July 1970

July 1, 1970 (Wednesday)

• The western section of Pakistan, formerly the province of West Pakistan, was reorganized into four sub-national provinces, each with its own provincial government, a system that has been in effect for the nation of Pakistan ever since. President Yahya Khan had announced the division on November 28 and then ordered the transition on April 1 The four provinces created were Balochistan, the North-West Frontier Province , Punjab and Sindh. East Pakistan, which continued to be a single province, would secede less than a year later and become the nation of Bangladesh.
• Police in Rio de Janeiro rescued all 40 people on a hijacked jet airplane, after the four hijackers had threatened to kill passengers "one by one" if their demands to be flown to Cuba were not met. The jet had taken off from Rio on a multistop flight to Buenos Aires in Argentina, then landed back at Rio when the crew convinced the hijackers that the jet would have to refuel before its flight to Cuba. Upon arrival in Rio, local police flattened the jet's tires with machine gun fire.
• In a special Congressional election in California to fill the unexpired terms of two U.S. Representatives who had died in office, the voting public approved two Republican candidates who became, at the time, the only acknowledged members of the ultra-conservative John Birch Society to serve in the House. John G. Schmitz took the 35th District seat of James B. Utt, who had died of a heart attack on March 1. John H. Rousselot of the 24th District succeeded Glenard P. Lipscomb, who died of cancer on February 1.

  July 2, 1970 (Thursday)

• Conservative Party rule began in the House of Commons after Queen Elizabeth II addressed the Commons and the House of Lords for the traditional State Opening of Parliament. The Queen spoke on the plans of Edward Heath's government for reducing taxes, reforming relations between management and labor, curbing immigration and reducing the government's intervention in business affairs. Prime Minister Heath then addressed the Commons and said that he planned to lift the ban on the sale of weapons to South Africa.
• Born:
• *Derrick Adkins, American track athlete and 1996 Olympic gold medalist in 400m hurdles; in Brooklyn
• *Spice 1, American rap artist; in Hayward, California

  July 3, 1970 (Friday)

• All 112 people aboard Dan-Air Flight 1903 were killed when the airliner crashed into the side of a mountain at Arbucias on its approach to Barcelona. The De Havilland Comet had been chartered to take 105 passengers from northern England to Spain for a 13-day holiday vacation, and had departed Manchester earlier.
• The Falls curfew started in Northern Ireland as resistance to a weapons search operation by the British Army in a nationalist area of Belfast. The Provisional IRA and the official IRA also got involved.
• Born:
• *Scott Aukerman, American actor, comedian and podcast host, in Savannah, Georgia
• *Audra McDonald, American stage actress and six-time Tony Award winner; in West Berlin, West Germany
• *Teemu Selänne, ice hockey wingman known as "The Finnish Flash", who played 21 years in the NHL; in Helsinki

  July 4, 1970 (Saturday)

• The French Army detonated a 914 kiloton hydrogen bomb over its atmospheric test site at the Mururoa Atoll at 5:30 in the morning local time as part of a program to make a thermonuclear weapon small enough to be deliverable by a missile. Four previous tests had been made since June 15 of atomic bombs designed to trigger the thermonuclear reaction. The bomb was kept above the ocean by a balloon. France's Defense Minister, Michel Debre, watched the test from the deck of the French warship De Grasse from a distance of
• A crowd of 400,000 people gathered in front of the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. for "Honor America Day", hosted by comedian Bob Hope and featuring other entertainers "to celebrate the nation's 194th birthday". The organizers— Hope, evangelist Billy Graham and Reader's Digest editor Hobart Lewis— promised in advance that they would keep the speeches and performances "scrupulously nonpolitical" attracted a smaller group of anti-war protesters, but remained relatively calm.
• A 19-year-old man was killed by two lions at the Portland Zoo in Oregon, after he and two companions broke into the zoo after closing time. Roger Adams sat at the edge of the deep lion pit, then lowered himself over the edge and fell the rest of the way when one of the lions knocked him down. Later in the early morning hours before the zoo reopened, an unknown person shot and killed the two lions, "Caesar" and "Sis" in an apparent retaliation for Adams's death

  July 5, 1970 (Sunday)

• The radio music countdown show American Top 40 made its debut, with Casey Kasem as host, playing the most recent list of Top 40 most popular songs as ranked by Billboard magazine. Initially, only 7 radio stations carried the syndicated program The first song introduced was Marvin Gaye's recording of "The End of Our Road", and the first number one hit was "Mama Told Me Not to Come" by Three Dog Night
• All 109 people aboard Air Canada Flight 621 were killed as the Super DC-8 airliner crashed while on its approach to Toronto International Airport The jet had departed from Montreal on a multi-stop flight with a final scheduled destination of Los Angeles.
• Luis Echeverría Álvarez was elected President of Mexico by an overwhelming margin, and his party, the PRI won all 60 of the seats in the Senate of Mexico and 178 of the 213 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. The PRI had ruled continuously since 1929. Echeverría had 86% of the vote against his opponent, Efraín González Morfín of the conservative PAN party.
• None of the five political parties in parliamentary elections in Cyprus received a majority although the Eniaion party won 15 of the 35 available seats. Under the Cypriot constitution, the unicameral parliament had 50 seats, with 35 for the Greek Cypriot legislators and 15 reserved for the island's Turkish Cypriot minority. In all, 141 candidates ran for the 35 Greek Cypriot seats, and 110 candidates ran for the 15 Turkish Cypriot seats.
• Born: Mac Dre, American rapper; in Oakland, California

  July 6, 1970 (Monday)

• On the eve of a threatened nationwide labor union walkout in Italy, Prime Minister Mariano Rumor announced his resignation. The three Italian labor federations all announced that they would suspend the planned walkout based on Rumor's decision to step down. Five days later, President Giuseppe Saragat appointed Giulio Andreotti to become prime minister and to form a new government Andreotti would fail to form a coalition and after a little more than two weeks, Saragat would ask Emilio Colombo to attempt to form a government.
• Born: Martin Smith, English musician; Inspectah Deck, American rapper, producer and actor.
• Died: Marjorie Rambeau, 80, American film actress

  July 7, 1970 (Tuesday)

• U.S. President Richard Nixon invoked the Railway Labor Act to send striking rail employees back to work after the United Transportation Union had started a walkout earlier in the day. Earlier in the day, rail workers had walked out on strike against the Baltimore & Ohio, the Louisville & Nashville, and the Southern Pacific railroads, and the railroad companies threatened a nationwide lockout of UTU members. Under the law invoked by President Nixon, a 30-day "cooling off" period took effect and an emergency board would hold hearings, recommend a settlement and send a report to the U.S. president. Under the law, no work stoppage would be allowed for 30 days after the report was delivered.
• Born:
• *Wayne McCullough, Northern Ireland professional boxer and WBC world bantamweight champion, 1995 to 1997; in Belfast
• *Atli Örvarsson, Icelandic film score composer; in Akureyri
• Died:
• *U.S. Army Major General George W. Casey Sr., 48, commander of the 1st Air Cavalry Division, was killed along with six other servicemen in South Vietnam when their Huey helicopter crashed into a mountain
• *Morris Markin, 76, Russian-born American taxicab manufacturer who founded the Checker Motors Corporation and was described as "the nation's smallest full-scale automaker... who built cars, mostly taxicabs, for durability rather than style".

  July 8, 1970 (Wednesday)

• In what an author described later as "the most dramatic reversal in the history of U.S. policy toward Indians", President Nixon sent a special message to Congress asking for legislation that would bring about "a new era in which the Indian future is determined by Indian acts and Indian decisions". Describing Native Americans as "the most deprived and most isolated minority group in our nation", President Nixon proposed a nine-point program The proposal also reversed the longstanding "Termination of Tribes" policy of the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs for the cultural assimilation of smaller tribes of American Indians into mainstream society for purposes of reducing federal aid to the tribes as a whole. "Self-determination among the Indian people can and must be encouraged without the threat of eventual termination," he wrote in his message.
• Twenty-five American judges agreed to spend a night in the Nevada State Prison in Carson City under the same conditions as the inmates, in the first experiment of its kind. The activity was sponsored by the University of Nevada, Reno, through a seminar of the National College of State Trial Judges. Most of the judges shared a cell with minimum security prisoners, while some were placed in "the hole" in solitary confinement. Upon walking out of the penitentiary the next day, the judges were in agreement that the conditions in U.S. prisons were shocking, and that prison reform was necessary.
• New World Pictures was founded by brothers Roger Corman and Gene Corman, initially as a producer and distributor of low budget, R-rated films. Its first release was Angels Die Hard, starring Tom Baker and William Smith, followed by The Student Nurses. In later years, New World Pictures would produce popular television programs.
• Born: Beck, a/k/a Beck Hansen, American singer; in Los Angeles