A
U.S. Air ForceSR-71 reconnaissance airplane set a new speed record for a transatlantic crossing, flying from
New York City to
London in less than two hours. Flown by USAF Majors James V. Sullivan and Noel F. Widdifield, the SR-71 had crossed North America in
subsonic flight from California, refueled twice in mid-air until reaching New York City's airspace, before beginning its attaining an average speed of 1,817 miles per hour (2,924 km/h) as it crossed the ocean. The crew covered the 3,490-mile (5,620 km) flight in 1 hour 55 minutes 42 seconds and landed at the
Farnborough International Airshow in England.[2] The crossing took less than half as long as the previous record, set by a
Royal Navy Phantom, of 4 hours, 35 minutes.[3]
Three separate missing persons cases began on the same day in the United States. In
Akron, Ohio, 17-year-old
Linda Pagano disappeared after arguing with her stepfather and leaving his apartment. Pagano's remains were discovered in
Strongsville, Ohio, five months later in February, but would remain unidentified until 2018. Her murder remains unsolved.[7][8]
Martha Morrison, aged 17, disappeared from
Portland, Oregon. Morrison's remains, and those of Carol Platt Valenzuela, were discovered on October 12 near
Vancouver, Washington. One woman was immediately identified as Valenzuela; the other was identified as Morrison by
DNA profiling in 2015.[9][10]Warren Forrest would be convicted of Morrison's murder on February 1, 2023.[11]
Boxer Charles "Big Boy" Cutajar of
Malta sustained a cut vein in his head during a fight with Italian boxer Francesco Piccanelli, who won by knockout. Cutajar died from a hemorrhage the following day.[14]
The Australian plant genus Alexgeorgea was discovered by American botanist
Sherwin Carlquist, beginning with the flower species Alexgeorgea subterranea.[21]
A tornado touched down in
New York City for the first time since storm records were kept, striking
the Bronx.[23]
In
Kruševac,
Socialist Republic of Serbia, Yugoslavia, 18-year-old
Milica Kostić jumped from a 12th-floor window to escape being raped by a group of 5 young men, telling police afterwards that it was the only way to save her honor. She would die of her injuries two days later.[24]
India's lower house of Parliament, the
Lok Sabha, voted 310 to 7 to make the kingdom of
Sikkim one of the states of India, subject to approval by the Sikkimese government.[44][45] The upper house, the
Rajya Sabha, followed suit on September 7 in a 168 to 8 vote.[45]
In
Kanawha County, West Virginia, hundreds of
coal miners stayed off the job to join protesters demanding the removal of school textbooks which they regarded as containing inappropriate content.[57]
In a continuation of protests in
South Korea following the August 15 assassination attempt on
PresidentPark Chung Hee by a Japanese-born North Korean sympathizer, a crowd attacked the
Japanese Embassy in
Seoul, breaking windows, removing the
flag of Japan from the roof and setting a car on fire. Police responded with
tear gas.[62] During further protests on September 9, 15 demonstrators cut off their little fingers, saying they wished to present them to the Embassy.[63]
The
Constitution of Pakistan was
amended to create and maintain a
statistical database of all citizens of Pakistan, with each citizen to have a government-issued
National Identity Card (NIC).[76] Another amendment set an official definition of "
Muslim" ("a person who believes in the unity and oneness of Allah, in the absolute and unqualified finality of the Prophethood of Muhammad (Peace be upon Him), the last of the Prophets, and does not believe in, or recognize as a prophet or religious reformer, any person who claimed or claims to be a prophet, in any sense of the word or of any description whatsoever, after Muhammad (Peace be upon Him)") and "non-Muslim" ("a person who is not a Muslim and includes a person belonging to the Christian, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist or Parsi community, a person of the Qadiani group or the Lahori group (who call themselves 'Ahmadis' or by another name), or a Baha'i, and a person belonging to any of the scheduled castes.")
The
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA) was signed into law by U.S. President Ford. Though individual states of the U.S. were free not to follow the guidelines of the Act, only those states that complied with the federal standards were eligible for federal grants for state juvenile programs.[78]
U.S. President Gerald Ford made an unpopular decision that would ultimately cost him the 1976 U.S. presidential election, as he announced in a nationally televised speech that he had granted a "full, free and absolute
pardon" to his predecessor, former President
Richard Nixon, for any crimes that Nixon might have committed during the
Nixon presidency.[87] Ford said in his speech, "I have come to a decision which I felt I should tell you and all of my fellow American citizens, as soon as I was certain in my own mind and in my own conscience that it is the right thing to do." He added that the
Watergate scandal "could go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it. I have concluded that only I can do that, and if I can, I must." He noted that, "I am compelled to conclude that many months and perhaps more years will have to pass before Richard Nixon could obtain a fair trial by jury in any jurisdiction of the United States," and that "During this long period of delay and potential litigation, ugly passions would again be aroused. And our people would again be polarized in their opinions. And the credibility of our free institutions of government would again be challenged at home and abroad."[88] Ford then read the text of
Proclamation 4311 aloud.[89] In 2001, Ford was presented the
Profile in Courage Award, and U.S. Senator
Ted Kennedy said, "At a time of national turmoil, America was fortunate that it was Gerald Ford who took the helm of the storm-tossed ship of state. Unlike many of us at the time, President Ford recognized that the nation had to move forward, and could not do so if there was a continuing effort to prosecute former President Nixon. So President Ford made a courageous decision, one that historians now say cost him his office, and he pardoned Richard Nixon... time has a way of clarifying past events, and now we see that President Ford was right. His courage and dedication to our country made it possible for us to begin the process of healing and put the tragedy of Watergate behind us.[90]
TWA Flight 841 crashed into the
Ionian Sea 18 minutes after takeoff from
Athens toward
Rome, after a terrorist bomb exploded in the cargo hold. With control no longer possible, the Boeing 707 made a steep climb and stalled. All 88 people aboard were killed.[91][92]
Igor Rotenberg, Russian billionaire businessman and co-owner of the
Stroygazmontazh conglomerate; in
Leningrad, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (now Saint Petersburg in Russia).[108]
The government of Portugal recognized the independence of its former colony, Portuguese Guinea, almost one year after the West African nation had declared its independence as the Republic of
Guinea-Bissau.[115] Guinea-Bissau, led by
Luís Cabral, had declared its independence on September 24, 1973.
Lou Brock of the
St. Louis Cardinals set the Major League Baseball record for most bases stolen in a season. Playing against the visiting
Philadelphia Phillies in the Cards' 142nd game, Brock tied the record of 104 (set by Maury Wills in the 154-game 1932 season), then had his 105th stolen base in the seventh inning.[116]
The crash of
Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 killed 72 of the 82 people on board. The
McDonnell Douglas DC-9 jet was approaching the airport in
Charlotte, North Carolina after departing
Charleston, South Carolina with a final scheduled destination of
Chicago.[123][124][125] with 3 of those dying within a month. The NTSB determined that the probable cause of the accident was a "lack of altitude awareness critical points during the approach at critical points during the approach due to poor cockpit discipline in that the crew did not follow prescribed procedures."[124]
The
Omega 7 anti-Castro terrorist group was created by Cuban exiles in the U.S. and based in
Miami. Despite having no more than 20 members, the group was responsible for at least 55 bombings and other attacks over an eight-year period.[126]
Six reserve members of the
Parachute Regiment 15th Battalion, all from Scotland, drowned in the
Kiel Canal near
Osterrade in
West Germany. They were part of the largest combined military exercise in the history of
NATO up to that time,
Exercise Bold Guard, with 40,000 people.[127] The group had undershot their
drop zone due to an unforeseen wind from an undetectable
temperature inversion. West German army officer Siegfried Mattern, who was on safety duty for the drop, subsequently
hanged himself even though his superior had told him he was not to blame for the accident.[128][129]
Philippine dissident
Jose W. Diokno, a former Senator and Secretary of Justice in the Philippine government, was released from imprisonment almost two years after having been arrested on September 23, 1972.[130]
The NBC television drama Little House on the Prairie, based on the works of
Laura Ingalls Wilder, began the first of 204 episodes over nine seasons, following a successful pilot that had been broadcast on March 30. It would continue until March 21, 1983.
A twin-engine private plane exploded and crashed 12 miles (19 km) northwest of
Austin, Minnesota, killing a minister who was flying the plane and five members of his congregation.[131]
The Derg proclaimed the 60-year-old Crown Prince,
Asfaw Wossen Tafari, as the new King (but not Emperor) of Ethiopia.[139] Prince Asfaw, who was in Switzerland for medical treatment, wisely declined to accept the invitation, and avoided imprisonment and execution that was meted out to other members of the former royal family.
The longest game in
Major League Baseball history to be played to a conclusion came to an end in the 25th inning, 7 hours and 4 minutes after it had started, as baseball's
St. Louis Cardinals defeated the host
New York Mets, 4 to 3, in the 25th inning. The game had been tied, 3 to 3, after nine innings and then went 15 additional scoreless innings before two Mets errors gave the Cardinals'
Bake McBride the opportunity to run from first base to home plate.[140][141]
In the U.S. state of
Massachusetts, court-ordered
desegregation busing began on the first day of school in
Boston. While busing was successful in 79 of Boston's 80 schools,[142] demonstrations and violence accompanied the beginning of school in the largely white
South Boston neighborhood. On the first day, only 124 of the 1,000 students enrolled at
South Boston High School attended, and white demonstrators stoned buses carrying African-American students home from the school.
Kevin White,
Mayor of Boston, banned gatherings of three or more people in the vicinity of public schools.[143]
American
serial murdererCalvin Jackson, who would confess to nine murders committed on the
West Side of Manhattan in New York City, was arrested. Jackson was picked up by police hours after the discovery of the body of 69-year-old widow Pauline Spanierman at her apartment at 40 West 77th Street. The
NYPD had not previously connected the women's deaths, nor even realized that some of the victims had been murdered.[144][145][146]
Japanese construction worker Etsuo Ono was arrested as the chief suspect in the
murders of nine women in and around Tokyo over the previous 20 months. Although he was convicted of murder in 1986 and sentenced to life imprisonment, based on a confession made under duress, Ono's conviction was reversed and he would be acquitted on retrial in 1991. He would later be arrested for the murder of another person in 1996.[147]
The
country music and comedy show Funny Farm, hosted by singer
Blake Emmons, premiered on the
CTV Television Network as a Canadian-produced program "advertised as a slick rural comedy, a cross between Hee Haw and Laugh-In".[148] The show was poorly received by critics, with one commenting, "in all my years of TV viewing I can't remember a worse show than Funny Farm. It's ugly and crude from every point of view; the concept is a straight steal from Hee Haw, but the writing, performances and production are straight out of the garbage dump."[149]
Born:Rayya Makarim, U.S.-born Indonesian actress, film screenwriter and producer; in
Boston[150]
Died:
Bert R. J. Hassell, 80, American aviation pioneer known for his 1928 establishment, with Parker D. Cramer, of the use of the
Great Circle Route over the Atlantic Ocean for the minimum distance between two points on a globe, the route most commercial airliners would later employ.[151]
A bomb exploded at the Cafetería Rolando, a restaurant adjacent to the national police headquarters in
Madrid, killing 13 people and injuring 71 others.[157]
Three members of the
Japanese Red Army (JRA)
seized the French Embassy in
The Hague, Netherlands, and took 11 people hostage, including
Jacques Senard, the French Ambassador to the Netherlands.[158] The JRA terrorists released their hostages after five days, in return for the release of jailed JRA member Yutaka Furuya and safe passage out of the Netherlands.[159]
Sofim (Società franco-italiana di motori) was created in Italy as a joint venture of the
Fiat,
Renault and
Alfa Romeo companies to manufacture diesel engines.[162]
Chicago Today, an afternoon tabloid newspaper owned and operated by the Chicago Tribune, published its final issue. The paper had started on July 4, 1900, as the Chicago American, was bought by the Tribune in 1956 and converted to Today in 1969.
Lieutenant General
Kim Jae-gyu, who would become the Director of the
Korea Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), was welcomed by South Korea's President
Park Chung Hee upon becoming the new Minister of Construction. Kim would tell his lawyer in 1979 that he had been prepared to shoot and kill Park upon shaking hands with the president but abandoned the plan.[176] After becoming the KCIA Director, Kim would
assassinate Park Chung Hee five years later on October 26, 1979.
Born:Hicham El Guerrouj, Moroccan
middle-distance runner and holder of the world records for the
fastest mile run (3 minutes, 43.13 seconds) since 1999, and the
1500 metres run (3 minutes, 26.00 seconds) since 1998; in
Berkane.[177] In addition to the mile record that has stood for almost 25 years, Berkane won Olympic gold medals in 2004 for the 1500 metre and 5000 metre races, and three consecutive world championships in the 1500 m race (1999, 2001 and 2003).
What would become known as the "
Bulldozer Exhibition" took place in
Moscow when Soviet authorities used bulldozers and water trucks to beak up an unauthorized exhibition of contemporary
nonconformist art in a park at
Profsoyuznaya Street. After the area was cleared, groups of young men destroyed paintings and threw them into a dump truck to be driven away as police watched. Viewers at the exhibit, including foreign diplomats and journalists attending the exhibit, were assaulted or forced to flee.[185]
Lieutenant General
Aman Andom was named as the Chairman of the
Provisional Military Government of Socialist Ethiopia (more commonly called "the
Derg") three days after the overthrow of the government of Emperor Haile Selassie, becoming the northeast African nation's new head of state. Aman, of Eritrean descent, would come into conflict with the rest of the Derg for his attempts to resolve the ongoing war of Eritrean independence and would be killed three weeks later.[186]
Suzanne Miller, a 26-year-old mother of three, disappeared after leaving her home near
Wolseley Barracks in
London, Ontario, Canada. Her car would be found on September 23, and her body was discovered on October 12 in a wooded area in
Thorndale, Ontario. As of 2018[update] Miller's murder would remain unsolved.[189]
Martin McBirneyQC, 56, and Rory Conaghan, 54, both judges in Northern Ireland, were assassinated in
Belfast by terrorists from the
Provisional Irish Republican Army. McBirney was Protestant and Conaghan (who was killed in front of his 8-year-old daughter) was Catholic.[197]
On the 19th anniversary of the beginning of the Revolución Libertadora, multiple terrorist acts took place in
Argentina, including over 50 bombings, and four people were killed.
Hipólito Atilio López, 45, a labor union leader and the former Vice-Governor of the
Province of Córdoba, was one of two men forced out of a car 36 miles (58 km) from
Buenos Aires and shot to death.[198]
Born:Loona (stage name for Marie-José van der Kolk), multilingual Dutch pop singer; in
IJmuiden[202][203]
Died:Forrest "Phog" Allen, 88, American college basketball coach at the University of Kansas, inductee into the
Basketball Hall of Fame, 1952 NCAA tournament champion, known for his winning percentage of almost 74% of games coached.[204]
The three Japanese terrorists who had taken over the French Embassy in The Hague released their 9 remaining hostages and left
Amsterdam by jetliner for
Damascus, Syria, taking with them Japanese Red Army member Yutaka Furuya, whose release from a Parisian prison they had demanded.[206] Earlier in the day,
Queen Juliana was driven in a blue compact car to the parliament building (
Ridderzaal) only 300 yards (270 m) from the French Embassy to give the Prinsjesdag, the Dutch
speech from the throne, rather than riding in the
Golden Coach as was traditional.[207]
The controversial
made-for-TV filmBorn Innocent was broadcast on NBC as the U.S. network's NBC World Premiere Movie starting at 8:00 pm Eastern Time (7:00 Central), with content never seen before on U.S. television, including a rape scene inside a juvenile detention center.[208] Starring
Linda Blair, Born Innocent was the highest-rated television movie to air in the United States in 1974, but would lead to the creation of a family viewing policy by the
National Association of Broadcasters.[209]
Born:
Masamori Tokuyama (ring name for Chang-soo Hong), Japanese-born
North Korean boxer who held the WBC super-flyweight title twice between 2000 and 2006, who later obtained
South Korean citizenship; in
Tokyo[210]
Mette Solli, Norwegian women's kickboxer, 2001 and 2007 world champion; in
Molde
Süleyman Demirel resigned as
Prime Minister of Turkey after seven members of his coalition government tried to stop him from making a state visit to the Scandinavian nations.[217] The post would remain empty until November 17, when
Sadi Irmak formed a
caretaker government that would last until March 31 the following year.
American actress
Doris Day won a $22,835,646 judgment against lawyer Jerome Rosenthal, whom she had accused of defrauding her and her husband,
Martin Melcher, who died in 1968.[219][220] Day would settle with Rosenthal's insurers in
August 1977 for $6 million to be paid in 23 annual installments.[220]
British Prime Minister
Harold Wilson announced in a televised speech that
new elections for the House of Commons would be held on October 10, marking the first time in 50 years that two general elections had been held in the same year.[221]
Four men from
Maitland, Florida, ranging in age from 20 to 24, drowned while
cave diving at the off-limits Little River Springs near
Branford. The executive director of the
National Association for Cave Diving told a reporter, "They were totally unprepared for their 1,000 foot dive with equipment nowhere near adequate and only one of them had any cave diving experience at all. It was a suicide except that they didn't know it."[222][223]
Ray Richards, 68, American football player known for the later-outlawed play "the lift", briefly coach of the
NFLChicago Cardinals, died of cancer.[227]
Brice Taylor, 72, African-American college football player, 1925 All-American, known for lacking a left hand. Taylor was the first black player for the USC Trojans, and later a head football coach for several
historically black colleges.[229]
In
Argentina,
the kidnapping of brothers Jorge Born and Juan Born, which would be resolved only after the payment of a record
ransom, was carried out in
Buenos Aires by the
Montoneros terrorist group. The two brothers, officers of the
Bunge & Born grain exporting company, were being driven to their offices, along with general manager Alberto Bosch, when their limousine was blocked by 15 terrorists in several cars. Bosch and the chauffeur, Juan Carlos Perez, were shot and killed.[230] Juan would be released in
April, but Jorge would remain captive until June 20, 1975, released only after the payment of $64,000,000 U.S. dollars.[231]
Yuri Andropov, the Director of the Soviet Union's
KGB spy agency, approved "Plan 5/9-16091", a disinformation campaign to discredit recently-expelled dissident
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn[232] and to deter his contacts with other Soviet dissidents. The harassment led to Solzhenitsyn leaving
Zürich in
Switzerland, where he and all persons contacting him had been under Soviet surveillance, and settling in the small U.S. town of
Cavendish, Vermont.[232]
Hurricane Fifi, later known as Hurricane Orlene, struck the Central American nation of
Honduras, where it killed more than 8,000 people.[240] On the first day, the town of
Choloma was destroyed and more than 2,800 people washed away when the flood collapsed a natural dam.[241][242][243]
The National Highway,
Australia's network of federally-funded roads, came into existence with the approval of the National Roads Act 1974.[244]
Queen
Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom ordered the dissolution of Parliament slightly more than six months after it opened on March 12, making the
46th Parliament of Elizabeth II the shortest elected UK parliament in history.[245]
The war crimes trial of
Bruno Streckenbach, director of Nazi Germany's Einsatzgruppen within Poland, on charges of one million counts of murder, was postponed indefinitely because of his cardiac problems.[246] Streckenbach would survive for three more years, never facing a verdict, until his death on October 28, 1977.
The
Kootenai Tribe of Idaho, under the leadership of tribal elder
Amelia Trice, announced a declaration of war against the U.S. government. The Tribe set up informational pickets and requested 10-cent tolls on
U.S. Highway 95 in
Bonners Ferry, Idaho. Trice would lead a delegation to Washington, D.C., for talks, resulting in U.S. President Ford signing a bill transferring two tracts of federal land to the tribe.[247]
About 3,000 people were evacuated in
Houston,
Texas, and 19 people were hospitalized, for injuries that happened within a 5-mile (8.0 km) radius of an explosion and leak of the gas
butadiene in a Houston railyard.[254]
The U.S. planetary probe Mariner 10, which had made a flyby of the planet
Mercury on March 29, was able to make a second, but more distant, pass for data collection because of Mercury's frequent orbit (every 88 days) around the Sun.[255]
In the
Gulf of Salerno, Italian
freediverEnzo Maiorca attempted to set a new world depth record of 90 metres (300 ft) on live television. Less than 20 metres (66 ft) down, Maiorca collided with
Enzo Bottesini, a diving expert and
RAI correspondent. Maiorca surfaced and let out a stream of
profanities that were audible to the television audience. He did not appear on television again until 2000.[262]
In the UK, the
BBC became the first television network to feature texting for viewers as it inaugurated
Ceefax. The service offered as many as 30 pages of information for subscribers to view while watching BBC programmes. Ceefax, a pun on the phrase "see facts", would continue until October 23, 2012.[267]
In Portugal, a late-night fire at
Lisbon's
Palace of Ajuda began, causing extensive damage and destroying 500 paintings, including a
Rembrandt self-portrait.[271][272]
Denis Ireland, 80,
Northern Irish Protestant political activist and the first member of the Republic of Ireland's parliament (as a member of the
Seanad Éireann to be a resident of Northern Ireland[277]
American orthopedic surgeon
Frank Jobe, a physician for the
Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, performed the first
ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction, now commonplace for athletes, with a tendon from one arm being used to reconstruct the elbow of the other arm.[290] Jobe's first patient was Dodgers pitcher
Tommy John, who tore a ligament in his left elbow on July 17[291] in his 12th season in baseball.[292] After staying out during the 1975 season to recover, John would continue as a pitcher for 14 additional seasons and would be the inspiration for other players to extend their careers by undergoing the "Tommy John surgery".[290]
The first warnings were made to the general public of the danger of
ozone depletion from the use of
chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), as The New York Times ran a front-page story headlined "Tests Show Aerosol Gases May Pose Threat to Earth". The Times noted that
Michael B. McElroy, professor of atmospheric science, and Dr.
Steven C. Wofsy, an atmospheric physicist, had concluded that if the use of the refrigerant
Freon continued, the
ozone in the atmosphere, the primary protector against
ultraviolet radiation, would be decreased by 30% within 20 years.[299] McElroy and Wofsy publicized the danger of ozone depletion, following up on the findings of its cause by
F. Sherwood Rowland and
Mario Molina, published on June 28, 1974, "to little fanfare".[300]
U.S. First LadyBetty Ford, the 56-year-old wife of President Gerald Ford, was first discovered to have a lump that would prove to be cancerous, when she chose "on the spur of the moment" to undergo an examination at the
Bethesda Naval Hospital. The appointment at Bethesda had been for the First Lady's personal assistant, Nancy Howe, and Mrs. Ford had gone along as a friend. Dr. Douglas Knab detected the lump in the examination, confirmed by surgeon William Fouty. The two physicians then contacted the
White House physician, Dr. William M. Lukash, who arranged for Dr. Richard Thistlewaite to conduct tests the next day at Bethesda, leading to surgery for
breast cancer on September 28.[301]
All television stations and networks in
Argentina were placed under direct control of the Argentine government by Decree 919/1974.[302]
U.S. Secretary of AgricultureEarl Butz abandoned a proposal for a
tent show that would have toured the United States with prayer, music and sketches of pioneer life to demonstrate that food was a better bargain in the U.S. than in any other country and to strengthen the credibility of the
Department of Agriculture.
Democratic Party politicians had ridiculed the idea, with U.S. Senator
George McGovern calling it "almost incomprehensible."[305]
Born:Joo Jin-mo (stage name for Park Jin-tae), South Korean film and TV actor, winner of the Grand Bell Award for Best Supporting Actor for the 1999 film Happy End; in
Seoul
East Germany (officially, the German Democratic Republic)
revised its Constitution to omit mention of the concept of
German reunification.[309] The changes, which also described the Communist German state as "a socialist state of workers and farmers... under the leadership of the working class and their Marxist-Leninist party," were made to further the new policy of Abgrenzung to designate East Germany as a separate nation.
Alí Lameda, a Venezuelan translator who had served as an interpreter for the North Korean Foreign Ministry, was allowed to leave the country after seven years in a
North Korean concentration camp.[311] In 1967, Lameda had made the mistake of telling jokes about North Korean leader
Kim Il Sung at a banquet for Foreign Ministry employees.[312]
Silvio Frondizi, 67, Argentine lawyer, brother of former President
Arturo Frondizi, was kidnapped from his home and murdered by terrorists from the right-wing
Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (Triple A).[316] On September 29, Argentine police used tear gas to disperse 3,000 people at Frondizi's funeral procession.[317]
Betty Ford, the
First Lady of the United States, underwent a
mastectomy at Bethesda Naval Hospital to remove her right breast after the discovery of a cancerous lump.[318] The choice of Mrs. Ford to fully disclose her diagnosis of
breast cancer would be described later as "an important decision which would have tremendous social impact". As one historian noted, "After she went public to alert as many women as possible of the benefits of early detection, millions of women schedule appointments at breast cancer clinics across the country."[319] Another historian, Lisa Liebman, would say later, "Her courage and candor not only removed the stigma from the topic but also saved countless lives."[319] Mrs. Ford herself would say later, "I got a lot of credit for having gone public with my mastectomy, but if I hadn't been the wife of the President of the United States, the press would not have come racing after my story, so in a way it was fate."[319]
The Panamanian freighter Sun Shang sank in a typhoon 400 miles (640 km) east of
Hong Kong, killing 31 of its 34 crewmembers. On the east coast of
Taiwan, at least 13 people in one village died in a landslide caused by the typhoon.[320]
A
Venezuelan Air Force Phantom jet with two people on board went out of control at an airshow near
Caracas and crashed into an apartment building, killing eight residents.[321]
In Moscow, over 30,000 people came to an open-air show of contemporary nonconformist art in
Izmaylovsky Park. The display was approved by Soviet authorities after foreign criticism of the
September 15 disruption of the exhibition at
Bitsa Park.[326] One artist commented to a reporter, "We have had four hours of freedom here this afternoon."[327]
Regular commercial air service began between
Japan and the
People's Republic of China with a direct flight from
Tokyo to
Beijing exactly two years after the 1972 establishment of diplomatic relations.[331]
^Cole-Adams, Peter (4 September 1974).
"Heath loses two yachts". The Age.
Melbourne. Page 1, column 1. Retrieved 12 November 2023 – via Google News. LONDON, September 3. — The British Opposition Leader (Mr. Heath) has lost two yachts in 24 hours. Two men are believed drowned after his yacht Morning Cloud II capsized and sank off the Sussex coast late last night.
^Eder, Richard (4 September 1974).
"Heath Yacht Sinks, Drowning Godson". The New York Times. Page 4, columns 4-6. Retrieved 12 November 2023. LONDON, Sept. 3—Former Prime Minister Edward Heath's racing sloop Morning Cloud capsized and sank in a gale last night in the English Channel off the Sussex coast.
^"Heath Yacht—Search for Sailor Stops". World News. The Sydney Morning Herald. 5 September 1974. Page 5, columns 4-5. Retrieved 12 November 2023 – via Google News. LONDON, Wednesday. — Coastguards abandoned last night an air and sea search for the missing crewman of Mr Edward Heath's yacht, Morning Cloud, 24 hours after it overturned in a gale.
^Shenker, Israel (3 September 1974).
"Moses Soyer, 74, Dead; Traditional U.S. Painter". The New York Times. Page 38, columns 1-3. Retrieved 11 November 2023. Moses Soyer, the Russian-born artist who became an outstanding American painter, died here yesterday while working at his studio in the Chelsea Hotel.
^
ab"Sikkim Bill ratified". New Straits Times. UPI. 9 September 1974. Page 2, column 5.
Archived from the original on 21 August 2019. Retrieved 21 January 2024 – via Google News. NEW DELHI, Sun.—India's Upper House of Parliament ratified a constitutional amendment yesterday that absorbs Sikkim into the Indian union.
^Butler, Geoff (22 June 2023).
"The Kiel Canal Disaster 1974". Hermes: Messenger of The Gods. The Parachute Regimental Association. Retrieved 19 November 2023.
^"A New Era for MUSC". With Integrity and Dignity: The Life of James W. Colbert, Jr., M.D. Waring Historical Library, Medical University of South Carolina. 2023. Retrieved 16 November 2023.
^Kifner, John (13 September 1974).
"VIOLENCE MARS BUSING IN BOSTON". The New York Times. Page 1, columns 2-4; page 77, columns 1-6. Retrieved 16 November 2023.
^再考 来た道行く道<5>煩悶 逆転無罪と新たな悲劇―連載 [Rethinking the way to go: Anguish on reversal of innocence and a new tragedy - serialization]. Nishinippon Shimbun (in Japanese). 26 December 2005. Archived from
the original on 6 May 2007. Retrieved 17 January 2024.
^Hornbaker, Tim (2007). National Wrestling Alliance: The Untold Story of the Monopoly That Strangled Pro Wrestling.
Toronto:
ECW Press. p. 252.
ISBN978-1550227413.
^Arquitetura, INBEC Pós-Graduação- Engenharia (4 February 2020).
"Conheça a história da construção do Metrô de São Paulo" [Discover the history of the construction of the São Paulo Metro]. INBEC Pós-Graduação (in Brazilian Portuguese). Retrieved 23 October 2023.
^Robards, Terry (18 September 1974).
"TERRORISTS FREE HOSTAGES, FLY OFF". The New York Times. Page 1, columns 1-4; page 85, columns 1-5. Retrieved 22 November 2023.
^Saxon, Wolfgang (23 September 1974).
"A. J. Greenough, Last Pennsy Head". The New York Times. Page 38, column 3. Retrieved 24 November 2023. Allen Jackson Greenough, lifelong railroader who presided over the Pennsylvania Railroad in its final years, died Saturday of cancer at St. Luke's Hospital.
^Santana, Francisco; Sucena, Eduardo (1994). Dicionário da História de Lisboa [Dictionary of the History of Lisbon] (in Portuguese).
Lisbon, Portugal: Serviço Educativo do Museu do Palácio Nacional da Ajuda. pp. 25–27.
^May, Jan (2016). "'Biennale of Dissent': Nonconformist Art from the USSR in Venice". In Bazin, Jérôme; et al. (eds.). Art Beyond Borders: Artistic Exchange in Communist Europe (1945-1989).
Central European University Press. p. 362.
A
U.S. Air ForceSR-71 reconnaissance airplane set a new speed record for a transatlantic crossing, flying from
New York City to
London in less than two hours. Flown by USAF Majors James V. Sullivan and Noel F. Widdifield, the SR-71 had crossed North America in
subsonic flight from California, refueled twice in mid-air until reaching New York City's airspace, before beginning its attaining an average speed of 1,817 miles per hour (2,924 km/h) as it crossed the ocean. The crew covered the 3,490-mile (5,620 km) flight in 1 hour 55 minutes 42 seconds and landed at the
Farnborough International Airshow in England.[2] The crossing took less than half as long as the previous record, set by a
Royal Navy Phantom, of 4 hours, 35 minutes.[3]
Three separate missing persons cases began on the same day in the United States. In
Akron, Ohio, 17-year-old
Linda Pagano disappeared after arguing with her stepfather and leaving his apartment. Pagano's remains were discovered in
Strongsville, Ohio, five months later in February, but would remain unidentified until 2018. Her murder remains unsolved.[7][8]
Martha Morrison, aged 17, disappeared from
Portland, Oregon. Morrison's remains, and those of Carol Platt Valenzuela, were discovered on October 12 near
Vancouver, Washington. One woman was immediately identified as Valenzuela; the other was identified as Morrison by
DNA profiling in 2015.[9][10]Warren Forrest would be convicted of Morrison's murder on February 1, 2023.[11]
Boxer Charles "Big Boy" Cutajar of
Malta sustained a cut vein in his head during a fight with Italian boxer Francesco Piccanelli, who won by knockout. Cutajar died from a hemorrhage the following day.[14]
The Australian plant genus Alexgeorgea was discovered by American botanist
Sherwin Carlquist, beginning with the flower species Alexgeorgea subterranea.[21]
A tornado touched down in
New York City for the first time since storm records were kept, striking
the Bronx.[23]
In
Kruševac,
Socialist Republic of Serbia, Yugoslavia, 18-year-old
Milica Kostić jumped from a 12th-floor window to escape being raped by a group of 5 young men, telling police afterwards that it was the only way to save her honor. She would die of her injuries two days later.[24]
India's lower house of Parliament, the
Lok Sabha, voted 310 to 7 to make the kingdom of
Sikkim one of the states of India, subject to approval by the Sikkimese government.[44][45] The upper house, the
Rajya Sabha, followed suit on September 7 in a 168 to 8 vote.[45]
In
Kanawha County, West Virginia, hundreds of
coal miners stayed off the job to join protesters demanding the removal of school textbooks which they regarded as containing inappropriate content.[57]
In a continuation of protests in
South Korea following the August 15 assassination attempt on
PresidentPark Chung Hee by a Japanese-born North Korean sympathizer, a crowd attacked the
Japanese Embassy in
Seoul, breaking windows, removing the
flag of Japan from the roof and setting a car on fire. Police responded with
tear gas.[62] During further protests on September 9, 15 demonstrators cut off their little fingers, saying they wished to present them to the Embassy.[63]
The
Constitution of Pakistan was
amended to create and maintain a
statistical database of all citizens of Pakistan, with each citizen to have a government-issued
National Identity Card (NIC).[76] Another amendment set an official definition of "
Muslim" ("a person who believes in the unity and oneness of Allah, in the absolute and unqualified finality of the Prophethood of Muhammad (Peace be upon Him), the last of the Prophets, and does not believe in, or recognize as a prophet or religious reformer, any person who claimed or claims to be a prophet, in any sense of the word or of any description whatsoever, after Muhammad (Peace be upon Him)") and "non-Muslim" ("a person who is not a Muslim and includes a person belonging to the Christian, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist or Parsi community, a person of the Qadiani group or the Lahori group (who call themselves 'Ahmadis' or by another name), or a Baha'i, and a person belonging to any of the scheduled castes.")
The
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA) was signed into law by U.S. President Ford. Though individual states of the U.S. were free not to follow the guidelines of the Act, only those states that complied with the federal standards were eligible for federal grants for state juvenile programs.[78]
U.S. President Gerald Ford made an unpopular decision that would ultimately cost him the 1976 U.S. presidential election, as he announced in a nationally televised speech that he had granted a "full, free and absolute
pardon" to his predecessor, former President
Richard Nixon, for any crimes that Nixon might have committed during the
Nixon presidency.[87] Ford said in his speech, "I have come to a decision which I felt I should tell you and all of my fellow American citizens, as soon as I was certain in my own mind and in my own conscience that it is the right thing to do." He added that the
Watergate scandal "could go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it. I have concluded that only I can do that, and if I can, I must." He noted that, "I am compelled to conclude that many months and perhaps more years will have to pass before Richard Nixon could obtain a fair trial by jury in any jurisdiction of the United States," and that "During this long period of delay and potential litigation, ugly passions would again be aroused. And our people would again be polarized in their opinions. And the credibility of our free institutions of government would again be challenged at home and abroad."[88] Ford then read the text of
Proclamation 4311 aloud.[89] In 2001, Ford was presented the
Profile in Courage Award, and U.S. Senator
Ted Kennedy said, "At a time of national turmoil, America was fortunate that it was Gerald Ford who took the helm of the storm-tossed ship of state. Unlike many of us at the time, President Ford recognized that the nation had to move forward, and could not do so if there was a continuing effort to prosecute former President Nixon. So President Ford made a courageous decision, one that historians now say cost him his office, and he pardoned Richard Nixon... time has a way of clarifying past events, and now we see that President Ford was right. His courage and dedication to our country made it possible for us to begin the process of healing and put the tragedy of Watergate behind us.[90]
TWA Flight 841 crashed into the
Ionian Sea 18 minutes after takeoff from
Athens toward
Rome, after a terrorist bomb exploded in the cargo hold. With control no longer possible, the Boeing 707 made a steep climb and stalled. All 88 people aboard were killed.[91][92]
Igor Rotenberg, Russian billionaire businessman and co-owner of the
Stroygazmontazh conglomerate; in
Leningrad, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (now Saint Petersburg in Russia).[108]
The government of Portugal recognized the independence of its former colony, Portuguese Guinea, almost one year after the West African nation had declared its independence as the Republic of
Guinea-Bissau.[115] Guinea-Bissau, led by
Luís Cabral, had declared its independence on September 24, 1973.
Lou Brock of the
St. Louis Cardinals set the Major League Baseball record for most bases stolen in a season. Playing against the visiting
Philadelphia Phillies in the Cards' 142nd game, Brock tied the record of 104 (set by Maury Wills in the 154-game 1932 season), then had his 105th stolen base in the seventh inning.[116]
The crash of
Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 killed 72 of the 82 people on board. The
McDonnell Douglas DC-9 jet was approaching the airport in
Charlotte, North Carolina after departing
Charleston, South Carolina with a final scheduled destination of
Chicago.[123][124][125] with 3 of those dying within a month. The NTSB determined that the probable cause of the accident was a "lack of altitude awareness critical points during the approach at critical points during the approach due to poor cockpit discipline in that the crew did not follow prescribed procedures."[124]
The
Omega 7 anti-Castro terrorist group was created by Cuban exiles in the U.S. and based in
Miami. Despite having no more than 20 members, the group was responsible for at least 55 bombings and other attacks over an eight-year period.[126]
Six reserve members of the
Parachute Regiment 15th Battalion, all from Scotland, drowned in the
Kiel Canal near
Osterrade in
West Germany. They were part of the largest combined military exercise in the history of
NATO up to that time,
Exercise Bold Guard, with 40,000 people.[127] The group had undershot their
drop zone due to an unforeseen wind from an undetectable
temperature inversion. West German army officer Siegfried Mattern, who was on safety duty for the drop, subsequently
hanged himself even though his superior had told him he was not to blame for the accident.[128][129]
Philippine dissident
Jose W. Diokno, a former Senator and Secretary of Justice in the Philippine government, was released from imprisonment almost two years after having been arrested on September 23, 1972.[130]
The NBC television drama Little House on the Prairie, based on the works of
Laura Ingalls Wilder, began the first of 204 episodes over nine seasons, following a successful pilot that had been broadcast on March 30. It would continue until March 21, 1983.
A twin-engine private plane exploded and crashed 12 miles (19 km) northwest of
Austin, Minnesota, killing a minister who was flying the plane and five members of his congregation.[131]
The Derg proclaimed the 60-year-old Crown Prince,
Asfaw Wossen Tafari, as the new King (but not Emperor) of Ethiopia.[139] Prince Asfaw, who was in Switzerland for medical treatment, wisely declined to accept the invitation, and avoided imprisonment and execution that was meted out to other members of the former royal family.
The longest game in
Major League Baseball history to be played to a conclusion came to an end in the 25th inning, 7 hours and 4 minutes after it had started, as baseball's
St. Louis Cardinals defeated the host
New York Mets, 4 to 3, in the 25th inning. The game had been tied, 3 to 3, after nine innings and then went 15 additional scoreless innings before two Mets errors gave the Cardinals'
Bake McBride the opportunity to run from first base to home plate.[140][141]
In the U.S. state of
Massachusetts, court-ordered
desegregation busing began on the first day of school in
Boston. While busing was successful in 79 of Boston's 80 schools,[142] demonstrations and violence accompanied the beginning of school in the largely white
South Boston neighborhood. On the first day, only 124 of the 1,000 students enrolled at
South Boston High School attended, and white demonstrators stoned buses carrying African-American students home from the school.
Kevin White,
Mayor of Boston, banned gatherings of three or more people in the vicinity of public schools.[143]
American
serial murdererCalvin Jackson, who would confess to nine murders committed on the
West Side of Manhattan in New York City, was arrested. Jackson was picked up by police hours after the discovery of the body of 69-year-old widow Pauline Spanierman at her apartment at 40 West 77th Street. The
NYPD had not previously connected the women's deaths, nor even realized that some of the victims had been murdered.[144][145][146]
Japanese construction worker Etsuo Ono was arrested as the chief suspect in the
murders of nine women in and around Tokyo over the previous 20 months. Although he was convicted of murder in 1986 and sentenced to life imprisonment, based on a confession made under duress, Ono's conviction was reversed and he would be acquitted on retrial in 1991. He would later be arrested for the murder of another person in 1996.[147]
The
country music and comedy show Funny Farm, hosted by singer
Blake Emmons, premiered on the
CTV Television Network as a Canadian-produced program "advertised as a slick rural comedy, a cross between Hee Haw and Laugh-In".[148] The show was poorly received by critics, with one commenting, "in all my years of TV viewing I can't remember a worse show than Funny Farm. It's ugly and crude from every point of view; the concept is a straight steal from Hee Haw, but the writing, performances and production are straight out of the garbage dump."[149]
Born:Rayya Makarim, U.S.-born Indonesian actress, film screenwriter and producer; in
Boston[150]
Died:
Bert R. J. Hassell, 80, American aviation pioneer known for his 1928 establishment, with Parker D. Cramer, of the use of the
Great Circle Route over the Atlantic Ocean for the minimum distance between two points on a globe, the route most commercial airliners would later employ.[151]
A bomb exploded at the Cafetería Rolando, a restaurant adjacent to the national police headquarters in
Madrid, killing 13 people and injuring 71 others.[157]
Three members of the
Japanese Red Army (JRA)
seized the French Embassy in
The Hague, Netherlands, and took 11 people hostage, including
Jacques Senard, the French Ambassador to the Netherlands.[158] The JRA terrorists released their hostages after five days, in return for the release of jailed JRA member Yutaka Furuya and safe passage out of the Netherlands.[159]
Sofim (Società franco-italiana di motori) was created in Italy as a joint venture of the
Fiat,
Renault and
Alfa Romeo companies to manufacture diesel engines.[162]
Chicago Today, an afternoon tabloid newspaper owned and operated by the Chicago Tribune, published its final issue. The paper had started on July 4, 1900, as the Chicago American, was bought by the Tribune in 1956 and converted to Today in 1969.
Lieutenant General
Kim Jae-gyu, who would become the Director of the
Korea Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), was welcomed by South Korea's President
Park Chung Hee upon becoming the new Minister of Construction. Kim would tell his lawyer in 1979 that he had been prepared to shoot and kill Park upon shaking hands with the president but abandoned the plan.[176] After becoming the KCIA Director, Kim would
assassinate Park Chung Hee five years later on October 26, 1979.
Born:Hicham El Guerrouj, Moroccan
middle-distance runner and holder of the world records for the
fastest mile run (3 minutes, 43.13 seconds) since 1999, and the
1500 metres run (3 minutes, 26.00 seconds) since 1998; in
Berkane.[177] In addition to the mile record that has stood for almost 25 years, Berkane won Olympic gold medals in 2004 for the 1500 metre and 5000 metre races, and three consecutive world championships in the 1500 m race (1999, 2001 and 2003).
What would become known as the "
Bulldozer Exhibition" took place in
Moscow when Soviet authorities used bulldozers and water trucks to beak up an unauthorized exhibition of contemporary
nonconformist art in a park at
Profsoyuznaya Street. After the area was cleared, groups of young men destroyed paintings and threw them into a dump truck to be driven away as police watched. Viewers at the exhibit, including foreign diplomats and journalists attending the exhibit, were assaulted or forced to flee.[185]
Lieutenant General
Aman Andom was named as the Chairman of the
Provisional Military Government of Socialist Ethiopia (more commonly called "the
Derg") three days after the overthrow of the government of Emperor Haile Selassie, becoming the northeast African nation's new head of state. Aman, of Eritrean descent, would come into conflict with the rest of the Derg for his attempts to resolve the ongoing war of Eritrean independence and would be killed three weeks later.[186]
Suzanne Miller, a 26-year-old mother of three, disappeared after leaving her home near
Wolseley Barracks in
London, Ontario, Canada. Her car would be found on September 23, and her body was discovered on October 12 in a wooded area in
Thorndale, Ontario. As of 2018[update] Miller's murder would remain unsolved.[189]
Martin McBirneyQC, 56, and Rory Conaghan, 54, both judges in Northern Ireland, were assassinated in
Belfast by terrorists from the
Provisional Irish Republican Army. McBirney was Protestant and Conaghan (who was killed in front of his 8-year-old daughter) was Catholic.[197]
On the 19th anniversary of the beginning of the Revolución Libertadora, multiple terrorist acts took place in
Argentina, including over 50 bombings, and four people were killed.
Hipólito Atilio López, 45, a labor union leader and the former Vice-Governor of the
Province of Córdoba, was one of two men forced out of a car 36 miles (58 km) from
Buenos Aires and shot to death.[198]
Born:Loona (stage name for Marie-José van der Kolk), multilingual Dutch pop singer; in
IJmuiden[202][203]
Died:Forrest "Phog" Allen, 88, American college basketball coach at the University of Kansas, inductee into the
Basketball Hall of Fame, 1952 NCAA tournament champion, known for his winning percentage of almost 74% of games coached.[204]
The three Japanese terrorists who had taken over the French Embassy in The Hague released their 9 remaining hostages and left
Amsterdam by jetliner for
Damascus, Syria, taking with them Japanese Red Army member Yutaka Furuya, whose release from a Parisian prison they had demanded.[206] Earlier in the day,
Queen Juliana was driven in a blue compact car to the parliament building (
Ridderzaal) only 300 yards (270 m) from the French Embassy to give the Prinsjesdag, the Dutch
speech from the throne, rather than riding in the
Golden Coach as was traditional.[207]
The controversial
made-for-TV filmBorn Innocent was broadcast on NBC as the U.S. network's NBC World Premiere Movie starting at 8:00 pm Eastern Time (7:00 Central), with content never seen before on U.S. television, including a rape scene inside a juvenile detention center.[208] Starring
Linda Blair, Born Innocent was the highest-rated television movie to air in the United States in 1974, but would lead to the creation of a family viewing policy by the
National Association of Broadcasters.[209]
Born:
Masamori Tokuyama (ring name for Chang-soo Hong), Japanese-born
North Korean boxer who held the WBC super-flyweight title twice between 2000 and 2006, who later obtained
South Korean citizenship; in
Tokyo[210]
Mette Solli, Norwegian women's kickboxer, 2001 and 2007 world champion; in
Molde
Süleyman Demirel resigned as
Prime Minister of Turkey after seven members of his coalition government tried to stop him from making a state visit to the Scandinavian nations.[217] The post would remain empty until November 17, when
Sadi Irmak formed a
caretaker government that would last until March 31 the following year.
American actress
Doris Day won a $22,835,646 judgment against lawyer Jerome Rosenthal, whom she had accused of defrauding her and her husband,
Martin Melcher, who died in 1968.[219][220] Day would settle with Rosenthal's insurers in
August 1977 for $6 million to be paid in 23 annual installments.[220]
British Prime Minister
Harold Wilson announced in a televised speech that
new elections for the House of Commons would be held on October 10, marking the first time in 50 years that two general elections had been held in the same year.[221]
Four men from
Maitland, Florida, ranging in age from 20 to 24, drowned while
cave diving at the off-limits Little River Springs near
Branford. The executive director of the
National Association for Cave Diving told a reporter, "They were totally unprepared for their 1,000 foot dive with equipment nowhere near adequate and only one of them had any cave diving experience at all. It was a suicide except that they didn't know it."[222][223]
Ray Richards, 68, American football player known for the later-outlawed play "the lift", briefly coach of the
NFLChicago Cardinals, died of cancer.[227]
Brice Taylor, 72, African-American college football player, 1925 All-American, known for lacking a left hand. Taylor was the first black player for the USC Trojans, and later a head football coach for several
historically black colleges.[229]
In
Argentina,
the kidnapping of brothers Jorge Born and Juan Born, which would be resolved only after the payment of a record
ransom, was carried out in
Buenos Aires by the
Montoneros terrorist group. The two brothers, officers of the
Bunge & Born grain exporting company, were being driven to their offices, along with general manager Alberto Bosch, when their limousine was blocked by 15 terrorists in several cars. Bosch and the chauffeur, Juan Carlos Perez, were shot and killed.[230] Juan would be released in
April, but Jorge would remain captive until June 20, 1975, released only after the payment of $64,000,000 U.S. dollars.[231]
Yuri Andropov, the Director of the Soviet Union's
KGB spy agency, approved "Plan 5/9-16091", a disinformation campaign to discredit recently-expelled dissident
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn[232] and to deter his contacts with other Soviet dissidents. The harassment led to Solzhenitsyn leaving
Zürich in
Switzerland, where he and all persons contacting him had been under Soviet surveillance, and settling in the small U.S. town of
Cavendish, Vermont.[232]
Hurricane Fifi, later known as Hurricane Orlene, struck the Central American nation of
Honduras, where it killed more than 8,000 people.[240] On the first day, the town of
Choloma was destroyed and more than 2,800 people washed away when the flood collapsed a natural dam.[241][242][243]
The National Highway,
Australia's network of federally-funded roads, came into existence with the approval of the National Roads Act 1974.[244]
Queen
Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom ordered the dissolution of Parliament slightly more than six months after it opened on March 12, making the
46th Parliament of Elizabeth II the shortest elected UK parliament in history.[245]
The war crimes trial of
Bruno Streckenbach, director of Nazi Germany's Einsatzgruppen within Poland, on charges of one million counts of murder, was postponed indefinitely because of his cardiac problems.[246] Streckenbach would survive for three more years, never facing a verdict, until his death on October 28, 1977.
The
Kootenai Tribe of Idaho, under the leadership of tribal elder
Amelia Trice, announced a declaration of war against the U.S. government. The Tribe set up informational pickets and requested 10-cent tolls on
U.S. Highway 95 in
Bonners Ferry, Idaho. Trice would lead a delegation to Washington, D.C., for talks, resulting in U.S. President Ford signing a bill transferring two tracts of federal land to the tribe.[247]
About 3,000 people were evacuated in
Houston,
Texas, and 19 people were hospitalized, for injuries that happened within a 5-mile (8.0 km) radius of an explosion and leak of the gas
butadiene in a Houston railyard.[254]
The U.S. planetary probe Mariner 10, which had made a flyby of the planet
Mercury on March 29, was able to make a second, but more distant, pass for data collection because of Mercury's frequent orbit (every 88 days) around the Sun.[255]
In the
Gulf of Salerno, Italian
freediverEnzo Maiorca attempted to set a new world depth record of 90 metres (300 ft) on live television. Less than 20 metres (66 ft) down, Maiorca collided with
Enzo Bottesini, a diving expert and
RAI correspondent. Maiorca surfaced and let out a stream of
profanities that were audible to the television audience. He did not appear on television again until 2000.[262]
In the UK, the
BBC became the first television network to feature texting for viewers as it inaugurated
Ceefax. The service offered as many as 30 pages of information for subscribers to view while watching BBC programmes. Ceefax, a pun on the phrase "see facts", would continue until October 23, 2012.[267]
In Portugal, a late-night fire at
Lisbon's
Palace of Ajuda began, causing extensive damage and destroying 500 paintings, including a
Rembrandt self-portrait.[271][272]
Denis Ireland, 80,
Northern Irish Protestant political activist and the first member of the Republic of Ireland's parliament (as a member of the
Seanad Éireann to be a resident of Northern Ireland[277]
American orthopedic surgeon
Frank Jobe, a physician for the
Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, performed the first
ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction, now commonplace for athletes, with a tendon from one arm being used to reconstruct the elbow of the other arm.[290] Jobe's first patient was Dodgers pitcher
Tommy John, who tore a ligament in his left elbow on July 17[291] in his 12th season in baseball.[292] After staying out during the 1975 season to recover, John would continue as a pitcher for 14 additional seasons and would be the inspiration for other players to extend their careers by undergoing the "Tommy John surgery".[290]
The first warnings were made to the general public of the danger of
ozone depletion from the use of
chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), as The New York Times ran a front-page story headlined "Tests Show Aerosol Gases May Pose Threat to Earth". The Times noted that
Michael B. McElroy, professor of atmospheric science, and Dr.
Steven C. Wofsy, an atmospheric physicist, had concluded that if the use of the refrigerant
Freon continued, the
ozone in the atmosphere, the primary protector against
ultraviolet radiation, would be decreased by 30% within 20 years.[299] McElroy and Wofsy publicized the danger of ozone depletion, following up on the findings of its cause by
F. Sherwood Rowland and
Mario Molina, published on June 28, 1974, "to little fanfare".[300]
U.S. First LadyBetty Ford, the 56-year-old wife of President Gerald Ford, was first discovered to have a lump that would prove to be cancerous, when she chose "on the spur of the moment" to undergo an examination at the
Bethesda Naval Hospital. The appointment at Bethesda had been for the First Lady's personal assistant, Nancy Howe, and Mrs. Ford had gone along as a friend. Dr. Douglas Knab detected the lump in the examination, confirmed by surgeon William Fouty. The two physicians then contacted the
White House physician, Dr. William M. Lukash, who arranged for Dr. Richard Thistlewaite to conduct tests the next day at Bethesda, leading to surgery for
breast cancer on September 28.[301]
All television stations and networks in
Argentina were placed under direct control of the Argentine government by Decree 919/1974.[302]
U.S. Secretary of AgricultureEarl Butz abandoned a proposal for a
tent show that would have toured the United States with prayer, music and sketches of pioneer life to demonstrate that food was a better bargain in the U.S. than in any other country and to strengthen the credibility of the
Department of Agriculture.
Democratic Party politicians had ridiculed the idea, with U.S. Senator
George McGovern calling it "almost incomprehensible."[305]
Born:Joo Jin-mo (stage name for Park Jin-tae), South Korean film and TV actor, winner of the Grand Bell Award for Best Supporting Actor for the 1999 film Happy End; in
Seoul
East Germany (officially, the German Democratic Republic)
revised its Constitution to omit mention of the concept of
German reunification.[309] The changes, which also described the Communist German state as "a socialist state of workers and farmers... under the leadership of the working class and their Marxist-Leninist party," were made to further the new policy of Abgrenzung to designate East Germany as a separate nation.
Alí Lameda, a Venezuelan translator who had served as an interpreter for the North Korean Foreign Ministry, was allowed to leave the country after seven years in a
North Korean concentration camp.[311] In 1967, Lameda had made the mistake of telling jokes about North Korean leader
Kim Il Sung at a banquet for Foreign Ministry employees.[312]
Silvio Frondizi, 67, Argentine lawyer, brother of former President
Arturo Frondizi, was kidnapped from his home and murdered by terrorists from the right-wing
Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (Triple A).[316] On September 29, Argentine police used tear gas to disperse 3,000 people at Frondizi's funeral procession.[317]
Betty Ford, the
First Lady of the United States, underwent a
mastectomy at Bethesda Naval Hospital to remove her right breast after the discovery of a cancerous lump.[318] The choice of Mrs. Ford to fully disclose her diagnosis of
breast cancer would be described later as "an important decision which would have tremendous social impact". As one historian noted, "After she went public to alert as many women as possible of the benefits of early detection, millions of women schedule appointments at breast cancer clinics across the country."[319] Another historian, Lisa Liebman, would say later, "Her courage and candor not only removed the stigma from the topic but also saved countless lives."[319] Mrs. Ford herself would say later, "I got a lot of credit for having gone public with my mastectomy, but if I hadn't been the wife of the President of the United States, the press would not have come racing after my story, so in a way it was fate."[319]
The Panamanian freighter Sun Shang sank in a typhoon 400 miles (640 km) east of
Hong Kong, killing 31 of its 34 crewmembers. On the east coast of
Taiwan, at least 13 people in one village died in a landslide caused by the typhoon.[320]
A
Venezuelan Air Force Phantom jet with two people on board went out of control at an airshow near
Caracas and crashed into an apartment building, killing eight residents.[321]
In Moscow, over 30,000 people came to an open-air show of contemporary nonconformist art in
Izmaylovsky Park. The display was approved by Soviet authorities after foreign criticism of the
September 15 disruption of the exhibition at
Bitsa Park.[326] One artist commented to a reporter, "We have had four hours of freedom here this afternoon."[327]
Regular commercial air service began between
Japan and the
People's Republic of China with a direct flight from
Tokyo to
Beijing exactly two years after the 1972 establishment of diplomatic relations.[331]
^Cole-Adams, Peter (4 September 1974).
"Heath loses two yachts". The Age.
Melbourne. Page 1, column 1. Retrieved 12 November 2023 – via Google News. LONDON, September 3. — The British Opposition Leader (Mr. Heath) has lost two yachts in 24 hours. Two men are believed drowned after his yacht Morning Cloud II capsized and sank off the Sussex coast late last night.
^Eder, Richard (4 September 1974).
"Heath Yacht Sinks, Drowning Godson". The New York Times. Page 4, columns 4-6. Retrieved 12 November 2023. LONDON, Sept. 3—Former Prime Minister Edward Heath's racing sloop Morning Cloud capsized and sank in a gale last night in the English Channel off the Sussex coast.
^"Heath Yacht—Search for Sailor Stops". World News. The Sydney Morning Herald. 5 September 1974. Page 5, columns 4-5. Retrieved 12 November 2023 – via Google News. LONDON, Wednesday. — Coastguards abandoned last night an air and sea search for the missing crewman of Mr Edward Heath's yacht, Morning Cloud, 24 hours after it overturned in a gale.
^Shenker, Israel (3 September 1974).
"Moses Soyer, 74, Dead; Traditional U.S. Painter". The New York Times. Page 38, columns 1-3. Retrieved 11 November 2023. Moses Soyer, the Russian-born artist who became an outstanding American painter, died here yesterday while working at his studio in the Chelsea Hotel.
^
ab"Sikkim Bill ratified". New Straits Times. UPI. 9 September 1974. Page 2, column 5.
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