February 1975

February 1, 1975 (Saturday)

• U.S. President Ford announced that the 1976 fiscal year budget would reflect a deficit of 52 billion dollars. At the time, it was "the largest peacetime deficit in the nation's history".
• The Intercontinental Broadcasting Corporation was launched in the Philippines.
• Born: Big Boi, American rapper with OutKast; in Savannah, Georgia

  February 2, 1975 (Sunday)

• Ethiopian troops massacred 103 civilians in the village of Woki Duba, after driving Eritrean rebels from the town.
• Born: Todd Bertuzzi, Canadian NHL player noted for his 2004 attack on Steve Moore during a 2004 game; in Sudbury, Ontario

  February 3, 1975 (Monday)

• Eli M. Black, the 53-year-old CEO of United Brands, was driven to his office at the Pan Am Building in Manhattan, rode to the 44th floor, locked the door inside his private office, broke a window, and jumped to his death. Subsequent investigations revealed that Black had paid a $1,250,000 bribe to the Economics Minister of Honduras, Abraham Bennaton Ramos, in order to prevent that nation from placing a tax on the bananas from United Brands' farms.
• Died: Umm Kulthum, 76, Egyptian actress and singer

  February 4, 1975 (Tuesday)

• The Haicheng earthquake killed 2,041 and injured 27,538 in Haicheng, Liaoning, China. In a possible example of successful earthquake prediction, the Chinese government had issued warnings at 2:00 in the afternoon to the three million residents of the southern Liaoning province, advising them to spend the night outdoors in tents. At 7:36 pm, a 7.8 magnitude quake flattened Haicheng.
• Former British Prime Minister Edward Heath stepped down as chairman of the Conservative Party after former Education Minister Margaret Thatcher outpolled him 130-119, still less than the majority 139 of 276 votes needed for anyone to become the party's leader. One week later, Thatcher would become the first woman to lead a British political party.
• Born: Natalie Imbruglia, Australian actress and singer, in Sydney
• Died: Louis Jordan, 66, American jazz bandleader, in Los Angeles

  February 5, 1975 (Wednesday)

• The Army of Peru suppressed a two-day strike by the Lima police department. At least 100 people died in Lima during the national emergency.
• Colonel Richard Ratsimandrava was sworn in as President of the Malagasy Republic, succeeding Gabriel Ramanantsoa. He would serve for only six days before being assassinated.

  February 6, 1975 (Thursday)

• Thieves in Italy broke into the Ducal Palace art museum at Urbino, and stole the paintings La Muta by Raphael, and the masterpieces The Flagellation of Christ and Madonna di Senigallia, by Piero della Francesca, considered to be three of the ten most famous Italian paintings from the Renaissance The works were recovered, unharmed, on March 24, 1976, from a hotel room in Locarno, Switzerland.
• An Australian visitor to South Africa became the first victim of a new outbreak of the Marburg virus, thought to have been eradicated eight years earlier, after being stung by an unknown arthropod near Hwange. He would die on February 19 in Johannesburg.
• A crucial by-election was held in Kankesanthurai, Sri Lanka. Tamil independence advocate S. J. V. Chelvanayakam retained his seat in the National State Assembly and cited the victory as a mandate for Tamil sovereignty.
• British commercial diver John Martin drowned when his diving helmet slipped off during his ascent from a surface-orientated dive in the Stavanger fjord in Norway. There was some evidence that he had experienced nitrogen narcosis. Martin's body was never recovered.
• On the same day, a Dutch commercial diver reportedly disappeared while about to conduct a welding job in the North Sea at a depth of ; his body was never recovered. This death appears in the records of the British Health and Safety Executive, but not in those of the Staatstoezicht op de Mijnen in the Netherlands.
• Born: Tomoko Kawase, Japanese singer with The Brilliant Green, in Kyoto
• Died: Sir Keith Park, 82, New Zealand born Air Chief Marshal of the Royal Air Force, nicknamed "The Defender of London" for his work during the Battle of Britain

  February 7, 1975 (Friday)

• The Los Angeles Times revealed the existence of Project Azorian, the American CIA's attempt to recover the Soviet submarine K-129, which had sunk in 1968. According to the investigative report, confidential files on the operation were "believed to have been among the documents stolen by safecrackers" during a burglary of the offices of the Summa Corporation the previous June, and had been held by the thieves who demanded one million dollars to prevent their leaking.
• Former White House aide Charles W. Colson told the Today Show that President Nixon had talked to him on December 18, 1973, about resigning, but did not do so because he was afraid that Vice-President Ford "couldn't control Henry Kissinger". Nixon's resignation had taken place almost eight months later, on August 9, 1974.

  February 8, 1975 (Saturday)

• Nine members of the Stannary, the parliament of the Duchy of Cornwall, signed a resolution declaring Cornwall, and its 350,000 Cornishmen, independent of the United Kingdom. Bus conductor Brian Hamblet drew up the document, referring to himself as the "Lord Protector of the Stannary Parliament", after being referred to as Lord Protector of the Stannaries in a letter from the Ministry for the Environment.
• Died: Robert Robinson, 88, British chemist and 1947, Nobel Prize laureate.

  February 9, 1975 (Sunday)

• Soyuz 17 cosmonauts Georgi Grechko and Aleksei Gubarev returned to Earth after one month in orbit aboard the Salyut 4 space station.
• A West German military transport crashed into the mountains of western Crete, killing all 42 people on board.
• Born: Vladimir Guerrero, Dominican MLB outfielder, and 2004 AL MVP; in Nizao

  February 10, 1975 (Monday)

• The Council of the European Community passed the Equal Pay Directive, number75/117/EEC, requiring its member states to follow "the principle of equal pay for men and women".
• Isabel Perón, the President of Argentina, signed "Decree 261", giving the nation's armed forces the authority to enter the rebellious Tucumán Province and to "annihilate subversion" of "Operativo Independencia" by any necessary means.
• Australian Attorney General Lionel Murphy was appointed as one of the seven judges of the High Court of Australia, where he served until his death in 1986.
• Born:
• *Hiroki Kuroda, Japanese baseball pitcher for the Hiroshima Toyo Carp and the Los Angeles Dodgers; in Osaka
• *Lee Soo-geun, South Korean stand-up comedian, in Gyeonggi Province
• Died: Nikos Kavvadias, 65, Greek poet and writer

  February 11, 1975 (Tuesday)

• Malagazy Republic President Richard Ratsimandrava, recently inaugurated on the east African island of Madagascar, was assassinated as he was being driven through Ambohijatovo Square in Tananarive. Sworn in six days earlier, he had been returning home from a cabinet meeting when he was attacked by machine gun fire, and died of his wounds hours later. He was replaced by General Gilles Andriamahazo.
• Margaret Thatcher was elected as the new leader of the United Kingdom's Conservative Party, becoming the first woman to lead a major British political party and the first female Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition. Thatcher received 146 votes of the 276 Conservative members of the House of Commons, a majority, and her closest rival, William Whitelaw, received 79. When the Conservatives formed a government in 1979, Mrs. Thatcher, a research chemist and tax lawyer, became the first female British Prime Minister.
• William Tolbert, the President of Liberia, hosted John Vorster, the Prime Minister of South Africa in what was supposed to have been a secret meeting, as South Africa had been repudiated by most of the rest of the continent because of its apartheid policies. The Times of London broke the story two days later with the headline "Mr Vorster Pays Secret Visit to Liberian Leader", to the embarrassment of the Liberian government.
• Mexico's President Luis Echeverría Álvarez decreed that Tiburón Island should be returned to the Seri people, who had lived there and named it Tahejöc.

  February 12, 1975 (Wednesday)

• Voters in South Korea overwhelmingly reaffirmed the 1972 "Yushin Constitution", with 80% of the eligible voters casting ballots. Because that constitution had given the President of the Fourth Republic greater power, the vote was seen as a referendum on the popularity of President Park Chung Hee.
• Born: Regla Torres, Cuban volleyball player and three time Olympic gold medalist; designated "Best Player of the 20th Century" by the Fédération Internationale de Volleyball; in Havana
• Died:
• *Carl Lutz, 79, Swiss envoy to Hungary and humanitarian who was credited with helping 62,000 Hungarian Jews to emigrate during the Holocaust
• *Sir Franklin Gimson, 84, British colonial administrator and former Governor of Hong Kong and Governor of Singapore
• *André Beaufre, 73, French general
• *Dagmar Godowsky, 77, American silent film star from 1919 to 1926;

  February 13, 1975 (Thursday)

• The Turkish Federated State of Cyprus was proclaimed by Rauf Denktaş, who had formerly been the Vice-President of the Republic of Cyprus until war divided the predominantly Greek southern half from the mostly Turkish northern part. Denktas would proclaim full independence of the area on November 12, 1983.
• An intense fire broke out on the 11th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center shortly after midnight, then spread across six floors, from the 9th to the 14th, before being brought under control. There were no serious injuries, but 16 firemen were treated for smoke inhalation. Only fifty people, all maintenance employees, were present in the towers and were safely evacuated. New York City Councilmen Howard Golden and Stephen Kaufman, citing the need for mandatory installation of sprinkler systems, wrote in a joint statement, "Had that fire erupted during the working day, we could have had another Triangle Shirtwaist disaster."