August 1973


The following events occurred in August 1973:

[August 1], 1973 (Wednesday)

[August 2], 1973 (Thursday)

  • A flash fire killed 50 people at the Summerland amusement centre at Douglas, Isle of Man. The four-level building had 4,000 people inside at the time, where hundreds had been attending a rock concert, when a series of explosions went off and the fires began.
  • Spiro Agnew, the Vice President of the United States, was notified by a federal prosecutor in Baltimore, George Beall, of a federal investigation, unrelated to the Watergate scandal, for possible violations of bribery, conspiracy and tax fraud arising from receipt of "kickbacks" from persons who benefited from his help. The Washington Post broke revealed on August 7 that Agnew was being accused of federal crimes.
  • The nine-day Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting 1973 opened with the prime ministers of 32 British Commonwealth nations, hosted at Ottawa by Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. On the first full day of business, the leaders vote, 31 to 0, to seek a total ban on atomic bomb testing. On August 9, the ministers voted unanimously in favor of black majority rule in Rhodesia.

[August 3], 1973 (Friday)

  • Four residents were killed and 12 injured when the former Grand Central Hotel in New York City collapsed. At the time of its 1870 opening, it was New York City's most elegant lodging and the largest hotel in the U.S., but had deteriorated more than a century later and was a residential apartment building, the University Hotel, at the time of the accident. The eight-story, 400-room building fell shortly after 5:00 in the afternoon. Most of the 308 persons registered as living at the building had escaped after rumbling began and plaster began falling, but 16 failed to heed warnings to get out.
  • James Dreymala of Pasadena, Texas, age 13, became the final murder victim of serial killer Dean Corll. Dreymala had left his home on a bicycle and telephoned his parents to tell them that he was "staying at an all night party." His body was found in a boat shed in Houston, along with the bicycle, five days later.
  • Born:
  • *Stephen Graham, English character actor known for This Is England and its sequels; in Kirkby, Lancashire
  • *Chris Murphy, American politician, U.S. Senator from Connecticut, in White Plains, New York

[August 4], 1973 (Saturday)

[August 5], 1973 (Sunday)

  • The Soviet Union launched the Mars 6 probe from Baikonur Cosmodrome. The spacecraft would reach the planet Mars seven months later on March 12, 1974, releasing a lander which would return data for 224 seconds during its descent through the Martian atmosphere before crashing on the surface. Much of the data that was transmitted was unusable.
  • The Black September terrorist group threw a hand grenade into a crowded passenger lounge at the airport in Athens and fired pistols, killing three people and injuring 55.
  • In Iceland, at a farm near Dragháls, a group of Norse worshipers revived the tradition of the "blót" for the first time since the violent blood sacrifice had been outlawed in the year 1000. The group, the Ásatrúarfélagið held ceremonies in front of a plaster statue of the Norse god Thor.
  • Born: Sean Sherk, American mixed martial arts competitor and UFC Lightweight champion 2006 to 2007; in St. Francis, Minnesota
  • Died: Vander Broadway, 74, American female impersonator, high-wire performer and trapeze artist who was billed as "Barbette", took an overdose of painkillers to commit suicide.

[August 6], 1973 (Monday)

  • With 10 days left before the halt of U.S. bombing of Cambodia, a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber mistakenly bombed a Cambodian Navy base at Neak Luong, killing more than 137 Cambodian servicemen and their families, and wounding 208.
  • Skylab 3 astronaut Jack R. Lousma almost doubled the record for a space walk, spending 6 hours and 31 minutes outside of the Skylab space station above the Earth. Lousma had only expected to spend 3½ hours in deploying a sun shield but encountered difficulties in getting it set up. The previous record had been on June 7 when Charles Conrad Jr. of Skylab 1 and spent 3 hours and 23 minutes outside the space station.
  • The Senate of Pakistan, with 45 members, met for the first time after a new constitution changed the unicameral Constituent Assembly to a bicameral parliament. Samia Usman Fatah took the oath of office as the first woman Senator in Pakistan.
  • Musician Stevie Wonder and his friend, John Harris, were injured when their vehicle collided with a truck loaded with logs near Salisbury, North Carolina. Wonder was being driven to Durham, where he was scheduled to perform a concert at the Duke University arena. For four days, Wonder was in a coma caused by severe brain contusion.
  • Born: Vera Farmiga, American TV, stage and film actress; in Clifton, New Jersey
  • Died:
  • *Fulgencio Batista, 72, former Cuban dictator overthrown by Fidel Castro at the end of 1958.
  • *James Beck, 44, British television and film actor and comedian known for the role of Private Walker in the BBC sitcom Dad's Army, died suddenly from an attack of pancreatitis after making a public appearance.
  • *Wilmoth Houdini, 77, Trinidadian-born U.S. calypso singer and recording artist

[August 7], 1973 (Tuesday)

  • A plea for help over citizens band radio, by a boy by the name of Larry purporting to be stranded inside an overturned truck with his dead father in New Mexico, sparked a search-and-rescue mission in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A massive search would be undertaken for five days before being called off on August 12 with no further calls after that, and the Federal Communications Commission would eventually conclude that the broadcast had been a hoax.
  • Zhores Medvedev, a biologist exiled from the Soviet Union and living in London, had his Soviet citizenship revoked and was ordered to surrender his passport to the Soviet Embassy. The next day, TASS, the Communist government's news agency, said that Medvedev had been "fabricating, sending to the West and spreading slanderous materials discrediting the Soviet state and social system and the Soviet people."
  • Hermine Braunsteiner became the first convicted Nazi war criminal in the U.S. to be extradited to West Germany for trial. She was found after Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal had learned that she was living in New York City as Mrs. Hermine Ryan.
  • Died: José Villalonga, 53, coach and manager of the Spanish soccer football team

[August 8], 1973 (Wednesday)

[August 9], 1973 (Thursday)

  • Near the Egyptian oasis town of Faiyum, 23 people were killed and 12 injured when the bus they were on fell into a canal after the driver swerved to avoid hitting a donkey.
  • The Soviet Union launched its Mars 7 interplanetary probe, with a goal of landing on the planet Mars. On March 9, 1974, the probe would reach Mars and release the lander, but because of a retrorocket failure, the lander would miss the atmosphere and instead fly past the planet at no closer than.
  • The "Nantua Pillar", a high, 12,000 ton granite boulder that had served as a local landmark and had hung for more than a century over the French town of Nantua in the Ain département, fell from its mountainside location, 65 minutes after 1,500 of the town's 3,500 residents had been evacuated.
  • Europe's first Tandy electronics store opened in Belgium in the Antwerp suburb of Aartselaar.
  • Died:
  • *Nikos Zachariadis, 70, Leader of the Communist Party of Greece during the Greek Civil War, 1946 to 1949, who briefly declared the Provisional Democratic Government in parts of Eastern Greece adjacent to Yugoslavia and Albania
  • *Donald Peers, 65, Welsh popular singer known for "In a Shady Nook by a Babbling Brook"

[August 10], 1973 (Friday)

  • The Skylab 3 astronauts were able to capture the most detailed photograph of a solar flare up to that time.
  • The Israeli Air Force intercepted Iraqi Airways Flight 006A shortly after it took off from the airport in Beirut with 74 passengers and a crew of eight, taking the group back home to Baghdad at the end of their vacation. Avoiding a repeat of the shootdown of a Libyan airliner earlier in the year, Israel successfully directed the Iraqi airplane to land at a secret airfield and held the group for eight hours. The Israeli forces had confused the flight with another Caravelle jet, Iraqi Airways Flight 006, which was believed to be bringing Palestinian guerrilla leaders to Lebanon from Vienna. Israel's act of forcing down a civilian airliner outside of its airspace was criticized worldwide, and even the U.S. joined in the UN Security Council resolution on August 15 condemning Israel, marking the first time in five years that the U.S. had sided against its ally.
  • Born:
  • *Luis Lacalle, President of Uruguay since 2020; in Montevideo
  • *Roman Golovchenko, Prime Minister of Belarus ; in Zhodzina, Byelorussian SSR, Soviet Union
  • Died:
  • *Jean Hanson, 53, British biophysicist and co-discoverer of the "sliding filament theory" of muscle contraction from her microscopic study of muscle fibers, died of meningococcal septicaemia, an infection of the brain tissue.
  • *Shwe U Daung, 83, popular Burmese mystery story author who created the fictional detective U San Shar
  • *Lillian Roxon, 41, Australian author and journalist known for the first encyclopedia of rock music, Lillian Roxon's Rock Encyclopedia, died of an asthma attack

[August 11], 1973 (Saturday)

  • Clive Campbell, a Jamaican-born American musician who performed under the stage name DJ Kool Herc, originated the hip hop music genre at a party that he and his younger sister Cindy Campbell had organized, the "Back to School Jam" held at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx in New York City.
  • At Minsk, the Soviet Red Army announced that seven former soldiers had been convicted in court-martial proceedings of collaboration with German Nazi invaders of the Byelorussian S.S.R. during World War II. Four were sentenced to death, and the others were given prison terms ranging from 10 to 15 years.
  • In one of the rare clashes between warships during the "Cod Wars" between the UK and Iceland over fishing rights, the Iceland Coast Guard patrol vessel ICGV Óðinn rammed the Royal Navy frigate HMS Andromeda in the disputed area more than from the Icelandic coast.
  • Born: Kiatisuk Senamuang, Thai footballer with 134 caps and 71 goals for the Thailand national team; in Udon Thani
  • Died:
  • *Peggie Castle, 45, American character actress in film who specialized in portraying ""the other woman", died of cirrhosis of the liver.
  • *Giorgio Vizzardelli, 50, Italian serial killer, committed suicide shortly after the end of his sentence.

[August 12], 1973 (Sunday)

[August 13], 1973 (Monday)

[August 14], 1973 (Tuesday)

[August 15], 1973 (Wednesday)

  • The American bombing of Cambodia halted at 10:45 in the morning local time, after a final round of U.S. Air Force bombardment of suspected Khmer Rouge guerrilla enclaves. The halt, originally set for one minute after midnight Washington D.C., officially ended 12 years of American combat in Southeast Asia. During the six and a half months since the Vietnam ceasefire had gone into effect on January 28, the U.S. had dropped 240,000 tons of bombs on Cambodia in 34,410 raids at a cost of $442,800,000. The final mission was flown by two A-7 Corsair jets, whose pilots were Major John Hoskins and Captain Lonnie Ratley. Captain Ratley's plane was the last to land at Korat [Royal Thai Air Force Base|Korat Air Base] in Thailand, but he told reporters that Major Hoskins had dropped the last bombs.
  • The U.S. Department of Commerce announced that, for the first time in more than three years, the balance of payments in the country was positive, as the nation's income was greater than its outflow.
  • U.S. President Richard M. Nixon delivered a nationally-televised address about the Watergate scandal for the first time, calling on the nation to end its "continued backward-looking obsession with Watergate" and to focus on "matters of far greater importance to all of the American people." Nixon said that he had no prior knowledge of the attempt to place listening devices in Democratic Party headquarters and that he had no knowledge of an attempt to cover-up the scandal until March 21, 1973. He said also that he would not turn over his tape recordings of White House conversations because to do so "would set a precedent that would cripple future Presidents by inhibiting conversations between them and those they look to for advice."
  • In the Gulf of Tonkin off North Vietnam, the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier departed "Yankee Station", a fixed point at sea located from the coast of North Vietnam. Constellation was the last aircraft carrier to operate at the point, where American aircraft carriers had gathered since 1966.
  • The ITV television network broadcast the first episode of the British situation comedy Man About the House, about single man Robin Tripp sharing a flat with two single women, Chrissy Paula Wilcox and Jo Sally Thomsett in a building owned by the Ropers, with Robin pretending to be gay in order to avoid the owners' objections. The format would be adapted for American audiences as Three's Company in 1977.
  • The members of the rock band "Sick Man of Europe" renamed the act "Cheap Trick", after playing a concert in Bettendorf, Iowa the evening before. Bassist Tom Petersson coined the new name after commenting that the British rock band Slade had "used every cheap trick in the book" during a concert that he had attended.
  • Born:
  • *Swadhin Kumar Mandal, Indian Bengali chemist
  • *Lubna Azabal, Belgian film and TV actress; in Brussels

[August 16], 1973 (Thursday)

[August 17], 1973 (Friday)

[August 18], 1973 (Saturday)

  • Aeroflot Flight A-13 crashed in the Soviet Union shortly after the An-24B turboprop took off from Baku, in the Azerbaijani SSR, to Fort-Shevchenko in the Kazakh SSR, killing 56 of the 64 passengers and crew. The left engine failed as the airplane lifted off, and as the pilot steered to the left in order to attempt an emergency landing, the left wingtip struck a cable at.
  • In soccer football, Gordon Banks, the goalkeeper for the England national football team and for Stoke City F.C., announced his retirement from the sport on the eve of the new season. Described by the press as "the world's greatest goalkeeper", had lost the sight in one eye after a car accident in October.
  • The annual All-American Soap Box Derby in Akron, Ohio was won by a 14-year-old boy from Boulder, Colorado, who finished the downhill race in his homemade unpowered car and won a $7,500 college scholarship. The victory was taken away two days later for cheating, after race officials found that the user's car had an electromagnet that allowed it to be pulled forward as the track's metal starting plate fell, allowing him a slight head-start against the other competitors.
  • Born: Victoria Coren, English writer, television presenter and poker player, in Hammersmith, London, the daughter of journalist Alan Coren
  • Died: Alice Stevenson, 112, the oldest resident of the United Kingdom ever, up to that time.

[August 19], 1973 (Sunday)

  • A three-month ban on the sale of beef went into effect in the South American nation of Uruguay as a measure to boost the country's exports of beef. Sales of beef were still allowed for the military, for hospitals, and for charitable organizations.
  • George Papadopoulos was sworn in as President of Greece after his June 1 overthrow of the monarchy had been confirmed by voters in a referendum.
  • Bruce Lee's final martial arts film before his death, Enter the Dragon, premiered in the United States 30 days after his death on July 20, and would become one of the most profitable movies of all time, with revenues of $400,000,000 after being filmed with a budget of $850,000.
  • Born: Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway; as Mette-Marit Tjessem Høiby in Kristiansand
  • Died: Willy Rey, 23, Dutch-born Canadian model and Playboy magazine feature in February 1971, died of an overdose of barbiturates.

[August 20], 1973 (Monday)

[August 21], 1973 (Tuesday)

[August 22], 1973 (Wednesday)

  • The resignation of William P. Rogers as U.S. Secretary of State was announced by President Nixon, who said that he would nominate his National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger, to the position. Rogers, the only member of Nixon's first Cabinet who was still in office, formally departed on September 4 to return to a private law practice.
  • In Chile the Chamber of Deputies voted overwhelmingly, 81 to 47, to condemn President Salvador Allende for violations of the South American nation's constitution during the attempts to suppress nationwide strikes. While the Deputies had sufficient votes in favor of an impeachment trial, and the Allende's opposition had 30 of the 50 seats in the Chilean Senate, the opposition Senators were still four votes short of the necessary 34 votes necessary for a two-thirds majority to remove Allende from office. The Chilean military would take their own action to remove Allende from office 20 days later.
  • The crash in Colombia of an Avianca DC-3 killed 16 of the 17 people on board, after it crashed into a hillside following its departure from Villavicencio to Yopal.
  • Born: Kristen Wiig, American actress and comedienne known for Saturday Night Live, and film screenwriter known for Bridesmaids; in Canandaigua, New York

[August 23], 1973 (Thursday)

  • The Norrmalmstorg robbery, the first criminal event in Sweden covered by live television, began in Stockholm as Jan-Erik Olsson entered the Kreditbanken bank on Norrmalmstorg Square, displayed a sub-machine gun, and took four employees hostage. After firing three shots at responding policemen, he demanded that the police release convicted robber Clark Olofsson, that the two be provided three million Swedish krona, and that they be provided a car and free passage to a flight out of Sweden, all of which was done. The police balked, however, at allowing the duo to take a hostage with them to the airport. Police would lock the two robbers and four hostages inside the bank's vault as the standoff continued, and would end the incident with a tear gas assault after five days. The incident would become famous for the origin of the term Stockholm syndrome, referring to hostages becoming sympathetic to their captors, in that the four hostages refused to testify against Olsson and Olofsson.
  • A nationwide railway strike was called in Canada by the Associated Railway Unions. Canada's Parliament forced a settlement after nine days to end the strike.
  • An epidemic of cholera began in Italy from polluted seafood, as contaminated mussels caused several cases in Naples. By September 3, the illness had spread to West Germany and had killed 18 people in Italy alone.
  • The Association of Tennis Professionals began publishing its weekly rankings of men's professional tennis players, using a computerized system based points assigned for a player's average finishes in the previous 52 weeks in tournaments. The first rankings were done in advance of the U.S. Open, with Ilie Nastase of Romania at the top of a list of 186 players who had been in at least 12-tournaments in a year.

[August 24], 1973 (Friday)

[August 25], 1973 (Saturday)

  • The receipt of a large number of letter bombs in the mail, all sent from West London, began with the sending to department stores of of explosives hidden in ordinary envelopes. According to Scotland Yard, each of the bombs "was hidden inside a BBC music pamphlet", with the explosive charge detonating as soon as the book was opened. On August 27, a bomb mailed to the British Embassy in Washington, D.C. exploded, causing a secretary to lose her left hand and mangling her right hand. and the British government issued a worldwide alert the next day.
  • The North American Soccer League, the major professional soccer football league in North America, played its championship game, with a new team, the Philadelphia Atoms, defeating the Dallas Tornado, 2 to 0 before a crowd of 18,824 at Texas Stadium. Englishman John Best, playing for Dallas, made the first score, albeit for the other side on an accidental own goal at the 65 minute mark. Bill Straub, a U.S. player for the Atoms, made the other goal with five minutes to play.
  • At the World University Games in Moscow, the U.S. national basketball team avenged the 51-50 loss of the U.S. in the 1972 Summer Olympics by beating the Soviet Union, 75 to 67.
  • A team from Tainan in Taiwan won the Little League World Series after Huang Ching-huy, who had pitched a perfect game at the beginning of the 8-team tournament, threw his third consecutive no-hitter, defeating the U.S. West team from Tucson, Arizona, 12 to 0.

[August 26], 1973 (Sunday)

[August 27], 1973 (Monday)

  • The ruins of the famous U.S. Navy ironclad gunboat USS Monitor were found more than 110 years after the vessel had sunk in the Atlantic Ocean off of the coast of Cape Hatteras at North Carolina. On March 8, 1862, during the U.S. Civil War, the Monitor had defeated the CSS Virginia, the Confederate Navy's most powerful vessel, and an adaptation of the USS Merrimack, in a battle memorialized as "Monitor vs. Merrimac". Monitor sank in a storm less than 10 months later, on December 21, 1862, with the loss of 16 of its crew.
  • All 42 people aboard and Aerocóndor Colombia turboprop airplane were killed when the Lockheed L-188A Electra airplane crashed into the side of a mountain three minutes after taking off from Bogota on a flight to Cartagena.
  • The Barringer Trophy, awarded for the longest distance soaring flight from any type of launching method other than airplane tow, was regained by its holder, Wallace Scott II, after a flight of from Odessa, Texas, to Kearney, Nebraska, in a Schleicher ASW 12.
  • The 14-team National Hockey League announced that it would expand to 16 and realign from two divisions to four for the 1974-1975 season.

[August 28], 1973 (Tuesday)

  • 1973 [Veracruz earthquake|A 7.1 magnitude earthquake] killed at least 539 people after striking the Mexican states of Veracruz and Puebla. Hardest hit were the city of Orizaba in Veracruz, where a 12-story-tall apartment building collapsed and killed over 100 people, and the town of Ciudad Serdán in Puebla.
  • The Delhi Agreement between India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, was signed by the foreign ministers of the three adjacent nations in India in order to provide for the voluntary repatriation of persons held in each nation who wished to return home, including former Bengali East Pakistan bureaucrats and officers who had been interned in West Pakistan, as well as people in Urdu language speakers in Bangladesh who wished to relocate to Pakistan, and several thousand Pakistan prisoners of war incarcerated in India.
  • American commercial diver Paul J. Havlena died of a pneumothorax from a pulmonary barotrauma while in saturation and conducting a bell dive from the pipe laying and derrick barge L.B. Meaders to perform non-routine maintenance on a pipeline in the North Sea. Havlena's death was caused by a malfunction in his breathing equipment, resulting in a pressure imbalance in his diving helmet.
  • Died:
  • *"Joe Diamond", 66, American mobster who had been the boss of the Bonanno crime family in New York City from 1968 to 1971
  • *Fructuoso Orduna, 80, Spanish sculptor

[August 29], 1973 (Wednesday)

[August 30], 1973 (Thursday)

[August 31], 1973 (Friday)