August 1970

August 1, 1970 (Saturday)

• The capsizing of the ferryboat MV Christena killed 233 passengers and crew when the overloaded vessel was making the journey between the islands of Saint Kitts and Nevis. The ferry's rated capacity was no more than 155 people, but it was carrying 324 when it departed Basseterre on Saint Christopher Island on its way to Charlestown on the island of Nevis. Only 91 people were rescued, and 123 bodies were recovered, more than half of them unidentifiable. The remaining 110 people were trapped on the Christena when it sank.
• Born:
• *Elon Lindenstrauss, Israeli mathematician, in Jerusalem
• *David James, England National Team football soccer goalkeeper, in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire
• Died:
• *Otto Heinrich Warburg, 86, German physician and 1931 laureate of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the enzyme that triggered the metabolism of cancerous cells and tumors
• *Frances Farmer, 56, American film and television actress, from esophageal cancer

  August 2, 1970 (Sunday)

• Rubber bullets, designed by the UK's Ministry of Defence as a non-lethal method of riot control, were used for the first time. The "L2A2", made of hard rubber, was first employed by the British Army against protesters in Northern Ireland, particularly children. Because they were "highly inaccurate", the bullets were fired into crowds, often by "skip firing" to bounce the projectiles off of the ground and into groups. Although the intent was to cause pain without killing or maiming an individual, the bullets caused numerous serious injuries and several deaths; over 55,000 would be fired during the Northern Ireland conflict until being discontinued at the end of 1974.
• For the first time, a "jumbo jet" was hijacked. Pan American Flight 299, which had made the first commercial Boeing 747 flight, was on its way from New York to San Juan, Puerto Rico. Shortly after midnight, one of the 360 passengers commandeered the aircraft brandished a gun and threatened to detonate explosives in his carry on luggage and demanded to be flown to Havana. Cuba's Premier Fidel Castro traveled to the Jose Marti Airport to discuss plans for the 747 pilot about how to safely take off from the airport's runways, which were not long enough to accommodate a large jet. The 747 took off for Miami after one hour in Cuba and safely returned. The aircraft, N736PA and designated as "Clipper Victor", would be destroyed in 1977 in the Tenerife airport disaster, after being struck by another Boeing 747 in the deadliest aviation disaster in history.
• U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield confirmed a report in The Washington Post that in 1963, President John F. Kennedy, had decided that he would order all U.S. troops to be withdrawn from South Vietnam after the 1964 presidential election. President Kennedy was assassinated before the election, and the new president, Lyndon Johnson ordered an increase of troops to a peak of half a million during his term of office
• Born:
• *Kevin Smith, American comedian and filmmaker, known for being "Silent Bob" in the Jay and Silent Bob film series; in Red Bank, New Jersey
• *Elijah Alexander, American NFL linebacker and fundraiser for multiple myeloma research; in Fort Worth, Texas

  August 3, 1970 (Monday)

• The United States Navy submarine USS James Madison made the first successful underwater test of the multi-warhead Poseidon C3 nuclear missile. Madison launched the unarmed missile skyward from a depth of and the rocket traveled to its intended target in the South Atlantic Ocean. Another U.S. Navy ship, the destroyer escort USS Calcaterra, positioned itself between the launch site and a Soviet surveillance trawler, the Leptev, to prevent close observation or the retrieval of debris from the launch. The Poseidon C3 missile was cleared by the Navy on March 31, 1971, for deployment aboard all ten of the James Madison-class submarines and the nine Lafayette-class submarines.
• Miriam Hargrave, a 62 year old English citizen who had been listed in the Guinness Book of Records for several years because of her consecutive failures on driver testing, was awarded a driver's license when she passed the test on her 40th try, after 39 failed tests. By then, she was sufficiently well known that her success made news worldwide. However, as Guinness noted in its next edition, she had spent so much money on driving lessons that she couldn't afford to buy a car.
• Born: Masahiro Sakurai, Japanese video game designer who created the Kirby series of games; in Musashimurayama, Tokyo

  August 4, 1970 (Tuesday)

• The government of British Honduras officially moved from Belize City into the new city of Belmopan, as Premier George Price convened the first cabinet meeting in the new capital.
• Delegates of Israel's conservative Gahal Party voted, 117 to 112, to withdraw the party's six cabinet members and to quit the government coalition. The walkout came after a nine-hour debate between moderate and conservative factions in the wake of a cabinet vote to accept terms of a U.S. peace proposal

  August 5, 1970 (Wednesday)

• Eleven residents of a low-rent apartment building, most of them retirees on a fixed income, were killed in a flash fire in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota The quick spread of the blaze in the 3-story "217 East Hennepin" building, was traced to some of the residents having kept the fire doors open because of summer heat.
• Born: Konstantin Yeryomenko, Russian pivot man and prolific goal scorer in the sport of futsal; in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union

  August 6, 1970 (Thursday)

• All 26 occupants and 4 crew of Pakistan International Airlines Flight 625 were killed when the Fokker F27 Friendship plane crashed six minutes after taking off from Rawalpindi during a severe thunderstorm with a scheduled destination of Lahore. The aircraft wreckage was found near the town of Rawat about southeast of Rawalpindi. A PIA spokesman said that the turboprop airplane had probably been hit by lightning and that it exploded and then disintegrated in midair.
• A bill to create the independent United States Postal Service, and to abolish the existing United States Post Office Department, passed Congress after being approved by the U.S. House of Representatives, 339 to 29. The bill, proposed by U.S. President Nixon, had passed the U.S. Senate earlier and marked "the most sweeping reform in the postal system's 181-year history" in the United States. The U.S. Senate had voted, 57 to 7, to approve the bill on August 3 President Nixon signed the bill on August 12, authorizing the transfer of functions to the USPS effective July 1, 1971.
• Born: M. Night Shyamalan, Indian-born horror film producer and director; in Mahé, Puducherry union territory

  August 7, 1970 (Friday)

• In San Rafael, California, Harold Haley, a Superior Court Judge for Marin County, was taken hostage during the criminal trial of a member of the Black Panthers, James D. McClain. Jonathan P. Jackson, the teenage nephew of George Jackson, had smuggled a pistol and a carbine rifle into the courtroom, then tossed the weapon to McClain, who then pressed the rifle against Judge Haley's neck in order to guarantee that the weapon would discharge if anyone attempted to stop the escape. Taking assistant prosecutor Gary W. Thomas and three women jurors as additional hostages, McClain, Jackson, and convict witnesses William Christmas and Ruchell Magee climbed into a rented van and Jackson began to drive to the parking lot exit, where they were met by a blockade by 100 law enforcement officers. McClain died in the shootout, which also killed Jackson and Christmas. Prosecutor Thomas said that nobody had been injured until McClain encountered the blockade and immediately turned around and shot Judge Haley with the sawed off shotgun. Thomas said also that he then grabbed a pistol from the van driver and shot McClain, Christmas and Jackson, at which point police opened fire, wounding Thomas and delivering fatal wounds to the three convicts.
• Claude L. Fly, an American agricultural adviser to the government of Uruguay, was kidnapped in Montevideo by the Tupamaro terrorists who had taken Dan Mitrione hostage on July 30. Fly would be held captive by the Tupamaros until 1971.

  August 8, 1970 (Saturday)

• A ceasefire between Egypt and Israel, brokered by U.S. Secretary of State William P. Rogers, took effect at one minute after midnight local time, with no fighting in an area wide on each side of the Suez Canal.

• Lolita, a female orca whale, was caught in Puget Sound off the U.S. state of Washington and sold to the Miami Seaquarium in Florida to serve as the mate for Hugo, a male orca. Estimated at four years old in 1970, Lolita spent 53 years in captivity before dying in 2023.

  August 9, 1970 (Sunday)

• All but one of the 100 people on LANSA Flight 502 were killed when the Peruvian L-188A Electra plane crashed shortly after taking off from Cuzco on a return trip to Lima. Two farmers on the ground were killed when the Electra came down on top of them. Most of the dead were American exchange students who were returning to Lima from a tour of Macchu Pichu.
• A head-on collision between two trains killed 33 people and injured at least 136 south of the resort town of Plentzia in Spain's Basque region A southbound train had pulled out from Plentzia with vacationing families and weekend visitors from the seaside of the Bay of Biscay and returning to Bilbao. Employees of the railway station at Urduliz had signalled for an empty train to depart the station on a northbound trip to pick up more passengers from Plentzia.
• The government of Turkey devalued the worth of the Turkish lira by 40 percent, after the International Monetary Fund had made the step a condition of a one billion dollar IMF credit. One hundred Turkish lira, formerly worth $11.11 USD, was reduced to a worth of $6.67 USD as the exchange rate changed from 9 lira for a dollar to 15 lira, an amount higher than the black market rate. The 40% decrease was the largest in one day required by the IMF; Iceland's currency was devalued by 24.6% in 1967 and again by 35.2% on November 12, 1968
• Qaboos bin Said, who had deposed his father Said bin Taimur on July 23 from the throne of Muscat and Oman, informed his subjects in a radio broadcast that the nation would henceforward be known simply as "Oman". The Sultan also announced also that his uncle, Tariq bin Taimur, was the nation's new prime minister
• Born:
• *Chris Cuomo, American journalist and political commentator for CNN; in New York City to then-lawyer Mario Cuomo
• *Thomas Lennon, American comedian and TV actor; in Oak Park, Illinois