August 1969

August 1, 1969 (Friday)

• A retroreflector, deployed by Neil Armstrong on the Moon at the Apollo 11 landing site on July 21, was tested successfully for the first time as part of the ongoing Lunar Laser Ranging experiment. Astronomers at the Lick Observatory in San Jose, California, had been trying for 12 days to strike the diameter unit, deployed as part of the mission in order to make precise measurements of the distance between the Earth and the Moon, before finally striking it with the laser and receiving the reflected beam at 2:00 in the morning local time. The first laser measurement concluded that, at the time sent, the Moon was "226,970.9 miles, give or take 150 feet" from San Jose.
• The Vallejo Times Herald and two San Francisco newspapers received letters from a man who would claim responsibility for the murder of 22-year-old Darlene Ferrin on July 4, and the December 20 murder of two high school students in Benicia. The letters, from a man who would later become known as the "Zodiac Killer", contained three parts of a cryptogram and a demand that the news dailies publish the letters to prevent more murders. To date, the Zodiac Killer has never been identified.
• NASA Administrator Thomas O. Paine told a crowd that a crewed mission to both Mars and Venus would be feasible in the 1980s. Paine told a San Francisco audience that November 12, 1981, would be "a particularly good date" for the launch of two rockets powered by the Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application under development. With Mars, Earth and Venus in ideal positions relative to each other, Paine said, the astronauts could enter orbit around Mars by August 9, 1982, then send "reusable stages much like jet planes" to ferry astronauts back and forth to the surface, before departing on October 28, 1982, toward Venus and then using the Venusian orbital motion for a gravity assist or slingshot on August 14, 1983, to return to Earth. The possibility, however, would depend on whether the American public was willing to commit to a cost of $24 billion. On September 15, Paine and U.S. Vice President Spiro Agnew, both advocates for a human landing on Mars, would present their task force report to U.S. President Richard Nixon, who accepted their recommendations "subject to budgetary considerations".
• After a hunt for a suspect who had killed five female students in the area since March in what had been dubbed as the "Co-ed murders", police arrested Eastern Michigan University student John Norman Collins in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and charged him with the July 23 murder of EMU freshman Karen Beineman.
• Died: Donald Keith, 65, American silent film actor and co-star with Clara Bow

  August 2, 1969 (Saturday)

• Richard Nixon became the first incumbent U.S. president to visit the capital of a Communist nation, arriving in Bucharest, Romania, as the guest of Romanian President Nicolae Ceaușescu.
• Born:
• *Hellhammer, Norwegian heavy metal drummer of the black metal band Mayhem; in Trysil Municipality
• *Fernando Couto, Portuguese footballer with 110 matches for the national team; in Espinho

  [August 3], 1969 (Sunday)

• All 55 people on board Aeroflot Flight H-826 were killed when a propeller blade came loose from the Antonov 24B 11 minutes after it had taken off from Dnepropetrovsk on a flight to another city in the Ukrainian SSR. When the plane reached an altitude of, part of the blade on the left side engine punctured the fuselage and severed the elevator and the aileron controls that allowed the plane to descend and to bank, respectively. The plane descended then spun before crashing into the ground.
• The long Coronado Bridge over San Diego Bay, high enough to allow U.S. Navy ships to travel beneath it, was opened to traffic at one minute after midnight. The toll bridge had been dedicated the day before by California Governor Ronald Reagan, and pedestrians were allowed to walk its length between San Diego and Coronado, California, until midnight.

  [August 4], 1969 (Monday)

• In Paris, U.S. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger secretly met with North Vietnam's former Foreign Minister, Xuan Thuy, to discuss a means of settling the Vietnam War at the Paris Peace Talks. The meeting followed a personal letter sent on July 16 by U.S. President Richard Nixon, to North Vietnam's President Ho Chi Minh, by way of France's diplomatic representative in Hanoi, Jean Sainteny. A Vietnamese historian would later note that "The secret dialogue was eventually to become more significant that the formal talks at Avenue Kleber," site of the Paris negotiations.
• NASA's George E. Mueller, in charge of Manned Space Flight, chose seven astronauts to augment existing flight crews for the Manned Orbiting Laboratory ; Richard H. Truly and Robert L. Crippen of the U.S. Navy; and Robert F. Overmyer of the U.S. Marine Corps. The seven were picked for their extensive training and experience with the MOL project and in view of the future of human spaceflight. NASA announced NASA Astronaut Group 7 on August 14. Another former MOL program astronaut, Albert H. Crews, had been a pilot in the canceled X-20 Dyna-Soar program, and joined MSC's Flight Crew Operations Directorate.
• Born: Michael DeLuise, American TV and film actor; in Los Angeles

  [August 5], 1969 (Tuesday)

• At least one future lunar landing canceled, NASA directed its Manned Space Center to prepare the transfer of the only Lunar Module no longer scheduled to be used, designated "LM-2" and slated for donation to the Smithsonian Institution. It was expected that the Smithsonian would exhibit LM-2 as a replica of the Lunar Module Eagle, designated LM-5, which had been first to land on the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission. After returning Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the orbiting Command Module, Eagle had been jettisoned and had crashed somewhere on the Moon's surface. NASA asked MSC to refurbish LM-2 to more closely resemble the Eagle's configuration prior to transfer. The LM-2 ascent stage would spend several months at Expo 70 in Osaka, Japan, before going to the Smithsonian. Due to later cancellation of lunar missions Apollo 18 and Apollo 19, modules LM-9 and LM-13 would not be used for and remain on Earth.
• Mariner 7 transmitted the closest pictures taken, up to that time, of the planet Mars, after the American interplanetary probe came within of the Martian surface. The 31 images were received at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, a little more than five minutes after having been sent from a distance of more than 58 million miles.
• The Stooges, a U.S. rock band, released their self-titled debut album, a landmark on the proto-punk scene.
• Born: Kenny Irwin Jr., American stock car racing driver; in Indianapolis
• Died: Duke Adolf Friedrich of Mecklenburg, 95, German scientist and explorer who was colonial Governor of Togoland prior to World War I, and later the president of West Germany's Olympic committee. The Ituri chameleon species, bears his name, as does a genus of four species of lizards, including Adolfus alleni.

  [August 6], 1969 (Wednesday)

• A sonic boom from a U.S. Navy F-4J Phantom II jet aircraft shattered three-quarters of the windows in the downtown business district of the Canadian resort town of Kelowna, British Columbia, causing an estimated $150,000 worth of damage and injuring six people hurt by broken glass. The unusual incident happened when a member of the Navy's Blue Angels stunt flying team exceeded Mach 1 at an altitude of only. The pilot was accelerating to catch up with the other three members of his team during practice for an upcoming air show. The cost of repairs, initially estimated at $250,000, was revised downward after 300 different claims were filed, and the U.S. Navy agreed to pay the costs on August 28.
• Born:
• *Elliott Smith, American singer and songwriter ; in Omaha, Nebraska
• *Jonathan Aibel, American film screenwriter; in Demarest, New Jersey
• Died: Theodor W. Adorno, 65, German theoretical philosopher

  [August 7], 1969 (Thursday)

• All but 10 of the residents of the small town of Greenfield, Iowa pledged to give up smoking cigarettes, as well as cigars and pipes, in advance of the shooting of a film produced and directed by Norman Lear. A total of 2,464 cards pledging to quit smoking or not to start were signed after lobbying by local leaders with the assistance of the Girl Scouts. Starring Dick Van Dyke and Bob Newhart, the movie Cold Turkey, would not be released until 1971.
• A panel of three judges, appointed by federal court order, concluded that de facto racial segregation still existed in 8 city school and 15 county school districts in Alabama. The largest of the districts cited were in Tuscaloosa County and in the city of Dothan. In all cases, the systems continued to operate separate white and Negro schools, and in some cases, practiced "busing of negro students to all-Negro schools when a predominantly white school is nearer to their homes." The systems were directed to desegregate by the 1970–71 school year.
• NASA officials announced at the Ames Research Center in Houston that testing of the lunar soil, brought back by the Apollo 11 mission, showed no organisms and no "positive traces of life". Scientists conceded that some of the Moon rocks had "a trace of organic material" but that it was likely caused by Earth contamination from rubber gloves, tools and plastic bags that stored the samples. Testing included injection of Moon dust into laboratory mice, spectrometer analysis and burning the samples for signs of carbon.
• U.S. President Richard Nixon and West Germany's Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger agreed to establish a "hot line" for instant communication between the two allies.

  [August 8], 1969 (Friday)

• U.S. President Richard Nixon, a Republican, proposed a law providing a basic guaranteed minimum income to poor families, regardless of whether any member of the family was able to obtain employment. Work incentives were part of the proposal, including free day-care centers for children, a 25% bonus for people in job-training programs, and allowing people to earn additional money at work without jeopardizing their guaranteed income. Nixon said that his program, which would replace the existing welfare payment system, "aims at ending the unfairness in a system that has become unfair to the welfare recipient, unfair to the working poor, and unfair to the taxpayer." Analysts noted that Nixon's proposal would more than double the number of people receiving government assistance to 22.4 million and would almost double the amount of money budgeted for welfare programs. The amount of guaranteed income— $1,600 per year or $133.33 per month— would be the equivalent of about $900 per month in 2018.
• The government of France announced a 12.5% devaluation of its currency, the French franc, effective Monday, with the exchange rate for one U.S. dollar going from 4.94F to 5.55F. Conversely, the value of the franc dropped from 20 cents to 18 cents American. Only eight people, including President Georges Pompidou and Finance Minister Valery Giscard D'Estaing, were aware of the July 16 decision; the French government followed up the announcement with a seven-week price freeze to prohibit wholesale and retail prices from being raised until September 15.
• The Beatles had their iconic photograph taken of their crossing of London's Abbey Road, as the cover for their record album of the same name, with professional photographer Iain Macmillan handling the photo shoot of six images, while London police blocked traffic. The zebra crossing, which attracts tourists wanting to re-enact the cover photo, was near the Beatles' Abbey Road Studios and allows pedestrians to cross Abbey Road near its intersection with Grove End Road.
• At 5:48 in the morning local time, the Soviet Union launched the uncrewed Zond 7 mission from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on the first and only successful mission to employ the Soyuz 7K-L1 spacecraft that would have potentially had enough power to been large enough to send cosmonauts on a crewed voyage to the Moon.
• Four members of the Manson Family— Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Linda Kasabian— departed from their home at the Spahn Ranch in Los Angeles to drive to a home near Beverly Hills with orders from their leader, Charles Manson, to kill everyone inside the house. They arrived shortly after midnight.
• Born: Faye Wong, Chinese pop singer; as Wang Fei in Beijing
• Died: Choi Seung-hee, 57, North Korean actress and dancer posthumously proclaimed as a "People's Actress"