April 1974


The following events occurred in April 1974:

[April 1], 1974 (Monday)

[April 2], 1974 (Tuesday)

[April 3], 1974 (Wednesday)

[April 4], 1974 (Thursday)

[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)

[April 7], 1974 (Sunday)

[April 8], 1974 (Monday)

[April 9], 1974 (Tuesday)

  • Australia's Prime Minister Gough Whitlam announced that "Advance Australia Fair" would replace "God Save the Queen" as the national anthem, based on a survey of 60,000 people The choice quickly became unpopular because of the lyrics, although Whitlam said that the tune would be used and that the words would go unsung. The melody would remain and the lyrics would be modified effective April 19, 1984.
  • The first 1973–1974 Whitbread Round the World Race, which had started on September 8, 1973, as 17 yachts departed the English port of Portsmouth, was won by Ramón Carlin and his 11-man crew from Mexico on the Sayula II. The yacht arrived in Portsmouth 152 days after it had departed.
  • The explosion of the Greek oil tanker Elias killed 13 people at Fort Mifflin port in Philadelphia A U.S. Coast Guard investigation would note that as of 1977, "Nine members of the crew and four visitors perished or are missing," with eight bodies recovered and five others never found, but could not find a cause for the disaster.
  • Born:
  • *Alexander Pichushkin, Russian serial murderer known as "The Chessboard Killer" for at least 49 homicides between 1992 and his arrest in 2006; in Mytishchi, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
  • *Jenna Jameson, American adult film actress and model who bills herself as "The Queen of Porn"; in Las Vegas
  • *Died: Emelie Hooke, 61, Australian opera soprano

[April 10], 1974 (Wednesday)

  • Israel's Prime Minister, Golda Meir, announced her resignation as Premier and as leader of the Israeli Labor Party, nine days after the release of the Agranat Commission report. Meir's decision came after a meeting of the 51 members of her Alignment party coalition, when she told reporters "I've had enough." Her colleague, Yitzhak Aharon, then told the group "The prime minister has announced her resignation." Rather than schedule new elections, the Israeli Labor Party announced on April 21 that they would try to form a new government of ministers.
  • Australia's Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, announced that he had asked the Governor-General to dissolve the Australian House of Representatives and to schedule new elections at the same time as an already-scheduled Senate election. Whitlam's request for a "double dissolution" came hours after the Australian Senate refused to approve a $170 million spending bill to prevent the government from shutting down. After the announcement of double dissolution, the Senate approved further government funding.
  • Akbar Etemad, known for founding Iran's nuclear energy and weapons program, was appointed as the first president of the new Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and given an additional post as Deputy Prime Minister.
  • Born: Eric Greitens, U.S. politician who served as Governor Missouri for 16 months in 2017 and 2018 before resigning in disgrace; in St. Louis
  • Died: Patricia Collinge, Irish-born American stage and film actress; in Dublin

[April 11], 1974 (Thursday)

  • A terrorist attack killed 18 people, including eight children, as three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine crossed from Lebanon into the town of Kiryat Shmona in Israel. The PFLP guerrillas had originally invaded the town's elementary school, but the school was closed for the Passover holiday.
  • The bipartisan Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives voted, 33 to 3, to subpoena U.S. President Nixon to submit the actual tape recordings of 42 specific conversations in the Oval Office, after the repeated refusal by the White House to comply with previous requests.
  • A jury in Pennsylvania convicted former United Mine Workers of America president W. A. "Tony" Boyle of the 1969 murder of his union rival, Joseph "Jock" Yablonski and Yablonski's wife and daughter.
  • Police in The Hague arrested Jacobus P. Phillipps, a Netherlands native who had served as an officer for the Nazi German SS during World War II, after Phillips had spent more than 29 years hiding in his parents home. Since 1945, Phillips had stayed inside the home and had been given a death sentence after being convicted of war crimes in absentia in 1950. Phillipps was taken to Scheveninger Prison and then transferred to Assen, where his conviction had taken place.
  • Born:
  • *Àlex Corretja, Spanish tennis player and winner of the 1998 ATP Finals; in Barcelona
  • *Tricia Helfer, Canadian actress and model known for the U.S. TV series Lucifer; in Donalda, Alberta
  • *Trot Nixon, American baseball player; in Durham, North Carolina

[April 12], 1974 (Friday)

[April 13], 1974 (Saturday)

[April 14], 1974 (Sunday)

[April 15], 1974 (Monday)

[April 16], 1974 (Tuesday)

  • In the U.S., a federal law took effect requiring that nearly all prescription medicines from pharmacies would be distributed in bottles with "child-proof" caps. The law made exceptions, including for medicines that needed to be used quickly. The legislation followed reports of accidents involving children opening household packaging and ingesting the contents.
  • The British rock band Queen played their first concert in the United States, appearing at the auditorium at Regis University in Denver.
  • Born: Xu Jinglei, Chinese film actress and director, known for starring in Spring Subway and directing My Father and I; in Beijing
  • Died:
  • *Johnston Murray, 71, the first Native American to be elected a Governor of U.S. state as the son of a mother from the Chickasaw Nation and a father who was a Chickasaw citizen, having governed Oklahoma from 1951 to 1955
  • *Gustave Daladier, 86, French flying ace who had 12 shootdowns in aerial combat in World War I

[April 17], 1974 (Wednesday)

  • The public court-martial of 63 Chilean Air Force officers and enlisted men began in the chapel of the Air Force War College in Santiago on accusations of sedition or treason. Prosecutors asked that six of the defendants be sentenced to death for espionage.
  • A group of rebels in the Egyptian military, including 16 cadets, attacked the Technical Military Academy in Cairo, killing 11 people and wounding 27 others as part of an alleged plot, financed by Libya, to overthrow President Anwar Sadat. Although the Egyptian government initially described reports about the incident as false, 75 members of the military would be arrested over the next 10 days, including the alleged leader, Dr. Saleh Abdullah Sariya of the Islamic Liberation Organization.
  • Three days after leading a coup d'detat, Seyni Kountché named a 12-man council to run the West African nation and proclaimed himself the Chief of State as Chairman of the Council.
  • Born:
  • *Victoria Beckham, English singer best known as "Posh Spice" for the Spice Girls; in Goff's Oak, Hertfordshire
  • *Mikael Åkerfeldt, Swedish heavy metal guitarist; in Stockholm
  • Died:
  • *Frank McGee, 52, American TV journalist and co-host of the NBC Today show since 1971, died of multiple myeloma six days after his last newscast.
  • *Blossom Seeley, 87, American singer and dancer billed as the "Queen of Syncopation"
  • *Vinnie Taylor, 25, guitarist for the group Sha Na Na, was found in a motel at Charlottesville, Virginia, dead of an accidental heroin overdose, two days after a concert at the University of Virginia.

[April 18], 1974 (Thursday)

  • In response to the Zebra murders that had claimed 14 lives in California since October 20, San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto and the San Francisco City Police instituted "Operation Zebra", stopping African-American men throughout the city for interrogations and the recording of identifying information. Over the next six days, 567 black men were stopped and 181 interrogated without yielding any information helpful to finding the Zebra murderers. U.S. District Judge Alfonso Zirpoli ruled that stopping suspects without probable cause was unconstitutional.
  • U.S. District Judge John J. Sirica ordered President Nixon to release 64 specific tape recordings that had been subpoenaed by the Watergate special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, and to do so by May 2. The White House declined to comment on whether it would comply with the order.
  • Born:
  • *Edgar Wright, English film director known for Shaun of the Dead; in Poole, Dorset
  • *Mark Tremonti, American rock guitarist and singer, co-founder of the band Creed; in Detroit
  • *Lorraine Pilkington, Irish actress known for Human Traffic; in Dublin
  • Died:
  • *Betty Compson, 77, American actress known for The Barker
  • *Marcel Pagnol, 79, French novelist, playwright and filmmaker

[April 19], 1974 (Friday)

[April 20], 1974 (Saturday)

  • French archaeologist Françoise Claustre was taken hostage by rebels led by future Chadian president Hissène Habré in the north African nation of Chad, at the town of Bardaï, beginning an ordeal that would last almost three years. Captured with her was Dr. Christophe Staewen of West Germany, and Frenchman Marc Combe, who would escape his captors. Françoise's husband Pierre would be captured by the same rebels 16 months later while trying to negotiate his wife's release. The two would finally be released on February 1, 1977.
  • Former South Korean President Yun Posun was secretly arrested at his home for donating more than US$1,000 to a Christian minister for delivery to a student group calling for a return to democracy. Yun, who had been president from 1960 to 1962, had run as a candidate against President Park Chung Hee in elections in 1963 and 1967, was detained without any announcement of his arrest from the government or in the government-regulated South Korean press, and his arrest would not be discovered by the Western press until June 10.
  • The U.S. state of Louisiana adopted its 11th state constitution since attaining statehood, upon a 58 percent approval by voters in a referendum. The new document, at 35,000 words, was more than one-eighth the size of the previous 250,000-word size document.
  • Born: Marko Blagojevic, Serbian politician, Minister for Public Investments, in Belgrade, SR Serbia, SFR Yugoslavia
  • Died: Peter Lee Lawrence, 30, German film actor known for spaghetti western films, including Fury of Johnny Kid, died of glioblastoma following surgery.

[April 21], 1974 (Sunday)

[April 22], 1974 (Monday)

  • All 107 passengers and crew on Pan Am Flight 812 were killed in a crash in Indonesia when the Boeing 707 crashed into the side of a mountain while approaching Denpasar as a stop on a flight from Hong Kong to Sydney in Australia. The remains of all the non-Asian victims were cremated, while those of Westerners, including 28 Americans, were buried in a mass grave.
  • A group of five employees at "The Hi-Fi Shop", a home audio store in Ogden, Utah, were taken hostage by six robbers and tortured. One man and two women were brutally murdered. Three active duty airmen of the U.S. Air Force would be arrested, while three others would never be identified. Two of the arrested would be convicted of murder and executed, while the third would be convicted of robbery and spend 13 years in prison. The story would become the basis of a best-selling book, Victim: The Other Side of Murder, by Gary Kinder, published in 1982 and later adapted to a television film, Aftermath: A Test of Love.
  • Operation Nimbus Star, the U.S. Navy's assistance in clearing the Suez Canal of explosive mines, began with minesweeping helicopters dispatched from amphibious assault ship.

[April 23], 1974 (Tuesday)

[April 24], 1974 (Wednesday)

[April 25], 1974 (Thursday)

[April 26], 1974 (Friday)

  • By a vote of 247 to 233, the lower house of West Germany's parliament, the Bundestag, narrowly passed a law allowing abortion of a pregnancy in the first trimester. The bill repealed paragraph 218 of the 1871 German penal code. The nation's supreme court suspended the law on June 21, and would strike it down as unconstitutional on February 25, 1975.
  • In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's Army arrested more than 200 high-ranking government ministers and military officers on charges of corruption. The former government ministers had resigned on the day after an attempted coup d'état on February 25 but had been blocked from leaving the capital.
  • The day after the overthrow of Portugal's Premier Marcelo Caetano, the seven-member Junta de Salvação Nacional, chaired by General Spinola, announced that it would govern Portugal until further notice, but that it would restore democracy and bring an end to Portugal's colonial rule of Mozambique, Angola and other colonies. The first act of the Junta was to announce amnesty for all political prisoners jailed during the Estado Novo regime; 172 were released on the same day, including Hermínio da Palma Inácio and 76 others imprisoned at the Fortress of Caxias outside of Lisbon.

[April 27], 1974 (Saturday)

  • All 109 passengers and crew on an Aeroflot flight were killed in the Soviet Union, shortly after the Ilyushin Il-18 turboprop took off from Leningrad to Zaporozhye. In accordance with practice at the time, the Soviet news media made no mention of the crash. According to a Western source, "The crash could be clearly seen from the airport and pandemonium broke out in the terminal with relatives and friends of the passengers screaming and crying."
  • The Anglo-Australian Telescope, a optical telescope, located at the Siding Spring Observatory on Mount Woorat in New South Wales, was first used.
  • The shelling of an Israeli fortress in the Golan Heights by Syrian artillery led to the deaths of 14 IDF soldiers in the Bashan salient, former Syrian property conquered by the Israeli Army in the 1973 war. Eight IDF soldiers were killed when a shell hit their fortress, while six more died in the crash of a helicopter that was on its way to rescue the survivors. Israel retaliated with airstrikes of Syrian army camps. The battle marked the last major fighting in the "War of Attrition that lasted for three months before a disengagement agreement signed between the two nations on May 31.
  • Died: U.S. Navy Admiral Jesse B. Oldendorf, 87, known for his command in the 1944 Battle of Leyte Gulf

[April 28], 1974 (Sunday)

[April 29], 1974 (Monday)

  • In a nationally televised speech, U.S. President Nixon announced that, instead of releasing tape recordings, requested by the House Judiciary Committee, of key conversations, he had instead arranged to have some of them, but not all, transcribed by his staff. The transcripts began with a recording taken on September 15, 1972, and did not include the June 23, 1972 tape that would ultimately show that Nixon had ordered the halting of further FBI investigation into the burglary. The edited 1,200 pages of transcripts were known for using the phrase "expletive deleted" in place of profanities used during the conversations by the President and his staff. In lieu of presenting the tapes, Nixon said that the leaders of the Judiciary panel would be invited to come to the White House to listen to recordings.
  • Argentine terrorists released U.S. oil executive Victor Samuelson following five months of captivity, after Esso Argentina, a subsidiary of the Exxon Corporation, had paid a record ransom of $14,200,000 on March 11 to guerrillas of the People's Revolutionary Army. Samuelson, who had been kidnapped on December 6 from a dining room at the company's refinery where he had been the manager, dropped Samuelson off at the home of the family's pediatrician, Dr. Federico Pfister, in the town of Acasusso, outside of Buenos Aires.
  • Born: Anggun Cipta Sasmi, Indonesian-born French singer and TV personality, known for her best-selling song "Snow on the Sahara"; in Jakarta

[April 30], 1974 (Tuesday)