April 1974

[April 1], 1974 (Monday)

• Britain's Local Government Act 1972, the most comprehensive reform of the political subdivisions of England and Wales, went into effect, changing the number of counties from 52, to 45. The Act had been given royal assent by Queen Elizabeth II on October 26, 1972 Among the major changes were that Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire were merged into the new metropolitan county of West Midlands, County Durham and Northumberland consolidated into the new Tyne and Wear, and Nottinghamshire became part of the new South Yorkshire.
• The Communist nation of North Korea officially abolished the levying of income taxes, with national leader Kim Il-sung calling taxes "remnants of an antiquated society", raising revenue instead through user fees and deductions from profits on all of the nation's state-owned enterprises.
• Five days after the Mariner 10 interplanetary probe made findings that suggested that the planet Mercury had a satellite, tentatively named "Charley" by astronomer A. Lyle Broadfoot of the Kitt Peak National Observatory, Broadfoot declared that the change in ultraviolet radiation intensity turned out to have been from a distant star, 31 Crateris, located 3,000 light years from Earth.
• Near Sitka, Alaska, black smoke rose from the crater of the dormant volcano Mount Edgecumbe, which had not erupted for more than four centuries, though the threat of an eruption proved to be an elaborate practical joke. Local prankster Porky Bickar had chartered a helicopter for six hours, flown over the site, and dropped 70 old kerosene-doused tires, diesel fuel, a gallon of sterno, a dozen smoke bombs, and oily rags, into the volcano's crater then lit them on fire, in an attempt to fool people into believing that the volcano had become active again and would erupt. He had spray painted in the snow "APRIL FOOL". Later reports noted that "few Sitka residents stirred" at "somebody's idea of an April Fool joke." Smoke was visible from Sitka "for about 25 minutes",
• Died: Hal Boyle, 63, U.S. journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner

  [April 2], 1974 (Tuesday)

• The day after Newsweek magazine's April 8 issue revealed that Georges Pompidou, President of France since 1969, was ill with cancer and might soon be resigning, the President's office abruptly canceled that day's scheduled meeting with the President of Rwanda, Juvénal Habyarimana, followed by a cancellation of all engagements for the rest of the week because of illness. Pompidou stayed home at his private apartment on Quai de Bethune on the Île Saint-Louis in Paris, and was found dead at 9:00 in the evening. The Agence France-Presse news agency sent a bulletin at 9:58 announcing "M. Pompidou c'est mort." Pompidou, who was later found to have complications from Waldenström macroglobulinemia, a form of leukemia, was 62. Before becoming president, he had served as prime minister from 1962 to 1968. The President of the French Senate, Alain Poher, became the Acting President of France until an election could be held to determine a new President. Poher had previously served as acting president after the death of President Charles de Gaulle, until Pompidou's election as president.
• The Agranat Commission, chaired by the President of the Supreme Court of Israel, issued its report assessing blame for Israel's failures in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, with recommendations for dismissal of General David Elazar, Brigadier-General Aryeh Shalev, and Major General Shmuel Gonen, leader of the Southern Front defense against Egypt. Following the report, the government of Prime Minister Golda Meir would fall.
• The 46th Academy Awards ceremony was held in the U.S. at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. The Sting won seven awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. Best Actor and Actress awards were given to Jack Lemmon and Glenda Jackson, while the Best Supporting Actor and Actress awards went to 71-year-old John Houseman and 10-year-old Tatum O'Neal, who became the youngest actress ever to receive an Oscar.
• Born: Håkan Hellström, Swedish pop musician; in Gothenburg
• Died:
• *Douglass Dumbrille, 84, Canadian stage, film and TV actor
• *Olga Burgoyne, 95, African-American choreographer and actress

  [April 3], 1974 (Wednesday)

• A system of 148 confirmed tornadoes killed 319 people and injured 5,484 others in 13 of the U.S. states and the Canadian province of Ontario. Hardest hit was the city of Xenia, Ohio, where 36 residents were killed after the tornado struck at 4:40 p.m. local time. Other areas struck were Brandenburg, Kentucky and Guin, Alabama. The area in and around Tanner, Alabama, was struck by two tornadoes 30 minutes apart, killing 44 people.
• The FIBA European Champions Cup, emblematic of the professional basketball championship of Europe, was won by Spain's Real Madrid Baloncesto in an 84 to 82 defeat of Italy's Pallacanestro Varese in a final before a sellout crowd at the Palais des Sports de Beaulieu in France. Wayne Brabender was the high scorer for Madrid with 28 points while Bob Morse of Varese had 24 points.
• The White House Press Office announced that the Internal Revenue Service had determined that U.S. President Richard Nixon owed $432,787.13 in back taxes and an additional $43,644 in penalties and interest, an amount almost half of Nixon's stated net worth. The ruling by the IRS disallowed deductions including a declaration one for $576,000 for the claimed worth of Nixon's vice-presidential papers.
• Two months after being kidnapped, Patty Hearst announced in an audiotape that she had joined her captors at the Symbionese Liberation Army and that she had adopted the name "Tania" for the SLA.
• Born: Juliana Awada, Argentine businesswoman who served as First Lady of the Argentine Nation from 2015 to 2019; in Villa Ballester
• Died: Andor Kertész, 45, Hungarian mathematician, died of a chronic illness

  [April 4], 1974 (Thursday)

• In Northern Ireland, the 1966 ban against the Ulster Volunteer Force was lifted by order of Merlyn Rees, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
• The crash of a Wenela Air Services flight in southern Africa killed 78 of the 84 people on board. The Douglas DC-4 went down shortly after takeoff from Francistown in Botswana after departing toward Blantyre in Malawi. Most of the dead were Malawian gold miners who were returning home.
• In Cincinnati, baseball player Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves hit his 714th home run on the first swing of his bat to open the 1974 Major League Baseball season and tied the career record set by Babe Ruth, in a 7 to 6 loss to the Cincinnati Reds. While the Braves wanted to keep him out of the opening three-game series against the Reds so that the record could be tied and broken at home in Atlanta, Commissioner of Baseball Bowie Kuhn had ruled that Aaron was required to play at least two of the three Cincinnati games. On April 7, Aaron came up to bat three times in a 5 to 3 win over the Reds, striking out twice and grounding out once.
• Women in Jordan were granted the right to vote in elections for the first time. However, the suspension of parliamentary democracy prevented the right of suffrage from being exercised except in local elections.
• Voting was held for 28 of the 31 seats of the new House of Assembly of the British colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, now the nations of Kiribati and Tuvalu.
• Born:
• *Dave Mirra, American bicycle motocross rider last inducted into the BMX Hall of Fame; in Chittenango, New York
• *Glenn Lyse, Norwegian pop music singer; in Stavanger

  [April 5], 1974 (Friday)

• A major development in x-ray astronomy was achieved with discovery of "the first indication of strong coronal emission from stars" when astronomer Richard Catura detected x-ray luminosity from the star Capella, almost 43 light years from Earth, that was more than 10,000 times as much as the x-ray luminosity of the Sun. The detection was made by accident, in that the intended mission of a rocket-borne launch of instruments was simply to calibrate the directional accuracy of the stellar sensors.
• In Vientiane, the capital of Laos, a new government was formed giving power for the first time to the Communist Pathet Lao, led by Prince Souphanouvong, chairman of the powerful new 48-person National Political Council, and his older half-brother, Prime Minister Souvanna Phouma. Souvanna Phouma and Souphanouvong were two of the 24 children of Chao Maha Oupahat Bounkhong, the late Uparaja of Luang Prabang. After having spent years in hiding during a fight against the Western-backed regime of Souvanna Phouma, Souphanouvong made his first public appearance in Laos, with his half-brother, at a ceremony at the Buddhist Ong Tu Temple, where both took a pledge to work together for the benefit of the Lao people.
• Carrie, the debut novel by high school teacher Stephen King, was published by Doubleday, launching his career as the "King of Horror".
• Died:
• *Jennifer Vyvyan, 49, British opera soprano, died of a bronchial illness.
• *Richard Crossman, 66, British M.P. and Leader of the House of Commons, 1966 to 1968
• *Fred Snodgrass, 86, retired American MLB baseball outfielder, later known for being the mayor of Oxnard, California, remembered for his crucial error in the 1912 World Series that cost the New York Giants the championship.
• *A. Y. Jackson, 91, Canadian landscape painter and a founding member of the "Group of Seven"
• *S. P. Kodandapani, 42, Indian film score composer

  [April 6], 1974 (Saturday)

• A massive fire, started accidentally by "a 10-year-old boy playing with matches" swept through the Lincoln National Forest in the U.S. state of New Mexico and the small towns of Weed and Sacramento, New Mexico, causing $38 million worth of damage, including 21 homes and buildings, and scorching of land.
• The California Jam, a rock festival held at the Ontario Motor Speedway in the Los Angeles suburb of Ontario California, attracted 250,000 paying spectators who came to see headliners Deep Purple and Emerson Lake & Palmer, along with the Eagles, Earth, Wind & Fire, Black Sabbath, Seals and Crofts, Rare Earth and Black Oak Arkansas.
• The Swedish pop group ABBA's song Waterloo won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest in Brighton, England.
• Born: Robert Kovač, West German-born Croatian footballer with 84 caps for the Croatia national team; in West Berlin
• Died:
• *Sir Hudson Fysh, 79, Australian aviator and founder of the Australian airline Qantas
• *Cardinal Štěpán Trochta, 69, the only Roman Catholic Cardinal for Czechoslovakia, died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Trochta, who had survived years in a Nazi concentration camp and later in a Czechoslovakian prison from 1953 to 1963 under Communist rule, had secretly been elevated to the cardinalate in 1969 by Pope Paul VI.
• *Willem Marinus Dudok, 89, Dutch modernist architect