August 1974


The following events occurred in August 1974:

[August 1], 1974 (Thursday)

[August 2], 1974 (Friday)

[August 3], 1974 (Saturday)

[August 4], 1974 (Sunday)

  • A bomb exploded on the Italicus Express train between Italy and West Germany, killing 12 people and injuring 48. Italian neo-fascists claimed responsibility.
  • The West African nation of Ghana began requiring its 80,000 motorists, as well as other vehicle operators, to drive on the right-hand side of the road after decades of left-hand side driving that dated from Ghana's days as a British colony. On the day before, the government banned the sale of alcohol for nine hours in order to ensure sobriety of vehicle operators after midnight.
  • The derailment of an express train in Dol-de-Bretagne, France, killed nine people and injured 30.
  • Swiss driver Clay Regazzoni won the 1974 German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring.
  • French Army Commandant Pierre Galopin, posted in Chad, was captured by Chadian rebels in the Sahara desert, after traveling to the rebel-held portion of the African nation to negotiate the release of hostages. Galopin would be sentenced to death by his captors and executed by hanging on April 4, 1975.
  • Bob Pleso, a stunt motorcyclist attempting to break the distance record of in jumping over parked automobiles, was fatally injured in front of 3,000 spectators while trying to jump over 30 cars at the Phenix Dragway in Phenix City, Alabama. Pleso's motorcycle cleared the first 27 cars before coming down on the windshield of the 28th, and he died in a hospital two hours later.

[August 5], 1974 (Monday)

  • U.S. president Richard Nixon released transcripts of three conversations between himself and the former White House Chief of Staff, H. R. Haldeman, on June 23, 1972, six days after the Watergate break-in. One of the transcripts showed that Nixon had ordered that the Federal Bureau of Investigation halt its inquiry into the case.
  • Nixon also released a statement saying that after he listened to the June 23 conversations, "Although I recognized that these presented potential problems, I did not inform my staff or my counsel of it... This was a serious act of omission for which I take full responsibility and which I deeply regret." He added that "a House vote on impeachment is, as a practical matter, virtually a foregone conclusion, and that the issue will therefore go to trial in the Senate."
  • Many of President Nixon's strongest supporters in Congress withdrew their support after the transcripts' release, including Representative Charles E. Wiggins of California, Nixon's most prominent defender on the House Judiciary Committee, who said he would now vote for impeachment on the charge of obstruction of justice.
  • At 10:24 in the morning, the roof of a U.S. government office building in downtown Miami, Florida, collapsed, killing 7 employees of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and injuring 15 others. An inspection would later conclude that materials used in resurfacing of a parking lot on top of the building, as well as salt and sand, had eroded and weakened the supporting steel structure.
  • The comic strip Tank McNamara, created by Jeff Millar and Bill Hinds, made its debut with distribution by United Press Syndicate. Billed as a satire on the American obsession with organized sports, the strip commented on the sports world through its title character, a former pro football player who had become a TV sports newscaster.
  • The sport of dogs catching flying discs gained national exposure in the U.S. when a 19-year-old college student brought his dog, Ashley Whippet, onto the field at Dodger Stadium for an unauthorized interruption of a nationally televised baseball game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the visiting Cincinnati Reds. Prior to the start of the ninth inning a crowd of 51,062 fans and millions of NBC viewers watched the whippet dog catch four out of five tosses with high leaps; the Dodgers won, 6 to 3.
  • Born:
  • *Kajol Devgan, Indian film star with six Filmfare Awards for best actress; in Bombay
  • *Roman Berezovsky, Armenian footballer with 94 caps as the goalkeeper for the Armenia national team; in Yerevan, Armenian SSR, Soviet Union

[August 6], 1974 (Tuesday)

[August 7], 1974 (Wednesday)

[August 8], 1974 (Thursday)

  • Richard Nixon became the first U.S. president to announce his resignation. Earlier in the week, Nixon had admitted his coverup of the Watergate scandal. In a televised address to the nation, Nixon said, "I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is opposed to every instinct in my body. But as President I must put the interests of America first." He added that continuing to fight "would almost totally absorb the time and attention of both the President and the Congress... when our entire focus should be on the great issues of peace abroad and prosperity without inflation at home. Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in as President at that hour in this office."
  • A team of Japanese and American climbers discovered the bodies of 7 members of an 8-woman team of Soviet climbers, led by Elvira Shatayeva, which had reached the summit of Lenin Peak, the third-tallest mountain in the Soviet Union, on August 5. The eighth woman was believed to have been swept off the mountain by high winds.
  • Born: Rubén Beloki, Spanish Basque pelota star; in Burlada
  • Died:
  • *Baldur von Schirach, 67, Nazi German politician who led the Hitler Youth, and served 21 years in prison for war crimes after World War II.
  • *Howie Pollet, 53, American Major League Baseball pitcher who had the best ERA and most games won in the 1946 National League season, died of adenocarcinoma.
  • *Elisabeth Abegg, 92, German resistance fighter who provided shelter to 80 Jews during the Holocaust.
  • *Henry King, 68, American orchestra leader for the Burns and Allen radio show.
  • *David Dodge, 63, American novelist

[August 9], 1974 (Friday)

[August 10], 1974 (Saturday)

[August 11], 1974 (Sunday)

[August 12], 1974 (Monday)

  • In Uganda, physician Peter Mbalu Mukasa died of poisoning. Police discovered the dismembered body of Kay Adroa, a former wife of President Idi Amin, in the trunk of a car belonging to Mukasa. Adroa's autopsy showed she had died from bleeding after an incomplete abortion. Mukasa's death was ruled a suicide.
  • All 27 people aboard Avianca Flight 610 were killed when the Piper DC-3 airliner flew into the side of Trujillo Mountain in Colombia at an altitude of. The plane was on a flight from Tumaco to Cali, and its wreckage would not be discovered until October 31.
  • Four mountain climbers died in the Alps in two separate incidents. Two Austrians fell while climbing the Matterhorn, while two West Germans fell on the Rimpfischhorn.
  • 20th Century Fox released the road movie Harry and Tonto, starring Art Carney and directed by Paul Mazursky.
  • During a televised address to a joint session of the United States Congress, U.S. President Ford said, "To the limits of my strength and ability, I will be the President of the black, brown, red and white Americans, of old and young, of women's liberationists and male chauvinists and all the rest of us in between, of the poor and the rich, of native sons and new refugees, of those who work at lathes or at desks or in mines or in the fields, and of Christians, Jews, Moslems, Buddhists and atheists, if there really are any atheists after what we have all been through."
  • Born: Trent Keegan, New Zealand investigative journalist who was murdered while working on a report in Kenya; in New Plymouth

[August 13], 1974 (Tuesday)

[August 14], 1974 (Wednesday)

[August 15], 1974 (Thursday)

[August 16], 1974 (Friday)

[August 17], 1974 (Saturday)

[August 18], 1974 (Sunday)

[August 19], 1974 (Monday)

[August 20], 1974 (Tuesday)

[August 21], 1974 (Wednesday)

[August 22], 1974 (Thursday)

  • The Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 was signed into law by U.S. president Gerald Ford, after being approved in the Senate, 76 to 11, and by the House, 351 to 25. The law created the Community Development Block Grant for public housing authorities in the U.S. to spend on housing, public facilities, child care and economic development to fill local needs. In effect, as one historian noted, "the U.S. government got out of the construction business," with the housing authorities being allowed to distribute Housing Choice Vouchers to low-income families and "letting the tenants shop around the private market to find an apartment of their own choosing."
  • For the first time, the International Monetary Fund provided crude oil from its own storage facility to give aid to a developing country.
  • The government of India ratified the nation's National Policy for Children to reduce poverty, with the objective of guaranteeing that "all children in the state get the necessary prenatal, postnatal and developmental care to ensure optimal health", to be accomplished by a comprehensive health program, funding for nutrition for women and children, free education for all children up to age 14, and prevention of the exploitation of child labor.
  • During preliminary trials for the 1974 America's Cup, a television helicopter crashed into Rhode Island Sound east of Point Judith, Rhode Island, killing a technician and injuring a cameraman and the pilot.
  • Died:
  • *Alfredo Edmead, 17, Dominican minor league baseball player, died of a skull fracture and cerebral hemorrhage after an on-field collision with teammate Pablo Cruz while playing for the Salem Pirates in the Carolina League. Edmead remains the youngest professional baseball player ever to die on the field.
  • *Sir Charles Wheeler, 82, English sculptor and president of the Royal Academy of Arts from 1956 to 1966
  • *Robert Wilder, 73, American novelist, playwright and screenwriter known for Flamingo Road
  • *Jacob Bronowski, 66, Polish-Jewish British mathematician, biologist and science historian, died of a heart attack.

[August 23], 1974 (Friday)

[August 24], 1974 (Saturday)

[August 25], 1974 (Sunday)

[August 26], 1974 (Monday)

[August 27], 1974 (Tuesday)

  • By a vote of 40,083 to 27,932, residents of Alaska voted to move the state capital from Juneau to a location near the village of Willow, away. The proposed capital was from Anchorage and voters opted for a site at least from Anchorage or Fairbanks. However, voters would later reject the move's associated construction costs, and Juneau remains the state capital.
  • At the age of 12, Becky Schroeder of Toledo, Ohio, was granted her first patent for an invention, receiving U.S. Patent 3,832,556 for her creation, the "Glow Sheet", a "luminescent backing sheet for writing in the dark" that could be placed underneath a regular sheet of paper for use by persons needing to work in dimly lit places. She had applied for the patent on December 26, 1973, with the assistance of her father, a patent attorney.
  • The case of Joan Little began at the jail in Beaufort County, North Carolina, when she stabbed a guard as he was raping her. Little escaped, then turned herself in to police and was charged with the murder of Clarence Alligood, who had made a practice of forcing female inmates to engage in sex with him. Little would be acquitted of the murder charge on August 15, 1975, after autopsy evidence confirmed her claim of self-defense. She became the first African-American woman to be acquitted of murder committed in self-defense against a sexual assault.
  • British commercial diver Peter Kelly died of anoxia due to pure helium being fed through his breathing mask during a bell dive in the Norwegian Sector of the North Sea. The other diver in the bell pulled off his mask before losing consciousness and survived.
  • Andrew Head, a tractor driver, discovered a woman's headless body near Swaffham, Norfolk in England. Police concluded that the woman was murdered during the first two weeks of August. The woman's head has never been found; she remains unidentified and her murder remains unsolved.
  • Five people died in an explosion at a meatpacking plant in Cipolletti, Argentina.
  • A memorial service for Charles Lindbergh was held in Kipahulu, Hawaii, at the small church next to which Lindbergh had been buried the previous day. Lindbergh's name was not mentioned during the half-hour service, at which fewer than 24 people were present.
  • Died: Otto Strasser, 76, Nazi German politician who broke with the party in 1930 in opposition to Adolf Hitler, and lived in exile in various countries until coming to West Germany in 1955.

[August 28], 1974 (Wednesday)

[August 29], 1974 (Thursday)

  • Jimmy Taylor, a 12-year-old Aboriginal Australian boy, disappeared from Derby, Western Australia. the case remains unsolved.
  • At Windsor Great Park, a Crown Estate property in southern England, police took action to disperse the 2,000 music fans attending the "Festival of the People", resulting in an eight-hour battle, 220 arrests and over 50 injuries.
  • A 3:05 a.m. explosion destroyed an entire city block in the African-American nightclub district of Chattanooga, Tennessee, causing one death and at least 13 injuries.
  • The August Rebellion, a prison riot, took place shortly after dusk at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women in Bedford, New York, as 200 prisoners took control of two buildings and a recreation yard to protest the brutal treatment of fellow prisoner Carol Crooks. The prisoners returned to their cells after midnight.
  • Aerialist Philippe Petit fulfilled his promise to give a free show for the children of New York, crossing a cable at a 30-degree angle from a stand of trees on the northeast side of Belvedere Lake in Central Park to an height on the watchtower of Belvedere Castle, southwest of the lake.
  • Malcolm "Mac" Graham and Eleanor "Muff" Graham, a married couple from San Diego, California, disappeared on Palmyra Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, to which they had traveled from Hawaii aboard their sailboat, the Sea Wind. Another sailor would discover Eleanor Graham's remains on the beach of Palmyra in 1981, after which ex-convict Buck Duane Walker and his girlfriend, Stephanie Stearns, the only other persons on Palmyra at the time of the Grahams' disappearance, would be charged with murdering Eleanor. Walker was convicted of the killing, but Stearns was acquitted. Stearns' defense attorney, Vincent Bugliosi, would co-write a 1991 book about the case, And the Sea Will Tell, which was adapted the same year into a television film.
  • Died:
  • *William M. Cann, 32, Chief of Police in Union City, California, died from wounds sustained when he was shot by a sniper on June 11, 1974.
  • *Stanton Griffis, 87, American diplomat and financier, died from injuries sustained in an August 13 fire in his suite at the Pierre Hotel in New York. Griffis had served as U.S. ambassador to Poland, Egypt, Argentina and Spain during his career.
  • *G. Ernest Wright, 64, American Old Testament scholar and biblical archaeologist

[August 30], 1974 (Friday)

[August 31], 1974 (Saturday)