1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970
Paris peace talks to end the Vietnam war continue for a second year without progress, but Washington reduces U.S. troop strength in Vietnam below 400,000 in response to mounting public pressure as casualties rise.
North Vietnamese troops and tanks seize a key Laotian stronghold in the Plaine des Jarres in mid-February. U.S. military activity in Laos clearly "violates the spirit" of congressional measures aimed at barring use of American ground forces there, says Sen. Charles McC. Mathias (D. Md.) February 25. Mathias cites a report that the CIA has hired hundreds of former Green Beret troops to serve in Laos.
U.S. authorities at Saigon charge five U.S. Marines with murdering 11 South Vietnamese women and five children while on patrol south of Danang February 19. Capt. Ernest L. Medina and five other soldiers are charged with premeditated murder and rape of civilian women at the South Vietnamese village of My Lai (Songmy) in mid-March 1968. West Point's superintendent resigns following accusations that he and 13 other officers suppressed information: Gen. Samuel W. Koster commanded the Americal Division, whose First Battalion C Company was involved in the 1968 My Lai massacre of 47 civilians. A secret army investigation has reportedly found that the number of victims dwindled as information moved up the chain of command but that U.S. troops did indeed commit acts of murder, rape, sodomy, and maiming against "noncombatants."
An explosion in New York's Greenwich Village March 6 completely wrecks a town house at 18 West 11th Street allegedly used by members of the Weather Underground to produce bombs. One member is killed. Police arrest Weather Underground activist Bernardine Dohrn, 27, (she will jump bail) and call in the FBI to help look for Kathy Boudin, 26, and Catherine Platt Wilkerson, 25, one of whom was reportedly naked and both of whom were bruised and lacerated. They borrowed clothing from a neighbor and fled the scene. Wilkerson (whose father owned the antebellum house) was a member of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) delegation to Hanoi in 1967 and has allegedly joined the ultramilitary Weathermen faction of SDS.
"The Senate must not remain silent now while the president uses the armed forces of the United States to fight an undeclared and undisclosed war in Laos," says Sen. Fulbright (D. Ark) March 11. He proposes a resolution challenging Nixon's authority to commit U.S. forces to combat in or over Laos.
Cambodians stage peaceful protest demonstrations at Phnom Penh over the presence of North Vietnamese forces in their country. Prince Norodom Sihanouk is overthrown in a right-wing coup March 18 while away on a visit to Moscow (he has held secret discussions with the Vietcong and North Vietnamese). The premier and defense minister Lon Nol seizes power and begins a reign of terror against Cambodia's 400,000 Vietnamese residents, appealing for U.S. aid to stop the North Vietnamese from taking over as civil war erupts between government forces and Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, whose numbers have swelled from perhaps 2,000 to more than 70,000 (see 1975).
A massive South Vietnamese move into Cambodia begins April 29 with support from U.S. planes and advisers.
President Nixon makes a television address April 30, saying that he has ordered U.S. combat troops into part of Cambodia to destroy North Vietnamese "headquarters" and "sanctuaries." The action is intended to save U.S. lives, he insists, and is essential to his plan for "Vietnamizing" the war. College campus radicals who oppose his policies in Vietnam are "bums," says Nixon May 1, but his own secretary of defense Melvin R. Baird and his secretary of state William Rogers have opposed expanding the war to Cambodia.
Kent State University students in Ohio rally at noon May 4 in one of countless campus protests against the widening of the war in Southeast Asia. National Guardsmen order the rock-throwing demonstrators to disperse, the students ignore them, some of the guardsmen panic, they suddenly wheel and open fire on the 1,000 students, and four fall dead in a 13-second, 67-shot volley: the dead include Jeff Miller, Sandra Lee (née Gittel) Scheuer, 20, William Schroeder, and Allison Krause, 19; nine others are wounded, three of them seriously.
New York construction workers break up an antiwar rally in the Wall Street area May 8, force City Hall officials to raise the American flag to full staff (it had been lowered to half staff in memory of the Kent State dead), and invade Pace College. President Nixon holds his first press conference in 3 months and announces that U.S. troops will be out of Cambodia by mid-June.
An antiwar rally May 9 brings 75,000 to 100,000 peaceful demonstrators to Washington, D.C. President Nixon is unable to sleep and drives to the Lincoln Memorial before dawn to talk for an hour with students protesting the war.
University of Wisconsin students protesting the university's participation in government war research blow up a campus laboratory August 24, killing a research graduate student, injuring four others, and destroying a $1.5 million computer.
Israeli jets raid Cairo suburbs in January; commandos strike within 37 miles of Cairo January 16, destroying power and telephone pylons on the main road between Cairo and Port Suez. Representatives of five Arab nations meet at Cairo and vow to continue fighting to recover territory occupied by Israel since the 1967 war. They blame the United States for Israel's refusal to give up the territory on which Israelis are building settlements, allude to profitable U.S. oil investments, and warn that the Arabs will not permit their "resources and wealth" to be exploited to help Israel.
Egypt's president Gamal Abdel Nasser accepts a U.S. peace formula for the Middle East July 24, Jordan announces her acceptance 2 days later, Syria makes a show of rejecting the formula, Israel announces her acceptance July 31 as Palestinians meet 25,000 strong at Amman and cheer a guerrilla leader's call for rejection of the formula and "liberation" of all Palestine.
Arab and Israeli forces clash on three fronts August 2 as diplomats in world capitals work to end hostilities, a cease-fire goes into effect August 7, guerrilla spokesmen at Amman say they will work to undermine the 90-day truce, and while the cease-fire remains intact along the Suez Canal Israeli jets attack guerrilla bases in Lebanon August 9, Israeli forces fight infiltrators from Syria in the Golan Heights, intelligence reports installation of new Soviet antiaircraft missiles on the Egyptian side of the Suez Canal 4 hours after the cease-fire went into effect, Israeli planes bomb and strafe Jordanian army posts that are said to make guerrilla raids possible, and concerted efforts begin at the UN in New York to settle the disputes in the Middle East.
Two armed men hijack a Pan Am Boeing 747 September 6 en route from Amsterdam to New York, reroute the plane to Beirut, take dynamite aboard, fly on to Cairo, evacuate all passengers via emergency exits, and blow up the aircraft 2 minutes later. An armed man and woman commandeer an Israeli El Al flight September 6 en route from Tel Aviv to London, but security guards on the plane mortally wound the man and passengers subdue the woman. Jailed at London, she turns out to be Leila Khaled, 24, a former student at Beirut's American University who took part in a hijacking last year. Palestinian militants hijack a TWA 707 and a Swissair DC-8 September 6 and force them to land outside Amman, Jordan. Militants hijack a BOAC VC-10 a few days later and force it to land on the same strip; they blow up all three planes after removing the passengers and hold the passengers hostage for several weeks until British, West German, Swiss, and Israeli authorities release Leila Khaled and other Arabs.
Jordan has civil war from September 15 to 26. King Hussein escapes an assassination attempt, his Bedouin troops eject Palestine Liberation Organization forces with considerable bloodshed, and the PLO moves to Lebanon (see 1975). Syrians invade in Soviet-built tanks but withdraw after threats of U.S. and Israeli intervention.
Egypt's president Gamal Abdel Nasser dies of a heart attack at Cairo September 28 at age 52. His friend (Mohamed) Anwar el-Sadat, 51, is elected president October 14 by an overwhelming vote; he served time in prison for antigovernment activities in the 1940s and participated in the overthrow of King Farouk in 1952.
A Syrian military coup November 13 replaces the civilian government with a rightist regime. Defense Minister Lieut. Gen. Hafez al-Assad, 40, takes over as premier November 19, beginning a repressive dictatorship that will continue until his death in June 2000.
Czechoslovakia's prime minister Oldrich Cernik resigns under pressure in January and by year's end has been forced out of the Communist Party for his liberal views (see 1969).
The British general elections January 18 give the Conservative Party a 30-seat majority in the House of Commons. Prime Minister Harold Wilson is turned out after more than 5 years of Labour Party government, and a new cabinet takes office with Conservative Edward (Richard George) Heath, 53, as prime minister.
Former British air chief marshal Hugh (Caswall Tremenheere) Dowding, 1st Baron Dowding, dies in Kent February 15 at age 83; former British field marshal William J. Slim, 1st Viscount Slim, at London December 14 at age 79. He served as governor general of Australia from 1953 to 1960.
Gen. Leslie Groves (ret.) of Manhattan Project fame dies of heart disease at Washington, D.C., July 13 at age 73; Brig. Gen. Benjamin O. Davis (ret.) of leukemia at North Chicago November 26 at age 93 (he served in the Spanish-American War and in 1940 became the first black in the U.S. Armed Forces to make general).
Former Portuguese dictator Antonio Salazar dies of a pulmonary embolism at Lisbon July 27 at age 81, not knowing he has been supplanted as premier by Marcelo Caetano.
Former French premier Edouard Daladier dies at Paris October 10 at age 86; Charles de Gaulle at Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises November 9 at age 79, 18 months after resigning as president.
Former German chancellor Heinrich Bruening dies at Norwich, Conn., March 30 at age 84; former Soviet field marshal Semyon K. Timoshenko of cancer at Moscow March 31 at age 74; former Russian premier Alexander F. Kerensky of heart disease at New York June 11 at age 89; former Yugoslav king Peter II at Los Angeles November 4 at age 49; former Soviet field marshal Andrei I. Yuramenko at Moscow November 19 at age 78.
Poland has riots beginning December 14 at Gdansk (formerly Danzig) 1 week after signing a treaty with the German Federal Republic, whose legislature gives provisional recognition to the Oder-Neisse line as Poland's western frontier. Warsaw has given assent to the repatriation of Germans living east of the Oder-Neisse line. The riots arise from shortages and higher prices of food and other commodities, they spread to other cities, police and troops put them down with heavy loss of life, Wladyslaw Gomulka and other members of the Polish politburo resign under pressure December 20, and Edward Gierek, 57, succeeds to Gomulka's offices, having served as party chief in Upper Silesia (see agriculture, 1976).
Nigeria's civil war ends January 12 with the capitulation of Biafran chief of staff Brig. Gen. Philip Effiong after more than 30 months of conflict in which at least a million people have died and possibly twice that many (see 1967). Effiong has assumed leadership following the flight of Gen. Odumegwu Ojukwu to the Ivory Coast; he and successors will grow rich from oil revenues, denying economic development to the people of the Niger Delta, partly out of greed, partly lest the Ibo take it into their heads to seek independence once again.
Libyan military leader Col. Muammar al-Qadaffi assumes power as premier January 16—4½ months after seizing control of the country (see 1969). French defense minister Michel Debre announces 5 days later that France will provide Libya with 100 military aircraft—twice the number originally announced—following Libya's promise to end her support of rebels in neighboring Chad. Qadaffi removes British and U.S. military bases from the country and expels most members of the native Italian and Jewish communities; imitating China's Mao Zedong, he issues a little Green Book describing his "new gospel," a mixture of Muslim fundamentalism, socialism, and Third Worldism calling for "heroic politics" (see energy, 1973).
Sudan's prime minister Gaafar Mohammed el-Nimeiri puts down a right-wing revolt in March that has been led by Sadik al-Mahdi (see 1969; 1971).
Tonga gains independence June 4 after 70 years as a British protectorate.
Former Indonesian president Achmad Sukarno dies at Jakarta June 21 at age 69, leaving President Suharto in firm control of the country (see 1967; 1971).
The Maharajah of Jaipur Sawaiman Sing dies during a polo match in England June 24 at age 58.
Malaysian voters oust the government of Prime Minister Tunku (Prince) Abdul Rahman Putra Alhaj in September as Chinese parties score election gains; Abdul Razak succeeds as prime minister, replacing the man who has headed the country since 1957.
Fiji gains independence October 10 after 96 years of British colonial rule.
Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima delivers the final manuscript of The Sea of Fertility and with four followers seizes control of the commanding general's office at military headquarters in downtown Tokyo November 25; he harangues 1,000 troops on the "disgrace" of having lost the Pacific war in 1945, urges them to support him and his private army in a coup d'état, arouses no interest, and dies by his own hand in a ceremonial act of seppuku at age 45.
Colombia's National Front coalition nominates former ambassador to the United States Misael Pastrano Borrero, 46, who wins the presidency amidst charges of election fraud and will try without success to end the turmoil and violence that have left some 200,000 people dead.
Former Mexican president Lazaro Cárdenas dies at Mexico City October 19 at age 75.
Chile's president Salvador Allende Gossens takes office November 3, restates his campaign promise to nationalize much of Chile's economy, and extends recognition to Cuba's Castro government. Now 62, Allende is the first Marxist to be elected head of a government in the Western Hemisphere by a democratic majority; CIA agents have tried to block the election, former CIA director John A. McCone has approached Richard Helms to propose a joint effort by the agency and International Telephone & Telegraph to thwart Allende's election (McCone is an ITT board member), Helms has said it would be better if ITT acted alone, and the company will contribute funds to Allende's political opponents (see 1973).
The U.S. Senate votes 51 to 45 April 8 to reject President Nixon's appointment of Florida jurist G. Harold Carswell to the Supreme Court (13 Republicans join 38 Democrats in rejecting Carswell, who has been called "mediocre" and accused of having racial bias; see 1969). Carswell's opponents include Margaret Chase Smith (R. Me.) and Marlo W. Cook (R. Ky). President Nixon appoints Minnesota judge Harry A. (Andrews) Blackmun, 61, of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, who is considered to have "conservative" credentials and wins confirmation without dissent.
Congressional Republicans mount an effort to oust Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, now 71, on the basis of allegations (they will later prove unfounded) of financial irregularities. Douglas has drawn fire for his opinions in civil-rights cases and cases involving business monopolies. Rep. Gerald R. Ford, 56, (R. Mich.) takes the well of the House April 15 to speak out in favor of impeachment, saying, "An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House considers it to be at a given moment in history."
The nonpartisan citizens' lobbying group Common Cause is founded by former secretary of health, education and welfare John W. Gardner, now 57, who has said, "Everybody's organized but the people." Within a year it will have more than 100,000 contributors funding its efforts to end U.S. involvement in Vietnam, reform the campaign-finance system, and bring greater transparency to government on state and federal levels; membership will grow to 320,000 by 1974 despite criticisms that its members are almost all affluent and well educated. Gardner will head Common Cause until 1977; membership will fall to 200,000 by the end of the century despite notable victories in promoting greater accountability and higher ethical standards on the part of lawmakers.
Former House Un-American Affairs Committee chairman J. Parnell Thomas dies at St. Petersburg, Fla., November 19 at age 75. Having fought against New Deal programs, he was convicted in 1948 of padding congressional payrolls, sentenced to prison, but pardoned by President Truman in 1952.
Former Alabama governor George Wallace urges Southern governors to defy federal integration orders. Addressing a noisy Birmingham rally February 8, Wallace says he will run for the presidency again in 1972 "if Nixon doesn't do something about the mess our schools are in."
Northern liberals should drop their "monumental hypocrisy" and concede that de facto segregation exists in the North, says Sen. Abraham A. Ribicoff, 59 (D. Conn.) February 9.
Five white men beat one-armed Midnight, Miss., sharecropper Rainey Pool, 54, to death at Louise, Miss., April 12. His body is found in a river, the five whites are arrested, but charges ranging from assault to murder are dismissed.
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights calls a recent presidential policy statement on school integration inadequate, overcautious, and possibly the signal for a major retreat. Congress approves education appropriation bills containing amendments designed to halt busing of children to achieve racial balance (see 1971).
Presidential adviser Daniel Patrick Moynihan, now 43, scolds liberals for their hysteria with regard to civil rights issues and suggests that some "benign neglect" may be in order until tempers cool (see Nonfiction, 1963). A group of civil-rights leaders calls Moynihan's report "a calculated, aggressive, and systematic" effort by the administration to "wipe out" gains made by the civil-rights movement.
Yale president Kingman Brewster Jr., 50, expresses doubt April 24 that black revolutionaries can get "a fair trial anywhere in the United States." A special coroner's jury at Chicago has ruled January 21 that last year's killing of Fred Hampton and another Black Panther in a predawn police raid was "justifiable."
Feminists demonstrate to "liberate" the men's bar at New York's Biltmore Hotel. The 116-year-old New York bar McSorley's admits its first woman patron (neighborhood leather-shop owner Barbara Schaum, 41) August 10 after Mayor John Lindsay signs a bill prohibiting sexual discrimination in public places (with a few exceptions such as Turkish baths).
A nationwide U.S. Women's Strike for Equality celebrates the 50th anniversary of suffrage; more than 10,000 people march down New York's Fifth Avenue August 26 carrying placards with demands for "emancipation," and many hear speeches by Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Rep. Bella Abzug (née Savitzky), 50, (the first Jewish woman elected to Congress), and Kate Millett, who call for more daycare centers, non-sexist advertising, and a revision of some Social Security laws. "Man is not the enemy," says Friedan; "man is a fellow victim."
The U.S. Department of Justice files a sex discrimination suit against Libbey-Owens and the United Glass and Ceramic Workers of North America (Ohio).
Twelve U.S. flight attendants file a multimillion-dollar sex discrimination suit against TWA.
Philadelphia activist Margaret "Maggie" Kuhn, 65, founds the Gray Panthers and begins fighting for the rights of retired Americans. Forced to retire from her job with the Presbyterian Church mission because of a mandatory retirement age policy, Kuhn feels "wounded and angry at having been sent out to pasture to get lost."
The Italian Senate votes October 9 to legalize divorce for the first time.
An explosion aboard the U.S. spacecraft Apollo 13 April 13 en route to the moon forces astronauts Jim Lovell, 42, Jack Swigert, 38, and Fred Haise, 36, to move into the craft's tiny lunar module, designed to keep two men alive for just 2 days. The men are 4 days from home when an oxygen tank in the service module ruptures, but engineers at NASA control in Houston get them back safely for a splashdown in the South Pacific.
The People's Republic of China launches its first satellite April 24, sending the 381-pound DFH-1 into space on a three-stage rocket; it broadcasts the song "Dong Fang Hong" ("The East Is Red") but has been launched mostly for propaganda reasons (see 1971).
The U.S. Gross National Product (GNP) reaches $977 billion, up from $503 billion in 1960. Government spending accounts for 32 percent, up from 27 percent in 1960.
United Auto Workers leader Walter P. Reuther is killed at age 62 May 9 in the crash of a chartered plane en route from Detroit to Black Lake, Mich. The UAW strikes General Motors plants November 2, beginning a 67-day walkout.
A U.S. Office of Management and Budget is created by Congress in May. President Nixon has proposed the idea and appoints Secretary of Labor Charles Schultz first OMB director.
Gold prices in the world market at London fall below the official U.S. price of $35 per ounce.
Financier-philanthropist Richard K. Mellon dies of heart ailments at Pittsburgh June 3 at age 70; financier Hjalmar Schacht at Munich June 4 at age 83.
Japan's record 57-month "Izangi boom" ends in July. Named for the god who supposedly created the islands, it has been fueled in part by U.S. needs for the war in Vietnam but also by a buildup of the nation's industrial base as companies poured money into advanced factories for electronics, chemicals, and steel, productivity skyrocketed, and workers poured into cities where lifetime employment was virtually guaranteed. The economy continues to thrive (see 1981).
Atlanta's Citizens & Southern Bank installs a two-way electronic automatic teller machine (see 1969; 1973)
The Department of Labor reports June 5 that 5 percent of the U.S. workforce is unemployed, the highest rate since 1965. Hardest hit by the industrial slowdown are skilled workers in aircraft, aerospace, weapons, and automaking.
President Nixon goes on television June 17 to ask that business and labor end inflation by voluntarily resisting wage and profit increases. The president says he will not impose direct wage and price controls, but he creates a new national commission and asks it to suggest ways for increasing output per worker.
Some 25.5 million Americans live below the poverty line—$$3,908 per year for a family of four—and another 10.2 million live only slightly above the line. Nearly half the 35.7 million total are in the South.
The Women's Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor reports that median earnings for women ($5,323 per year) are 59.4 percent of the median for men ($8,966), down from 63.9 percent in 1955. Onetime labor organizer Bessie Abramowitz (Mrs. Sidney Hillman) dies at New York December 23 at age 81.
A U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) signed by President Nixon December 29 compromises differences between labor and management and establishes an office that will work to minimize hazards in industry. Critics will show evidence 30 years hence that OSHA regulations have reduced workplace fatalities by 2 to 3 percent, often at enormous expense (see 1974), but serious injuries will be reduced more substantially.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average bottoms out at 631 and jumps 32.04 points May 27 to close at 663.20—the largest 1-day advance thus far recorded. Daily volume on the New York Stock Exchange averages 11.6 million shares, up from 2.6 million in 1955, 3 million in 1960. Brokerage houses struggle to automate their back rooms to keep up with mounting paperwork. The Dow closes December 31 at 838.92, up from 800.36 at the end of 1969.
Egypt's Aswan High Dam opens on the Nile 6 months after the death of President Nasser (see 1960). Rising 350 feet high, the great rock-filled dam has cost about $1.2 billion (plus the lives of about 1,000 workers); its 12 giant hydroelectric turbines supply half of the nation's energy needs, permitting millions of poor farmers to enjoy electricity for the first time, revitalizing the nation, and even enabling Egypt to export energy to her Arab neighbors.
Libya's Col. Muammar al-Qadaffi orders cutbacks in his country's oil production to conserve petroleum and push up prices.
A rupture in Syria's Tapline May 3 stops the flow of Saudi Arabian crude oil that has been coming through at the rate of 500,000 barrels per day. A bulldozer has cut the pipeline by accident, says Damascus, but the Syrians refuse to allow Tapline technicians into the country to repair the break.
OPEC nation delegates meeting at Caracas, Venezuela, in December agree to raise the posted prices of Persian Gulf oil and increase taxes on the oil.
Piper Aircraft founder William T. Piper dies of a kidney ailment at Lock Haven, Pa., January 15 at age 89.
Boeing 747 jumbo jets go into transatlantic service for Pan Am beginning January 21 (see 1966).
A Dominican DC-9 crashes into the sea February 15 on takeoff from Santo Domingo, killing 102; a British charter jet crashes near Barcelona July 3, killing 112; an Air Canada DC-8 crashes near Toronto July 5, killing 108; a Peruvian turbojet crashes after takeoff from Cuzco August 9, killing 101, including some on the ground; a chartered plane carrying 43 Marshall University football players and coaches crashes at Huntington, W. Va., November 14, killing 75.
The Concorde supersonic jet exceeds twice the speed of sound for the first time November 4.
The Highway Safety Act signed into law by President Nixon March 22 establishes the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) under the Department of Transportation to succeed the National Highway Safety Bureau created under the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966 and the Highway Safety Act of 1966. Created in response to the uproar caused by Ralph Nader's 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed, the new NHSTA is to set and enforce safety performance standards with a view to reducing deaths, injuries, and economic losses resulting from crashes, partly through grants to state and local governments for conducting effective local highway-safety programs.
U.S. Volkswagen sales peak at 582,573 (see 1968). The "Bug" will continue to be sold in the United States until 1979.
A survey reports that rail travel is 2½ times as safe as air travel, 1½ times as safe as bus travel, 23 times as safe as automobile travel.
Burlington Northern, Inc., is created March 2 by a merger of the Great Northern, Northern Pacific, and Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railroads with the Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroad. With 25,000 miles of track, BN is the longest railway system in the free world; its six-mile-long Flathead Tunnel opens in November.
The Indian-Pacific Express between Sydney and Perth begins service in March on the Trans-Australian Railway (see 1969). The twice-a-week transcontinental train runs 2,460 miles through forest, desert, mountains, and wheat lands; it is so popular that space must be booked well in advance.
The Rail Passenger Service Act signed into law by President Nixon October 30 creates the National Rail Passenger Corp. (Amtrak) and authorizes it to operate passenger trains under contract with the nation's railroads, which have been losing money on service other than freight; the new law's purpose is to improve rail travel.
New York City's transit fare goes to 30¢ January 4; it has been 20¢ since 1966.
Mexico City's Metro system opens its Chapultepec-Juanacatlán line April 11 with 537 bright orange cars connecting 22 stations on 18 kilometers of track (see 1969). Built with the help of a substantial French loan, the $400 million subway employs rubber-tired, French-built trains, the standard fare is 8¢, but while the handsome new system eases congestion, some 40 percent of the city's commuters continue to use private vehicles, going home at noon for lunch and a siesta, returning to work in midafternoon, and creating enormous traffic (and pollution) problems. The first system to use symbols and colors for identifying stations, it will grow by 1996 to have nearly 202 kilometers of track, with the lowest fares anywhere in the world, and with cars carrying 1.4 billion passengers per year in what will by then be the world's largest city.
Xerox Corp. opens Xerox PARC at Palo Alto, Calif., with the aim of becoming the "architect of the information age." The advanced technologies devised by its researcher and development people will be the basis of the Apple Macintosh operating system (see 1984), Microsoft Windows (see 1995), the laser printer (see 1984), and other computer advances that will provide little benefit to Xerox itself.
U.S. companies begin producing the first DRAMS (Digital Random Access Memory Systems) for computers (see IBM, 1966). IBM introduces Relational Database and SQL (Structured Query Language), a more flexible way to store and retrieve data that will become the industry standard for database access (see RISC, 1980).
A restriction enzyme discovered by New York-born biochemist Hamilton O. Smith, 39, always breaks certain DNA molecules at the same pace; Johns Hopkins biologist Daniel Nathans, now 41, will find next year that the enzyme can break up the DNA of a cancer virus, a finding that will lead to a complete genetic mapping of the virus.
New York-born MIT microbiologist David Baltimore, 32, demonstrates the existence of "reverse transcriptase," a viral enzyme that reverses the normal DNA-to-RNA process.
Ethnologist-adventurer Thor Heyerdahl leaves Safi, Morocco, May 17 aboard the papyrus raft Ra II with another international crew in a second effort to prove his theory that South America was originally settled by people from North Africa (see 1969). Better built than last year's raft, Ra II arrives at Bridgetown, Barbados, July 12 but most scientists continue to believe that the Western Hemishere was populated by Asians who crossed a prehistoric land bridge from Siberia to Alaska (see Heyerdahl, 1977).
Physicist Max Born dies of a heart ailment at Göttingen, West Germany, January 5 at age 87; anthropologist Hortense Powdermaker of a heart attack at her Berkeley, Calif., home June 15 at age 74; mathematician-geophysicist Sydney Chapman of a heart attack and stroke at Golden, Colo., June 16 at age 82 (he has worked at the High Altitude Observatory in Boulder since 1954); Nobel physicist Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman dies at Bangalore November 21 at age 82; archaeologist Alfonso Caso y Andrade at his native Mexico City November 30 at age 74; University of Illinois anthropologist Oscar Lewis after a heart attack at New York December 16 at age 55.
Baltimore-born National Institutes of Health biochemist Martin Rodbell, 45, discovers that the signal transmission (or transduction) by which bodily cells receive their directions requires a tiny intracellular molecule—gunasone triphosphate (GTP). The finding will have major implications for the treatment of cancer, cholera, and many other diseases.
Human Sexual Inadequacy by William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson will lead to a proliferation of sex therapy clinics where couples will be encouraged to put less emphasis on intercourse, more on non-sexual physical contact, as a way of reducing tensions and promoting natural, loving sex (see 1966). Masters and Johnson refute the Freudian notion that there are two kinds of female orgasm and that vaginal orgasm can be achieved only through vaginal penetration by the penis (see 1905): anatomically, they say, all female orgasms are centered in the clitoris, whether they result from direct manual stimulation of the clitoris, from the thrusting of the penis in the vagina, or from stimulation of other erogenous areas, such as the breasts, and the orgasm resulting from masturbation is more intense than that resulting from sexual intercourse. Once a woman experiences orgasm, she is likely to have several orgasms in rapid succession, they have found.
Physician Peyton Rous dies at New York February 16 at age 90; psychologist Frederick S. "Fritz" Perls after surgery at Chicago March 14 at age 76; psychologist Abraham Maslow of a heart attack at Menlo Park, Calif., June 8 at age 62; psychiatrist Eric L. Berne while recovering from a heart attack at Monterrey, Calif., July 15 age 60; pathologist Alice Hamilton at Hadlyme, Conn., September 22 at age 101.
English missionary Gladys Aylward dies of pneumonia at Taipei January 3 at age 67; Russian Orthodox patriarch Aleksei I at his native Moscow April 17 at age 82; Richard Cardinal Cushing at Boston November 2 at age 75 (he was named archbishop of Boston in 1944).
The Lutheran Church in America ordains its first female pastor (Elizabeth Platz) November 22.
U.S. public schools are for the most part "grim," "joyless," and "oppressive," says a study commissioned by the Carnegie Corporation, and they fail to educate children adequately.
Dare to Discipline by Shreveport, La.-born University of Southern California psychologist James (Clayton) Dobson (Jr.), 34, urges parents to ignore the permissive teachings of Dr. Benjamin Spock (see 1946). Dobson will start a right-wing ecumenical radio show in 1977 and build a huge following among the Christian Right.
No U.S. scholar specializing in Vietnamese studies has a tenured professorship, no scholar is devoting most of his time to studying current affairs in North Vietnam, and fewer than 30 Americans are studying the Vietnamese language, a survey reveals.
A House subcommittee holds the first hearings ever on sex discrimination in education.
U.S. colleges close down in antiwar demonstrations, and some will remain closed for the balance of the spring term as students coordinate plans for strikes and demonstrations. Secretary of the Interior Walter J. Hickel sends a letter to President Nixon warning that the administration is contributing to anarchy and revolt by turning its back on American youth and that further attacks on the motives of young people by Vice President Agnew will solidify hostility and make communication impossible (see Agnew, 1969).
Hampshire College opens on an 800-acre campus at Amherst, Mass., October 3 (see 1965). Teacher-poet-playwright-public official Archibald MacLeish, now 78, gives the inaugural address, saying, "The only confident educational pronouncements of this troubled time have issued, not from the colleges or universities, but from Mr. Spiro Agnew. And all Mr. Spiro Agnew has had to tell us is that the whole thing is the doing of wicked boys and girls egged on by 'the disgusting and permissive attitude of the people in command of the campuses.' By which Mr. Agnew means that the troubles would go away if only the trouble-makers were eradicated."
British undergraduates demonstrate against keeping files on students' political activities.
Paris students protest the banning of a Maoist splinter group and riot in the Latin Quarter to protest prison sentences handed down against two Maoist student leaders.
The autonomous, coeducational, state-financed Universités de Lille I, II, et III are founded in the northern city under terms of the 1968 law reforming higher education. Lille I specializes in science and technology; Lille II in law and the health sciences (medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, physical education); Lille III in human sciences, literature, and arts (history, languages, philosophy, psychology); and each university has its own teaching and research units.
More U.S. Ivy League colleges go coeducational (see Yale, 1969), but Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Smith, and Wellesley will remain strictly for women, while Radcliffe will be virtually swallowed up by Harvard). Women receive degrees along with men at Harvard for the first time June 11 and Harvard elects its first woman overseer (Helen Homans Gilbert of Washington, D.C., chairs Radcliffe's board of trustees).
Trustees of Maine's 176-year-old Bowdoin College vote to accept women for the first time and to make the College Board's Scholastic Aptitude Test optional.
Former Vassar president Henry N. MacCracken dies at Pougkeepsie, N.Y., May 7 at age 89; former teacher John T. Scopes of 1925 Scopes trial fame of cancer at Shreveport, La., October 21 at age 70.
Some 152,000 U.S. postal workers strike 671 locations in March, the army is sent in to sort the mail, the Post Office loses $6.3 billion this year on 85 billion pieces of mail, and the Postal Reorganization Act signed into law by President Nixon August 12 converts the Post Office Department into the U.S. Postal Service within the executive branch of government. The president has appointed Alabama-born construction magnate and Chamber of Commerce president Winton M. (Malcolm) Blount, 49, postmaster general and asked him to make the post office more efficient; Blount has urged removing postal service from political patronage, giving it adequate financial authority, empowering it to set postal rates after hearings before an impartial panel, and providing collective bargaining between management and employees (see 1971).
Fiber optics begin to replace copper wires for high-speed data transmission (see Kao, 1964). A team of researchers at Corning Glass Works in Corning, N.Y., begin experimenting with fused silica to improve on an ultra-pure glass invented in the 1930s by Corning chemist (and silicone pioneer) J. Franklin Hyde, now 67, and employed to some extent in radar during World War II and, later, in spacecraft windows. Using a pattern of light waves that can be decoded up to 1,000 miles away, the fiber optic wire ("Optical Waveguide Fiber") patented by St. Louis-born physicist Robert D. (Distler) Maurer, 46, Lansing, Mich.-born researcher Donald B. (Bruce) Keck, 29, and Oshkosh, Wis.-born researcher Peter F. Schultz, 30, can carry 65,000 times more information than copper wire (see 1975; British Telecommunications, 1981).
Cleveland's Harris Corp. introduces the first electronic editing terminal for newspapers.
The 119-year-old New York Times institutes an Op-Ed page beginning September 21 with a page facing the editorial page for columns expressing opinions that may differ from those of the paper's editorial board.
Kinko's has its beginnings in a copy shop opened near Santa Barbara, Calif., by kinky-haired, dyslexic University of California student Paul "Kinko" Orfalea, 22, who cannot spell, has trouble reading, but will build a chain that provides not only copy and printing services but also the use of fax machines and computers equipped with popular software programs and high-speed Internet connections. The son of Lebanese immigrants, Orfalea has begun by selling notebooks on the campus, displaying them on the sidewalk, keeping other school supplies in the back of a former hamburger stand, and offering customers the use of a copier and film-processing machine. His chain will come close to failure in 1996, but a New York buyout firm will rescue it, and as more and more Americans work out of their homes and need a place to reproduce everything from business plans to blueprints, Kinko services will grow in popularity. It will be a nationwide chain of more than 900 24-hour shops by 1998, and by the end of the century the chain will be producing 16 billion paper copies per year.
Essence magazine begins publication at New York; four black men have started the magazine for black women, their first print-run is 50,000, and circulation by 1994 will top 1 million.
Time and Newsweek run cover stories on the women's movement. Newsweek pays a settlement to 46 editorial workers to resolve a sex-discrimination suit. The August issue of The Ladies' Home Journal carries a special supplement in response to a sit-in by 100 women in the magazine's office to protest its portrayal of women.
Former editor and longtime communist sympathizer Anna Louise Strong dies of a heart attack at Beijing (Peking) March 29 at age 84 (she has lived in the Chinese capital since 1958); cartoonist Rube Goldberg dies of cancer at New York December 7 at age 87.
Nonfiction: The Making of a Counter Culture by Chicago-born California State University professor Theodore Roszak, 37; The Greening of America by New York-born Yale professor Charles Reich, 34; My Lai Four: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath by Seymour M. Hersh (see politics, 1969); Nixon Agonistes by Atlanta-born journalist Garry Wills, 35; The Real Majority: An Extraordinary Examination of the American Electorate by Ben J. Wattenberg and elections analyst Richard M. Scammon argues that the Democratic Party must shift its emphasis from economic issues toward social issues if it is to remain viable; American Violence: A Documentary History by Richard Hofstadter; The Politics of History by Howard Zinn; Why ABM? and The Emerging Japanese Superstate: Challenge and Response by Herman Kahn; The Politics of Authenticity: Radical Individualism and the Emergence of Modern Society by New York-born CCNY political scientist Marshall Berman, 29; We Talk, You Listen: New Tribes, New Turf by Vine Deloria Jr.; Interview with History (Intervista con la Storia) by Oriana Fallaci; Inside the Third Reich by architect and former German economic minister Albert Speer, now 65, who was released from Spandau Prison 4 years ago after serving a 20-year term; Xenophon's Socratic Discourse: An Interpretation of the Oeconomicus by Leo Strauss; Up the Organization by former (1962-1965) Avis Rent-a-Car president Robert C. (Chase) Townsend, 50; Hard Times by Studs Terkel; Future Shock by New York-born sociologist Alvin Toffler, 41; A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English by Eric Partridge, now 76; I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (autobiography) by St. Louis-born writer-singer-entertainer-black activist Maya Angelou, 42, who was raped by her mother's boyfriend at age 8, was mute for the next 5 years, gave birth to a son at age 16, but fills her book with humor, optimism, and homespun philosophy; Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War by New York-born Columbia University historian Eric Foner, 27; Sexual Politics by St. Paul, Minn.-born feminist Kate (Katherine Murray) Millett, 35, who says: "Our society, like all other historical societies, is a patriarchy. The fact is evident at once if one recalls that the military, industry, technology, universities, science, political office, and finance—in short, every avenue of power within the society, including the coercive force of the police, is entirely in male hands"; The Female Eunuch by Australian feminist Germaine Greer (née Reginal), 31, who says, among other things, "I'm sick of pretending that some fatuous male's self-important pronouncements are the objects of my undivided attention"; Slam the Door Softly by Clare Boothe Luce, now 67, who writes: "When a man can't explain a woman's actions, the first thing he thinks about is the condition of her uterus"; Ball Four: My Life and Hard Times Throwing the Knuckleball in the Big Leagues by Houston Astros (and former New York Yankees) pitcher James Alan "Jim" Bouton, 31; Wallflower at the Orgy (articles) by New York writer Nora Ephron, 39.
Philosopher Bertrand Russell dies at Penrhyndeudraeth, Merionethshire, February 2 at age 97; author Vera Brittain at London March 29 at age 76; Joseph Wood Krutch at Tucson May 22 at age 76; John Gunther at New York May 29 at age 68; Penguin Books founder Sir Alan Lane of cancer at Northwood, Middlesex, July 7 at age 67; philosopher Harry A. Overstreet at Falls Church, Va., August 17 at age 94; philosopher Rudolf Carnap at Santa Monica, Calif., September 14 at age 79; historian Richard Hofstadter of leukemia at New York October 25 at age 54; sociologist Robert S. Lynd at New York November 1 age 78.
Fiction: Fifth Business by Robertson Davies, now 57, begins the "Deptford Trilogy;" Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow; VitalParts by Thomas Berger; Losing Battles by Eudora Welty; Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion; Deliverance by Atlanta-born poet-novelist James Dickey, 47; Islands in the Stream by the late Ernest Hemingway; The Blood Oranges by John Hawkes; Bech: A Book by John Updike; City Life (stories) by Donald Barthelme; A Soldier of the Revolution by Michigan City, Ind.-born novelist Ward (Swift) Just, 35, who worked as a war correspondent in Southeast Asia for the Washington Post, sustained severe wounds in a 1967 jungle skirmish, and published an account of the war (To What End: Report from Vietnam) 2 years ago; Time and Again by Milwaukee-born science- fiction novelist Jack (Walter Braden) Finney, 59; Love Story by Brooklyn, N.Y.-born Yale classics professor Erich Segal, 33; Travels with My Aunt by Graham Greene; The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles; A Guest of Honor by Nadine Gordimer; Rich Man, Poor Man by Irwin Shaw, whose book is panned by reviewers but gains wide popularity; The Perfectionist by Birmingham, Ala.-born novelist Gail Godwin, 33; Lovesounds by Mamaroneck, N.Y.-born journalist-novelist Gail Sheehy (née Henion), 32; QB VII by Leon Uris; Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Oak Park, Ill.-born former U.S. Navy jet pilot Richard (David) Bach, 33; The Anderson Tapes by Brooklyn, N.Y.-born crime novelist Lawrence Sanders, 51; The Hot Rock by Donald E. Westlake.
Nobel novelist S. Y. Agnon dies at Rehovoh, Israel, February 17 at age 81; mystery novelist Erle Stanley Gardner at Temecula, Calif., March 11 at age 80; Nigel Balchin at London March 17 at age 61; John O'Hara at Princeton, N.J., April 11 at age 65; E. M. Forster at Coventry, England, June 7 at age 91; Francis Parkinson Keyes at New Orleans July 3 at age 84; François Mauriac at Paris September 1 age 84; Erich Maria Remarque at Locarno, Switzerland, September 25 at age 72; John Dos Passos at Baltimore September 28 at age 74.
Poetry: The Double Dream of Spring by John Ashbery; Eye-Beaters, Blood, Victory, Madness, Buckhead and Mercy by James Dickey; Elegiac Feelings by Gregory Corso; Relearning the Alphabet by Denise Levertov; Lucidities by Elizabeth Jennings; To See, To Take by Mona Van Duyn; The Nightmare Factory by Maxine Kumin; Iconographs by May Swenson.
Poet Louise Bogan dies at New York February 4 at age 72; Nellie Sachs at Stockholm May 12 age 78; Giuseppe Ungaretti at Milan June 1 at age 82; N. P. van Wyk Louw at Johannesburg June 18 at age 64.
Juvenile: The Trumpet of the Swan by E. B. White; Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret and Iggie's House by Judy Blume; The Terrible Roar by Memphis-born, Chicago-raised Hyde Park, N.Y. author Daniel (Manus) Pinkwater, 28; Sing Down the Moon by Scott O'Dell; The Summer of the Swan by U.S. writer Betsy Cromer Byars, 42; Some of the Days of Everett Anderson by Lucille Clifton.
Painting: Andy Warhol by Alice Neel; Flamingo Capsule by James Rosenquist; Small heart painting No. 21 by Jim Dine; Courtroom by Philip Guston; Patchwork Quilt (collage) by Romare Bearden; Male and Female Models Leaning on Chair by Philip Pearlstein; The Tennis Game by Fairfield Porter. Mark Rothko commits suicide in a fit of depression at New York February 25 at age 66; Barnett Newman dies of a heart attack at New York July 4 at age 65; Romaine Brooks at Nice December 7 at age 96 (Natalie Clifford Barney, her companion of 40 years, will die in 1972 at age 94).
Sculpture: Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson; Personnage (bronze) by Joan Miró; Untitled (rope piece) by Eva Hesse, who dies of a brain tumor at New York May 29 at age 34.
Completion of Egypt's Aswan High Dam on the Nile River submerges antiquities that have not been relocated to higher ground, but the United Nations Education and Scientific Committee (UNESCO) has rescued 23 major temples including Abu Simbel.
Photography: the image of Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling at Kent State University beside a slain student by Valley Daily News photographer John Filo fuels nationwide and worldwide indignation against suppression of protests against the U.S. war in Vietnam.
Theater: The Sleep of Reason (El sueño a la razón) by Spanish playwright Antonio Buero Vallejo 2/6 at Madrid's Teatro Arena Vitoria; Sleuth by Liverpool-born London playwright Anthony (Joshua) Shaffer, 43 (Peter's twin brother) 2/12 at St. Martin's Theatre, London, with Anthony Quayle, Keith Baxter, 2,308 perfs.; Child's Play by Bronx-born New York playwright Robert Marasco, 32, 2/17 at New York's Royale Theater, with Pat Hingle, Fritz Weaver, Ken Howard, Michael McGuire, 342 perfs.; After Hagerty by Yorkshire-born playwright David Mercer, 41, 2/26 at London's Aldwych Theatre, with Frank Finlay, John White, Billie Dixon, David Wood; The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds by New York-born playwright Paul Zindel, 33, 4/7 at New York's off-Broadway Mercer O'Casey Theater, with Pamela Payton-Wright, Amy Levitt, Des Moines-born actress Sada Thompson, 40, Swoosie Kurtz, 819 perfs.; Home by David Storey 6/17 at London's Royal Court Theatre, with John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson; The Philanthropist by English playwright Christopher Hampton, 24, 8/3 at London's Royal Court Theatre, with Alec McCowen; How the Other Half Loves by English playwright Alan Ayckbourn, 31, 8/5 at London's Lyric Theatre, with Robert Morley, Joan Tetzel, Elizabeth Ashton; The Accidental Death of an Anarchist (Morte accidentale di un anarchico) by Dario Fo 12/10 at Milan's Vio Coletta (La Commune); The Gingerbread Lady by Neil Simon 12/13 at New York's Plymouth Theater, with Maureen Stapleton, 193 perfs.
Playwright Arthur Adamov commits suicide at Paris March 16 at age 61; Fernand Crommelynck dies at Saint-Germaine-en-Laye March 17 at age 84; humorist Herb Shriner in an automobile accident near Delray Beach, Fla., April 23 at age 51; actress Anita Louise of a stroke at Los Angeles April 25 at age 53; former stripteaser Gypsy Rose Lee of lung cancer at Los Angeles April 26 at age 56; Billie Burke at Los Angeles May 14 at age 84; Menasha Skulnik at New York June 4 at age 80; Frank Silvera is accidentally electrocuted at Pasadena, Calif., June 11 at age 55; actress Lenore Ulric dies at Orangeburg, N.Y., December 30 at age 78.
Television: All My Children 1/5 (daytime) on ABC with Scarsdale, N.Y.-born five-foot-two actress Susan Lucci, 20, as Erica Kane in a soap opera created by Agnes Nixon; Horton Hears a Who 3/19 on CBS with animation based on Dr. Seuss drawings; McCloud 9/16 on NBC with Dennis Weaver as a rural sheriff (to 8/28/1977); The Mary Tyler Moore Show 9/19 on NBC with Moore, now 32, as a Minneapolis newspaper reporter, Kansas City-born actor Edward Asner, 40, as her editor ("You've got spunk. I hate spunk."), Ted Knight, 46, Valery Harper (as Mary's friend Rhoda Morganstern), Gavin McLeod, Cloris Leachman, Beverly Hills, Calif.-born actress Candice Bergen, 24 (to 9/3/1977); The Odd Couple 9/24 on ABC with Tony Randall as fussy photographer Felix Unger, Jack Klugman as sportswriter slob Oscar Madison (to 7/1975) (Unger will remarry his ex-wife, Gloria, in the 113th and final episode); The Partridge Family 9/25 on ABC with David Cassidy, Shirley Jones (to 5/29/1974).
Former TV quiz-show host Hal March dies of pneumonia at Los Angeles January 19 at age 49; former radio personality John J. Anthony of a heart attack at San Francisco July 16 at age 68.
Films: Bob Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces with Jack Nicholson, Illinois-born actress Karen Black (Karen Blanche Ziegler), 28, Susan Anspach, Billy Green Bush; Bernardo Bertolucci's The Garden of the Finzi-Continis with French actress Dominique Sanda (née Varaine), 19; Arthur Penn's Little Big Man with Dustin Hoffman, Faye Dunaway; Robert Altman's M*A*S*H with Elliott Gould, Donald Sutherland, Long Beach, Calif.-born actress Sally Kellerman, 33 (as "Hot Lips" Hoolihan); Luis Buñuel's The Milky Way with Paul Frankens, Laret Terzieff; Franklin Schaffner's Patton with George C. Scott, Karl Malden; Marcel Ophuls's documentary The Sorrow and the Pity; Laurence Olivier's Three Sisters with Olivier, John Sichel, Joan Plowright, 40, Alan Bates. Also: François Truffaut's Bed and Board with Jean-Pierre Leaud, Claude Jade; William Friedkin's The Boys in the Band with Kenneth Nelson, Peter White; Aram Avakian's End of the Road with Savannah-born actor Stacy Keach, 29, James Earl Jones; Gilbert Cates's I Never Sang for My Father with Melvyn Douglas, Gene Hackman; Eric van Zuylen's In for Treatment with Marja Kok; Hal Ashby's The Landlord with Beau Bridges, 28, Pearl Bailey; Arthur Hiller's Love Story with Westchester County, N.Y.-born actress Ali (née Elizabeth Alice) MacGraw, 32, Los Angeles-born actor Ryan O'Neal, 29; Alan Cooke's The Mind of Mrs. Soames with Terence Stamp; Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes with Robert Stephens, Colin Blakely, screenplay by I. A. L. Diamond; Waris Hussein's Quacker Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx with Gene Wilder, Margot Kidder; René Clement's Rider on the Rain with Charles Bronson, Marlene Jobert; Otto Preminger's Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon with Los Angeles-born actress Liza Minnelli, 24 (daughter of the late Judy Garland), Ken Howard, Robert Moore; Joseph L. Mankiewicz's There Was a Crooked Man. . . with Kirk Douglas, Henry Fonda; Claude Chabrol's This Man Must Die with Jean Yanne, Michael Duchaussoy, Caroline Cellier; Luis Buñuel's Tristana with Cathérine Deneuve, Fernando Rey; Joseph Strick's Tropic of Cancer with Rip Torn, James Callahan, Detroit-born actress Ellen Burstyn (Edna Rae Gillooly), 37; Ken Russell's Women in Love with Alan Bates, Oliver Reed, Glenda Jackson, 34, Eleanor Bron.
Character actor Conrad Nagel dies of a heart attack at his New York home February 24 at age 73; director William Beaudine of uremic poisoning at Canoga Park, Calif., March 18 at age 78; actor Ed Begley of a heart attack at Los Angeles April 29 at age 69; Inger Stevens of acute barbiturate intoxication at Hollywood April 30 at age 35; Sonny Tufts of pneumonia at Santa Monica June 4 at age 59; Preston Foster of cancer at La Jolla July 14 at age 69; Frances Farmer of esophageal cancer at Indianapolis August 1 at age 56; Chester Morris of a barbiturate overdose at New Hope, Pa., September 11 at age 69; Edward Everett Horton of cancer at his Encino, Calif., home September 29 at age 83; makeup artist Perc Westmore at Hollywood September 30 age 65; Charles Ruggles of cancer at Santa Monica December 23 at age 84.
Film musicals: Michael Wadleigh's Woodstock with Joan Baez, Richie Havens, Crosby, Stills and Nash, The Jefferson Airplane, Joe Cocker, Sly and the Family Stone, the Who, and others (a documentary account of last year's bash at Bethel, N.Y.); David Maysles, Albert Maysles, and Charlotte Swerin's Gimme Shelter with The Rolling Stones (a documentary account of last year's Altamont rock concert); Gene Kelly's Hello, Dolly with Barbra Streisand.
Hollywood film composer-conductor Alfred Newman dies at Hollywood February 17 at age 68.
Broadway and off-Broadway musicals: The Last Sweet Days of Isaac 1/26 at the Eastside Playhouse with Austin Pendleton, music by Nancy Ford, lyrics by Gretchen Cryer, 465 perfs.; Purlie 3/15 at the Broadway Theater with Melba Moore, music by Gary Geld, lyrics by Peter Udell, songs that include "I Got Love," 688 perfs.; Applause 3/30 at the Palace with Lauren Bacall, music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Lee Adams, book by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, 896 perfs.; Company 4/26 at the Alvin Theater with Elaine Stritch, choreography by Michael Bennett, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, 706 perfs.; The Me Nobody Knows 5/18 at the Orpheum Theater, with music by Gary William Friedman, lyrics by Will Holt, 587 perfs.; The Rothschilds 10/19 at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater, with music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, 507 perfs.; Two by Two 11/10 at the Imperial Theater, with Danny Kaye, music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Martin Charnin, 352 perfs.
Opera: Somerville, N.J.-born mezzo soprano Frederica Von Stade, 24, makes her Metropolitan Opera debut 1/11 as the Third Boy in the 1791 Mozart opera Die Zauberflöte; Lexington, Ky.-born soprano Judith (Eyer) Blegen, 28, makes her Metropolitan Opera debut 1/19 singing the role of Papagena in Die Zauberflöte; the opera Of Mice and Men based on John Steinbeck's 1937 novel has its premiere 1/22 at Seattle with music by South Carolina-born composer Carlisle Floyd, 43; Marilyn Horne makes her Metropolitan Opera debut 3/3 in the role of Adalgisa in the 1871 Verdi opera Aïda (Joan Sutherland sings the title role); Beverly Sills makes her London debut at Covent Garden singing the title role in the 1835 Donizetti opera Lucia di Lammermoor; Adriana Maliponte appears at La Scala in the title role of the 1884 Massenet opera Manon.
Ballet: Kirov Ballet Company star Natalia Makarova, 29, defects to the West while on tour in London and will join the American Ballet Theater in New York, making frequent guest appearances with the Royal Ballet, Covent Garden, and other companies.
First performances: The Yale-Princeton Football Game orchestral suite by the late Charles Ives (completed by Gunther Schuller) 11/29 at New York's Carnegie Hall.
Curtis Institute of Music founder Mary Louisa Curtis Bok Zimbalist dies at Philadelphia January 4 at age 93; conductor Sir John Barbirolli at London June 29 at age 70; conductor George Szell at Cleveland July 30 at age 73 while recovering from a heart attack.
Popular songs: "Bridge Over Troubled Water" by Simon and Garfunkel (who will break up their partnership next year); "Your Song" by English singer-pianist-songwriter Elton John (Reginald Kenneth Dwight), 23; "I Want You Back," "ABC," "The Love You Save," and "I'll Be There" by the Gary, Ind.-born Detroit R&B group Jackson 5 (steelworker's son Michael [Joseph] Jackson, 11, and his brothers Jackie, 18; Tito, 16; Jermaine, 15; and Marlon, 12, who won a major talent contest 4 years ago with their rendition of the Temptations' song "My Girl"; All Things Must Pass (album) by Beatles guitarist-songwriter George Harrison includes the singles "What Is Life," "My Sweet Lord," and "Beware of Darkness"; Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band and John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (albums); Let It Be (album) by John Lennon and Paul McCartney of the Beatles; McCartney (album) by Paul McCartney includes "Maybe I'm Amazed" and "The Lovely Linda" (for his New York-born wife, Linda [née Eastman], now 28, whom he met in 1967 when she was photographing the Beatles and whom he married last year); "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" by Bobbie Gentry; Déjà Vu (album) by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (Neil Young, now 24, has joined the group, which also records "Ohio"); Sweet Baby James (album) by Boston-born soft-rock singer-songwriter James Taylor, 22; Cosmos Factory (album) by John Fogerty of the Creedence Clearwater Revival; Abraxas (album) by Santana; Black Sabbath and Paranoid (albums) by Birmingham (England) rock group Black Sabbath (John "Ozzy" Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward); "Coal Miner's Daughter" by Loretta Lynn; Silk Purse (album) by Linda Ronstadt includes "Long Long Time"; New Haven, Conn.-born singer (and onetime drummer) Karen Carpenter, 20, records the Burt Bacharach-Hal David number "(They Long to Be) Close to You" with her brother Richard on keyboards and has her first big hit; First Take (album) by Black Mountain, N.C.-born soul singer Roberta Flack, 31; What About Me (album) and "Snowbird" by Nova Scotia-born country singer-ukelele player Anne Murray, 25; Chicago (album) by the Chicago rock band (reed player Walter Parazider, 25; trumpet player Lee Loughnane, 24; trombonist James Pankow, 23; guitarist Terry Kath, 24; drummer Danny Seraphine, 22) which has changed its name from Chicago Transit Authority after a protest from the local transit authority.
Composer-songwriter Harry M. Woods dies January 13 at age 73 after being struck by a car at Phoenix, Ariz.; songwriter Albert Lamorisse dies in an air crash near Teheran June 2 at age 48; lyricist Charles Tobias of liver disease at Manhasset, N.Y., July 7 at age 71; Jimi Hendrix dazzles audiences at a rock festival on the Isle of Wight in August but dies of drugs or alcohol in his London apartment in mid-September at age 27; Janis Joplin dies of a drug overdose at Hollywood, Calif., October 3 at age 27; bandleader Phil Spitalny at Miami October 11 at age 80; composer-vocalist Agustín Lara at his native Mexico City November 6 at age 73; songwriter Ray Henderson after a heart attack at Greenwich, Conn., December 31 at age 74.
Kansas City beats Minnesota 23 to 7 at New Orleans January 11 in Super Bowl IV.
Chicago Bears halfback Brian Piccolo dies of cancer at New York June 16 at age 26; former Green Bay Packers coach Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi of intestinal cancer at Washington, D.C., September 4 at age 57 after leading the Washington Redskins to their first winning season in 14 years ("Winning isn't everything," he has said, "it's the only thing.").
Joe Frazier regains the world heavyweight boxing title February 16 by knocking out Jimmy Ellis in the fifth round of a championship bout at New York.
The New York Knickerbockers win the first National Basketball Association (NBA) title in their 24-year history May 8. Coached by Red Holzman and led by their all-star center Willis Reed (who has been hobbled by a leg injury but is still named the outstanding player of the playoffs), the Knicks get help from Walt Frazier, 27, to beat the Los Angeles Lakers 113 to 99 at the new Madison Square Garden in the seventh and deciding game (see Reed, 1964). Now 27, Reed earns the Most Valuable Player award for the regular season, the championships, and the All-Star game, a distinction never before given to any player in the same season.
Hockey goalie Terry Sawchuk of the New York Rangers dies at New York May 31 at age 40 from injuries suffered while horsing around with a teammate. His career record of 103 shutouts will stand into the 21st century.
Racehorse trainer Hirsch Jacobs dies of a cerebral hemorrhage at Miami Beach February 13 at age 65; Wheatley Stables owner Mrs. Henry Carnegie Phipps at Roslyn, N.Y., October 19 at age 87.
John Newcombe wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Mrs. Court in women's singles; Ken Rosewall wins in men's singles at Forest Hills, Mrs. Court in women's singles.
The first Virginia Slims tennis tournament opens September 23 at Houston (see tobacco, 1968). Sponsored by cigarette maker Philip Morris, it is the first tournament for women professionals held separately from male players. Billie Jean King is among the organizers.
The first New York Marathon September 23 attracts 126 starters, who run around Central Park four times. Far Rockaway fireman Gary Muhrcke, 30, wins the event; it will grow to attract more than 25,000 male and female runners who will start on Staten Island and finish in Central Park.
Golfer Tony Jacklin, 26, becomes the first Briton to win the U.S. Open in 50 years. Jack Nicklaus wins his second British Open.
The Australian ocean yacht Gretel II loses her bid for the America's Cup. The U.S. defender Intrepid wins 4 races to the Gretel's 1.
Veteran yachtsman (and contract bridge inventor) Harold S. Vanderbilt dies at Newport, R.I., July 4 at age 85.
Brazil wins the World Cup football (soccer) championship by defeating Italy 4 to 1 at Mexico City.
Baseball's Seattle Pilots become the Milwaukee Brewers and Milwaukee becomes a major league city once again (see 1966).
The Baltimore Orioles win the World Series, defeating the Cincinnati Reds 4 games to 1.
Monday Night Football begins on ABC television September 21 with sportscaster Howard Cosell, now 52, in the broadcast booth. ABC producer Roone Arledge has developed the show, and Cosell will continue his commentaries on the games until 1983, when he will quit, calling professional football "a stagnant bore," but the program will continue into the 21st century.
U.S. women balk at a new midiskirt decreed by fashion arbiters. Unsold garments are returned to manufacturers, women wear their skirts as long or short as they like, and slaves to fashion fade from the scene.
Man-made fabrics raise their share of the U.S. textile market to 56 percent, up from 28 percent in 1960, with polyesters enjoying a 41 percent share of the market and cotton only 40 percent, down from 65 percent in 1960. E. I. du Pont's patent on polyester has run out, other companies have entered the market, and some big chemical companies have helped mills that use polyester-cotton blends with massive consumer advertising to proclaim the virtues of durable-press fabrics.
Couturière Nina Ricci dies at Paris November 28 at age 87, having retired in the early 1950s. The Maison Ricci that she founded in 1932 introduced the fragrance Coeur de Joie in 1945 and L'Air du Temps in 1948, showed its first ready-to-wear collection in 1964, continues under the direction of designer Gérard Pipart, now 37, and will open boutiques as it brings in new designers.
The Ziploc plastic bag introduced by Dow Chemical Co. challenges the plastic Baggie launched by Mobil Corp. in the mid-1960s.
Adult Americans give up cigarettes in growing numbers, but smoking among teenagers increases: 36.3 percent of Americans aged 21 and over smoke cigarettes, down from 42.5 percent in 1964; 42.3 percent of adult males smoke cigarettes, down from 52.5 percent in 1964; 30.5 percent of adult females smoke cigarettes, down from 31.5 percent.
An August shootout in a San Rafael, Calif., courtroom leaves a Superior Court judge and three others dead. Police charge former UCLA teaching assistant Angela (Yvonne) Davis, 26, with having bought the 12-gauge shotgun used by the Soledad Brothers in their escape; she has been dismissed from her job on grounds that she is a communist, is arrested October 16 at New York on charges of flight to avoid prosecution for her alleged role in the courtroom shootout, is extradited to California, and is booked December 22 for murder, kidnapping, and criminal conspiracy (see 1972).
Drug advocate Timothy Leary escapes September 12 from a prison near San Luis Obispo, Calif. Now 50, he has been serving a sentence for possession of marijuana.
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act signed by President Nixon October 15 will be used in the 1980s to prosecute both Mafia kingpins and white-collar criminals, notably Wall Street traders using privileged information.
Police arrest antiwar activist Jane Fonda at Cleveland November 3 and charge her with having smuggled drugs and kicked an officer.
Architect Richard Neutra dies at Wuppertal, West Germany, April 16 at age 78 while on a tour of Europe.
Moscow's 21-story Intourist Hotel opens at 3 Tverskaya Street, half a block from the Kremlin. Built for foreign visitors (who are subject to strict surveillance), the 484-room structure will survive into the early 21st century.
Bangkok's Dusit Thani Hotel opens near Lumpini Park. The city's first new luxury hotel in decades, it has been designed and built by Thai architects and is Bangkok's tallest building thus far.
U.S. conservationists win a battle to prevent construction of a giant international jetport near Florida's Everglades.
President Nixon signs an executive order February 4 calling for elimination of all air and water pollution caused by federal agencies. He authorizes expenditure of $359 million to carry out the order with a 3-year deadline to meet state pollution standards. The Clean Air Act signed by President Nixon in December is the toughest such measure yet, even after compromises with automakers. They are given 6 years to develop engines that are 90 percent emission free, but lobbyists for utility companies and other "smokestack industry" polluters have persuaded lawmakers to "grandfather" (exempt) existing plants from regulation under the new law, whose provisions apply only to newly-built power plants and factories on the premise that old ones will soon become obsolete; rather than invest billions of dollars in new facilities. However, companies will opt for more than 30 years to expand the capacity of old ones.
The Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meterological Society publishes a paper by Dutch chemist Paul Crutzen, 36, demonstrating that chemical compounds of nitrogen oxide accelerate the destruction of the stratospheric ozone that protects the Earth from the Sun's ultraviolet radiation (see 1958). Crutzen has discovered that the nonreactive nitrous oxide (N2O) produced naturally by soil bacteria rises into the stratosphere and is split there by solar energy into the reactive compounds NO and NO2 that remain active for some time, reacting catalytically with ozone (O3) and breaking it down into molecular oxygen (O2) (see Molina and Rowland, 1974).
U.S. Army engineers sink an obsolete Liberty ship carrying 12,540 canisters of nerve gas in 16,000 feet of water off the Bahamas. Legal action has been taken to prevent this, but initial tests show that no gas has escaped from the ship (critics warn that the canisters will eventually rust).
Earth Day April 21 sees the first mass demonstrations against pollution and other desecrations of the planet's ecology. Sen. Gaylord A. Nelson (D. Wis.), 53, has promoted the idea, and it receives wide support. More than 20 million environmentalists turn out to block off streets and employ other means to raise U.S. awareness of threats to the environment of spaceship Earth (in the phrase of the late Adlai Stevenson). In the next few years Congress will pass 28 major environmental statutes (but see "Sagebrush Rebellion," 1976).
An earthquake in China's Yunnan Province January 4 registers 7.5 on the Richter scale and leaves 15,621 dead; a quake at Gediz, Turkey, March 28 registers 7.3 and kills 1,100; the most destructive earthquake in the history of the Western Hemisphere rocks northern Peru May 31 from an epicenter 15 miles west of Chimbote in the Pacific Ocean. Measuring 7.75 on the Richter scale, it jars loose part of the west face of Mt. Huascarán, Peru's highest peak (22,205 feet [6,768 meters]), an estimated 50 million cubic yards of ice and rock tumble down upon the town of Yungay at 200 miles per hour, the town is buried 20 feet deep, nine other towns are destroyed, upwards of 15,000 are killed, and Peru's total death toll reaches 66,000, with 50,000 injured and 186,000 buildings destroyed—30 percent of all the structures in the region.
Los Angeles buildings sway August 12 as a series of sharp rolling earthquakes make California shudder as far south as San Diego, breaking windows, blocking some highways, and increasing anxieties that the "Big One" may not be far off.
Hurricane Celia strikes Corpus Christi, Tex., August 3 with winds of up to 145 miles per hour that damage or destroy 90 percent of downtown Corpus.
Southern California has its worst brush fires in history. Thousands in San Diego County are driven from their homes, Los Angeles suburbs are threatened, and the fires in late September strike Sequoia National Forest north of Bakersfield.
A cyclone devastates East Pakistan November 13. Great waves engulf the Ganges Delta and sweep over islands in the Bay of Bengal; 150,000 are feared dead, and the death toll mounts in the weeks following as poor transportation slows distribution of food to survivors (see 1991; politics, 1971).
The Environmental Protection Agency created by Congress December 2 will be the largest U.S. regulatory agency within 5 years, with 9,000 employees and a budget of $2 million per day. Sen. Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson (D. Wash.) has been among the supporters of the EPA.
Fishermen net 69.3 million metric tons of fish from the world's oceans, more than three times the catch before World War II. A world catch of 180 million tons is possible, some U.S. Government scientists suggest, but others express fears that fishermen are exhausting the sea's bounty.
Completion of Egypt's Aswan High Dam ends the annual flooding of the Nile River that for millennia has deposited silt on fields on the Nile Delta, whose farmers will hereafter be required to use chemical fertilizers if they are to maintain their accustomed rates of grain and cotton production.
Norman Borlaug receives the Nobel Peace Prize for his development of high-yield strains of wheat and rice but says the "green revolution" has only delayed the world food crisis for another 30 years. Now 56, Borlaug heads the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). Agricultural economist Wolf Ladejinsky, now 71, warns that the introduction of high-yield grains requiring large inputs of chemicals and technology will incite landlords to evict tenants from the land and replace them with machines.
The U.S. corn harvest falls off as a result of a new strain of the fungus Helminthosporum maydis. Since most U.S. corn is now genetically similar in its lack of resistance to the blight, much of the crop is lost, raising meat and poultry prices and raising alarms that an increasing decline in biodiversity may produce repeated disasters such as the Irish potato famine of the mid-1840s. Critics warn that agribusiness has come to depend on only 20 plant varieties (out of an estimated 80,000) for 90 percent of the world's food, and that 27,000 plant species are becoming extinct each year.
Only one in 22 Americans lives on a farm, down from one in three 50 years ago.
Cuba's president Fidel Castro rolls out a "10 Million Tons of Sugar Harvest" program in an effort to boost the island nation's economy. Forty Soviet ships lie idle in Cuban ports, waiting to load 400,000 tons of sugar that Castro has sold for cash on the world market in order to obtain hard currency.
World cotton production tops 50 million 50-pound bales, up from 21 million in 1920, but U.S. planters account for only 10 million, down from 13 in 1920.
Let Them Eat Promises: The Politics of Hunger in America by San Antonio, Tex.-born journalist Nathan Kadison "Nick" Kotz, 38, reveals White House minutes showing that President Nixon told Secretary of Agriculture Clifford M. Hardin after taking office last year, "You can say that this administration will have the first complete, far-reaching attack on the problem of hunger in history. Use all the rhetoric, so long as it doesn't cost any money." The administration's record will be better than this quotation suggests, but some state and county officials have acted in the belief that people who are not hungry will not work and have illegally demanded birth certificates and statements of financial need before issuing food stamps or distributing surplus food commodities to women with hungry children. The federal government distributes some 24 different staple items—including beans, cheese, cornmeal, and flour—to the needy because it is cheaper than storing them, but not every county gives away every commodity, and many counties distribute only 14 or 15 of the 24 on the list.
At least 1.3 million Americans have no income whatever and cannot afford to pay for food stamps, but Congress has been unwilling to establish a free food-stamp program, the Department of Agriculture balks at giving away food stamps, and in many U.S. counties and cities there are people who are unable to obtain enough food to sustain even minimal dietary needs. The Farm Bureau Federation opposes federal help to anyone, including farmers; milk industry lobbyists have led the farm lobby's opposition to food for the needy.
The Central Committee of the Soviet Union approves a report by Premier Brezhnev in July conceding that food supplies are inadequate. The nation has record crops, harvesting 186 million metric tons of grain, but lacks the corn needed to increase its livestock herds. New York-based Continental Grain receives an order from Moscow for 500,000 tons of corn and fills it with grain from Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, France, and Thailand because it cannot obtain a waiver of the rule that half of any U.S. grain must be shipped in U.S. bottoms.
Poland has a wet spring on the heels of a severe winter, flood and drought ensue, and these factors combined with a wet harvest sharply reduce crop yields. The resulting high food prices trigger the December 14 riot of Gdansk shipyard and factory workers, raising alarms in Moscow that the Soviet government may face revolution if citizens are not better fed (see 1972).
The National Research Council warns expectant mothers in the United States not to restrict weight gain too severely. A Committee on Maternal Nutrition of the NRC says at least half of infant mortalities are preventable through use of prenatal care, adequately trained personnel at delivery, correction of dietary deficiencies, proper hygiene, and health education and it says a weight gain of 20 to 25 pounds in pregnancy is permissible.
Vitamin pioneer Otto H. Warburg dies at West Berlin August 1 at age 86.
Vitamin C and the Common Cold by Nobel chemist Linus C. Pauling, now 69, claims that megadoses (up to 15 grams per day) of ascorbic acid will prevent or alleviate colds. Nutrition evangelists Adelle Davis and J. I. Rodale have made similar claims, but Pauling (who has coined the term megadose) has taken his cue from Irwin Stone, a 60-year-old Staten Island, N.Y., biochemist who has suggested that the foraging ancestors of prehistoric man ate enough subtropical leaves, fruit, and organ meats to ingest two to four grams—2,000 to 4,000 mgs—of ascorbic acid per day. The contention that vitamin C combats the common cold will not be supported by clinical studies but will earn Pauling a fortune and make him the darling of dietary supplement producers, despite the fact that he makes no distinction between "natural" vitamin C and synthetic, and questions the value of so-called "bioflavonoids," although some people with conditions such as sore gums will respond to drinking lemon juice, or eating peppers, when they are not helped by synthetic ascorbic-acid pills.
The Food and Drug Administration permits some food companies to enrich foods that have never been enriched before. National Biscuit Co. responds to an appeal from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and produces enriched saltines, used as bread substitutes by many older people, especially in low-income groups.
U.S. breakfast foods come under fire July 23 from former Nixon administration hunger consultant Robert B. (Burnett) Choate Jr., 46, who testifies before a Senate subcommittee that 40 of the top 60 dry cereals have little nutritional content. "The worst cereals are huckstered to children" on television, says Choate, but within a year he will acknowledge that 45 of the 60 cereals he analyzed have improved their nutritional content dramatically and that even brands with such names as Apple Jacks, Cocoa Krispies, Fruit Loops, Puffa Puffa Rice, Sugar Frosted Flakes, and Sugar Pops are nutritionally respectable; he will later concede that even the worst ones have been reformulated.
Nebraska-born Beaufort County, S.C., physician Donald E. Gatch pleads guilty in August to having maintained improper records of drugs dispensed by his office and is fined $500. He told a board of inquiry in 1967 that he had seen 150 to 200 cases of pellagra, along with rickets, scurvy, kwashiorkor, and other malnutrition diseases. An effort to have Gatch's license suspended is unsuccessful, and he claims that he has been persecuted for revealing hunger conditions in Beaufort County: "They think maybe if they can discredit me, they can somehow discredit the fact that there are 20 million malnourished people in this nation."
The Federal Trade Commission announces October 31 that Carnation Co. has promised to stop making what the FTC has called "unwarranted nutritional claims" in advertising for its Instant Breakfast, introduced in 1964.
Consumer Beware—Your Food and What's Been Done to It by New York-born author Beatrice Hunter (née Trum), 51, raises alarms about food safety; The Chemical Feast by James Turner reports the findings of a Ralph Nader summer project and raises similar alarms.
Livers of Alaskan fur seals in the Pribilof Islands are shown to contain high levels of mercury. Liver tissue samples reveal a mercury content of 58 parts per million and iron-supplement pills made from freeze-dried seal liver are withdrawn from the market.
The FDA orders the recall of all lots of canned tunafish whose mercury levels exceed 0.5 parts per million. The December recall order is said to affect nearly one-fourth of all canned tuna in U.S. markets, but by spring of next year it will turn out that only 3 percent of the canned tuna pack (nearly 200,000 cases) exceeds the 0.5 ppm FDA guideline.
The Poison Prevention Packaging Act passed by Congress December 30 requires that manufacturers of drugs, sulfuric acid, turpentine, and other potentially dangerous products put safety tops on their containers so that children will not be able to open them. The act will take effect in 1972 and fatalities from aspirin and other potential poisons will drop.
London's municipal government announces that the city's fruit, vegetable, and flower market at Covent Garden will be moved to Nine Elms, a 68-acre site on the south side of the Thames (see 1886). The actual move will not be made until 1974.
Orville Redenbacher's Gourmet Popping Corn is introduced by Indiana agronomist Redenbacher, 63, and his partner Charles Bowman, who in 1952 bought an agricultural business, have crossbred 30,000 popcorn hybrids, and 5 years ago came up with a yellow corn that expanded nearly twice as much as other brands and left almost no unpopped kernels. Redenbacher has driven across the country persuading grocers and department stores to stock his premium-priced Red Bow popcorn but a Chicago marketing firm has persuaded them to put Redenbacher's picture on the package and change the product's name. It will be America's largest-selling brand of popcorn within 5 years (see 1976).
Microwave oven inventor Percy L. Spencer dies at Newton, Mass., September 7 at age 76. The ovens remain costly and problematical, few Americans use them, but improved models (and microwavable frozen foods) in the next few decades will make the microwave almost indispensable.
Retired U.S. physicist Carl G. Sontheimer, 56, and his wife, Shirley, attend a housewares show in France, see a demonstration of a restaurant food-preparation machine, decide that it can be adapted for use as a home appliance, and meet with its inventor, Pierre Verdun, who advises them that a home version is already in the planning stage. Sontheimer arranges to buy three prototypes of the proposed home version and acquires U.S. distribution rights, but he notes that it lacks safety features and has other shortcomings. Intending it as a part-time activity, he starts a company, initially to import a line of quality stainless-steel cookware, but will spend much of the next 2 years making refinements in Verdun's machine (see Cuisinart, 1973).
More than 75 percent of the world's coffee supply now comes from the Western Hemisphere. Americans consume about half the world's coffee output; U.S. men, women, and children drink an average of 2.4 cups of the beverage per day, but per capita consumption is even higher in Sweden.
McDonald's opens 294 new outlets (see 1969). The Big Mac introduced nationwide in 1968 will become so popular that U.S. patrons will consume more than 600 million of them per year before the end of the century, and economists will create the "Big Mac Index" to gauge the value of foreign currencies against the U.S. dollar (see 1971).
Santa Ana, Calif., municipal judge Paul G. Mast dismisses abortion charges against physician R. C. Robb in January, ruling that a woman has the constitutional right not to bear children. The state's Therapeutic Abortion Act of 1967 is unconstitutional, Judge Mast rules.
The most liberal abortion law in the United States goes into effect July 1 in New York State. At least 147 women in the state undergo abortions, more than 200 register at municipal hospitals for the procedure, bringing the application total to more than 1,200; right-to-life groups continue to protest the new law as they do also new, liberalized abortion laws in Colorado, Alaska, and Hawaii.
The chemical synthesizing of prostaglandin gives medicine a new way to terminate pregnancies in hospitals.
Birth control pills may produce blood clots, warns the Food and Drug Administration (see 1969). The FDA sends letters to more than 300,000 physicians urging them to pay close attention to the risks involved in taking The Pill and to inform their patients. Activists disrupt Senate subcommittee hearings on The Pill, protesting that the witnesses are mostly male doctors and that women are being used as "guinea pigs" in testing The Pill's safety and efficacy.
Norman Borlaug says in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech at Stockholm December 10 that only population control can win the battle against world hunger.
The world's population reaches 3.63 billion, up from just over 3 billion in 1960, with 1.13 billion in South Asia, 929.9 million in East Asia (including Japan), 462.1 million in Europe, 344.4 million in Africa, 283.3 million in Latin America, 227.6 million in North America, 19.4 million in Oceania.
The USSR has only 9 urban centers with populations of 1 million or more versus 35 such urban centers in the United States. Only 8.5 percent of the Soviet population is in these large urban centers versus 41.5 percent of the U.S. population. Soviet census figures show that Muslim populations in the Uzbek S.S.R., the Tadjik S.S.R., and other Muslim republics have increased by roughly 50 percent since the 1959 census but that the number of Great Russians in these republics has declined. Ethnic Russians remain the largest single national group within the USSR, they are roughly three times as numerous as the Ukrainians, but they will become a minority by 1976.
Population in the Soviet Union reaches 242.6 million, in the People's Republic of China 760 million, in India 550 million, in the United States 205 million. The United States has 85 people per square mile, the PRC 305, India 655, Japan 1,083. Egypt's population has been growing at the rate of 1 million per year, and some 35 million people are crowded into the Nile valley and delta.
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