Through the years 1964 -1978

[admin]

I am using a one month trial for full access to the Australian and they are running a 50 day article called 50 years in 50 days. It show cases some of the biggest stories of the times and I though that as Austech is full of old bastards () that it might be of interest to hear what older members heard and thought at the time. I will add a year a day (unless I get sued over copyright )

We start at 1964 the year the Australian started production.

Click here for the front page (in pdf format). I would have posted it as a jpeg but it would probably make it harder to read.


1964


We remember Australia in the early 1960s as a nation relaxed and comfortable in the torpor of the post-war years of physical and spiritual recovery; of new families in project homes on quarter acre blocks in sprawling suburbs; of two-tone Holdens in the drive and Menzies in The Lodge.

Sir Robert Menzies was half way through his second decade in office; Sir Thomas Playford in South Australia was in the last year of his record term of 26 years as premier; Sir Henry Bolte was a decade into his reign as premier of Victoria and at the peak of the constitutional apex sat a true Lord of the realm — Viscount D’Lisle, the last British blue blood to serve as our governor-general.

In Sydney, St George won the ninth of its 11-straight rugby league grand finals and Melbourne won its sixth VFL (now AFL) grand final of the previous decade. (It was also its last premiership.)

Yet these simple symbols of predictability, solidity and continuity masked a growing societal ferment that was to become as great as any our nation had faced in its previous six decades. Wars had torn us apart but the youth revolution of the 1960s was about to remake us.

In 1964, when The Australian was first published, the world was being consumed by a revolution so tumultuous that by the time it had subsided and settled into new decades and new paradigms, everything had changed. Nothing remained the same.

In 1964 the first baby boomers were reaching maturity. The youth revolution was on. The dutiful teens of the 50s were starting to revolt. They were questioning their parents, asking why, why not and, in defiance of whatever answers were offered, declaring that they would do it their way.

First signs of the revolution were found in music. In 1964 the Beatles visited Australia and hundreds of thousands of adoring youth lined the streets to greet them. The Fab Four had six of the top 10 songs of that year.

The Beatles’ introduction of new, different and therefore, in the eyes of many, undesirable music was paralleled in literature by Oz magazine, launched in 1963. In 1964 it sparked furious debates over censorship and obscenity when it published satirical commentary on police, parliaments and politicians. It “outed” the police practice of “poofter bashing” and liberated discussion on homosexuality — the subject that had dared not speak its name.

In 1964 Donald Horne published his bitter commentary on the “she’ll-be-right” mediocrity of Australia and its political and institutional management under the ironic title The Lucky Country. We blithely ignored his meaning and chose the phrase to define us. The Mavis Bramston Show began on TV and we mistook its biting and pomposity-pricking satire for hugely entertaining humour.




But it was to be the Vietnam War that shaped the generation emerging in 1964. Four months after the launch of The Australian the Menzies government announced the reintroduction of national service. The life — and death — of kids was to be determined by a birthday lottery. If you were male and 18 and if the date of your birth emerged from the lottery barrel, you were in the Army – and could be sent to the jungles of Vietnam.

None of this featured in the prospectus for The Australian. Written primarily by editorial director Douglas Brass and published in book form a month before the launch, it defines the ambitions of a secretly recruited team of about 50 journalists. Read today, it has an old fashioned, stilted and naive feel to it.

Perhaps the best reflection of the changing times is seen in the section of the prospectus devoted to “the world of women”. Next to a photograph of a model wearing what was probably the most fashionable pants suit (and boots) of the day, it says: “There was a time, not long ago, when a woman’s world spread no farther than the washtub, the mangle, starched petticoats and that fine old institution of the family kitchen, the cast-iron, fuel-cooking range. This was an age when woman knew her place and, with the exception of a few rebels, stayed there.

“Today woman’s horizons are wider — and widening. Her influence and interest penetrate to national affairs, business, art, civic movements, education, medicine, law — while her ancient and honourable roles of mother, pillar of the home, domestic manager have broadened in scope.”

And to drive home the point, the prospectus announced that Miss Ethel Brice, “whose knowledge and achievements are widely known in the fields of cooking and home features”, would write on these subjects for The Australian. It even included her recipe for Tournedos Rossini.



On February 11 the aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne slices the destroyer during night exercises off Jervis Bay, killing 82. Two royal commissions were held into the cause of the accident and litigation relating to it continues in the courts today. The decommissioned Melbourne was sold to China.

Briton Donald Campbell flashed across Lake Eyre in his magnificent Bluebird at 403.1mph, achieving a land speed record. At year’s end he had also set a world water speed record of 276.33mph in Bluebird K7 at Lake Dumbleyung, near Perth. He is the only person to set land and water records in the one year. He died in another record attempt in 1967.

The Australian swim team leaves the Tokyo Olympics with six gold medals. Dawn Fraser wins a third gold at consecutive Olympics, but a prank – stealing a flag from the grounds of the Imperial Palace – sparked a swimming ban on her the following year.

Democrat Lyndon Johnson has an easy win over Barry Goldwater in the US presidential election.

The population was 11,280,429.

On TV The Mavis Bramston Show and Homicide premiered.

Donald Horne’s The Lucky Country and George Johnston’s My Brother Jack were published.

A first-class fare from Sydney to Melbourne rose 14 shillings to 12 pounds 10 shillings ($25).

A new Valiant (manual sedan) cost 1220 pounds, while top of the range station wagon automatic was 1598 pounds.

A three-bedroom new brick veneer house in Canberra (with oil heating, feature brickwork and flyscreens) cost 6950 pounds.

And The Australian cost fourpence in Canberra and sixpence elsewhere.

[admin]

I see from the pdf front page, politics hasnt changed much. The same fights still go on to today.

I liked the announcment of the new "unfailing" electronic cigarette lighter.

[admin]

1965

Link to paper front page.


IN 1965 the seismic changes in Australian society, evident when The Australian was launched the year before, gathered pace. In Canberra, Sir Robert Menzies entered his 18th year presiding over the political landscape but elsewhere, the earth was trembling. Liberal Sir Thomas Playford lost office in South Australia in March after 26 years as premier, and in May NSW Labor lost power to Robin Askin’s Liberals after 24 years.



The first of the baby boomers, born in 1946, were entering universities and they, like their international counterparts, were stirring. The youth revolution was not in full swing but growing numbers of young people were rejecting the norms of the 50s as suffocating. They demanded change. It would soon become a groundswell that pitted the world’s youth against their establishments and brought with it the new norms of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll.



In Australia in April 1965 the Menzies government made a fateful decision that was to alienate the nation’s youth and become the focus of dissent. It decided to commit troops to Vietnam, based on a false plea for assistance from the government of South Vietnam, and introduced conscription to ensure it had the personnel to send to the war front.

Conscription became the “lottery of death” as young men turning 21 were called up for two years’ compulsory military service if their date of birth was drawn from a barrel. More than 15,000 conscripts were to serve in Vietnam and within a year Private Errol Noack of South Australia became a symbol for anti-war campaigners when he was killed in a gunfight near Nui Dat. In 1965 we also had our first Vietnam VC winner, WO Kevin “Dasher” Wheatley.

At home Aboriginal activist Charles Perkins led the first “freedom ride” through western NSW in combat rampant racism and discrimination. At the same time the Northern Territory government forcibly rounded up the last of the Pintubi tribespeople of central Australia and resettled them at Papunya and Yuendumu missions.



A dress five inches above the knee, no hat, no gloves, no stockings! What a sensation when UK model Jean Shrimpton, The Shrimp, showed up for the Melbourne Cup.



Aboriginal activist Charles Perkins leads a “freedom ride” through country towns

Robin Askin leads the Liberals to power in NSW for the first time in 24 years

Singapore severs ties with the Malaysian Federation to become an independent state

Roma Mitchell becomes Australia’s first female judge

Herbert “Doc” Evatt dies

Rhodesia breaks from Britain

Ronald Ryan and Peter Walker shoot dead a warder during their escape from Pentridge in Melbourne

[Godzilla]

Was conscription for anyone over the age of 21 whose birth-date was pulled from the lottery?

Could you be called in if your were 26, married, kids, with a job and house to pay off?

If it is the case, you would be stuffed trying to keep your head above water.....

[SpankedHam]

IIRC think the only thing that saved you, apart from being unfit, was if you were involved in an essential service/industry. My old man was called up but was let go due to being a plant operator in electricity generation.

As an aside, I wonder how News would react if it finds it's copyrighted material being republished here and copyright then claimed on it. Has Austech been threatened with the take down stick when similar has happened before? I know pay TV operators waked that stick quite successfully some time ago.

[admin]

Was conscription for anyone over the age of 21 whose birth-date was pulled from the lottery?

Could you be called in if your were 26, married, kids, with a job and house to pay off?

If it is the case, you would be stuffed trying to keep your head above water.....

Here is a run down on it mate.

Under the National Service Scheme, twenty-year-old men were required to register with the Department of Labour and National Service (DLNS), they were then subject to a ballot which, if their birth date was drawn, meant the possibility of two years of continuous full-time service in the regular army, followed by three years part-time service in the Army Reserve. As part of their duty, national servicemen on full-time duty were liable for ‘special overseas service’ including combat duties in Vietnam.

As the number of men eligible for call-up far exceeded the number needed for military service, the bi-annual ballot determined who would be considered for national service. The ballot resembled a lottery draw, even to the extent, in the case of the final five ballots, of being fully televised. Numbered marbles representing birthdates were chosen randomly from a barrel and within a month men whose numbers had been drawn were advised by the DLNS of whether they were required for participation in the scheme or not. Those failing to register without an acceptable explanation were automatically considered for call-up as well as being liable to a fine.

Various categories of men eligible for national service were granted either indefinite or temporary deferments. Applications were considered individually and only after the ballot had been drawn. Men for whom no exemption applied and who were selected for call-up were required to be as fit as those enlisting in the regular army. The process involved a medical examination by a civilian doctor. If passed, this was followed by an interview and finally a security check carried out by the Attorney General’s Department, the Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and the Commonwealth Police. Men who passed these three tests were usually given a month’s notice before having to report for military service.

Men who failed to comply, who misled the medical board and who made false and misleading statements were liable to prosecution and if convicted were sentenced to prison for a period equivalent to that which would have been spent on national service. Fourteen men were thus prosecuted, until 1968 they were incarcerated in military prisons. Later, they served their time in civilian gaols.

Between 1964 and December 1972 when the Whitlam Government suspended the scheme, 804,286 twenty-year-olds registered for national service, 63,735 national servicemen served in the Army and 15,381 served in Vietnam. Between 1966 and 1971 Australian infantry battalions were typically comprised of an even mix of regular soldiers and national servicemen. Some 200 national servicemen lost their lives in Vietnam.

[admin]

Realistically you would have to have some pretty bad luck to be conscripted. Of course if it was a bigger war for us it would be a different story. Approximately 60,000 Australians served in the war; 521 were killed and more than 3,000 were wounded, compare that to say WW2 when we had 476,000 just in the army only alone. If you added in airforce, navy, merchant navy, women etc etc nearly 1 million Australians served.

[Bibliophile]

IIRC think the only thing that saved you, apart from being unfit, was if you were involved in an essential service/industry.

Bit of a joke actually.
I was a third year trainee technician with the ABC when one of my colleagues was selected and deferred for the same reason.

[admin]

1966

Link to paper front page


For Australians, this was a big news year, kicked off in January by the retirement of Sir Robert Menzies as prime minister after 16 years. A month later we converted pounds, shillings and pence to dollars and cents and the two utterly unconnected events combined to bring down a symbolic “out with the old, in with the new” curtain on an era.

The departure of our longest-serving PM in history and his replacement by the younger and more active Harold Holt acted as yet another invitation for social change. The first baby boomers were reaching maturity and were determined to throw off the stultifying laws and attitudes of the Menzies years, spurred on by the revolution in which dissent and utopian dreams were encapsulated in new forms of music.

The Vietnam war attracted majority support in 1966, and Holt was determined to use it to his electoral advantage. In July he visited the White House and pledged to president Lyndon Johnson that Australia would go “all the way with LBJ”. Three months later Johnson became the first American president to visit Australia and helped Holt win a November election with the biggest majority seen in the Australian parliament since its inception in 1901.

But an anti-war protest movement was growing in strength and passion. Opposition leader Arthur Calwell was shot at and injured by splinters of glass as he left an anti-war protest meeting in Sydney and when Johnson was driven through Sydney with NSW premier Robert Askin activists blocked the road, prompting Askin to urge his driver to “run over the bastards”.




Fight for the right to eat margarine



“The right of a housewife to use margarine in preference to butter seems a small issue when measured against some of the loftier aspirations of democracy. But if Mrs Jones and tens of thousands of Australian housewives are denied this basic freedom of choice, then they are being denied the very essence of freedom”. Them was fighting words and they came from Mrs Jones, played by Gwen Lisle (in an effective advertising campaign mounted by Marrickville Margarine), tackling legislation that placed a quota on the production of margarine and even the colour and taste of it. All in the name of protecting butter.

In China, Chairman Mao began the cultural revolution that led to the death of millions.

Jail escapees Ronald Ryan and Peter Walker are captured in Sydney on January 5. Ryan is later sentenced to hang

The three Beaumont children go missing in Adelaide on the Australia Day holiday – a mystery that has never been solved



The day of the jingle arrives: the 14th of February 1966 and the introduction of decimal currency

Danish architect Joern Utzon quits the Opera House on February 28

The first Australian conscripts leave for Vietnam on April 29. On August 18, the army announces that 17 men were killed and 26 injured during the battle of Long Tan. By year’s end the Australian commitment in Vietnam has been increased to 6300

29 men died when a fire sweeps through a Salvation Army hostel in Melbourne

South African prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd is stabbed to death

An Ansett-ANA Viscount crashes near Winton, killing all 24 on board on September 22

Solo British yachtsman Francis Chichester arrives in Sydney after a non-stop 23,000km voyage from England

Bob Dylan makes his first tour of Australia and The Easybeats leave for London

Victoria extends hotel trading hours from 6pm to 10pm, ending the infamous "Six O'Clock Swill". Driving with a blood alcohol level over 0.05% becomes a criminal offence.

Japan replaces Great Britain as Australia's largest trading partner

General Motors Holden becomes the first local car manufacturer to instal seat belts as standard equipment in all its new vehicles

[Tiny]

Realistically you would have to have some pretty bad luck to be conscripted. Of course if it was a bigger war for us it would be a different story. Approximately 60,000 Australians served in the war; 521 were killed and more than 3,000 were wounded, compare that to say WW2 when we had 476,000 just in the army only alone. If you added in airforce, navy, merchant navy, women etc etc nearly 1 million Australians served.

Ahh memories. As luck would have it for me I was mistakenly conscripted in 1966 at Age 7, yep the system failed & had my birth date wrong.
My mother contacted them & explained their error & I was given an immediate reversal as well as a document giving me a lifetime exemption from being conscripted.
Must ask her where that is before she passes. Not that I need it now, who needs a 55 year old soldier?

[weirdo]

who needs a 55 year old soldier?

Dad's army?

[admin]

1967

Link to front page




The late 60s were arguably the most turbulent years of the century. Social attitudes were changing. For a start, South Australia became the last state to abandon laws requiring hotels to close at 6pm. It had been the first to impose the measure, in 1915, in the hope that men would return to their homes earlier after work, but it generated the speed-drinking culture known as the “six o’clock swill”.

Meanwhile the youth revolution expanded from music to insurrection over the Vietnam war and tension mounted as prime minister Harold Holt consigned another battalion to the jungles. The war had become a running sore for governments in the US and Australia.

The hanging of Ronald Ryan at Melbourne’s Pentridge jail sparked a furore and a national debate that was to convince governments in every jurisdiction that the death penalty should be abolished. And the referendum to amend the Constitution to allow Aborigines to be counted in the national census brought a focus on the appalling treatment of our indigenous people and was carried with a Yes vote of more than 90 per cent – the first step on a long and tortuous road towards full rights and reconciliation.
For the first time home telephone users could contact friends and relatives around the nation without intervention from a switchboard operator following the introduction of subscriber trunk dialling. News of the world’s first heart transplant in South Africa confronted us with the realisation that the heart was not the centre of our humanity; it was merely a pump that could be repaired or even replaced by surgeons. John Newcombe won the tennis at Wimbledon but Sir Frank Packer was not so fortunate at Newport, Rhode Island, where his yacht Dame Pattie (renamed Damn Pity by cartoonists) continued a 125-year tradition by failing to wrest the coveted America’s Cup from the New York Yacht Club.

None of these stories was to cause the shock that reverberated around the nation on December 17, 1967, when it was revealed that Harold Holt had been lost at sea. The prime minister was at Portsea, south of Melbourne, with friends when he waded into the surf, never to be seen again. Police and armed forces swung into action and searched for days without success.Rumours began to circulate about Holt’s family and his relationships with his friends and nonsensical conspiracy theories were spawned, with some believing Holt had been spirited away in a Chinese submarine.

John McEwen, leader of the Coalition’s junior partner the Country Party, was sworn in as prime minister on December 19 and US president Lyndon Johnson attended Holt’s funeral in Melbourne on December 22, along with Prince Charles and dozens of foreign dignitaries.

“Let me complete the job”: architect Jorn Utzon made the offer to the NSW government through the pages of The Australian on February 28. It was the first anniversary of his resignation from the Opera House project. “Rather than see this vision lost forever I am willing to come back and work for the minister on mutually acceptable terms,” he told Mungo MacCallum. Sadly those terms were never agreed on.

On March 12 The Seekers, at the height of their popularity, draw a crowd of 200,000 to a concert at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl. That was one-tenth of the entire population of Melbourne at the time.



Has there been a greater trainer-jockey combination than Bart Cummings and Roy Higgins? They won the Melbourne Cup together with Red Handed, building on their 1965 success with Light Fingers

Rowena Wallace, who had experience in revue television in Brisbane, provided the first scandal of local TV drama in You Can’t See ‘Round Corners. When co-star Ken Shorter ran his hand up her leg, she rightly looked shocked – and viewers were even more so. Some TV stations scrubbed the scene before broadcast.
In a pioneering year for TV, nightly current affairs program This Day Tonight started on the ABC with host Bill Peach. The ABC also had success with a soap opera, Bellbird, as a 20-minute lead-in to its 7pm news and Adventure Island fired the imagination of young viewers. Seven turned its hand to sit-com with My Name’s McGooley, What’s Yours?, with Gordon Chater. And John(ny) Farnham filled the radio airwaves with Sadie (The Cleaning Lady). Top 40 radio had a new competitor – talkback.



Bushfires kill 62 in Tasmania

General Suharto takes over from Sukarno in Indonesia. About 500,000 people died in an anti-communist crackdown after a failed coup in 1965

The Tasmanian government proposes a hydro-electric scheme for the Gordon River by flooding Lake Pedder

Don Dunstan becomes the new Labor premier of South Australia

Six-day war erupts between Israel and Arab states

John Newcombe wins the men’s singles at Wimbledon

We’re up, up and away – the first Aussie satellite is launched from Woomera

Dr Christiaan Barnard performs the first human heart transplant in South Africa



Australian troops in Vietnam await transportation from the USA Army's Iroquois helicopter.

[admin]

1968

Link to front page


At home and abroad, rapid-fire events changed the direction of history and changed our lives. Just listing some of them captures the helter-skelter nature of the year: Senator John Gorton was elected to lead the Liberal party in the wake of Harold Holt’s death and became prime minister in January; Don Dunstan lost power in South Australia to Liberal Steele Hall; the conflict in Vietnam grew with the battle of Khe Sanh followed by the Tet offensive and the My Lai massacre, which turned the tide of opinion against the war and drove Lyndon Johnson out of the presidential race in the US; Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, followed two months later by Robert Kennedy who died of bullet wounds in the kitchen of a Los Angeles hotel – events that snuffed out the dreams of millions.


Microsoft founder Bill Gates, pictured standing, aged 13, with co-founder and childhood friend Paul Allen.

France lurched towards civil war and the Russians massed on the border of Czechoslovakia; students and protesters rioted in the streets of Chicago outside the Democratic convention; Richard Nixon narrowly defeated Hubert Humphrey in the US presidential elections and the Mexico Olympics were remembered for the Black Power salutes of American athletes and the show of support by Australia’s Peter Norman.



The Apollo space program picked up pace and astronauts saw, for the first time, the dark side of the moon. The Pope condemned the Pill and contraception; Wally Mellish staged Australia’s first hostage siege at Glenfield in NSW with the help of the NSW police commissioner who gave him a gun; Joh Bjelke Petersen came to power in Queensland; Australia’s first heart transplant was performed; bushfires destroyed 200 homes in the Blue Mountains; the Boeing 747 made its debut; a bloke named Saddam Hussein came to power in Iraq; and Jacqueline Kennedy, widow of the slain US president, rocked New York society to its core by marrying Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis.


George St Sydney, 1968

Wally Mellish ends his siege in Sydney’s south after 174 hours. During that time he has married his captive, Beryl Muddle, 19, with the NSW police commissioner Norm Allan as witness and best man. The top cop provides the $20 ring and guns are placed on a table during the ceremony.



Lionel Rose becomes the first Aborigine to hold a world boxing title when he defeats Fighting Harada for the bantamweight title in Tokyo.



Richard Nixon is elected President of the United States, defeating Democrat Hubert Humphrey and independent George Wallace.



Sydney’s Paddington, a largely rundown suburb, is in the first throes of gentrification. Businesswoman Yutta Anton tells the paper of her enterprising plan to buy houses: “I get rid of the filth and the smell and get the pest-control people in.” Back on the market, she prices the homes at – wait for it – $30,000, a princely sum that the article notes raises rather a few eyebrows.

British comedian Tony Hancock is found dead in his Sydney apartment. “He died in his prime time of life – a pen in his hand, two notes beside him, tablets scattered on the floor. And no viewers.”

“Madness! Auditions – folk and rock’n’roll musicians and singers for acting in a new TV series. Running parts for four insane boys aged 17-22.” From that ad in the US, the Monkees were born. When they tour Australia in September, Mike Nesmith, whose Mum invented Liquid Paper, tells Mungo MacCallum: “Audiences here seem to be well-adjusted – the screams have more of adoration in them than [they have] at home.”



Major Australian Events

4 January – The search for the body of Prime Minister Harold Holt, who disappeared whilst swimming off Portsea, Victoria, is called off.

10 January – John Gorton is sworn in as Prime Minister of Australia after the disappearance of Harold Holt.

28 January – Members of English rock groups The Who and Small Faces are escorted by police from a plane at Melbourne's Essendon Airport, after the pilot diverts the flight citing the bands' behaviour.

1 April – American evangelist Billy Graham begins a tour of Australia.

17 April – A state election is held in South Australia. Steele Hall (Liberal and Country League) defeats Don Dunstan (ALP), and becomes Premier of South Australia.

8 April – Fluoridation of Sydney's water supply begins.

30 April – Jim Cairns unsuccessfully challenges Gough Whitlam for leadership of the Australian Labor Party.

1 May – The Duke of Edinburgh arrives in Australia for a ten-day visit.

5 May – Three Australian journalists are killed by the Viet Cong in Saigon.

21 May – Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi visits Australia.

14 June – Journalist Simon Townsend, future host of Simon Townsend's Wonder World, is granted exemption from military service after lodging a fifth appeal against his imprisonment and court martial for conscientious objection.

18 June – The first stage of the Warringah Freeway opens in Sydney.

24 June – British comedian Tony Hancock commits suicide in his Sydney hotel room.

2 July – Fifty students are arrested during an anti-Vietnam War protest in Martin Place, Sydney.

4 July – Forty five people are arrested during an anti-war protest outside the U.S. consulate in St Kilda Road, Melbourne.

31 July – The Premier of Queensland, Jack Pizzey, dies in office.

1 August – Jack Pizzey's deputy, Gordon Chalk, is sworn in as his successor until the appointment of Joh Bjelke-Petersen as Premier a week later.

3 August – The standard gauge rail line between Perth and Kalgoorlie is completed.

20 August – The National Gallery of Victoria is opened in Melbourne.

14 October – The town of Meckering, Western Australia, is badly damaged by an earthquake.

28 October – The Postmaster-General's Department decreases the number of mail deliveries per day from two to one.

31 October – Minister for the Army Phillip Lynch admits that Australian Army troops may have breached the Geneva Convention by using water torture during the interrogation of a female Viet Cong suspect.

1 November – The airline Ansett-ANA is renamed Ansett.

14 December – A referendum is held in Tasmania to allow the granting of Australia's first casino license to the Wrest Point Hotel. The referendum is passed.

31 December – MacRobertson Miller Airlines Flight 1750 crashes south of Port Hedland, Western Australia, killing all 26 people on board.

[admin]

Please click thanks if you are reading and are interested. I dont mind posting it up as long as I know people are interested in reading it.

Thanks

[admin]

1969

Link to front page (moon landing)





The tribal love-rock musical Hair, complete with nudity, four-letter words and a message of love, peace, happiness and everything hippie-dom, opens at the Metro Theatre, Sydney. The album of the Broadway show had been seized in Brisbane the month before, along with “Save water, shower with a friend” posters and Aubrey Beardsley prints. Of the stage show, Ray Taylor wrote in his review for The Australian: “Going to see Hair will be the nearest most Australians will come to making a trip. Make it.”

Film director Tony Richardson arrives to make a movie of Ned Kelly starring Mick Jagger. Says Richardson: “Jagger has just the quality of temperament, spirit and poetry. He’s a rebel like Kelly and has exactly the spirit.” Not a critical or box office success, the movie, released in 1970, rates two stars on Rotten Tomatoes.



Nine people are killed and more than 50 injured when the Southern Aurora collides with a goods train at Violet Town in Victoria.



Dame Zara, widow of drowned prime minister Harold Holt, marries Liberal politician and farmer Jeff Bate.

Fancy a night out in Sydney with supper and Shirley Bassey providing the show? It’ll cost you $5.

23 people die when fires sweep Victoria

Alexander Dubcek, reforming Czechoslovak communist leader, is forced from office in a win for Moscow

Labor dumped after 25 years in Tasmanian election

Judge John Kerr jails Clarrie O’Shea, secretary of the Victorian Bus and Tram Employees Union, for the union’s refusal to pay fines

Joh Bjelke-Petersen wins Queensland election

HMAS Melbourne slices through the destroyer USS Frank E. Evans during an exercise in the South China Sea. 73 Americans die

Rod Laver wins the men’s singles at Wimbledon

North Vietnam leader Ho Chi Minh dies at 79

Rain Lover wins the Melbourne Cup for the second successive year


Prime Minister John Gorton at a press conference at Parliament House, Canberra, after his win in the federal election.

Australian Events

7 February – The Violet Town railway disaster: the passenger train Southern Aurora collides head-on with a freight train on the new Melbourne to Sydney train line. Nine people are killed.

30 April – Sir Paul Hasluck becomes Governor-General of Australia after the retirement of Lord Casey.

10 May – The 1969 Tasmanian election is held, resulting in a hung parliament with the ALP and Liberals winning 17 seats each. The deadlock is broken when Kevin Lyons of the Centre Party forms a coalition government with the Liberals and becomes Deputy Premier under Angus Bethune.

12 May – The Age newspaper in Melbourne begins the process of moving from Collins Street to Spencer Street. The move is completed on 6 October.

3 June – Melbourne-Evans collision – The Royal Australian Navy aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne collides with the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Frank E. Evans in the South China Sea. Frank E. Evans is cut in half and sinks, killing 74 crew.

19 June – The Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission rules that equal pay for women doing the same work as men must be phased in by 1972.

26 September – The Poseidon bubble begins when the small mining company Poseidon NL discovers a large nickel deposit in Laverton, Western Australia.

25 October – A federal election is held. The incumbent Coalition government led by John Gorton defeats the Australian Labor Party led by Gough Whitlam.

29 November – The rebuilding of the Indian Pacific rail line between Sydney and Perth to standard gauge is completed.

16 December – Prime Minister John Gorton announces that a withdrawal of Australian Army troops from the Vietnam War would begin in 1970.

Australian Sport

21 January – Boxer Johnny Famechon becomes world featherweight champion, when he defeats Cuban Jose Legra in a bout at the Albert Hall in London.

12 April – Carlton achieve the first double-century VFL score when they kick 30.30 (210) against Hawthorn, beating a previous record from 1931.

6 September – Richmond sets a new record VFL finals winning margin when it beats Geelong by 118 points. it is the first century winning margin in a finals match and beats the previous record margin of 88 points by Melbourne against Collingwood in the 1964 Second Semi.

20 September – The Balmain Tigers defeated South Sydney Rabbitohs in the NSWRL Rugby League Grand Final at the Sydney Cricket Ground.

27 September – Richmond 12.13 (85) beats Carlton 8.12 (60) for its seventh premiership.

2 October – Tennis player Rod Laver beats fellow Australian Tony Roche in the men's singles final of the U.S. Open, achieving his second Grand Slam (having also won the Australian Open, the French Open and Wimbledon in that year).

11 October – John Farrington wins his first men's national marathon title, clocking 2:21:02.8 in Sydney.

4 November – Rain Lover wins the Melbourne Cup.

World Events

January 2 Australian media baron Rupert Murdoch purchases the largest selling British Sunday newspaper, The News of the World.
People's Democracy begins a march from Belfast to Derry, Northern Ireland in support of civil rights.
Ohio State defeats USC in the Rose Bowl to win the national title for the 1968 season.

January 4 – The Government of Spain hands over Ifni to Morocco.

January 5 – The Soviet Union launches Venera 5 toward Venus.

January 6 – The final passenger train traverses the Waverley Line, which subsequently closes to passengers.

January 10
Members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) damage property and assault occupants in the Bogside in Derry. In response, residents erect barricades and establish Free Derry.
The Soviet Union launches Venera 6 toward Venus.

January 12
Led Zeppelin, the first Led Zeppelin album, is released.
Martial law is declared in Madrid, as the University is closed and over 300 students are arrested.
The New York Jets upset the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III, 16-7. Joe Namath is the MVP of the game.

January 14
An explosion aboard the USS Enterprise near Hawaii kills 27 and injures 314.
The Soviet Union launches Soyuz 4.

January 15 – The Soviet Union launches Soyuz 5, which docks with Soyuz 4 for a transfer of crew.

January 16 – Student Jan Palach sets himself on fire in Prague's Wenceslas Square to protest the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia; 3 days later he dies.

January 18 – In Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian displays the art of Winslow Homer for 6 weeks.

January 20
Richard Milhous Nixon succeeds Lyndon Baines Johnson as the 37th President of the United States of America.
After 147 years, the last issue of The Saturday Evening Post is published.

January 26 – Elvis Presley steps into American Studios in Memphis, Tennessee, recording "Long Black Limousine", thus beginning the recording of what becomes his landmark comeback sessions for the albums From Elvis in Memphis and Back in Memphis. The sessions yield the popular and critically acclaimed singles "Suspicious Minds," "In the Ghetto" and "Kentucky Rain."

January 27
Fourteen men, 9 of them Jews, are executed in Baghdad for spying for Israel.
Reverend Ian Paisley, hardline Protestant leader in Northern Ireland, is jailed for 3 months for illegal assembly.
The present-day Hetch Hetchy Moccasin Powerhouse, rated at 100,000 KVA, is completed and placed in operation.

January 28 – A blow-out on Union Oil's Platform spills 80,000 to 100,000 barrels of crude oil into a channel and onto the beaches of Santa Barbara County in Southern California, inspiring Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson to organize the first Earth Day in 1970.

January 30 – The Beatles give their last public performance, filming several tracks on the roof of Apple Records, London.

February 2
Two cosmonauts transfer from Soyuz 5 to Soyuz 4 via a spacewalk while the two craft are docked together, the first time such a transfer takes place. The two spacecraft undock. Soyuz 4 will reenter Earth's atmosphere and land February 17 while Soyuz 5 will have a hard landing February 18.
Ten paintings are defaced in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

February 4 – In Cairo, Yasser Arafat is elected Palestine Liberation Organization leader at the Palestinian National Congress.

February 5 – A huge oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, closes the city's harbor.

February 7 – The original Hetch Hetchy Moccasin Powerhouse is removed from service.

February 8 – The Allende meteorite explodes over Mexico.

February 8 – The last issue of The Saturday Evening Post hits magazine stands.

February 9 – The Boeing 747 makes its maiden flight.

February 13 – FLQ terrorists bomb the Stock Exchange in Montreal, Quebec.

February 14 – Pope Paul VI issues a motu proprio deleting many names from the Roman calendar of saints (including Valentine, who was celebrated on that day).

February 17 – Aquanaut Berry L. Cannon dies of carbon dioxide poisoning while attempting to repair the SEALAB III habitat off San Clemente Island, California.

February 24
The Mariner 6 Mars probe is launched.
Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District: The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the First Amendment applies to public schools.

March 2
In Toulouse, France the first Concorde test flight is conducted.
Soviet and Chinese forces clash at a border outpost on the Ussuri River.

March 3
In a Los Angeles, California court, Sirhan Sirhan admits that he killed presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy.
Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 9 (James McDivitt, David Scott, Rusty Schweickart) to test the lunar module.
The United States Navy establishes the Navy Fighter Weapons School (also known as Top Gun) at Naval Air Station Miramar.

March 4 - Jim Morrison is arrested in Florida for indecent exposure during a Doors-concert three days earlier.

March 10
In Memphis, Tennessee, James Earl Ray pleads guilty to assassinating Martin Luther King Jr. (he later retracts his guilty plea).
The novel The Godfather by Mario Puzo is published.[clarification needed]

March 13 – Apollo program: Apollo 9 returns safely to Earth after testing the Lunar Module.

March 17
The Longhope lifeboat is lost after answering a mayday call during severe storms in the Pentland Firth; the entire crew of 8 die.[1]
Golda Meir becomes the first female prime minister of Israel.

March 18 – Operation Breakfast, the secret bombing of Cambodia, begins.

March 19
British paratroopers and Marines land on the island of Anguilla.
A 385 metres (1,263 ft) tall TV-mast at Emley Moor, UK, collapses due to ice build-up.

March 20 – John Lennon and Yoko Ono are married at Gibraltar, and proceed to their honeymoon "Bed-In" for peace in Amsterdam.



March 22 – The landmark art exhibition When Attitudes become Form, curated by Harald Szeemann, opens at the Kunsthalle Bern in Bern, Switzerland.

March 29 – The Eurovision Song Contest 1969 is held in Madrid, and results in four co-winners, with 18 votes each, from Spain, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and France.

March 30 – The body of former United States General and President Dwight D. Eisenhower is brought by caisson to the United States Capitol to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda; Eisenhower had died two days earlier, after a long illness, in the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, D.C..

April 1 – The Hawker Siddeley Harrier enters service with the Royal Air Force.

April 4 – Dr. Denton Cooley implants the first temporary artificial heart.

April 9
The Harvard University Administration Building is seized by close to 300 students, mostly members of the Students for a Democratic Society. Before the takeover ends, 45 will be injured and 184 arrested.
Fermín Monasterio Pérez is killed by the ETA in Biscay, Spain, being the 4th victim in the name of Basque nationalism.

April 13 – Queensland: The Brisbane Tramways end service after 84 years of operation.

April 15 – The EC-121 shootdown incident: North Korea shoots down the aircraft over the Sea of Japan, killing all 31 on board.

April 20
British troops arrive in Northern Ireland to reinforce the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
A grassroots movement of Berkeley community members seizes an empty lot owned by the University of California, to begin the formation of "People's Park".

April 22 – Robin Knox-Johnston becomes the first person to sail around the world solo without stopping.

April 24 – Recently formed British Leyland launches their first new model, the Austin Maxi in Portugal.

April 28 – Charles de Gaulle steps down as president of France after suffering defeat in a referendum the day before.

May 10
Zip to Zap, a harbinger of the Woodstock Concert, ends with the dispersal and eviction of youths and young adults at Zap, North Dakota by the National Guard.
The Battle of Dong Ap Bia, also known as Hamburger Hill, begins during the Vietnam War.

May 13 – May 13 Incident: Race riots occur in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

May 14 – Colonel Muammar Gaddafi visits Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

May 15 – An American teenager known as 'Robert R.' dies in St. Louis, Missouri, of a baffling medical condition. In 1984 it will be identified as the first confirmed case of HIV/AIDS in North America.

May 16 – Venera program: Venera 5, a Soviet spaceprobe, lands on Venus.

May 17 – Venera program: Soviet probe Venera 6 begins to descend into Venus' atmosphere, sending back atmospheric data before being crushed by pressure.

May 18 – Apollo program: Apollo 10 (Tom Stafford, Gene Cernan, John Young) is launched, on the full dress-rehearsal for the Moon landing.

May 20 – United States National Guard helicopters spray skin-stinging powder on anti-war protesters in California.

May 21 – Rosariazo: Civil unrest breaks out in Rosario, Argentina, following the death of a 15-year-old student.

May 22 – Apollo program: Apollo 10's lunar module flies to within 15,400 m of the Moon's surface.

May 25 – Midnight Cowboy, an X-rated, Oscar-winning John Schlesinger film, is released.
May 26
The Andean Pact (Andean Group) is established.
Apollo program: Apollo 10 returns to Earth, after a successful 8-day test of all the components needed for the upcoming first manned Moon landing.

May 26–June 2 – John Lennon and Yoko Ono conduct their second Bed-In. The follow-up to the Amsterdam event is held at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, Quebec.

May 29
Cordobazo: A general strike and civil unrest break out in Córdoba, Argentina.
Guided tours begin at the Kremlin and other government sites in Moscow.

May 30 – Riots in Curaçao mark the start of an Afro-Caribbean civil rights movement on the island.

June 3 – While operating at sea on SEATO maneuvers, the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne accidentally rams and slices in two the American destroyer USS Frank E. Evans in the South China Sea, killing 74 American seamen.



June 5 – An international communist conference begins in Moscow.

June 7 – The rock group Blind Faith plays its first gig in front of 100,000 people in London's Hyde Park.

June 8 – U.S. President Richard Nixon and South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu meet at Midway Island. Nixon announces that 25,000 U.S. troops will be withdrawn by September.

June 17 – After a 23 game match, Boris Spassky defeats Tigran Petrosian to become the World Chess Champion in Moscow.

June 18–June 22 – The National Convention of the Students for a Democratic Society, held in Chicago, collapses, and the Weatherman faction seizes control of the SDS National Office. Thereafter, any activity run from the National Office or bearing the name of SDS is Weatherman-controlled.

June 20 – Georges Pompidou is elected President of France.

June 22
The Cuyahoga River fire helps spur an avalanche of water pollution control activities resulting in the Clean Water Act, Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement and the creation of the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
Judy Garland dies of a drug overdose in her London home.

June 23 – Warren E. Burger is sworn in as Chief Justice of the United States by retiring Chief Justice Earl Warren.

June 24 – The United Kingdom and Rhodesia sever diplomatic ties.

June 28 – The Stonewall riots in New York City mark the start of the modern gay rights movement in the U.S.
Neil Armstrong descends a ladder to become the first human to step onto the surface of the Moon during Apollo 11

July 1 – Charles, Prince of Wales, is invested with his title at Caernarfon.

July 3 – Brian Jones, musician and founder of The Rolling Stones, drowns in his swimming pool at his home in Sussex, England.

July 4 – Michael Mageau and Darlene Ferrin are shot at Blue Rock Springs in California. They are the second (known) victims of the Zodiac Killer. Mageau survives the attack while Ferrin is pronounced dead-on-arrival at Kaiser Foundation Hospital - Richmond.

July 5 – Tom Mboya, Kenyan Minister of Development, is assassinated.

July 6 – Francisco Franco orders the closing of the border and communications between Gibraltar and Spain in response to the 1967 Gibraltar sovereignty referendum.

July 7 – French is made equal to English throughout the Canadian national government.

July 8 – Vietnam War: The very first U.S. troop withdrawals are made.

July 10 – Donald Crowhurst's trimaran Teignmouth Electron is found drifting and unoccupied. It is assumed that Crowhurst might have committed suicide.

July 14
Football War: After Honduras loses a soccer game against El Salvador, rioting breaks out in Honduras against Salvadoran migrant workers. Of the 300,000 Salvadoran workers in Honduras, tens of thousands are expelled, prompting a brief Salvadoran invasion of Honduras. The OAS works out a cease-fire on July 18, which takes effect on July 20.
The Act of Free Choice commences in Merauke, West Irian.
The United States' $500, $1,000, $5,000 and $10,000 bills are officially withdrawn from circulation.

July 16 – Apollo program: Apollo 11 (Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins) lifts off toward the first landing on the Moon.

July 18 – Chappaquiddick incident – Edward M. Kennedy drives off a bridge on his way home from a party on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts. Mary Jo Kopechne, a former campaign aide to his brother, dies in the early morning hours of July 19 in the submerged car.

July 19
John Fairfax lands in Hollywood Beach, Florida near Miami and becomes the first person to row across an ocean solo, after 180 days spent at sea on board 25' ocean rowboat 'Britannia' (left Gran Canaria on January 20, 1969).

July 20 – Apollo program: The lunar module Eagle lands on the lunar surface. An estimated 500 million people worldwide watch in awe as Neil Armstrong takes his historic first steps on the Moon at 10:56 pm ET (02:56 am UTC July 21), the largest television audience for a live broadcast at that time.

July 24
The Apollo 11 astronauts return from the first successful Moon landing, and are placed in biological isolation for several days, on the chance they may have brought back lunar germs. The airless lunar environment is later determined to preclude microscopic life.
The Soviet Union returns Gerald Brooke to the United Kingdom in exchange for spies Peter and Helen Kroger (Morris and Lona Cohen).

July 25 – Vietnam War: U.S. President Richard Nixon declares the Nixon Doctrine, stating that the United States now expects its Asian allies to take care of their own military defense. This starts the "Vietnamization" of the war.

July 26 – The New York Chapter of the Young Lords is founded.

July 30 – Vietnam War: U.S. President Richard M. Nixon makes an unscheduled visit to South Vietnam, meeting with President Nguyen Van Thieu and U.S. military commanders.

July 31 – The halfpenny ceases to be legal tender in the UK.

August 4 – Vietnam War: At the apartment of French intermediary Jean Sainteny in Paris, U.S. representative Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese representative Xuan Thuy begin secret peace negotiations. They eventually fail since both sides cannot agree to any terms.

August 5 – Mariner program: Mariner 7 makes its closest fly-by of Mars (3,524 kilometers).

August 8
The Beatles at 11:30 have photographer Iain Macmillan take their photo on a zebra crossing on Abbey Road.
A fire breaks out in the Bannerman's Castle in the Hudson River; most of the roof collapses and crashes down to the lower levels.

August 9
The Haunted Mansion attraction opens at Disneyland California. Later versions open in Florida, Tokyo and Paris.
Followers of Charles Manson murder Sharon Tate, (who was 8 months pregnant), and her friends: Folgers coffee heiress Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, and Hollywood hairstylist Jay Sebring at the home of Tate and her husband, Roman Polanski, in Los Angeles, California. Also killed is Steven Parent, leaving from a visit to the Polanskis' caretaker. More than 100 stab wounds are found on the victims, except for Parent, who had been shot almost as soon as the Manson Family entered the property.



August 10 – The Manson Family kills Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, wealthy Los Angeles businesspeople.

August 12 – Violence erupts after the Apprentice Boys of Derry march in Derry, Northern Ireland, resulting in a three-day communal riot known as the Battle of the Bogside.

August 13 – Serious border clashes occur between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China.

August 14 – British troops are deployed in Northern Ireland following the three-day Battle of the Bogside.

August 15–August 18 – The Woodstock Festival is held in upstate New York, featuring some of the top rock musicians of the era.

August 17 – Category 5 Hurricane Camille, the most powerful tropical cyclonic system at landfall in history, hits the Mississippi coast, killing 248 people and causing US$1.5 billion in damage (1969 dollars).

August 20 – Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument is established in Florissant, CO, USA

August 21
Donald and Doris Fisher open the first Gap store on Ocean Avenue in San Francisco.
Australian Denis Michael Rohan sets the Al-Aqsa Mosque on fire.
Strong violence on demonstration in Prague and Brno, Czechoslovakia. Military force contra citizens. Prague spring finally beaten.

September 1 – A coup in Libya ousts King Idris, and brings Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to power.

September 2
The first automatic teller machine in the United States is installed in Rockville Centre, New York.
Ho Chi Minh, former president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, dies.



September 5 – Lieutenant William Calley is charged with 6 counts of premeditated murder, for the 1968 My Lai Massacre deaths of 109 Vietnamese civilians in My Lai, Vietnam.

September 9 – Allegheny Airlines Flight 853 DC-9 collides in flight with a Piper PA-28, and crashes near Fairland, Indiana killing all 83 persons in both aircraft.

September 13 – The first-ever episode of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! is broadcast on CBS: "What a Night for a Knight".

September 20 – The very last Warner Bros. cartoon of the original theatrical Looney Tunes series is released: Injun Trouble.

September 22 – San Francisco Giant Willie Mays becomes the first player since Babe Ruth to hit 600 career home runs.

September 22 – September 25 – An Islamic conference in Rabat, Morocco, following the al-Aqsa Mosque fire (August 21), condemns the Israeli claim of ownership of Jerusalem.

September 23
China carries out an underground nuclear bomb test.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (directed by George Roy Hill and starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford) opens to limited release in the U.S.



September 24 – The Chicago Eight trial begins in Chicago, Illinois.

September 25 – The Organisation of the Islamic Conference is founded.

September 26
The Beatles release their Abbey Road album, receiving critical praise and enormous commercial success.
The Brady Bunch is broadcast for the first time on ABC.

September 28 – The Social Democrats and the Free Democrats receive a majority of votes in the German parliamentary elections, and decide to form a common government.

October 1
In Sweden, Olof Palme is elected Labour Party leader, replacing Tage Erlander as prime minister on October 14.
The Beijing Subway begins operation.

October 2 – A 1.2 megaton thermonuclear device is tested at Amchitka Island, Alaska. This test is code-named Project Milrow, the 11th test of the Operation Mandrel 1969–1970 underground nuclear test series. This test is known as a "calibration shot" to test if the island is fit for larger underground nuclear detonations.
October 5
Monty Python's Flying Circus first airs on BBC One.
Sazae-san first airs on Fuji Television.

October 9–October 12 – Days of Rage: In Chicago, the United States National Guard is called in to control demonstrations involving the radical Weathermen, in connection with the "Chicago Eight" Trial.

October 15 – Vietnam War: Hundreds of thousands of people take part in Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam demonstrations across the United States.

October 16 – The "miracle" New York Mets win the World Series, beating the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles 4 games to 1.

October 17
Willard S. Boyle and George Smith invent the CCD at Bell Laboratories (30 years later, this technology is widely used in digital cameras).
Fourteen black athletes are kicked off the University of Wyoming football team for wearing black armbands into their coach's office.

October 21
Willy Brandt becomes Chancellor of West Germany.
General Siad Barre comes to power in Somalia in a coup, 6 days after the assassination of President Abdirashid Ali Shermarke.

October 22
Led Zeppelin release Led Zeppelin II to critical acclaim and commercial success.



October 25
Pink Floyd release their Ummagumma album.

October 29 – The first message is sent over ARPANET, the forerunner of the internet.

October 31 – Wal-Mart incorporates as Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

November 3
Vietnam War: U.S. President Richard M. Nixon addresses the nation on television and radio, asking the "silent majority" to join him in solidarity with the Vietnam War effort, and to support his policies. Vice President Spiro T. Agnew denounces the President's critics as 'an effete corps of impudent snobs' and 'nattering nabobs of negativism'.
Süleyman Demirel of AP forms the new government of Turkey (31st government).

November 9 – A group of American Indians, led by Richard Oakes, seizes Alcatraz Island for 19 months, inspiring a wave of renewed Indian pride and government reform.

November 10 – Sesame Street is broadcast for the first time, on the National Educational Television (NET) network.

November 12 – Vietnam War – My Lai Massacre: Independent investigative journalist Seymour Hersh breaks the My Lai story.

November 14 – Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 12 (Pete Conrad, Richard Gordon, Alan Bean), the second manned mission to the Moon.

November 15
Cold War: The Soviet submarine K-19 collides with the American submarine USS Gato in the Barents Sea.
Vietnam War: In Washington, DC, 250,000–500,000 protesters stage a peaceful demonstration against the war, including a symbolic "March Against Death".
Regular colour television broadcasts begin on BBC1 and ITV in UK.
Dave Thomas opens his first restaurant in a former steakhouse on a cold, snowy Saturday in downtown Columbus, Ohio. He names the chain Wendy's after his 8-year-old daughter Melinda Lou (nicknamed Wendy by her siblings).

November 17 – Cold War: Negotiators from the Soviet Union and the United States meet in Helsinki, to begin the SALT I negotiations aimed at limiting the number of strategic weapons on both sides.

November 19
Apollo program: Apollo 12 astronauts Charles Conrad and Alan Bean land at Oceanus Procellarum ("Ocean of Storms"), becoming the third and fourth humans to walk on the Moon.
Soccer great Pelé scores his 1,000th goal.

November 20
Vietnam War: The Plain Dealer publishes explicit photographs of dead villagers from the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.
Richard Oakes returns with 90 followers and offers to buy Alcatraz for $24 (he leaves the island January 1970).

November 21
U.S. President Richard Nixon and Japanese Premier Eisaku Sato agree in Washington, D.C. to the return of Okinawa to Japanese control in 1972. Under the terms of the agreement, the U.S. retains rights to military bases on the island, but they must be nuclear-free.
The first ARPANET link is established (the progenitor of the global Internet).
The United States Senate votes down the Supreme Court nomination of Clement Haynsworth, the first such rejection since 1930.

November 24 – Apollo program: The Apollo 12 spacecraft splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean, ending the second manned mission to the Moon.

November 25 – John Lennon returns his MBE medal to protest the British government's involvement in the Nigerian Civil War.

December 1 – Vietnam War: The first draft lottery in the United States is held since World War II (on January 4, 1970, the New York Times will run a long article, "Statisticians Charge Draft Lottery Was Not Random").

December 2 – The Boeing 747 jumbo jet makes its first passenger flight. It carries 191 people, most of them reporters and photographers, from Seattle, Washington, to New York City.



December 4 – Black Panther Party members Fred Hampton and Mark Clark are shot dead in their sleep during a raid by 14 Chicago police officers.

December 6 – The Altamont Free Concert is held at the Altamont Speedway in northern California. Hosted by the Rolling Stones, it is an attempt at a "Woodstock West" and is best known for the uproar of violence that occurred. It is viewed by many as the "end of the sixties."

December 12 – The Piazza Fontana bombing in Italy (Strage di Piazza Fontana) takes place.

December 14 – The murder of Diane Maxwell takes place, when the 25-year-old phone operator is found sexually assaulted and killed (the case remains unsolved until 2003).

December 24 – Charles Manson is allowed to defend himself at the Tate-LaBianca murder trial.

December 27 The Liberal Democratic Party wins 47.6% of the votes in the Japanese general election, 1969. Future prime ministers Yoshirō Mori and Tsutomu Hata and future kingmaker Ichiro Ozawa are elected for the first time.

December 28 – The Young Lords take over the First Spanish Methodist Church in East Harlem.

December 30 – The Linwood bank robbery leaves two police officers dead.

[Tiny]

The amazing thing for me reading these articles is that although I was only 5 in !964, I can remember the impotant events quite clearly & they bring my own childhood memories of the time to surface as well.
As the years have progressed up to 1969 so far, me at 10 years old, the experience & memories gets stronger.

The odd thing is back then & even now I find the news quite boring & don't watch or listen to it, yet the major events somehow get in my head whether I want them or not.

Thx Admin for bringing them to us.

[admin]

I cant remember what I did yesterday, but I can remember plenty from when I was a kid. Every telephone number, the rego number of every car we owned , all sorts of useless information

Being a little younger than you , I should start getting some good flashbacks once we hit the 70's.

I have started adding quite a bit more than what the Australian has , such as world events. Cant help myself Each post year is getting longer.

[admin]

1970

We enter the 70's. My favourite decade.

Link to front page showing the Westgate Bridge Disaster


AUSTRALIA entered the 1970s divided. Support for the Vietnam war was waning as the moratorium movement gathered pace, Aborigines protested as the Queen visited to commemorate James Cook’s landing 200 years earlier, and the battle against censorship pitted young against old.

The protest movements that sprang from the 60s became more sophisticated and determined. Left-wing Labor leader Dr Jim Cairns led the Vietnam moratorium movement in Australia, adopting a strong message of non-violence, and was vindicated when more than 100,000 people came together for a peaceful demonstration in Melbourne. Another 100,000 gathered in the other cities.

Cairns led further protests, again with few arrests, as the Labor Party adopted policies to end conscription and bring Australian troops home. The government of John Gorton, sensing the wind, withdrew a battalion from the front and announced it would not be replaced.

Vietnam was not the only battleground as a new generation pushed for urgent social reform in Australia. Few people had heard of the Wave Hill cattle station in the Northern Territory but it was at the centre of an early push for Aboriginal land rights. Indigenous workers on the British-owned station had been on strike over pay and work conditions for four years and in spite of petitions, nationwide campaigning and growing support, the Gorton government in 1970 refused to recognise their claims.

It was to be another five years before Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam poured dirt into the cupped hands of protest leader Vincent Lingiari to symbolise the handing over of land rights. But there were glimmers of hope for indigenous people. Don Dunstan, a champion of land rights, returned to power in South Australia to begin a decade of reform, with land rights high on his agenda.

Susan Peacock (later, Susan, Lady Renouf) arrived on the political stage in a bedroom farce. The then wife of promising young minister for the army, Andrew Peacock, endorsed Sheridan Sheets in advertisements – something seen as not quite fitting, so to speak. Susan said she had consented to do the ads in Melbourne without informing Andrew, who was in Canberra; in retrospect, “a grave error”. He kept his job.



The first Boeing 747 jumbo jet arrived in October in a flight from Los Angeles to Sydney that was 9 and a half hours late. One customs officer remarked: “I’d hate to have two 747s arriving at the same time.”



The mini is dead, long live the midi, The Australian reported on November 14. Christian Dior leading designer Marc Bohan was convinced the shorter dress would not be coming back, declaring: “If Australian women are still wearing it, they are demode.”

Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) declares itself an independent republic

Great Train Robber Ronne Biggs flees Australia for Rio de Janeiro after spending four years in hiding

Aborigines protest against the visit of the Queen, Prince Philip, Princess Anne and Prince Charles commemorating the 200th anniversary of Captain Cook’s arrival at Botany Bay

Four students are shot dead at Kent State University, Ohio, in a demonstration against US involvement in Cambodia

Conservative Edward Heath sweeps Labour from power in the UK

Tullamarine opens



Early homosexual law reform group Camp Inc is formed

President Nasser dies in Cairo and is replaced by Anwar Sadat

Charles de Gaulle dies

Australian Events

17 January – Cyclone Ada hits Central Queensland, killing 14.

21 April – The Hutt River Province Principality is established.

3 May – A new international terminal is opened at Sydney Airport

1 July – Melbourne Airport is officially opened.

15 October – A portion of the West Gate Bridge in Melbourne collapses, killing 35



Pope Paul VI visits Australia.
Elizabeth II and other members of the royal family tour Australia.

Australian Sport

26 September - Carlton defeats Collingwood by 10 points in the VFL Grand Final. In other Australian rules football leagues Clarence defeated New Norfolk in the TFL, Sturt defeated Glenelg in the SANFL and it was South Fremantle defeating Perth in the WANFL.

19 September — The South Sydney Rabbitohs defeated Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles in the NSWRL Grand Final at the Sydney Cricket Ground. Souths captain John Sattler played most of the game with a broken jaw.

26 September – John Farrington wins his second men's national marathon title, clocking 227 in Werribee.

Baghdad Note wins the Melbourne Cup.

Victoria wins the Sheffield Shield.

Buccaneer takes line honours and Pacha wins on handicap in the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race.

The US yacht Intrepid defeats the Australian yacht Gretel II in the America's Cup.

Australia defeats Germany 3-0 in the Federation Cup.

Margaret Court becomes the second woman to win the Grand Slam of tennis.

John Newcombe wins both the singles and doubles championships at Wimbledon.



Johnny Famechon defeats Fighting Harada to retain the WBC featherweight championship.

[admin]

World Events

January 1 – UNIX time begins at 00:00:00 UTC.

January 4 – 1970 Tonghai earthquake: An earthquake of 7.7 Richter magnitude scale in Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, kills at least 15,621.

January 5 – The first episode of United States soap opera All My Children is broadcast on the ABC television network.

January 12 – Biafra capitulates, ending the Nigerian civil war.

January 14 – Diana Ross and The Supremes perform their farewell live concert together at the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas. Ross's replacement, Jean Terrell, is introduced onstage at the end of the last show.

January 15 – After a 32-month fight for independence from Nigeria, Biafran forces under Philip Effiong formally surrender to General Yakubu Gowon.

January 20 – The Greater London Council announces its plans for the Thames Barrier at Woolwich to prevent flooding (the barrier opens in 1981).

January 21
Five lifeboatmen are killed when a Fraserburgh, Scotland vessel, The Duchess of Kent, capsizes.
Pan American Airways offers the first commercially scheduled 747 service from John F. Kennedy International Airport to London Heathrow Airport.

January 23
Joseph Fielding Smith becomes the 10th President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

February 1 – A train collision near Buenos Aires, Argentina kills 236.

February 10 – An avalanche at Val d'Isère, France kills 39 tourists.

February 11 – Ōsumi, Japan's first satellite, is launched on a Lambda-4 rocket.

February 13 – Black Sabbath's eponymous debut album is released; often regarded as the first true heavy metal album.



February 14 – The iconic live album The Who: Live at Leeds is recorded.

February 17
MacDonald family massacre: Jeffrey R. MacDonald kills his wife and children at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, claiming that drugged-out "hippies" did it.


February 11: Ōsumi (satellite) launched
Author David Irving is ordered to pay £40,000 libel damages to Capt. John Broome over his book The Destruction of Convoy PQ17.

February 18 – A jury finds the Chicago Seven defendants not guilty of conspiring to incite a riot, in charges stemming from the violence at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Five of the defendants are found guilty on the lesser charge of crossing state lines to incite a riot.

February 19 – Poseidon bubble: shares in Australian nickel mining company Poseidon NL, which stood at $0.80 in September 1969, peak at around $280 before the speculative bubble bursts.

February 21 – Construction begins on the Boğaziçi Bridge crossing the Bosphorus in Istanbul.

February 22 – Guyana becomes a Republic within the Commonwealth of Nations.

February 26 – Chevrolet releases the second generation Camaro.



March 1 – Rhodesia severs its last tie with the United Kingdom, declaring itself a republic.

March 5 – The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty goes into effect, after ratification by 56 nations.

March 6
A bomb being constructed by members of the Weathermen and meant to be planted at a military dance in New Jersey, explodes, killing 3 members of the organization.
Süleyman Demirel of AP forms the new government of Turkey (32nd government).

March 7
Citroën introduces the SM at the Geneva Auto Salon.
A Solar Eclipse passes along the Atlantic coast region. Totality is visible across southern Mexico and across the southeast coast of the United States, Nantucket, and Nova Scotia.

March 12 – Teenagers in the United Kingdom vote for the first time, in a by-election in Bridgwater.

March 15 – The Expo '70 World's Fair opens in Suita, Osaka, Japan.



March 16 – The complete New English Bible is published.

March 17 – My Lai massacre: The United States Army charges 14 officers with suppressing information related to the incident.

March 18
General Lon Nol ousts Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia.
United States Postal Service workers in New York City go on strike; the strike spreads to the state of California and the cities of Akron, Ohio, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Chicago, Boston, and Denver, Colorado; 210,000 out of 750,000 U.S. postal employees walk out. President Nixon assigns military units to New York City post offices. The strike lasts 2 weeks.

March 20 – The Agency for Cultural and Technical Co-operation (ACCT) (Agence de Coopération Culturelle et Technique) is founded.

March 21
The first Earth Day proclamation is issued by San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto.
"All Kinds of Everything", sung by Dana (music and text by Derry Lindsay and Jackie Smith), wins the Eurovision Song Contest 1970 for Ireland.

March 31
NASA's Explorer 1, the first American satellite and Explorer program spacecraft, reenters Earth's atmosphere after 12 years in orbit.
Japan Airlines Flight 351, carrying 131 passengers and 7 crew from Tokyo to Fukuoka, is hijacked by Japanese Red Army members. All passengers are eventually freed.

April 1
American President Richard Nixon signs the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act into law, banning cigarette television advertisements in the United States from January 1, 1971.
American Motors Corporation introduces the Gremlin.



The 1970 United States Census begins. There are 203,392,031 United States residents on this day.

April 6 – BBC Radio 4 broadcasts the first edition of PM.

April 8
A huge gas explosion at a subway construction site in Osaka, Japan kills 79 and injures over 400.
Israeli Air Force F-4 Phantom II fighter bombers kill 47 Egyptian school children at an elementary school in what is known as Bahr el-Baqar massacre. The single-floor school is hit by 5 bombs and 2 air-to-ground missiles.

April 10
In a press release written in mock-interview style, that is included in promotional copies of his first solo album, Paul McCartney announces that he has left the Beatles.
The Elton John album is released, the second album by Elton John, but the first to chart and the first to be released in America.

April 11
An avalanche at a tuberculosis sanatorium in the French Alps kills 74, mostly young boys.
Apollo program: Apollo 13 (Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, Jack Swigert) is launched toward the Moon.
Chelsea and Leeds united draw 2-2 in the 1970 FA cup final it went to at replay at Old Trafford.

April 13 – An oxygen tank in the Apollo 13 spacecraft explodes, forcing the crew to abort the mission and return in 4 days.

April 16
Rev. Ian Paisley wins a by-election to gain a seat in the House of Commons of Northern Ireland.
The National Westminster Bank begins trading in the United Kingdom.

April 17 – Apollo program: Apollo 13 splashes down safely in the Pacific.



April 21 – The Hutt River Province Principality secedes from Australia.

April 22 – The first Earth Day is celebrated in the U.S.

April 24 – China's first satellite (Dong Fang Hong 1) is launched into orbit using a Long March-1 Rocket (CZ-1).

April 26 – The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is founded.

April 29 – The U.S. invades Cambodia to hunt out the Viet Cong; widespread, large antiwar protests occur in the U.S.

May 1 – Demonstrations against the trial of the New Haven Nine, Bobby Seale, and Ericka Huggins draw 12,000. President Richard Nixon orders U.S. forces to cross into neutral Cambodia, threatening to widen the Vietnam War, sparking nationwide riots and leading to the Kent State Shootings.

May 4 – Kent State shootings: Four students at Kent State University in Ohio are killed and 9 wounded by Ohio National Guardsmen, at a protest against the incursion into Cambodia.



May 6.
Arms Crisis in the Republic of Ireland: Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney are dismissed as members of the Irish Government, for accusations of their involvement in a plot to import arms for use by the Provisional IRA in Northern Ireland.
Feyenoord wins the European Cup after a 2–1 win over Celtic.

May 8
Hard Hat riot: Unionized construction workers attack about 1,000 students and others protesting the Kent State shootings near the intersection of Wall Street and Broad Street and at New York City Hall.



The Beatles release their 12th and final album, Let It Be.
The New York Knicks win their first NBA championship, defeating the Los Angeles Lakers 113-99 in Game 7 of the world championship series at Madison Square Garden.

May 9 – In Washington, D.C., 100,000 people demonstrate against the Vietnam War.

May 10 – The Boston Bruins win their first Stanley Cup since 1941 when Bobby Orr scores a goal 40 seconds into overtime for a 4-3 victory which completes a four-game sweep of the St. Louis Blues.

May 11
Henry Marrow is killed in an alleged hate crime in Oxford, North Carolina.
Lubbock Tornado: An F5 tornado hits downtown Lubbock, Texas, the first to hit a downtown district of a major city since Topeka, Kansas in 1966; 28 are killed.

May 12 – The 1976 Winter Olympics are awarded to Denver, Colorado but it is later rejected in 1972.

May 14
Ulrike Meinhof helps Andreas Baader escape and create the Red Army Faction which exists until 1998.
In the second day of violent demonstrations at Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi, state law enforcement officers fire into the demonstrators, killing 2 and injuring 12.

May 17 – Thor Heyerdahl sets sail from Morocco on the papyrus boat Ra II, to sail the Atlantic Ocean.

May 23 – A fire occurs in the Britannia Bridge over the Menai Strait near Bangor, Caernarfonshire, Wales, contributing to its partial destruction and amounting to approximately £1,000,000 worth of fire damage.

May 24 – The scientific drilling of the Kola Superdeep Borehole begins in the USSR.

May 26 – The Soviet Tupolev Tu-144 becomes the first commercial transport to exceed Mach 2.



May 27 – A British expedition climbs the south face of Annapurna I.

May 31
The 1970 Ancash earthquake causes a landslide that buries the town of Yungay, Peru; more than 47,000 people are killed.
The 1970 FIFA World Cup is inaugurated in Mexico.

June 1 – Soyuz 9, a two-man spacecraft, is launched in the Soviet Union.

June 2
New Zealander racing driver and team founder Bruce McLaren is killed testing a new M8D at Goodwood.
Norway announces it has rich oil deposits off its North Sea coast.

June 4 – Tonga gains independence from the United Kingdom.

June 6 – A D-Day celebration is held in Washington, D.C..

June 7 – The Who become the first act to perform rock music (their rock opera, Tommy) at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York.



June 8 – A coup in Argentina brings a new junta of service chiefs; on June 18, Roberto M. Levingston becomes President.

June 11 – The United States gets its first female generals, Anna Mae Hays and Elizabeth P. Hoisington.

June 12 – N.D.F.L.O.A.G. guerrillas attack military garrisons at Izki and Nizwa in Oman.

June 18 – United Kingdom general election, 1970: the Conservative Party wins and Edward Heath becomes Prime Minister, ousting the Labour government of Harold Wilson after nearly six years in power. The election result is something of a surprise, as most of the opinion polls had predicted a third successive Labour win.

June 21
Brazil defeats Italy 4–1 to win the 1970 FIFA World Cup.
Penn Central declares Section 77 bankruptcy, the largest ever US corporate bankruptcy up to this date.

June 24 – The United States Senate repeals the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 1964.

June 28 – U.S. ground troops withdraw from Cambodia.

June 30 – Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati opens.



July 1
Colorado State College changes its name to University of Northern Colorado.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is subordinated to Public Health Service.

July 3 – The French Army detonates a 914 kiloton thermonuclear device in the Mururoa Atoll. It is their fourth and largest nuclear test.

July 4
A chartered Dan-Air De Havilland Comet crashes into the mountains north of Barcelona; at least 112 people are killed.
Bob Hope and other entertainers gather in Washington, D.C. for Honor America Day, a nonpartisan holiday event.
Longtime radio music countdown show American Top 40 debuts on 5 U.S. stations with Casey Kasem as host.

July 5 – Air Canada Flight 621 crashes at Toronto International Airport, Toronto, Ontario; all 109 passengers and crew are killed.

July 11 – The first tunnel under the Pyrenees links the towns of Aragnouet (France) and Bielsa (Spain).

July 12 – Thor Heyerdahl's papyrus boat Ra II arrives in Barbados.

July 16 – Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh opens.

July 21 – The Aswan High Dam in Egypt is completed.

July 23
Said bin Taimur, Sultan of Muscat and Oman, is deposed in a palace coup by his son, Qaboos.
Two CS gas canisters are thrown into the chamber of the British House of Commons.

July 30 – Damages totalling £485,528 are awarded to 28 Thalidomide victims.

July 31 – NBC anchor Chet Huntley retires from full-time broadcasting.

August 7 – Harold Haley, Marin County Superior Court Judge, is taken hostage and murdered, in an effort to free George Jackson from police custody.

August 17–August 18 – The U.S. sinks 418 containers of nerve gas into the Gulf Stream near the Bahamas.

August 17 – Venera program: Venera 7 is launched toward Venus. It later becomes the first spacecraft to successfully transmit data from the surface of another planet.

August 26 – The Women's Strike for Equality takes place down Fifth Avenue in New York City.

August 26–August 30 – The Isle of Wight Festival 1970 takes place on East Afton Farm off the coast of England. Some 600,000 people attend the largest rock festival of all time. Artists include Jimi Hendrix, The Who, The Doors, Chicago, Richie Havens, John Sebastian, Joan Baez, Ten Years After, Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Jethro Tull.

August 29 – Rubén Salazar is shot and killed during a rally in East Los Angeles.

September 1 – An assassination attempt against King Hussein of Jordan precipitates the Black September crisis.

September 3 – September 6 – Israeli forces fight Palestinian guerillas in southern Lebanon.

September 5 – Vietnam War – Operation Jefferson Glenn: The United States 101st Airborne Division and the South Vietnamese 1st Infantry Division initiate a new operation in Thua Thien Province (the operation ends in October 1971).

September 6
Formula One driver Jochen Rindt is killed in qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix. He becomes World Driving Champion anyhow, first to earn the honor posthumously.
Dawson's Field hijackings, The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacks 4 passenger aircraft from Pan Am, TWA and Swissair on flights to New York from Brussels, Frankfurt and Zürich.

September 7
An anti-war rally is held at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, attended by John Kerry, Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland.
Fighting breaks out between Arab guerillas and government forces in Amman, Jordan.

September 8–September 10 – The Jordanian government and Palestinian guerillas make repeated unsuccessful truces.

September 9
Guinea recognizes East Germany.
Elvis Presley begins his first concert tour since 1958 in Phoenix, Arizona, at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum.



September 10
Cambodian government forces break the siege of Kompong Tho after 3 months.
The Chevrolet Vega is introduced.

September 11 – The Ford Pinto is introduced.

September 11-September 13 – The covert incursion of Operation Tailwind is instigated by the American forces in southeast Laos.

September 13 – The first New York City Marathon begins.

September 15 – King Hussein of Jordan forms a military government with Muhammad Daoud as the prime minister.

September 18
Jimi Hendrix dies in London of drug related complications.

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Black Sabbath releases its second album, Paranoid

September 19 The Mary Tyler Moore Show, featuring its star as an unmarried professional woman, debuts on CBS;

September 20
Syrian armored forces cross the Jordanian border.
Luna 16 lands on the Moon and lifts off the next day with samples. It lands on Earth September 24.

September 21
Palestinian armored forces reinforce Palestinian guerillas in Irbidi, Jordan.
Monday Night Football debuts on ABC; the Cleveland Browns defeat the New York Jets 31-21 in front of more than 85,000 fans at Cleveland Stadium.

September 22
The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) is founded.
Tunku Abdul Rahman resigns as prime minister of Malaysia, and is succeeded by his deputy Tun Abdul Razak.

September 23 – The first women's only tennis tournament begins in Houston, known as the Houston Women's Invitation.

September 25 – The Partridge Family debuts on ABC.



September 26 – The Laguna Fire starts in San Diego County, burning 175,425 acres (709.92 km2).

September 27 – Richard Nixon begins a tour of Europe, visiting Italy, Yugoslavia, Spain, the United Kingdom and Ireland.

September 28 – Gamal Abdal Nasser dies; Vice President Anwar Sadat is named temporary president of Egypt.

September 29
The U.S. Congress gives President Richard Nixon authority to sell arms to Israel.
In Berlin, Baader-Meinhof Gang members rob 3 banks, with loot totaling over DM200,000.

October 2 – Under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) the Environmental Science Services Administration (ESSA) Corps, one of seven federal uniformed services of the United States, is renamed to NOAA Commissioned Officer Corps under the soon to be formed National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

October 2 – The Wichita State University football team's "Gold" plane crashes in Colorado, killing most of the players. They were on their way (along with administrators and fans) to a game with Utah State University.

October 3
In Lebanon, the government of Prime Minister Rashid Karami resigns.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is formed.
The Weather Bureau is renamed to National Weather Service, as part of NOAA.

October 4
Jochen Rindt becomes Formula One World Driving Champion, first to earn the honor posthumously.
In Bolivia, Army Commander General Rogelio Miranda and a group of officers rebel and demand the resignation of President Alfredo Ovando Candía, who fires him.
National Educational Television ends operations, being succeeded by PBS.
In Los Angeles, Rock and blues singer Janis Joplin dies in her hotel room, from an overdose of heroin.



October 5
U.S. President Richard Nixon's European tour ends.
The Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) kidnaps James Cross in Montreal and demands release of all its imprisoned members. The next day the Canadian government announces it will not meet the demand, beginning Quebec's October Crisis.
The Public Broadcasting Service begins broadcasting.

October 6
Bolivian President Alfredo Ovando Candía resigns; General Rogelio Miranda takes over but resigns soon after.
French President Georges Pompidou visits the Soviet Union.

October 7 – General Juan José Torres becomes the new President of Bolivia.

October 8
The U.S. Foreign Office announces that renewal of arms sales to Pakistan.
Soviet author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Vietnam War: In Paris, a Communist delegation rejects U.S. President Richard Nixon's October 7 peace proposal as "a maneuver to deceive world opinion."

October 9 – The Khmer Republic is proclaimed in Cambodia which begins the Civil War with the Khmer Rouge.

October 10
Fiji becomes independent.
October Crisis: In Montreal, Quebec, a national crisis hits Canada when Quebec Minister of Labour Pierre Laporte becomes the second statesman kidnapped by members of the FLQ terrorist group.

October 11 – Eleven French soldiers are killed in a shootout with rebels in Chad.

October 12 – Vietnam War: U.S. President Richard Nixon announces that the United States will withdraw 40,000 more troops before Christmas.

October 13
Canada and the People's Republic of China establish diplomatic relations.
Saeb Salam forms a government in Lebanon.

October 14 – A Chinese nuclear test is conducted in Lop Nor.

October 15
In Egypt, a referendum supports Anwar Sadat 90.04%.
A section of the new West Gate Bridge in Melbourne collapses into the river below, killing 35 construction workers.



The Baltimore Orioles defeat the Cincinnati Reds in Game 5 of the World Series, 9–3, to win the series 4 games to 1 for their 2nd World Championship.
The domestic Soviet Aeroflot Flight 244 is hijacked and diverted to Turkey.

October 16 – October Crisis: The Canadian government declares a state of emergency and outlaws the Quebec Liberation Front.

October 17
October Crisis: Pierre Laporte is found murdered in south Montreal.
A cholera epidemic breaks out in Istanbul.
Anwar Sadat officially becomes President of Egypt.

October 20
The Soviet Union launches the Zond 8 lunar probe.
Egyptian president Anwar Sadat names Mahmoud Fawzi as his prime minister.

October 21 – A U.S. Air Force plane makes an emergency landing near Leninakan, Soviet Union. The Soviets release the American officers, including 2 generals, November 10.

October 22 – Chilean army commander René Schneider is shot in Santiago; the government declares a state of emergency. Schneider dies October 25.

October 24 – Salvador Allende is elected President of Chile.

October 25 – The wreck of the Confederate submarine Hunley is found off Charleston, South Carolina, by pioneer underwater archaeologist, Dr. E. Lee Spence,[2] then just 22 years old. Hunley was the first submarine in history to sink a ship in warfare.



October 26 – Garry Trudeau's comic strip Doonesbury debuts in approximately two dozen newspapers in the United States.

October 28
In Jordan, the government of Ahmed Toukan resigns; the next prime minister is Wasfi Al-Tal.
A cholera outbreak in eastern Slovakia causes Hungary to close its border with Czechoslovakia.
Gary Gabelich drives the rocket-powered Blue Flame to an official land speed record at 622.407 mph (1,001.667 km/h)[3] on the dry lake bed of the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. The record, the first above 1 000 km/h, stands for nearly 13 years.



October 30 – In Vietnam, the worst monsoon to hit the area in 6 years causes large floods, kills 293, leaves 200,000 homeless and virtually halts the Vietnam War.

November 1 – Club Cinq-Sept fire in Saint-Laurent-du-Pont, France, kills 146.

November 3
Democrats sweep the U.S. Congressional midterm elections; Ronald Reagan is reelected governor of California; Jimmy Carter is elected governor of Georgia.
Salvador Allende becomes president of Chile.

November 4
Vietnam War – Vietnamization: The United States turns control of the air base in the Mekong Delta to South Vietnam.
Social workers in Los Angeles, California take custody of Genie, a girl who had been kept in solitary confinement since her birth.

November 5 – Vietnam War: The United States Military Assistance Command in Vietnam reports the lowest weekly American soldier death toll in 5 years (24 soldiers die that week, which is the fifth consecutive week the death toll is below 50; 431 are reported wounded that week, however).

November 8
Egypt, Libya and Sudan announce their intentions to form a federation.
Tom Dempsey, who was born with a deformed right foot and right hand, sets a National Football League record by kicking a 63-yard field goal to lift the New Orleans Saints to a 19-17 victory over the Detroit Lions at Tulane Stadium.



The British comedy television series The Goodies starring Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie debuts on BBC 2



November 9
The Soviet Union launches Luna 17.
Vietnam War: The Supreme Court of the United States votes 6–3 not to hear a case by the state of Massachusetts, about the constitutionality of a state law granting Massachusetts residents the right to refuse military service in an undeclared war.
Charles de Gaulle dies and 63 heads of state attend his funeral.



November 10 – Vietnam War – Vietnamization: For the first time in 5 years, an entire week ends with no reports of United States combat fatalities in Southeast Asia.

November 12 – Soviet author Andrei Amalrik is sentenced to 3 years for 'anti-Soviet' writings.

November 13
Hafez al-Assad comes to power in Syria, following a military coup within the Ba'ath party.
1970 Bhola cyclone: A 120-mph (193 km/h) tropical cyclone hits the densely populated Ganges Delta region of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), killing an estimated 500,000 people (considered the 20th century's worst cyclone disaster). It gives rise to the temporary island of New Moore / South Talpatti.

November 14
Southern Airlines Flight 932 crashes in Wayne County, West Virginia; all 75 on board, including 37 players and 5 coaches from the Marshall University football team, are killed.
The Soviet Union enters the ICAO, making Russian the fourth official language of the organization.

November 16 – The Lockheed L-1011 Tristar flies for the first time.



November 17
Vietnam War: Lieutenant William Calley goes on trial for the My Lai massacre.
Luna program: The Soviet Union lands Lunokhod 1 on Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains) on the Moon. This is the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world, and is released by the orbiting Luna 17 spacecraft.

November 18
U.S. President Richard Nixon asks the U.S. Congress for US$155 million in supplemental aid for the Cambodian government (US $85 million is for military assistance to prevent the overthrow of the government of Premier Lon Nol by the Khmer Rouge and North Vietnam).
The United Nations Security Council demands that no government recognize Rhodesia.

November 19 – European Economic Community prime ministers meet in Munich.

November 21
Syrian Prime Minister Hafez al-Assad forms a new government but retains the post of defense minister.
In Ethiopia, the Eritrean Liberation Front kills an Ethiopian general.
Vietnam War – Operation Ivory Coast: A joint Air Force and Army team raids the Son Tay prison camp in an attempt to free American POWs thought to be held there (no Americans are killed, but the prisoners have already moved to another camp; all U.S. POWs are moved to a handful of central prison complexes as a result of this raid).

November 22 – Guinean president Sekou Toure accuses Portugal of an attack when hundreds of mercenaries land near the capital Conakry.

November 23–24 – The Guinean army repels the landing attempts.

November 23 – Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! makes its network TV debut, when CBS telecasts the 1955 film version as a 3-hour Thanksgiving special.

November 25–November 29 – A U.N. delegation arrives to investigate the Guinea situation.

November 25 – In Tokyo, author and Tatenokai militia leader Yukio Mishima and his followers take over the headquarters of the Japan Self-Defense Forces in an attempted coup d'état. After Mishima's speech fails to sway public opinion towards his right-wing political beliefs, including restoration of the powers of the Emperor, he commits seppuku (public ritual suicide).



November 26
East Pakistan leader Sheik Mujibur Rahman accuses the central government of negligence in catastrophe relief.
Pope Paul VI begins an Asian tour.

November 27 – Bolivian artist Benjamin Mendoza tries to assassinate Pope Paul VI during his visit in Manila.

November 30 – British Caledonian Airways Ltd. (BCal) is formed.

December 1
The Italian House of Representatives accepts the new divorce law.
Ethiopia recognizes the People's Republic of China.
The Basque ETA kidnaps West German Eugen Beihl in San Sebastián.
Luis Echeverría becomes president of Mexico.

December 2 – The United States Environmental Protection Agency is established.

December 3 – October Crisis: In Montreal, Quebec, kidnapped British Trade Commissioner James Cross is released by the Front de libération du Québec terrorist group after being held hostage for 60 days. Police negotiate his release and in return the Government of Canada grants 5 terrorists from the FLQ's Chenier Cell their request for safe passage to Cuba.

December 3 – Burgos Trial: In Burgos, Spain, the trial of 16 Basque terrorism suspects begins.

December 4
The Spanish government declares a 3-month martial law in the Basque county of Guipuzco, over strikes and demonstrations.
The U.N. announces that Portuguese navy and army units were responsible for the attempted invasion of Guinea.

December 5
The Asian and Australian tour of Pope Paul VI ends.



Fluminense wins the Brazil Football Championship.

December 7
Giovanni Enrico Bucher, the Swiss ambassador to Brazil, is kidnapped in Rio de Janeiro; kidnappers demand the release of 70 political prisoners.
The U.N. General Assembly supports the isolation of South Africa for its apartheid policies.
During his visit to the Polish capital, German Chancellor Willy Brandt goes down on his knees in front of a monument to the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto, which will become known as the Warschauer Kniefall (German for "Warsaw Genuflection").

December 12 – A landslide in western Colombia leaves 200 dead.

December 13 – The government of Poland announces food price increases. Riots and looting lead to a bloody confrontation between the rioters and the government on December 15, and martial law December 17–22.

December 15
The USSR's Venera 7 becomes the first spacecraft to land successfully on Venus and transmit data back to Earth.
The South Korean ferry Namyong Ho capsizes off Korean Strait; 308 people are killed.

December 16 – The Ethiopian government declares a state of emergency in the county of Eritrea over the activities of the Eritrean Liberation Front.

December 20
General Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party, Władysław Gomułka, resigns; Edward Gierek replaces him.
An Egyptian delegation leaves for Moscow to ask for economic and military aid.

December 21 – The Grumman F-14 Tomcat makes its first flight.



December 22
The Libyan Revolutionary Council declares that it will nationalize all foreign banks in the country.
Franz Stangl, the ex-commander of Treblinka, is sentenced to life imprisonment.

December 23
The Polish government freezes food prices for 2 years.
The Bolivian government releases Régis Debray.
The North Tower of the World Trade Center is topped out at 1,368 feet (417 m), making it the tallest building in the world.
Law 70-001 is enacted in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, amending article 4 of the constitution and making the country a single-party state.

December 25 – The ETA releases Eugen Beihl.

December 27 – India's president declares new elections.

December 28
Burgos Trial: Three Basques are sentenced to death (3 twice), others sentenced to 12 to 62 years, and one is released.
The suspected killers of Pierre Laporte, Jacques and Paul Rose and Francis Sunard, are arrested near Montreal.

December 29 – U.S. President Richard Nixon signs into law the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

December 30
In Viscaya, Spain, Basque county, 15,000 go on strike to protest the Burgos trial death sentences.
Francisco Franco commutes the death sentences of the Burgos Trial defendants to 30 years in prison.

December 31 – Paul McCartney sues in Great Britain to dissolve the Beatles' legal partnership.