December 28 registers 6.2 and leaves more than 5,000 dead over an area of 1,000 square miles.
Ministers of the six European Common Market countries meet at Brussels in March but are unable to agree on joint agricultural policies or a common wine policy as member nations maintain programs designed to protect their farmers from competition with relatively high prices (see 1972). Negotiations with candidates for membership—Britain, Ireland, Denmark, and Norway—cannot be opened so long as enormous surpluses of butter, sugar, and cereal grains continue. Britons would pay more for food if Britain joined, the French and Belgians want no cuts in dairy-product prices, the Germans will not accept lower grain prices, Italians say there can be no cuts in production quotas for sugar and—as Europe's biggest wine producers—insist that there be no restrictions on cross-border sales of wine.
The Union of Banana Exporting Countries formed by Central and South American nations pushes for higher fruit prices to offset climbing fuel costs. Honduras imposed a 50¢ tax on each 40 lb. box of bananas in April; the tax is halved to 25¢ within 5 months after $2.5 million has been deposited to the Swiss bank account of former economic minister Abraham Bennaton Ramos (see Black suicide, 1975).
Worm rot in northwestern U.S. apple orchards creates a shortage that boosts demand for imported Granny Smith apples.
Hawaiian pineapples account for 33 percent of the world crop, down from 72 percent in 1950, as the industry shifts to the Philippines and Thailand. Hawaiian pineapple growers continue to use heptachlor to kill ants, they sell their plants to dairy farmers after they harvest the fruit, and heptachlor gets into the milk, butter, ice cream, and other dairy products consumed by Hawaiian children.
Ethiopia's military coup follows months of riots and mutinies to protest government handling of a famine that has killed some 1.5 million people (see 1971), inundated the cities with refugees from drought-stricken areas, and produced food shortages and inflation. The death toll has been far greater than that in the more publicized famine in sub-Saharan countries, but an essay entitled "Living on a Lifeboat" by human ecologist Garrett Hardin appears in BioScience magazine arguing that contributing food would add to overpopulation, which he considers the root of Ethiopia's problems.
Bangladesh has famine; hundreds of thousands die (see politics, 1975).
A World Food Conference at Rome in November hears a U.S. refusal to make commitments for specific increases in food aid to needy countries. Impact on U.S. consumer prices in the face of tight supplies is a major reason, but there is also an emphasis on the importance of self-help in the needy countries, including material advances in population control.
Nutrition evangelist Adelle Davis dies of bone-marrow cancer at her Palos Verdes Estates, Calif., home May 31 at age 70. Her obituaries report that she considered herself a failure when she learned that she had bone cancer, since she had claimed that cancer was related to dietary inadequacies, but then realized that even though she had eaten well while growing up on an Indiana farm her eating habits had changed for the worse in college and she had eaten what she called "junk food" until the 1950s.
The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs (McGovern Committee) established in 1968 holds extensive hearings at which experts testify on shortcomings in the U.S. diet and in nutrition education (see 1975).
The Environmental Protection Agency bans use of the chlorinated-hydrocarbon insecticides aldrin, dieldrin, and heptachlor, whose chemical structure is similar to that of DDT; they have been shown to cause cancer in test animals (see agriculture, 1972).
Use of heptachlor on Hawaiian pineapples agitates proponents of organic farming, but some reputable biochemists will maintain that natural carcinogens in foods far outnumber the carcinogens in synthetic pesticides, and are more potent and that synthetic pesticides are, in fact, a boon to nutrition since they permit marketing of fruits and vegetables at lower prices that put them within the reach of more people. Many U.S. farmers use more chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides than necessary, however, and the runoffs of these chemicals pose environmental hazards that will bring increasing pressure to limit their use.
Use of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) soars as high sugar prices make it economical to substitute the corn sweetener, whose highest commercial grade is 93 to 94 percent as sweet as any cane or beet sugar (see 1967). HFCS comes into use by makers of canned goods, frozen foods, jams, jellies, preserves, pickles, ketchup, and some brands of ice cream; average annual U.S. per-capita consumption of HFCS will be nearly 10 pounds by 1977, up from one pound in 1972 and by 2001 it will be 62.2 pounds.
Average U.S. food prices: sugar 32.3¢/lb., up from 15.1¢ last year; white bread 34.5¢/one lb. loaf, up from 27.6¢; rice 44¢/lb., up from 26¢; potatoes 24.9¢/lb., up from 20.5¢; coffee $1.28/lb., up from $1.04.
Baby food pioneer Daniel F. Gerber dies at his native Fremont, Mich., March 16 at age 75. His company has grown to be the world's largest of its kind, with 60 percent of the U.S. market and annual sales of $278 million.
London's Covent Garden wholesale fruit, vegetable, and flower market moves after more than 300 years in the heart of town to a new site at Nine Elms in south London (see commerce, 1552; 1886; 1970).
The first supermarket checkout scanner goes into operation June 26 at the Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio—home of Hobart Manufacturing Co. (see Universal Product Code, 1973), and the first item to have its bar code checked out with the NCR scanner is a 67¢ ten-pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit chewing gum. Most retailers balk initially at installing the costly equipment needed and consumers will protest elimination of individually-marked prices, but retailers will find that the system saves money by facilitating inventory control and gauging customer buying habits. Within 25 years scanners will be ringing up an estimated 1.4 billion items per day, and by the end of the century they will be scanning nearly 5 billion per day.
Miller Lite Beer is introduced by Philip Morris, which acquired the brewery in 1970 and 1971 for $243 million (see 1855). By 1978 the heavily promoted low-calorie beer ("Tastes good," "Less filling") will have lifted Miller Brewing Co. from seventh place to second, ahead of Coors and just behind Anheuser-Busch, but the St. Louis brewer redoubles its print, radio, and (especially) television advertising ("This Bud's for You") and will make its Bud Light second only to Budweiser in U.S. sales. Competition from the major national brewers have put most regional and local beers out of business.
Mexico inaugurates a government-sponsored family-planning program, establishing a network of clinics and using billboards to proclaim the benefits of small families (see Colombia, 1965). By 1999 the average Latin American woman will be bearing 2.9 children, down from more than six in 1965, as increasing urbanization makes children more of an economic liability than an asset, as family-planning information, health care, and contraceptives become more available, and as more women gain employment outside the home and educated to the idea that they can choose to have smaller families and thus improve their economic conditions.
Planned Parenthood Federation of America president Alan F. Guttmacher dies at New York March 18 at age 75.
Dalkon Shield maker A. H. Robins Co. agrees May 15 to remove its intrauterine device from the market in response to FDA pressure but maintains that it is safe and effective if used as directed (see 1971). IUDs have not been subject to rigorous testing because they were not classified as drugs; the pregnancy rate among women using the device is 10 percent, as compared with 3 percent for most other IUDs, and seven women have died from uterine infections related to using the Dalkon Shield. Of the 3 to 5 million women using IUDs, 2 million have been using the Dalkon Shield. Robins will continue to distribute it abroad for another 10 months, and it will use federal bankruptcy law to stop 6,000 suits in U.S. courts (see 1985).
French Minister of Health Simone Veil, 47, sponsors a liberalized abortion law (see 1973).
Hong Kong rescinds a 6-year-old policy of accepting illegal immigrants from China. Thousands of Vietnamese and other refugees have poured into the crowded city.
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