The
Arabic language daily newspaper "
Al-Arab", published in
London, was introduced by entrepreneur Ahmed el-Houni, who had formerly been the Minister of Defense for Libya.[1]
Nintendo, founded in 1889 as a manufacturer of
playing cards and which introduced a line of electronic toys in 1969, debuted its first
home video game console, the
Color TV-Game (カラー テレビゲーム or Karā Terebi-Gēmu).[2] On June 8, a week after Color TV-Game 6 was released, Nintendo released Color TV-Game 15.[3]
Belgium's prime minister
Leo Tindemans announced that he had formed a new government. He resigned three hours later after a dispute between
French speaking and
Flemish speaking members of his party.
Born: Zachary Quinto, American TV and film actor known for portraying Sylar on the series Heroes and for Spock in the rebooted 2009 Star Trek film and its sequels; in
Pittsburgh
Died:
Stephen Boyd (stage name for William Millar), 45, Northern Irish film actor, Golden Globe winner for best supporting actor for his role in Ben Hur, died of a heart attack in the U.S. while playing golf in
Northridge, California.[6]
Fred Young (stage name for Njo Tiong Gie), 76, Indonesian film director
June 3, 1977 (Friday)
Elections were held in Morocco for 176 of the 264 seats of the
Majlis, the lower house of
Moroccan Parliament. The other 88 were indirectly elected, with 48 by local government councils, and 40 others from professional colleges. A total of 1,022 candidates ran for office; independent candidates won 81 seats (as well as 60 picked indirectly), while the
Istiqlal Party won 46 and the Constitutional and Democratic Popular Movement (CDPM) won 29.[7][8]
The United States and Cuba announced that they would begin diplomatic relations for the first time since 1961, with the exchange of diplomats. The Cuban government followed by releasing 10 Americans who had been incarcerated in Cuban jails.[9]
The United Kingdom deported former American CIA official
Philip Agee, who had revealed the names of CIA agents, barring him from re-entry to the country after he had traveled to the Netherlands.[10]
Vincent van Gogh's painting Poppy Flowers (Stilleven met viscaria), worth an estimated U.S.$55,000,000, was stolen from
Cairo's
Khalil Museum in
Egypt. Recovered 10 years later, the painting would be stolen again in 2010 and has not been seen since then.
A court in
Cyprus dismissed murder charges against the two members of the terrorist group, EOKA-B, Ioannis Ktimatias and Nepotolemos Leftis. The two had been indicted for the 1974 assassination of U.S. Ambassador
Rodger Davies and a Greek Cypriot secretary to the ambassador, Antoinette Varnavas.[12] Ktimatias and Leftis were found guilty of the lesser offense of illegal use of firearms and rioting, with Ktimatias getting a seven-year sentence and Leftis five years.[13]
Marvin Mandel, Governor of the U.S. state of Maryland, stepped aside and appointed Lieutenant Governor
Blair Lee III as ""Acting Chief Executive", after Mandel was indicted along with five co-defendants of the crimes of mail fraud and racketeering.[14] After being convicted, Mandel would be sentenced to the federal prison at
Eglin Air Force Base in
Florida. Mandel would rescind Lee's powers on January 15, 1979, after his conviction was overturned on appeal, and serve the remaining two days of his elected term.[15]
Died: František Michl, 75, Czech artist who had been incarcerated by the Nazi German government for being anti-fascist, and by the Czechoslovakian government for being anti-Communist.
June 5, 1977 (Sunday)
Meacham and René
A bloodless
coup overthrew the government of President
James Mancham while he was out of the country, and installed
France-Albert René as President of the
Seychelles. Mancham was in the UK at the time, attending the British Commonwealth meeting.[16]
A week of celebrations of the
Silver Jubilee of Elizabeth II began with the Queen lighting the fuse to a 30 feet (9.1 m) high
bonfire in a ceremony before a crowd of 300,000 at
Windsor Great Park. The lighting began the first of a network of 103 bonfires, lit consecutively across the island.[19]
Singer
Elvis Presley released his last recording, "
Way Down", which would reach number one on the Billboard Country Music chart on the week before he died, and #31 on the Billboard Hot 100 ten days before his August 16 death.
The U.S. and the
Republic of Congo agreed to resume diplomatic relations, 12 years after they had closed their embassies. the announcement came from Congo's Foreign Minister, Theophile Obenga, and U.S. Undersecretary of State William E. Schaufele Jr.[20]
After a campaign by singer
Anita Bryant, voters in a referendum in
Miami-Dade County, Florida repealed ordinance 77-4 of the
Dade County Commission that had outlawed discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in employment, housing and public services.[21] The ordinance had been passed on January 18.[22] Bryant was able to persuade almost 70% of voters that protection of gay rights would be a threat to the community as part of her "
Save the Children campaign, with 202,319 for repeal and 89,562 against it.
Elections were held for one-third of the members of the Turkish Senate, with 50 of the 150 seats to be filled.[24]
Convicted kidnapper
Ted Bundy, on trial in Colorado for the 1975 murder of Caryn Campbell, escaped from the Pitkin County Courthouse in
Aspen, Colorado.[25] He would be recaptured three days later, but would escape from another Colorado jail on December 30.
Born: Donovan Ricketts, Jamaican footballer with 100 appearances as goalkeeper for the Jamaica national team; in
Montego Bay[26]
June 8, 1977 (Wednesday)
Plans for a conversion of U.S. roadway signs to the
metric system were canceled. Director
William M. Cox of the
Federal Highway Administration informed Iowa Congressman
Charles E. Grassley that regulations published on April 27 for
public notice and comment had received enough negative comment and protest to merit withdrawing the proposal.[27] Cox explained later that "More than 5,000 comments were received, and about 98% of them were negative."[28]
The daily
Spanish newspaper for a
Basque audience published its first issue.[30] The paper, published by Editorial Iparraguirre, had some articles written in the
Basque language as well. It would celebrate its 45th anniversary in 2022.
Former U.S. President
Gerald R. Ford hit a
hole-in-one while playing golf,[31] the year after losing the 1976 presidential election. Ford, who was participating in the pro-am
Danny Thomas Memphis Golf Classic for charity, was only the second American president to accomplish the feat.[32] The other one was
Richard M. Nixon, who hit a hole-in-one on September 4, 1961, one year after losing the 1960 presidential election.[32]
Taha Carim, the Turkish ambassador to Vatican City and envoy to the Roman Catholic Church, was shot to death by two Armenian Turks in retaliation for the
Armenian genocide carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1917.[34]
A fire killed 42 people in a
nightclub in
Abidjan in the African nation of
Côte d'Ivoire. An estimated 250 people had been in Le Pacha when the fire broke out. Most of the dead were foreign tourists from Europe and from Lebanon.[35]
James Earl Ray, convicted assassin of
Martin Luther King Jr., escaped from the
Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in
Petros, Tennessee, where he was in the ninth year of a 99-year prison sentence.[36] He and the other escapees would be recaptured on June 13.[37] Ray then had his sentence extended by three years, from 2068 to 2071.[38] He would die in 1998, 30 years and 19 days after Dr. King's murder.
In the Netherlands, the
BBE, the Dutch
special forces team, rescued all but two of 51 train passengers who had been
taken hostage by nine South Moluccan terrorists on May 23, and the remaining four hostages at the Bovensmilde elementary school.[40] At 5:00 in the morning, six F-104 Starfighter jets of the
Royal Netherlands Air Force flew at low altitude over the train, using the deafening noise to disorient the terrorists, after which the BBE commandos fired rifles and machine guns at the areas on the train where the hijackers were known to be staying. Six hijackers and two hostages were killed.
The first
Victoria's Secret women's lingerie store was opened by its founding couple,
Roy Raymond and his wife Gaye Redmond, opening at the
Stanford Shopping Center in
Palo Alto, California. From an $80,000 investment, the Raymonds' business would earn $500,000 in its first year and expand with a mail order catalog and additional stores in
San Francisco in 1978. In 1982, the Raymonds would sell the chain to
Leslie Wexner for one million dollars.[42]
A
cylcone killed 105 people in the monarchy of
Oman as it swept over
Masirah Island and delivered sustained winds of up to 104 miles per hour (167 km/h), with gusts as high as 140 miles per hour (230 km/h). The storm wrecked 95% of the buildings on the island and left 2,000 people homeless.[44]
Three
Girl Scouts, aged 8, 9, and 10,
were murdered while camping at Camp Scott, located in
Mayes County, Oklahoma.[45] Gene Leroy Hart, who had escaped from prison, was arrested, but would be acquitted on March 30, 1979. Returned to prison to serve out his sentence, he would die of a heart attack three months later on June 4.
Cleanup began of the
Enewetak Atoll (in the U.S.
Marshall Islands territory) after years of American nuclear weapons testing on the South Pacific group of 40 islands. A group of 222 troops from the U.S. Army's 84th Engineers Battalion was landed on the island of Lojwa, along with earth-moving equipment and concrete mix.[46]
Died:
Tom C. Clark, 77, former Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, 1949–1967, and U.S. Attorney General, 1945—1949 [47]
Matthew Garber, 21, English child actor known for having portrayed Michael Banks in the 1964 film Mary Poppins died of pancreatitis after having contracted hepatitis.
June 14, 1977 (Tuesday)
Arnold Miller defeated two other candidates, Lee Roy Patterson and Harry Patrick, to win re-election to a second five-year term as president of the
United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) labor union, which had 277,000 members at the time.[48]
Died:
Alan Reed (stage name for Herbert Bergman), 69, American actor whose most famous role was as the voice of
Fred Flintstone "Alan Reed Dies; Radio Straight Man, Voice of Fred Flintstone", Indianapolis Star, June 16, 1977, p. 92
Alex Phillips, 76, stage name for Alexander Pelepiock, Canadian-born Mexican cinematographer
Aleko Lilius, 87, Russian-born Swedish journalist and adventurer known for his 1931 book I Sailed with Chinese Pirates
Nikolai Podgorny was removed from his job as the nominal head of state of the Soviet Union. He was replaced as
President of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet by the de facto leader of the USSR, Communist Party General Secretary
Leonid Brezhnev, who had held the office from 1960 to 1964 prior to becoming the leader of the Party.[50] Having served as
President of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR since 1965, and at one time part of the
troika of CPSU General Secretary
Leonid Brezhnev, Premier
Alexei Kosygin and himself. He had been removed from the Communist Party Politburo three weeks earlier. A motion that Podgorny be "retired on pension" was approved without debate by the 1,517 deputies of the two houses of the Presidium, without Podgorny present and without a word of praise for his 11 years of service.
The U.S. launched its second geosynchronous weather satellite,
GOES 2 (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite), placed initially over the
75th meridian west to observe weather in the eastern United States, supplementing
GOES 1, which had been placed in 1975 over the
Indian Ocean.
Shih Ming-teh, who had been a political prisoner in
Taiwan since 1962 after being convicted of attempting to overthrow the government as part of the Formosa Independence Movement, was released by the Taiwanese government. Initially sentenced to life in prison, Shih had his sentence commuted to 15 years in 1975, and was set free 15 years after he had been jailed.
The U.S. Department of Defense sent a message to U.S. Armed Forces commanders all around the world, "reminding them not to speak out of line or contradict Administration policy" of President Jimmy Carter. The warning went out after U.S. Army Lieutenant General Donn A. Starry had told a high school graduating class at the base in
Frankfurt,
West Germany, that the Soviet Union and China would likely fight a major war and that the United States would probably get involved.[53]
Died:
Wernher von Braun, 65, German and American rocket scientist who was a leader in the development of the
V-2 rocket for
Nazi Germany, and later of the missiles and rockets for the U.S. space program, died of pancreatic cancer.[54]
Benjamin W. Lee, 42, Korean-born U.S. theoretical physicist who had correctly predicted the mass of the
charmquark, was killed in an automobile accident on Interstate 80 near
Kewanee, Illinois, when a truck crossed the median and crashed into his vehicle.[55]
June 17, 1977 (Friday)
High school teacher
Jill Jacobs married U.S. Senator
Joe Biden of Delaware at the
Chapel at the United Nations in New York City. The wedding was the second for both, after Biden's first wife,
Neilia Hunter Biden, had been killed in a car accident on December 18, 1972, and after Jacobs had divorced her first husband, Bill Stevenson, in 1975.[56] In 2021, Mr. and Mrs. Biden would become the President and the First Lady of the United States.
The Soviet Union conducted what a U.S. Department of Defense spokesman said was a successful test of a "
killer satellite", as Kosmos 918 was launched against a specific target, Kosmos 909, which had been put into orbit on May 20. Although there was no actual destruction of 909, the DOD said that its own data "allows for a close approach and a probable successful mission occurred."[57] After the fall of the USSR, archives showed that the test had failed and that 918 had been de-orbited; a first successful test would occur on October 26, 1977.[58]
The U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in the case of Dobbert v. Florida ruled, 6 to 3, that a person convicted of murder could be legally executed even though the crime for which he received the death penalty took place under a law that was later found unconstitutional. Ernest John Dobbert had brutally murdered two of his children in 1971, but was not indicted until 1974. All U.S. death penalty laws enacted before 1972 had been declared unconstitutional in Furman v. Georgia.[59] Dobbert, who was white, would die in the electric chair on September 7, 1984.[60]
June 18, 1977 (Saturday)
The "Uganda Liberation Movement" (ULM), a group of 500 dissidents led by
Patrick Kimumwe from the
Army of Uganda attempted
Operation Mafuta Mingi, an assassination plot and coup d'état against the government of dictator
Idi Amin Dada.[61] The
State Research Bureau, Uganda's internal security agency, was tipped off by an informant and President Amin changed his plans, riding with a convoy of cars from
Entebbe to
Kampala. Unexpectedly, Amin's convoy ran into the ULM's backup unit at Baitababiri. Not knowing which car of the presidential convoy was occupied by Amin, the ULM guerrillas attacked as many cars as they could, and actually shattered the windows of Amin's car (causing him minor injuries) before the guards in each car counterattacked. After the attempt, Amin carried out a purge of soldiers and a roundup of civilians from the
Baganda and
Busoga tribes. Kimumwe and five other plotters would escape from prison on September 23, before their scheduled execution, but would drown 15 months in 1978.[62]
U.S. golfer
Hubert Green won the
U.S. Open, played at Southern Hills Country Club in
Tulsa,
Oklahoma, finishing one stroke ahead of 1975 champion
Lou Graham (278 to 279). Green kept his composure after being informed of a death threat made by an anonymous caller who said that three men were "on their way" to shoot Green when he reached the 15th hole.[68]
Erno Schwarz, 75, Hungarian-born U.S. soccer player who founded the
New York Americans team and coached the U.S. national team from 1953 to 1955
Dragiša Kašiković, 44, Yugoslavian Bosnian writer and journalist was stabbed to death in the office of his Chicago-based newspaper, Sloboda (Liberty), by agents of the
UDBA, the Communist nation's secret police.[69] The perpetrators, never individually identified, also murdered his 9-year-old stepdaughter, Ivanka Milosevich, the only other witness to the killing.[70]
June 20, 1977 (Monday)
The
Alaska Pipeline (officially the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System) began operations as the first oil entered it from the North Slope oil fields at
Prudhoe Bay in the U.S. state of
Alaska.[72] Fred Moore, a technician for the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company pushed the button to open a 36 inches (910 mm) diameter valve to start the flow of oil at 10:00 in the morning (2000 UTC) [73] Oil in the pipeline traveled southward along the 800 miles (1,300 km) [74] at four miles per hour, until reaching the port of
Valdez, Alaska, with the first petroleum arriving on August 1.
The Republic of Chile released Jorge Montes, the General Secretary of the Chilean Communist Party, who had been imprisoned for almost four years since the overthrow of Salvador Allende's government in 1973. Montes was allowed to go to East Germany in return for the release of 11 political prisoners held by the East Germans. Chile's government-owned newspaper referred to Montes as the South American nation's "last political prisoner", notwithstanding thousands of people who had been imprisoned or disappeared after the coup.[13]
Former
White House Chief of StaffH. R. Haldeman, who had been the top adviser to U.S. President Richard Nixon until forced to resign because of the
Watergate scandal, began his prison sentence at the
FCI Lompoc, the minimum security installation at
Lompoc, California. He had been sentenced to eight years in prison after his conviction of charges of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury. Haldeman had chosen to report early and without notice, in order to avoid an expected gathering of reporters for the Wednesday date.[77]
Former U.S. Attorney General
John N. Mitchell reported to
Federal Prison Camp, Montgomery, located on the grounds of
Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. Mitchell was the 25th, and last person to be imprisoned in connection with Watergate, and the first former U.S. Attorney General to go to prison.[78]
In a 10-hour surgery at Children's Hospital in Washington, D.C., a 20-member surgical team (7 surgeons, 5 anesthesiologists and 8 nurses), led by Dr. Judson G. Randolph separated
conjoined twins who had been born in April in Italy. The two girls were connected at a point from the
sternum to the
pelvis. Each child had a heart, a stomach and intestines, a pair of lungs, and a spine, but shared a pair of kidneys, a liver and a diaphragm.[79] One of the twins would die on August 13 from an infection that arose from the surgery.[80]
The U.S. Navy launched the most sophisticated navigation satellite up to that time, NTS-2 (Navigational Technology Satellite 2), into orbit to replace the Navstar GPS satellite that failed shortly after its 1974 launch.[81]
The
National Primary Drinking Water Regulations, the first federal rules promulgated by the U.S. under the
Safe Drinking Water Act, went into effect, setting limits for six synthetic organic chemicals, ten inorganic chemicals, five radionuclides, coliform bacteria, and turbidity, went into effect.[82]
Three days before the creation of the African
Republic Djibouti from France, the colonial Chamber of Deputies unanimously elected
Hassan Gouled as the nation's first president.[83] On the same day,
Aden Robleh Awaleh, leader of the
Front de Libération de la Côte des Somalis guerrillas that had fought for independence, was seriously injured after being beaten in an assassination attempt. Though hospitalized, he would be named Djibouti's Minister of the Port three weeks later, and Minister of Commerce, Transport and Tourism the next year.
Died: André-Gilles Fortin, 33, Canadian politician who had been elected president of the
Social Credit Party seven months earlier, was killed in an auto accident.
June 25, 1977 (Saturday)
The African nation of
Ethiopia introduced its new "People's Militia" of 80,000 people, mostly peasants, who had undergone weeks of training by 30 advisers from
Cuba. The militia's size made it the third-largest armed force in Africa, and was assembled in eight divisions, each with 100 groups of 100 soldiers, on the runway of the old airport at Addis Ababa.[84]
Real Betis won Spain's
Copa del Rey after winning a penalty-shootout over
Athletic Bilbao in front of 70,000 people at the
Vicente Calderón Stadium in
Madrid. Betis had finished in fifth place in the
1976-77 La Liga regular season in Spain's premier soccer football league,
La Liga, and Bilbao had finished third. Playing to a 2–2 draw after extra time, the two teams competed in a shootout which was unresolved until the 10th attempt by each team, with Betis hitting 8 kicks and Bilbao 7.
U.S.
park rangerRoy Sullivan, nicknamed "the Human Lightning Rod" for having been struck on multiple occasions by
lightning, was hit by a bolt for the seventh and final time while at the
Shenandoah National Park in
Virginia, surviving the experience but suffering burns to his hair, chest and stomach.[85] After being struck in 1942, he said he had been hit again in 1969, 1970, 1972, 1973, and 1976.[86] Sullivan would commit suicide in 1983.[87]
Fanfreluche, a thoroughbred horse bred in Canada and the 1970 winner of the Sovereign Award for Horse of the Year, was kidnapped from her stall at the
Claiborne Farm in
Paris, Kentucky, while carrying the foal of
Secretariat. She would be found six months later in Tennessee after her kidnappers abandoned her.
U.S. musician
Prince Rogers Nelson of Minneapolis signed his first recording contract, negotiated by his agent,
Owen Husney. Under the three-album contract, Nelson, who would shorten his stage name to "Prince", was given creative control by the Warner Bros company.[88]
A fire at the county jail in
Maury County, Tennessee killed eight visitors and 34 inmates, who were unable to be released from their cells because each cell required a separate key.[89] The fire occurred during visiting hours when a juvenile, held in a padded holding cell, set fire to the fabric. During the panic, keys to the cell were knocked out of a deputy's hands in a collision with a fleeing visitor, and 12 minutes passed before the key ring could be relocated, during which toxic gas and smoke was spread by the jail's ventilating system.[90]
The territory of the Afars and Issas, the last European colony in Africa, became independent from France as the
Republic of Djibouti, with
Hassan Gouled Aptidon as its first President.[93]
A collision between a passenger train and a freight train in
East Germany killed 29 people near
Lebus, now in Germany's
Brandenburg state. East Germany's Transport Minister,
Otto Arndt (who also directed the state-owned railroad, the Deutsche Reichsbahn, said that the disaster had been caused by a switching error.[94] The switchman was arrested the next day for negligence in putting the passenger express train on a collision course with the parked freight train.[95]
Born: Raúl (Raúl González Blanco) Spanish footballer with 102 caps as a forward for the Spain national team
June 28, 1977 (Tuesday)
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of
Nixon v. Administrator of General Services Administration, 7 to 2, that former U.S. President
Richard Nixon had no right to White House tape recordings and documents as private property, and upheld the 1974 Presidential Records and Materials Preservation Act.[96]
The
Albert Einstein Society was founded at
Bern in
Switzerland by Dr. Max Flückiger to honor individual scientists who had contributed to furthering Einstein's work. The first Einstein Medal presented by the Society would be awarded to British astrophysicist and mathematician
Stephen Hawking in 1979. The Society also restored Einstein's former home at Kramgasse 49 in
Bern and would open it to the general on March 14, 1979, the centennial of Einstein's 1879 birth.[97]
June 29, 1977 (Wednesday)
The African nations of
Somalia and
Kenya fought a
one-day battle, as more than 3,000
Somali National Army soldiers invaded the Kenyan Army border post of
Rhamu in an attempt to attack the
Ethiopian Army.[98] Supported by the
Somali Air Force, the Somali Army killed 480 Kenyan soldiers and police officers, destroyed 20 tanks and captured or destroyed more than 40 armored vehicles. The Somalis lost 19 soldiers and five tanks.[99]
Defying the orders of
Pope Paul VI, Roman Catholic Archbishop
Marcel Lefebvre ordained 14 priests in the city of
Econe in
Switzerland. Despite his challenge to the Pope to excommunicate him,[100] Lefebvre continued defying the Papacy and would not be excommunicated until 1986.
Born:
Jeff Baena, American film director and screenwriter; in
Miami
Keagborekuzi I, traditional monarch of the
Agbor in
Nigeria; as Benjamin Keagborekuzi Ikenchukwu in Agbor,
Delta State,
Federal Republic of Nigeria. Upon the death of his father, Obi Ikenchukwu I, on April 29, 1979, Keagborekuzi would be crowned King of Agbor at the age of 22 months.
Died:
Sylvia Ashley (stage name for Edith Hawkes), 73, English actress and socialite known for her five marriages, including to
Clark Gable (1942–1952) and
Douglas Fairbanks Sr. (1936–1939)
Magda Lupescu, 77, former mistress of Romania's
King Carol II as Princess Helena of Romania. In 1925, as his mistress, she led Crown Prince King Carol to abandon his rights to the throne in order for their marriage to take place, but the couple returned to power in 1937 in a coup d'état until his forced abdication in 1940.[101]
June 30, 1977 (Thursday)
U.S. President
Jimmy Carter ordered a halt to any further production of the controversial
B-1 bomber, based on its unprecedented cost of 102 million dollars for each aircraft and the U.S. Air Force goal of 244 B-1s in its arsenal.[102] Carter's successor, U.S. President
Ronald Reagan, would revive the project and 100 B-1B bombers would be manufactured by
Rockwell International between 1983 and 1988.
Nine years after the
Prague Spring, Czechoslovakia's Communist Party and government granted amnesty to almost all of its 75,000 citizens who had fled the country after the 1968 invasion by the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact forces, dropping charges and in absentia convictions for having left the country illegally. The only dissidents denied amnesty were those who publicly criticized Czechoslovakia after their departure.[103]
Brazil's President
Ernesto Geisel, who had been granted dictatorial powers, issued a decree removing his chief political opponent from office. Alencar Furtaco of the Chamber of Deputies, leader of the opposition to Geisel's military regime, was barred from office for 10 years by Geisel's order.[103]
^"The World", Los Angeles Times, June 2, 1977, p. I-2
^Waggoner, "Casino Unit's Power Is Termed Absolute," The New York Times, June 4, 1977
^"Actor Stephen Boyd Dies of Apparent Heart Attack", Los Angeles Times, June 3, 1977, p. I-
^Dolf Sternberger, et al., Die Wahl der Parlamente, Band II: Afrika ("The Choice of Parliaments, Volume II: Africa") (Nomos, 1978), p1345
^"Morocco King's Backers Win at Polls", Los Angeles Times, June 5, 1977, p. I-23
^"U.S. Will Exchange Diplomats With Cuba— Havana Frees 10 Americans as a Gesture", by Oswald Johnston, Los Angeles Times, June 4, 1977, p. I-1
^Christopher M. Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (Basic Books, 2000) p. 232-233
^"Italian Director Rossellini, Pioneer of Neorealism, Dies", Los Angeles Times, June 4, 1977, p. I-1
^"The World", Los Angeles Times, June 5, 1977, p. I-2
^
ab"The World", Los Angeles Times, June 22, 1977, p. I-2
^"Mandel Temporarily Quits Governorship", Los Angeles Times, June 5, 1977, p. I-2
^"Mandel, His Conviction Voided, Back as Governor — for 2 Days", by Ben A. Franklin, The New York Times, January 16, 1979, p. A12
^"Leader Ousted in Tiny Africa Nation— Seychelles Appeared a Model of Stability", by David Lamb, Los Angeles Times, June 6, 1977, p. I-1
^"Turk Opposition Party Celebrates Victory; Premier Warns of New Era of Instability", by Joe Alex Morris Jr.", Los Angeles Times, June 6, 1977, p. I-1
^"Blazers Rip Sixers In Final, 109-107", Indianapolis Star, June 6, 1977, p.2
^"Queen Ignites Silver Jubilee Bonfire", Los Angeles Times, June 7, 1977, p. I-5
^"The World", Los Angeles Times, June 7, 1977, p. I-2
^"Miami Repeals Gay Rights by Overwhelming Margin— Crusade Headed by Anita Bryant Scores a Resounding Victory", by Jeff Prugh, Los Angeles Times, June 8, 1977, p. I-1
^"Bias Against Homosexuals is Outlawed in Miami", The New York Times, January 19, 1977, p. 14
^"Chicago Machine Delivers Bilandic", by Bryce Nelson, Los Angeles Times, June 8, 1977, p. I-14
^Dieter Nohlen, et al., Elections in Asia: A Data Handbook, Volume I (Nomos 2001) pp. 269–273
^Ann Rule, The Stranger Beside Me (Pocket Books, 2009) p.285
^"New Romanian Patriarch", Los Angeles Times, June 19, 1977, p. I-20
^"Storm Leaves 50 Dead, 20,000 Homeless on Persian Gulf Island", Los Angeles Times, June 19, 1977, p. I-4
^"3 Girl Scouts Slain at Summer Retreat", Los Angeles Times, June 14, 1977, p. I-4
^"Radiation Cleanup on Pacific Atoll Begins— Troops Erase Work to Erase Damage of 43 Nuclear Tests", by Larry Pryor, Los Angeles Times, June 20, 1977, p. I-3
^"Tom C. Clark, 77, Ex-Justice Dies", Los Angeles Times, June 14, 1977, p. I-1
^"Miller Wins UMW Election", Atlanta Constitution, June 16, 1977, p.3-A
^"Suarez Wins Virtual Majority in Election— Spaniards Also Create Near 2-Party System With Socialist 'Opposition'", by Stanley Meisler, Los Angeles Times, June 17, 1977, p. I-4
^"Brezhnev Adds Presidency to His Power Base", Los Angeles Times, June 17, 1977, p. I-1
^"Lynch's Irish Opposition Party Upsets Ruling Coalition", Los Angeles Times, June 18, 1977, p. I-4
^"History and the Current Status of the Russian Early-Warning System", by Pavel Podvig, Science and Global Security (2002) pp. 21–60
^"Pentagon Warns on Opinions", Los Angeles Times, June 17, 1977, p. I-2
^"Von Braun, Who Helped Put Man on Moon, Dies", Los Angeles Times, June 18, 1977, p. I-1
^"Dr. Benjamin Lee, 42, of Fermilab; Noted Physicist Was Crash Victim", The New York Times, June 18, 1977
^"French Envoy Killed in Car Accident", Los Angeles Times, June 20, 1977, p. I-21
^"Bishop Neumann Installed as First U.S. Male Saint", by William Tuohy, Los Angeles Times, June 20, 1977, p. I-1
^Dieter Nohlen, et al., Elections in Asia: A Data Handbook, Volume II, (2001) pp.490-491
^"Green Shrugs Off ALL Threats to Win U.S. Open— Champion Has Police Guard After Death Threat", by Shav Glick, Los Angeles Times, June 20, 1977, p. III-1
^"Anti-Communist Editor, Girl Shot to Death in Chicago", Los Angeles Times, June 20, 1977, p. I-10
^"Trans-Alaska oil pipeline marks 35 years of production", by Mary Pemberton, Anchorage Daily News, June 21, 2012
^"Alaskan Oil Flows With Push of Button", by Bill Stall, Los Angeles Times, June 21, 1977, p. I-1
^Not an estimate; the pipeline is 800.32 miles in length (800 miles, 1,690 feet or 10 meters short of 1,288m),
"The Trans-Alaska Pipeline", The Lay of the Land, The Center for Land Use Interpretation Newsletter (Spring 2009)
^"Begin Sworn In as Israeli Prime Minister— Voting Along Party Lines, Parliament Narrowly Approves His New Cabinet", by Dial Torgerson, Los Angeles Times, June 21, 1977, p. I-6
^"Haldeman Enters Prison One Day Early— Former Nixon Aide Starts Watergate Term at Lompoc", by Tom Paegel, Los Angeles Times, June 22, 1977, p. I-3
^"Prisoners Jeer Mitchell as He Starts Sentence; Now No. 24171-157", Los Angeles Times, June 23, 1977, p. I-1
^"Surgery Separates Siamese Twin Girls", Los Angeles Times, July 8, 1977, p.I-6
^"One Siamese Twin Dies After Surgery", Los Angeles Times, August 18, 1977, p.I-13
^"Where Am I?", by Don Bedwell, in American Heritage Magazine (Spring 2007)
^John C. Crittenden, et al. Water Treatment: Principles and Design (John Wiley & Sons, 2012) p181-182
^"First President of New African Nation Elected", Los Angeles Times, June 25, 1977, p.I-12
^"Ethiopia Unveils People's Militia— Africa's Third Larges Force to Face Rebels", Los Angeles Times, June 26, 1977, p.I-1
^"Zap! Lightning Strikes Again— For 7th Time", AP report in Roanoke (Va.) Times, June 28, 1977, p.1
^John Friedman, Out of the Blue: A History of Lightning: Science, Superstition, and Amazing Stories of Survival (Delacorte Press, 2008)
^Guinness World Records 2001, ed. by Ken Campbell (Guinness World Record Ltd, 2000) p.36
^Jason Draper, Prince: Life and Times (Book Sales, 2016) pp.11–16
^"Tennessee Jail Fire Kills 42, Including Locked-up Prisoners", The New York Times, June 27, 1977
^"42 Die in Tennessee Jail Fire; Keys Lost— Inmates and Eight Visitors Asphyixated by Smoke, Gas From Padded Cell Blaze", Los Angeles Times, June 27, 1977, p.I-1
^Ted Harrison, The Death and Resurrection of Elvis Presley (Reaktion Press, 2016)
The
Arabic language daily newspaper "
Al-Arab", published in
London, was introduced by entrepreneur Ahmed el-Houni, who had formerly been the Minister of Defense for Libya.[1]
Nintendo, founded in 1889 as a manufacturer of
playing cards and which introduced a line of electronic toys in 1969, debuted its first
home video game console, the
Color TV-Game (カラー テレビゲーム or Karā Terebi-Gēmu).[2] On June 8, a week after Color TV-Game 6 was released, Nintendo released Color TV-Game 15.[3]
Belgium's prime minister
Leo Tindemans announced that he had formed a new government. He resigned three hours later after a dispute between
French speaking and
Flemish speaking members of his party.
Born: Zachary Quinto, American TV and film actor known for portraying Sylar on the series Heroes and for Spock in the rebooted 2009 Star Trek film and its sequels; in
Pittsburgh
Died:
Stephen Boyd (stage name for William Millar), 45, Northern Irish film actor, Golden Globe winner for best supporting actor for his role in Ben Hur, died of a heart attack in the U.S. while playing golf in
Northridge, California.[6]
Fred Young (stage name for Njo Tiong Gie), 76, Indonesian film director
June 3, 1977 (Friday)
Elections were held in Morocco for 176 of the 264 seats of the
Majlis, the lower house of
Moroccan Parliament. The other 88 were indirectly elected, with 48 by local government councils, and 40 others from professional colleges. A total of 1,022 candidates ran for office; independent candidates won 81 seats (as well as 60 picked indirectly), while the
Istiqlal Party won 46 and the Constitutional and Democratic Popular Movement (CDPM) won 29.[7][8]
The United States and Cuba announced that they would begin diplomatic relations for the first time since 1961, with the exchange of diplomats. The Cuban government followed by releasing 10 Americans who had been incarcerated in Cuban jails.[9]
The United Kingdom deported former American CIA official
Philip Agee, who had revealed the names of CIA agents, barring him from re-entry to the country after he had traveled to the Netherlands.[10]
Vincent van Gogh's painting Poppy Flowers (Stilleven met viscaria), worth an estimated U.S.$55,000,000, was stolen from
Cairo's
Khalil Museum in
Egypt. Recovered 10 years later, the painting would be stolen again in 2010 and has not been seen since then.
A court in
Cyprus dismissed murder charges against the two members of the terrorist group, EOKA-B, Ioannis Ktimatias and Nepotolemos Leftis. The two had been indicted for the 1974 assassination of U.S. Ambassador
Rodger Davies and a Greek Cypriot secretary to the ambassador, Antoinette Varnavas.[12] Ktimatias and Leftis were found guilty of the lesser offense of illegal use of firearms and rioting, with Ktimatias getting a seven-year sentence and Leftis five years.[13]
Marvin Mandel, Governor of the U.S. state of Maryland, stepped aside and appointed Lieutenant Governor
Blair Lee III as ""Acting Chief Executive", after Mandel was indicted along with five co-defendants of the crimes of mail fraud and racketeering.[14] After being convicted, Mandel would be sentenced to the federal prison at
Eglin Air Force Base in
Florida. Mandel would rescind Lee's powers on January 15, 1979, after his conviction was overturned on appeal, and serve the remaining two days of his elected term.[15]
Died: František Michl, 75, Czech artist who had been incarcerated by the Nazi German government for being anti-fascist, and by the Czechoslovakian government for being anti-Communist.
June 5, 1977 (Sunday)
Meacham and René
A bloodless
coup overthrew the government of President
James Mancham while he was out of the country, and installed
France-Albert René as President of the
Seychelles. Mancham was in the UK at the time, attending the British Commonwealth meeting.[16]
A week of celebrations of the
Silver Jubilee of Elizabeth II began with the Queen lighting the fuse to a 30 feet (9.1 m) high
bonfire in a ceremony before a crowd of 300,000 at
Windsor Great Park. The lighting began the first of a network of 103 bonfires, lit consecutively across the island.[19]
Singer
Elvis Presley released his last recording, "
Way Down", which would reach number one on the Billboard Country Music chart on the week before he died, and #31 on the Billboard Hot 100 ten days before his August 16 death.
The U.S. and the
Republic of Congo agreed to resume diplomatic relations, 12 years after they had closed their embassies. the announcement came from Congo's Foreign Minister, Theophile Obenga, and U.S. Undersecretary of State William E. Schaufele Jr.[20]
After a campaign by singer
Anita Bryant, voters in a referendum in
Miami-Dade County, Florida repealed ordinance 77-4 of the
Dade County Commission that had outlawed discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in employment, housing and public services.[21] The ordinance had been passed on January 18.[22] Bryant was able to persuade almost 70% of voters that protection of gay rights would be a threat to the community as part of her "
Save the Children campaign, with 202,319 for repeal and 89,562 against it.
Elections were held for one-third of the members of the Turkish Senate, with 50 of the 150 seats to be filled.[24]
Convicted kidnapper
Ted Bundy, on trial in Colorado for the 1975 murder of Caryn Campbell, escaped from the Pitkin County Courthouse in
Aspen, Colorado.[25] He would be recaptured three days later, but would escape from another Colorado jail on December 30.
Born: Donovan Ricketts, Jamaican footballer with 100 appearances as goalkeeper for the Jamaica national team; in
Montego Bay[26]
June 8, 1977 (Wednesday)
Plans for a conversion of U.S. roadway signs to the
metric system were canceled. Director
William M. Cox of the
Federal Highway Administration informed Iowa Congressman
Charles E. Grassley that regulations published on April 27 for
public notice and comment had received enough negative comment and protest to merit withdrawing the proposal.[27] Cox explained later that "More than 5,000 comments were received, and about 98% of them were negative."[28]
The daily
Spanish newspaper for a
Basque audience published its first issue.[30] The paper, published by Editorial Iparraguirre, had some articles written in the
Basque language as well. It would celebrate its 45th anniversary in 2022.
Former U.S. President
Gerald R. Ford hit a
hole-in-one while playing golf,[31] the year after losing the 1976 presidential election. Ford, who was participating in the pro-am
Danny Thomas Memphis Golf Classic for charity, was only the second American president to accomplish the feat.[32] The other one was
Richard M. Nixon, who hit a hole-in-one on September 4, 1961, one year after losing the 1960 presidential election.[32]
Taha Carim, the Turkish ambassador to Vatican City and envoy to the Roman Catholic Church, was shot to death by two Armenian Turks in retaliation for the
Armenian genocide carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1917.[34]
A fire killed 42 people in a
nightclub in
Abidjan in the African nation of
Côte d'Ivoire. An estimated 250 people had been in Le Pacha when the fire broke out. Most of the dead were foreign tourists from Europe and from Lebanon.[35]
James Earl Ray, convicted assassin of
Martin Luther King Jr., escaped from the
Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in
Petros, Tennessee, where he was in the ninth year of a 99-year prison sentence.[36] He and the other escapees would be recaptured on June 13.[37] Ray then had his sentence extended by three years, from 2068 to 2071.[38] He would die in 1998, 30 years and 19 days after Dr. King's murder.
In the Netherlands, the
BBE, the Dutch
special forces team, rescued all but two of 51 train passengers who had been
taken hostage by nine South Moluccan terrorists on May 23, and the remaining four hostages at the Bovensmilde elementary school.[40] At 5:00 in the morning, six F-104 Starfighter jets of the
Royal Netherlands Air Force flew at low altitude over the train, using the deafening noise to disorient the terrorists, after which the BBE commandos fired rifles and machine guns at the areas on the train where the hijackers were known to be staying. Six hijackers and two hostages were killed.
The first
Victoria's Secret women's lingerie store was opened by its founding couple,
Roy Raymond and his wife Gaye Redmond, opening at the
Stanford Shopping Center in
Palo Alto, California. From an $80,000 investment, the Raymonds' business would earn $500,000 in its first year and expand with a mail order catalog and additional stores in
San Francisco in 1978. In 1982, the Raymonds would sell the chain to
Leslie Wexner for one million dollars.[42]
A
cylcone killed 105 people in the monarchy of
Oman as it swept over
Masirah Island and delivered sustained winds of up to 104 miles per hour (167 km/h), with gusts as high as 140 miles per hour (230 km/h). The storm wrecked 95% of the buildings on the island and left 2,000 people homeless.[44]
Three
Girl Scouts, aged 8, 9, and 10,
were murdered while camping at Camp Scott, located in
Mayes County, Oklahoma.[45] Gene Leroy Hart, who had escaped from prison, was arrested, but would be acquitted on March 30, 1979. Returned to prison to serve out his sentence, he would die of a heart attack three months later on June 4.
Cleanup began of the
Enewetak Atoll (in the U.S.
Marshall Islands territory) after years of American nuclear weapons testing on the South Pacific group of 40 islands. A group of 222 troops from the U.S. Army's 84th Engineers Battalion was landed on the island of Lojwa, along with earth-moving equipment and concrete mix.[46]
Died:
Tom C. Clark, 77, former Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, 1949–1967, and U.S. Attorney General, 1945—1949 [47]
Matthew Garber, 21, English child actor known for having portrayed Michael Banks in the 1964 film Mary Poppins died of pancreatitis after having contracted hepatitis.
June 14, 1977 (Tuesday)
Arnold Miller defeated two other candidates, Lee Roy Patterson and Harry Patrick, to win re-election to a second five-year term as president of the
United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) labor union, which had 277,000 members at the time.[48]
Died:
Alan Reed (stage name for Herbert Bergman), 69, American actor whose most famous role was as the voice of
Fred Flintstone "Alan Reed Dies; Radio Straight Man, Voice of Fred Flintstone", Indianapolis Star, June 16, 1977, p. 92
Alex Phillips, 76, stage name for Alexander Pelepiock, Canadian-born Mexican cinematographer
Aleko Lilius, 87, Russian-born Swedish journalist and adventurer known for his 1931 book I Sailed with Chinese Pirates
Nikolai Podgorny was removed from his job as the nominal head of state of the Soviet Union. He was replaced as
President of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet by the de facto leader of the USSR, Communist Party General Secretary
Leonid Brezhnev, who had held the office from 1960 to 1964 prior to becoming the leader of the Party.[50] Having served as
President of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR since 1965, and at one time part of the
troika of CPSU General Secretary
Leonid Brezhnev, Premier
Alexei Kosygin and himself. He had been removed from the Communist Party Politburo three weeks earlier. A motion that Podgorny be "retired on pension" was approved without debate by the 1,517 deputies of the two houses of the Presidium, without Podgorny present and without a word of praise for his 11 years of service.
The U.S. launched its second geosynchronous weather satellite,
GOES 2 (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite), placed initially over the
75th meridian west to observe weather in the eastern United States, supplementing
GOES 1, which had been placed in 1975 over the
Indian Ocean.
Shih Ming-teh, who had been a political prisoner in
Taiwan since 1962 after being convicted of attempting to overthrow the government as part of the Formosa Independence Movement, was released by the Taiwanese government. Initially sentenced to life in prison, Shih had his sentence commuted to 15 years in 1975, and was set free 15 years after he had been jailed.
The U.S. Department of Defense sent a message to U.S. Armed Forces commanders all around the world, "reminding them not to speak out of line or contradict Administration policy" of President Jimmy Carter. The warning went out after U.S. Army Lieutenant General Donn A. Starry had told a high school graduating class at the base in
Frankfurt,
West Germany, that the Soviet Union and China would likely fight a major war and that the United States would probably get involved.[53]
Died:
Wernher von Braun, 65, German and American rocket scientist who was a leader in the development of the
V-2 rocket for
Nazi Germany, and later of the missiles and rockets for the U.S. space program, died of pancreatic cancer.[54]
Benjamin W. Lee, 42, Korean-born U.S. theoretical physicist who had correctly predicted the mass of the
charmquark, was killed in an automobile accident on Interstate 80 near
Kewanee, Illinois, when a truck crossed the median and crashed into his vehicle.[55]
June 17, 1977 (Friday)
High school teacher
Jill Jacobs married U.S. Senator
Joe Biden of Delaware at the
Chapel at the United Nations in New York City. The wedding was the second for both, after Biden's first wife,
Neilia Hunter Biden, had been killed in a car accident on December 18, 1972, and after Jacobs had divorced her first husband, Bill Stevenson, in 1975.[56] In 2021, Mr. and Mrs. Biden would become the President and the First Lady of the United States.
The Soviet Union conducted what a U.S. Department of Defense spokesman said was a successful test of a "
killer satellite", as Kosmos 918 was launched against a specific target, Kosmos 909, which had been put into orbit on May 20. Although there was no actual destruction of 909, the DOD said that its own data "allows for a close approach and a probable successful mission occurred."[57] After the fall of the USSR, archives showed that the test had failed and that 918 had been de-orbited; a first successful test would occur on October 26, 1977.[58]
The U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in the case of Dobbert v. Florida ruled, 6 to 3, that a person convicted of murder could be legally executed even though the crime for which he received the death penalty took place under a law that was later found unconstitutional. Ernest John Dobbert had brutally murdered two of his children in 1971, but was not indicted until 1974. All U.S. death penalty laws enacted before 1972 had been declared unconstitutional in Furman v. Georgia.[59] Dobbert, who was white, would die in the electric chair on September 7, 1984.[60]
June 18, 1977 (Saturday)
The "Uganda Liberation Movement" (ULM), a group of 500 dissidents led by
Patrick Kimumwe from the
Army of Uganda attempted
Operation Mafuta Mingi, an assassination plot and coup d'état against the government of dictator
Idi Amin Dada.[61] The
State Research Bureau, Uganda's internal security agency, was tipped off by an informant and President Amin changed his plans, riding with a convoy of cars from
Entebbe to
Kampala. Unexpectedly, Amin's convoy ran into the ULM's backup unit at Baitababiri. Not knowing which car of the presidential convoy was occupied by Amin, the ULM guerrillas attacked as many cars as they could, and actually shattered the windows of Amin's car (causing him minor injuries) before the guards in each car counterattacked. After the attempt, Amin carried out a purge of soldiers and a roundup of civilians from the
Baganda and
Busoga tribes. Kimumwe and five other plotters would escape from prison on September 23, before their scheduled execution, but would drown 15 months in 1978.[62]
U.S. golfer
Hubert Green won the
U.S. Open, played at Southern Hills Country Club in
Tulsa,
Oklahoma, finishing one stroke ahead of 1975 champion
Lou Graham (278 to 279). Green kept his composure after being informed of a death threat made by an anonymous caller who said that three men were "on their way" to shoot Green when he reached the 15th hole.[68]
Erno Schwarz, 75, Hungarian-born U.S. soccer player who founded the
New York Americans team and coached the U.S. national team from 1953 to 1955
Dragiša Kašiković, 44, Yugoslavian Bosnian writer and journalist was stabbed to death in the office of his Chicago-based newspaper, Sloboda (Liberty), by agents of the
UDBA, the Communist nation's secret police.[69] The perpetrators, never individually identified, also murdered his 9-year-old stepdaughter, Ivanka Milosevich, the only other witness to the killing.[70]
June 20, 1977 (Monday)
The
Alaska Pipeline (officially the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System) began operations as the first oil entered it from the North Slope oil fields at
Prudhoe Bay in the U.S. state of
Alaska.[72] Fred Moore, a technician for the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company pushed the button to open a 36 inches (910 mm) diameter valve to start the flow of oil at 10:00 in the morning (2000 UTC) [73] Oil in the pipeline traveled southward along the 800 miles (1,300 km) [74] at four miles per hour, until reaching the port of
Valdez, Alaska, with the first petroleum arriving on August 1.
The Republic of Chile released Jorge Montes, the General Secretary of the Chilean Communist Party, who had been imprisoned for almost four years since the overthrow of Salvador Allende's government in 1973. Montes was allowed to go to East Germany in return for the release of 11 political prisoners held by the East Germans. Chile's government-owned newspaper referred to Montes as the South American nation's "last political prisoner", notwithstanding thousands of people who had been imprisoned or disappeared after the coup.[13]
Former
White House Chief of StaffH. R. Haldeman, who had been the top adviser to U.S. President Richard Nixon until forced to resign because of the
Watergate scandal, began his prison sentence at the
FCI Lompoc, the minimum security installation at
Lompoc, California. He had been sentenced to eight years in prison after his conviction of charges of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury. Haldeman had chosen to report early and without notice, in order to avoid an expected gathering of reporters for the Wednesday date.[77]
Former U.S. Attorney General
John N. Mitchell reported to
Federal Prison Camp, Montgomery, located on the grounds of
Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. Mitchell was the 25th, and last person to be imprisoned in connection with Watergate, and the first former U.S. Attorney General to go to prison.[78]
In a 10-hour surgery at Children's Hospital in Washington, D.C., a 20-member surgical team (7 surgeons, 5 anesthesiologists and 8 nurses), led by Dr. Judson G. Randolph separated
conjoined twins who had been born in April in Italy. The two girls were connected at a point from the
sternum to the
pelvis. Each child had a heart, a stomach and intestines, a pair of lungs, and a spine, but shared a pair of kidneys, a liver and a diaphragm.[79] One of the twins would die on August 13 from an infection that arose from the surgery.[80]
The U.S. Navy launched the most sophisticated navigation satellite up to that time, NTS-2 (Navigational Technology Satellite 2), into orbit to replace the Navstar GPS satellite that failed shortly after its 1974 launch.[81]
The
National Primary Drinking Water Regulations, the first federal rules promulgated by the U.S. under the
Safe Drinking Water Act, went into effect, setting limits for six synthetic organic chemicals, ten inorganic chemicals, five radionuclides, coliform bacteria, and turbidity, went into effect.[82]
Three days before the creation of the African
Republic Djibouti from France, the colonial Chamber of Deputies unanimously elected
Hassan Gouled as the nation's first president.[83] On the same day,
Aden Robleh Awaleh, leader of the
Front de Libération de la Côte des Somalis guerrillas that had fought for independence, was seriously injured after being beaten in an assassination attempt. Though hospitalized, he would be named Djibouti's Minister of the Port three weeks later, and Minister of Commerce, Transport and Tourism the next year.
Died: André-Gilles Fortin, 33, Canadian politician who had been elected president of the
Social Credit Party seven months earlier, was killed in an auto accident.
June 25, 1977 (Saturday)
The African nation of
Ethiopia introduced its new "People's Militia" of 80,000 people, mostly peasants, who had undergone weeks of training by 30 advisers from
Cuba. The militia's size made it the third-largest armed force in Africa, and was assembled in eight divisions, each with 100 groups of 100 soldiers, on the runway of the old airport at Addis Ababa.[84]
Real Betis won Spain's
Copa del Rey after winning a penalty-shootout over
Athletic Bilbao in front of 70,000 people at the
Vicente Calderón Stadium in
Madrid. Betis had finished in fifth place in the
1976-77 La Liga regular season in Spain's premier soccer football league,
La Liga, and Bilbao had finished third. Playing to a 2–2 draw after extra time, the two teams competed in a shootout which was unresolved until the 10th attempt by each team, with Betis hitting 8 kicks and Bilbao 7.
U.S.
park rangerRoy Sullivan, nicknamed "the Human Lightning Rod" for having been struck on multiple occasions by
lightning, was hit by a bolt for the seventh and final time while at the
Shenandoah National Park in
Virginia, surviving the experience but suffering burns to his hair, chest and stomach.[85] After being struck in 1942, he said he had been hit again in 1969, 1970, 1972, 1973, and 1976.[86] Sullivan would commit suicide in 1983.[87]
Fanfreluche, a thoroughbred horse bred in Canada and the 1970 winner of the Sovereign Award for Horse of the Year, was kidnapped from her stall at the
Claiborne Farm in
Paris, Kentucky, while carrying the foal of
Secretariat. She would be found six months later in Tennessee after her kidnappers abandoned her.
U.S. musician
Prince Rogers Nelson of Minneapolis signed his first recording contract, negotiated by his agent,
Owen Husney. Under the three-album contract, Nelson, who would shorten his stage name to "Prince", was given creative control by the Warner Bros company.[88]
A fire at the county jail in
Maury County, Tennessee killed eight visitors and 34 inmates, who were unable to be released from their cells because each cell required a separate key.[89] The fire occurred during visiting hours when a juvenile, held in a padded holding cell, set fire to the fabric. During the panic, keys to the cell were knocked out of a deputy's hands in a collision with a fleeing visitor, and 12 minutes passed before the key ring could be relocated, during which toxic gas and smoke was spread by the jail's ventilating system.[90]
The territory of the Afars and Issas, the last European colony in Africa, became independent from France as the
Republic of Djibouti, with
Hassan Gouled Aptidon as its first President.[93]
A collision between a passenger train and a freight train in
East Germany killed 29 people near
Lebus, now in Germany's
Brandenburg state. East Germany's Transport Minister,
Otto Arndt (who also directed the state-owned railroad, the Deutsche Reichsbahn, said that the disaster had been caused by a switching error.[94] The switchman was arrested the next day for negligence in putting the passenger express train on a collision course with the parked freight train.[95]
Born: Raúl (Raúl González Blanco) Spanish footballer with 102 caps as a forward for the Spain national team
June 28, 1977 (Tuesday)
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of
Nixon v. Administrator of General Services Administration, 7 to 2, that former U.S. President
Richard Nixon had no right to White House tape recordings and documents as private property, and upheld the 1974 Presidential Records and Materials Preservation Act.[96]
The
Albert Einstein Society was founded at
Bern in
Switzerland by Dr. Max Flückiger to honor individual scientists who had contributed to furthering Einstein's work. The first Einstein Medal presented by the Society would be awarded to British astrophysicist and mathematician
Stephen Hawking in 1979. The Society also restored Einstein's former home at Kramgasse 49 in
Bern and would open it to the general on March 14, 1979, the centennial of Einstein's 1879 birth.[97]
June 29, 1977 (Wednesday)
The African nations of
Somalia and
Kenya fought a
one-day battle, as more than 3,000
Somali National Army soldiers invaded the Kenyan Army border post of
Rhamu in an attempt to attack the
Ethiopian Army.[98] Supported by the
Somali Air Force, the Somali Army killed 480 Kenyan soldiers and police officers, destroyed 20 tanks and captured or destroyed more than 40 armored vehicles. The Somalis lost 19 soldiers and five tanks.[99]
Defying the orders of
Pope Paul VI, Roman Catholic Archbishop
Marcel Lefebvre ordained 14 priests in the city of
Econe in
Switzerland. Despite his challenge to the Pope to excommunicate him,[100] Lefebvre continued defying the Papacy and would not be excommunicated until 1986.
Born:
Jeff Baena, American film director and screenwriter; in
Miami
Keagborekuzi I, traditional monarch of the
Agbor in
Nigeria; as Benjamin Keagborekuzi Ikenchukwu in Agbor,
Delta State,
Federal Republic of Nigeria. Upon the death of his father, Obi Ikenchukwu I, on April 29, 1979, Keagborekuzi would be crowned King of Agbor at the age of 22 months.
Died:
Sylvia Ashley (stage name for Edith Hawkes), 73, English actress and socialite known for her five marriages, including to
Clark Gable (1942–1952) and
Douglas Fairbanks Sr. (1936–1939)
Magda Lupescu, 77, former mistress of Romania's
King Carol II as Princess Helena of Romania. In 1925, as his mistress, she led Crown Prince King Carol to abandon his rights to the throne in order for their marriage to take place, but the couple returned to power in 1937 in a coup d'état until his forced abdication in 1940.[101]
June 30, 1977 (Thursday)
U.S. President
Jimmy Carter ordered a halt to any further production of the controversial
B-1 bomber, based on its unprecedented cost of 102 million dollars for each aircraft and the U.S. Air Force goal of 244 B-1s in its arsenal.[102] Carter's successor, U.S. President
Ronald Reagan, would revive the project and 100 B-1B bombers would be manufactured by
Rockwell International between 1983 and 1988.
Nine years after the
Prague Spring, Czechoslovakia's Communist Party and government granted amnesty to almost all of its 75,000 citizens who had fled the country after the 1968 invasion by the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact forces, dropping charges and in absentia convictions for having left the country illegally. The only dissidents denied amnesty were those who publicly criticized Czechoslovakia after their departure.[103]
Brazil's President
Ernesto Geisel, who had been granted dictatorial powers, issued a decree removing his chief political opponent from office. Alencar Furtaco of the Chamber of Deputies, leader of the opposition to Geisel's military regime, was barred from office for 10 years by Geisel's order.[103]
^"The World", Los Angeles Times, June 2, 1977, p. I-2
^Waggoner, "Casino Unit's Power Is Termed Absolute," The New York Times, June 4, 1977
^"Actor Stephen Boyd Dies of Apparent Heart Attack", Los Angeles Times, June 3, 1977, p. I-
^Dolf Sternberger, et al., Die Wahl der Parlamente, Band II: Afrika ("The Choice of Parliaments, Volume II: Africa") (Nomos, 1978), p1345
^"Morocco King's Backers Win at Polls", Los Angeles Times, June 5, 1977, p. I-23
^"U.S. Will Exchange Diplomats With Cuba— Havana Frees 10 Americans as a Gesture", by Oswald Johnston, Los Angeles Times, June 4, 1977, p. I-1
^Christopher M. Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (Basic Books, 2000) p. 232-233
^"Italian Director Rossellini, Pioneer of Neorealism, Dies", Los Angeles Times, June 4, 1977, p. I-1
^"The World", Los Angeles Times, June 5, 1977, p. I-2
^
ab"The World", Los Angeles Times, June 22, 1977, p. I-2
^"Mandel Temporarily Quits Governorship", Los Angeles Times, June 5, 1977, p. I-2
^"Mandel, His Conviction Voided, Back as Governor — for 2 Days", by Ben A. Franklin, The New York Times, January 16, 1979, p. A12
^"Leader Ousted in Tiny Africa Nation— Seychelles Appeared a Model of Stability", by David Lamb, Los Angeles Times, June 6, 1977, p. I-1
^"Turk Opposition Party Celebrates Victory; Premier Warns of New Era of Instability", by Joe Alex Morris Jr.", Los Angeles Times, June 6, 1977, p. I-1
^"Blazers Rip Sixers In Final, 109-107", Indianapolis Star, June 6, 1977, p.2
^"Queen Ignites Silver Jubilee Bonfire", Los Angeles Times, June 7, 1977, p. I-5
^"The World", Los Angeles Times, June 7, 1977, p. I-2
^"Miami Repeals Gay Rights by Overwhelming Margin— Crusade Headed by Anita Bryant Scores a Resounding Victory", by Jeff Prugh, Los Angeles Times, June 8, 1977, p. I-1
^"Bias Against Homosexuals is Outlawed in Miami", The New York Times, January 19, 1977, p. 14
^"Chicago Machine Delivers Bilandic", by Bryce Nelson, Los Angeles Times, June 8, 1977, p. I-14
^Dieter Nohlen, et al., Elections in Asia: A Data Handbook, Volume I (Nomos 2001) pp. 269–273
^Ann Rule, The Stranger Beside Me (Pocket Books, 2009) p.285
^"New Romanian Patriarch", Los Angeles Times, June 19, 1977, p. I-20
^"Storm Leaves 50 Dead, 20,000 Homeless on Persian Gulf Island", Los Angeles Times, June 19, 1977, p. I-4
^"3 Girl Scouts Slain at Summer Retreat", Los Angeles Times, June 14, 1977, p. I-4
^"Radiation Cleanup on Pacific Atoll Begins— Troops Erase Work to Erase Damage of 43 Nuclear Tests", by Larry Pryor, Los Angeles Times, June 20, 1977, p. I-3
^"Tom C. Clark, 77, Ex-Justice Dies", Los Angeles Times, June 14, 1977, p. I-1
^"Miller Wins UMW Election", Atlanta Constitution, June 16, 1977, p.3-A
^"Suarez Wins Virtual Majority in Election— Spaniards Also Create Near 2-Party System With Socialist 'Opposition'", by Stanley Meisler, Los Angeles Times, June 17, 1977, p. I-4
^"Brezhnev Adds Presidency to His Power Base", Los Angeles Times, June 17, 1977, p. I-1
^"Lynch's Irish Opposition Party Upsets Ruling Coalition", Los Angeles Times, June 18, 1977, p. I-4
^"History and the Current Status of the Russian Early-Warning System", by Pavel Podvig, Science and Global Security (2002) pp. 21–60
^"Pentagon Warns on Opinions", Los Angeles Times, June 17, 1977, p. I-2
^"Von Braun, Who Helped Put Man on Moon, Dies", Los Angeles Times, June 18, 1977, p. I-1
^"Dr. Benjamin Lee, 42, of Fermilab; Noted Physicist Was Crash Victim", The New York Times, June 18, 1977
^"French Envoy Killed in Car Accident", Los Angeles Times, June 20, 1977, p. I-21
^"Bishop Neumann Installed as First U.S. Male Saint", by William Tuohy, Los Angeles Times, June 20, 1977, p. I-1
^Dieter Nohlen, et al., Elections in Asia: A Data Handbook, Volume II, (2001) pp.490-491
^"Green Shrugs Off ALL Threats to Win U.S. Open— Champion Has Police Guard After Death Threat", by Shav Glick, Los Angeles Times, June 20, 1977, p. III-1
^"Anti-Communist Editor, Girl Shot to Death in Chicago", Los Angeles Times, June 20, 1977, p. I-10
^"Trans-Alaska oil pipeline marks 35 years of production", by Mary Pemberton, Anchorage Daily News, June 21, 2012
^"Alaskan Oil Flows With Push of Button", by Bill Stall, Los Angeles Times, June 21, 1977, p. I-1
^Not an estimate; the pipeline is 800.32 miles in length (800 miles, 1,690 feet or 10 meters short of 1,288m),
"The Trans-Alaska Pipeline", The Lay of the Land, The Center for Land Use Interpretation Newsletter (Spring 2009)
^"Begin Sworn In as Israeli Prime Minister— Voting Along Party Lines, Parliament Narrowly Approves His New Cabinet", by Dial Torgerson, Los Angeles Times, June 21, 1977, p. I-6
^"Haldeman Enters Prison One Day Early— Former Nixon Aide Starts Watergate Term at Lompoc", by Tom Paegel, Los Angeles Times, June 22, 1977, p. I-3
^"Prisoners Jeer Mitchell as He Starts Sentence; Now No. 24171-157", Los Angeles Times, June 23, 1977, p. I-1
^"Surgery Separates Siamese Twin Girls", Los Angeles Times, July 8, 1977, p.I-6
^"One Siamese Twin Dies After Surgery", Los Angeles Times, August 18, 1977, p.I-13
^"Where Am I?", by Don Bedwell, in American Heritage Magazine (Spring 2007)
^John C. Crittenden, et al. Water Treatment: Principles and Design (John Wiley & Sons, 2012) p181-182
^"First President of New African Nation Elected", Los Angeles Times, June 25, 1977, p.I-12
^"Ethiopia Unveils People's Militia— Africa's Third Larges Force to Face Rebels", Los Angeles Times, June 26, 1977, p.I-1
^"Zap! Lightning Strikes Again— For 7th Time", AP report in Roanoke (Va.) Times, June 28, 1977, p.1
^John Friedman, Out of the Blue: A History of Lightning: Science, Superstition, and Amazing Stories of Survival (Delacorte Press, 2008)
^Guinness World Records 2001, ed. by Ken Campbell (Guinness World Record Ltd, 2000) p.36
^Jason Draper, Prince: Life and Times (Book Sales, 2016) pp.11–16
^"Tennessee Jail Fire Kills 42, Including Locked-up Prisoners", The New York Times, June 27, 1977
^"42 Die in Tennessee Jail Fire; Keys Lost— Inmates and Eight Visitors Asphyixated by Smoke, Gas From Padded Cell Blaze", Los Angeles Times, June 27, 1977, p.I-1
^Ted Harrison, The Death and Resurrection of Elvis Presley (Reaktion Press, 2016)