February 1969

[February 1], 1969 (Saturday)

• U.S. President Richard M. Nixon instructed his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, to pursue a secret plan of action to establish dialogue between the governments of the United States and the People's Republic of China beginning with meetings between diplomats in Poland, where both nations had embassies.
• Born:
• *Gabriel Batistuta, Argentine-born soccer football striker who starred in Italy's Serie A major league, and for Argentina's national team in three World Cup competitions; in Avellaneda, Santa Fe Province
• *Andrew Breitbart, American conservative news publisher and creator of the Breitbart website ; in Los Angeles

  [February 2], 1969 (Sunday)

• The Burdell Mansion commune, home at one time to members of the Grateful Dead rock band and later to more than 50 hippies who called their group The Chosen Family, was destroyed by an electrical fire. Decades later, California state archaeologists would excavate the ruins to study the hippie culture.
• Born: Dambisa Moyo, Zambian-born economist and author of four bestselling books, including 2010's How the West Was Lost; in Lusaka
• Died: Boris Karloff, 81, English-born actor known for portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in horror films, and as the narrator in the cartoon adaptation of ''How the Grinch Stole Christmas!''

  [February 3], 1969 (Monday)

• Eduardo Mondlane, the 48-year-old leader of the Mozambique nationalist organization FRELIMO, was assassinated by a time bomb that had been planted inside a book mailed to him at his headquarters in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Investigators were never able to determine whether Mondlane's murder had been carried out by the Portuguese colonial government of Mozambique or by Mondlane's rivals within FRELIMO. Mondlane was succeeded by Samora Machel, who would become the first President of Mozambique when the east African nation was granted independence by Portugal in 1975.
• At the Palestinian National Congress in Cairo, Yasser Arafat was elected as the new chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, replacing Yahya Hammuda. Arafat would serve as PLO Chairman until shortly before his death in 2004.
• As the hijacking to Cuba of American passenger jets continued, Eastern Air Lines Flight 7 was diverted to Havana along with its 87 passengers, including Allen Funt and a crew from the popular practical joke TV show, Candid Camera. The plane was diverted as it approached Miami on its flight from Newark, New Jersey. Because of Funt's reputation as the host of the hidden camera prank show, many of the passengers thought at first that the hijacking was part of the filming of a Candid Camera episode.
• Born:
• *Retief Goosen, South African professional golfer and 2001 and 2004 U.S. Open winner; in Pietersburg
• *Beau Biden, American politician and Attorney General of Delaware from 2007 to 2015; in Wilmington, Delaware
• Died:
• *C. N. Annadurai, 59, Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, died just 20 days after he had successfully lobbied for the name of the populous state of India to be changed from Madras to Tamil Nadu.
• *Al Taliaferro, 63, American comic strip artist who had drawn the Donald Duck newspaper comic since 1938

  [February 4], 1969 (Tuesday)

• The derailment of the Trichinopoly to Madras express train in India killed 25 people and injured another 25. Nearly all of the victims had been non-paying passengers riding on the roof of the train.
• Born: Maniac, Norwegian musician, best known as the former vocalist in the black metal band Mayhem

  [February 5], 1969 (Wednesday)

• Turn-On, a new sketch comedy show on ABC from the creators of NBC's popular Laugh-In, premiered at 8:30 in the evening Eastern time, for its first and only episode. One television station in Cleveland, WEWS-TV, took the show off the air after the first commercial break, and stations in Portland and Seattle refused to air it after learning of the reaction in the earlier time zones. Enough viewers and ABC station owners were offended by the show and its cancellation was announced two days later.
• Thirty-one people were killed in a fire at the Bandai Kokusai Hotel in the Japanese ski resort of Koriyama, and another 28 injured. The blaze broke out in the hotel's nightclub and was driven by winter winds throughout the building. Masaki Matsushita, a nude dancer at the nightclub, told fire investigators later that she had accidentally started the blaze when she had "placed a gasoline-soaked rag on an oil stove backstage" while preparing to perform her act before 300 customers.
• António de Oliveira Salazar, the Prime Minister of Portugal who had ruled the nation as its dictator from 1932 until a brain hemorrhage in 1968, was released from the hospital in Lisbon. Salazar had been replaced as prime minister while in a coma, but would not be told of the decision; he would continue in the belief that he ruled as Portugal's leader until his death in 1970.
• Angeles Flying Service Flight 601, a Beechcraft Super H18 air taxi that regularly ferried passengers from Port Angeles, Washington to Seattle, crashed and burned immediately after its early-morning takeoff, killing all 10 people aboard.
• Born:
• *Michael Sheen, Welsh stage and film actor; in Newport
• *Bobby Brown, American R&B singer and songwriter; in Boston
• Died:
• *Conrad Hilton Jr., 42, American businessman, heir to the Hilton Hotels fortune, and playboy, died from complications of alcoholism
• *Thelma Ritter, 66, American stage and film actress

  [February 6], 1969 (Thursday)

• Residents of the West Indies island of Anguilla voted overwhelmingly for independence from the United Kingdom and the creation of a republic. The final result was 1,739 in favor and only four against on the island of 6,000 people. British paratroopers and municipal policemen from St. Kitts would invade the island on March 19 and dismantle the republic.
• Born: Masaharu Fukuyama, Japanese singer-songwriter and actor; in Nagasaki

  [February 7], 1969 (Friday)

• Nine passengers were killed, and 47 seriously injured in Australia after the engineer of the Southern Aurora express train had a fatal heart attack as he approached the crossing at Violet Town, Victoria. The train was nearing the end of its overnight trip from Sydney to Melbourne and passengers were preparing to eat breakfast when the collision with a freight train happened at 7:10 in the morning. A subsequent autopsy concluded that engineer John Bowden was dead before the train ran through two warning signals and a stop signal.
• Diane Crump of Woodmont, Connecticut, became the first woman jockey to ride a racehorse in American competition. With odds of 50-to-1 on the horse, Bridle 'n Bit, 19-year-old Crump finished tenth in a field of 12 in the seventh race that day at Florida's Hialeah race track near Miami.
• The highest gust of wind in British history took place at Kirkwall, at Scotland's Orkney Isles on the North Sea, with a wind burst measured at.
• Died: Frank "Cannonball" Richards, 81, American carnival and vaudeville performer whose act involved taking heavy blows to his stomach

  [February 8], 1969 (Saturday)

• At 1:05 in the morning local time, the Allende meteorite exploded as it entered the atmosphere over the village of Pueblito de Allende in Mexico's Chihuahua state. As the meteor exploded into two pieces which then fragmented into thousands, most of the stones fell in and around Pueblito Allende. Eventually, more than two tonnes — — of fragments would be picked up; the Allende meteorite has become the most studied in the world, and is among the rarest because of its composition of carbonaceous chondrite.
• February 8, 1969, was the last date for an issue of the weekly magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, though it was placed on newsstands and sent to subscribers a week earlier. The Post would be resurrected a year later as a semi-monthly magazine.

  [February 9], 1969 (Sunday)

• The Boeing 747 "jumbo jet" was flown for the first time, taking off at 11:44 in the morning Pacific Time from Boeing's Paine Field airfield at Everett, Washington. The flight had been scheduled to last two and a half hours, but pilot Jack Waddell reported difficulty with a wing flap 34 minutes after takeoff, and the 335 ton jet, largest commercial airliner in the world, returned for a landing at 12:49.
• The ADN news agency of East Germany announced that the government would bar travel along the three corridors from West Germany to West Berlin, effective February 15, in an apparent effort to block West German state and federal officials from participating in the March 5 presidential election, to be held in West Berlin by 1,036 electors.
• TACCOMSAT, the Tactical Communications Satellite and the largest communications satellite to ever be launched from the United States, was put into a geostationary orbit above the equator by a Titan 3C booster rocket launched from Cape Kennedy.
• The Israeli Navy recovered the distress buoy from the submarine INS Dakar, which had disappeared in the Mediterranean Sea on January 25, 1968. However, the wreckage itself would not be located for another 30 years, finally being found on May 28, 1999.
• Born: Ian Eagle, American TV sports announcer; in Miami
• Died: Gabby Hayes, 83, American character actor in Western films who portrayed the sidekick comedy relief for Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers and several other Western stars.

  [February 10], 1969 (Monday)

• The Kingdom of Thailand held elections for Parliament for the first time since the 1958 military coup, in accordance with the new 1968 constitution. Field Marshal Thanom Kittikachorn, who had been prime minister since 1963, retained his office as the leader of the new military-backed United Thai People's Party, which won 75 of the 219 seats in the House of Representatives. Thirty of the 72 winning independent candidates would join the UTPP.