April 1969

[April 1], 1969 (Tuesday)

• At Houston, NASA Engineer Max Faget showed 20 colleagues a small balsa wood and paper model with "straight, stubby wings and a shark-like nose" and told them. "We're going to build America's next spacecraft. It's going to launch like a spacecraft; it's going to land like a plane." Faget, the director of engineering and development at the Manned Space Center, was introducing the assembled group to a planned reusable spacecraft, the American Space Shuttle.
• Meeting in Stevenson, Washington, the Board of County Commissioners of Skamania County voted to enact county ordinance Number 69-01, making either an April Fool's Day joke or the first official recognition by any government agency of the possibility of the existence of "Bigfoot". Whether intended as humorous or not, the ordinance was published in the April 4 and April 11 issues of the weekly Skamania County Pioneer, a requirement under state law, and was amended again in 1984. The text of the 1969 enactment noted "evidence to indicate the possible existence" in the county of an ape-like creature, a large number of "purported recent sightings" and "an influx of scientific investigators as well as casual hunters, many armed with lethal weapons", and was passed to discourage "laxity in the use of firearms" that posed a threat to "persons living or traveling within the boundaries of Skamania County", and made slaying of the creature described as "Sasquatch", "Yeti" or "Bigfoot" a felony punishable by a $10,000 fine and/or five years imprisonment.
• The 9th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party opened in Beijing, with 1,512 delegates appearing for 24 days of meetings. Lin Biao, the vice-chairman of the party, Vice-Premier of China and Defense Minister, delivered the opening address and was accepted later in the Congress as the official successor to Chairman Mao Zedong. The Congress was the first in almost 14 years.
• The Harrier GR1, a jet fighter with vertical takeoff and landing capability, entered military service for the first time, with the original Harrier jets becoming part of Britain's Royal Air Force fleet at RAF Wittering. The Harrier had first flown on December 28, 1967.
• Born:
• *Andrew Vlahov, Australian pro basketball player for the National Basketball League Perth Wildcats, inductee to the Australian Basketball Hall of Fame, 1991 NBL rookie of the year and 1995 Grand Finals MVP; in Perth
• *Fadl Chaker, Lebanese singer who was later convicted in absentia by Lebanon's government of terrorism; in Sidon

  [April 2], 1969 (Wednesday)

• The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, "apparently bowing to a Soviet ultimatum", reluctantly announced strict censorship of the Czechoslovak news media, and the government's Ministry of the Interior issued new regulations. The CTK government news agency issued a statement saying that punishment awaited any newspaper or broadcast report that did not "proceed in harmony with the interests of the domestic and foreign policy of the State", and that the government "expressed its regret and apologies" to the USSR for instances where a mood of "anti-Soviet hysteria" had been created by the press.
• All 51 people aboard LOT Polish Airlines Flight 165 were killed when the Antonov An-24 crashed into a mountain slope during its scheduled flight from Warsaw to Kraków. With visibility low in a snowstorm, and the pilot well off course, the propeller-driven airplane impacted with the Polica Mountain at an altitude of, after flying past its destination and impacting in the mountains above the town of Zawoja.
• Twenty-three South Vietnamese soldiers and an American pilot were killed when their CH-47 Chinook combat helicopter crashed north of the abandoned Khe Sanh combat base, and another 53 soldiers were injured. The 77 people on board were flying into combat when a rotor of the Chinook struck a tree and brought the aircraft down in what was described as "the costliest helicopter crash of the war".
• Born: Ajay Devgn, Indian Hindi cinema actor and two-time National Film Award Best Actor winner; in New Delhi

  [April 3], 1969 (Thursday)

• Lieutenant General Joseph A. Ankrah resigned as President of Ghana after the revelation of a financial scandal that showed that Ankrah had accepted money from foreign interests in return for favors. The National Liberation Council required him to resign from his post as chairman and retire from the Ghanaian Army. Ankrah was replaced by Brigadier General Akwasi Afrifa, who would allow parliamentary elections on August 29.
• The U.S. Department of Defense announced that the death toll for American soldiers in the Vietnam War had exceeded the 32,629 who had died in the Korean War, based on 312 additional deaths during the week from March 22 to March 28 to bring the toll to 33,641. The Vietnam War became the "fourth bloodiest war in American history" on March 26.
• The Mass of Paul VI, also known as the Novus Ordo, was promulgated in the Roman Catholic Church by the Pope, creating the most commonly used liturgy by Catholics. Its liturgical books would be published in 1970, and revised by Paul VI in 1975. Revised again by Pope John Paul II in 2000, they would be revised a third time by John Paul IIin 2002. The Novus Ordo largely displaced the Tridentine Mass. The editions of the Mass of Paul VI Roman Missal are titled Missale Romanum ex decreto Sacrosancti Oecumenici Concilii Vaticani II instauratum.
• Born:
• *Ben Mendelsohn, Australian film and TV actor, 2016 Emmy Award winner for best supporting actor in Bloodline; in Melbourne
• *Lance Storm, Canadian professional wrestler; in Sarnia, Ontario

  [April 4], 1969 (Friday)

• Dr. Denton Cooley implanted the first temporary artificial heart, in an operation at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital in Houston. The recipient was 47-year-old Haskell Karp of Skokie, Illinois, whose diseased heart was removed from his chest and replaced by the Liotta TAH plastic and fabric mechanical pump, developed by Dr. Domingo Liotta. Sixty-five hours after the implantation of the mechanical heart, Karp received a donor heart from a 40-year-old woman whose body had been flown in from Lawrence, Massachusetts. However, Karp survived only 32 hours after the new heart was implanted, before he succumbed to pneumonia caused by Pseudomonas bacteria; another artificial heart implant would not take place until 1981.
• Popular, but controversial, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was abruptly canceled by the CBS television network. CBS President Robert Wood explained that the show's two producers, Dick Smothers and Tommy Smothers, "consistently had failed to deliver tapes" of their programs in time for CBS executives and local TV stations to review the content, and added that it was "abundantly clear" that the brothers were "unwilling to accept the criteria of taste established by the network's program practices department."
• Also popular and controversial, singer Jim Morrison of The Doors appeared with his attorney before the Los Angeles office of the FBI to answer federal charges of "interstate flight to avoid prosecution" in relation to his indecent exposure at his March 1 concert in Miami. By arrangement, Morrison was arrested and immediately released upon posting of a $5,000 bond. By then, The Doors' 1969 concert dates had been canceled and the group was blacklisted by the Concert Hall Managers' Association.
• Born: William Maurice "Mo" Cowan, American lawyer and interim United States Senator for five months for Massachusetts in 2013; in Yadkinville, North Carolina
• Died: U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Félix Conde Falcón, 31, was killed in the Vietnam War while leading a charge against a large complex of enemy bunkers at Ap Tan Hoa. Almost 35 years later, the case of the Puerto Rican non-commissioned officer would be reviewed and Falcón would be awarded the Medal of Honor for his bravery.

  [April 5], 1969 (Saturday)

• Rescuers in Sweden saved all 18 skiers who had been buried in an avalanche at the Riksgränsen ski resort, although three were injured critically. The group, who were part of a group of tourists taking part in a slalom competition, were buried in the snow for up to an hour as hundreds of police from surrounding towns in Sweden and Norway searched for the group. Rescue dogs were able to dig the tourists out.
• A sniper killed four people at random and wounded 16 more on a section of the Pennsylvania Turnpike as he pulled off to the shoulder of the westbound lanes and fired at passing cars with an army carbine and a.30 caliber rifle. After killing a man and woman near the Highspire Service Area, Donald Lambright killed his wife and then himself.
• Died: Rómulo Gallegos, 84, Venezuelan politician who was elected President of Venezuela in 1948, but was overthrown in a military coup nine months after taking office.

  [April 6], 1969 (Sunday)

• The crash of the Taiwanese freighter Union Faith killed 25 crew in a fiery crash on the Mississippi River beneath the Greater New Orleans Bridge. The freighter, with 51 men on board, collided head-on with a set of three linked oil-laden barges that were being pushed by the tugboat Warren Doucet, causing the lead barge to split in two and set fire to its cargo of 9,000 barrels of crude oil.
• Born:
• *Paul Rudd, American film actor known for portraying Ant-Man in Marvel films; in Passaic, New Jersey
• *Bret Boone, American MLB baseball player and winner of four Gold Glove Awards and two Silver Slugger Awards; in El Cajon, California
• *Louie Spence, English dancer, choreographer and TV personality; in Ponders End, Enfield
• Died: Gabriel Chevallier, 73, French satirical novelist and author of the 1934 book ''Clochemerle''

  [April 7], 1969 (Monday)

• UCLA graduate student and computer scientist Steve Crocker wrote and circulated the very first Request for Comments publication to be circulated among the Network Working Group that was developing the communication protocols for the upcoming ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet. The very first RFC summarized the tentative agreements that the group had settled on for the Interface Message Processor routers in the network sites, with initial messages being limited to 8,080 bits.
• The United States Supreme Court ruled in Stanley v. Georgia that the possession of obscene material was protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Writing for the majority, Justice Thurgood Marshall commented that "A state has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his house, what books he may read or what films he may watch", adding that individual state governments remained free to restrict public distribution of those materials.