June 1970

June 1, 1970 (Monday)

• Soyuz 9, a two-man spacecraft with cosmonauts Andrian Nikolayev and Vitaly Sevastianov, was launched from the Soviet Union's Baikonur space center at 1:09 in the morning of June 2.
• Born:
• *Alexi Lalas, American soccer player for the U.S. National team; in Birmingham, Michigan
• *Alison Hinds, Barbadian soca singer known as "The Queen of Soca"; born in London, England now residing in Barbados.
• *R. Madhavan, Indian film actor and producer in Bollywood films and Tamil cinema; in Jamshedpur, Bihar state
• Died: Pedro Eugenio Aramburu, 67, former President of Argentina, was murdered in Buenos Aires, three days after being kidnapped from his apartment.

  June 2, 1970 (Tuesday)

• A team of scientists at the University of Wisconsin, led by Dr. H. Gobind Khorana, announced that they had synthesized the first artificial gene.
• Discovery of Western Europe's first large oil field, located offshore beneath Norway's section of the North Sea was announced by the Phillips Petroleum Company of the U.S., one of four companies in a consortium that had been drilling undersea." The other partners in the venture were AGIP of Italy, Petrofina of Belgium, and the Petronord Group of seven French companies and one from Norway. The Ekofisk oil field is from Norway and from Scotland.
• Born: B-Real, American rapper and lead for the hip hop group Cypress Hill; in Los Angeles
• Died:
• *Bruce McLaren, 32, New Zealand race car engineer and driver, founder of the McLaren Group, was killed while testing the M8D, the fourth modification of his M8A series, at England's Goodwood Circuit, near Chichester, West Sussex
• *Orhan Kemal, 55, Turkish novelist
• *George Watkins, 69, American baseball player who had a record.373 batting average in his rookie season, but spent only six seasons in the major leagues

  June 3, 1970 (Wednesday)

• U.S. President Richard M. Nixon announced in a nationwide television and radio address that American troops would be pulled back out of Cambodia after the achievement of "all our major military objectives", and that half of the 31,000 U.S. troops in Cambodia had been returned to fight in South Vietnam.
• Died:
• *Hjalmar Schacht, 93, German politician and financier who served as President of the Reichsbank and as Adolf Hitler's Minister of Economics from 1935 to 1937 during Germany's dramatic recovery from the worldwide economic recession
• *Aníbal Milhais, 74, Portugal's most highly decorated soldier and national hero.
• *Ruth Sawyer, 89, American children's author and adult fiction novelist
• *R. K. Mellon, 70, American financier and philanthropist

  June 4, 1970 (Thursday)

• The Kingdom of Tonga was granted independence from the United Kingdom, after 70 years as a British protectorate, with Tāufaʻāhau Tupou IV as King and his brother Fatafehi Tuʻipelehake as Prime Minister. Independence celebrations were held in the capital at Nukuʻalofa at a soccer field next to the royal palace, but attended by only 3,000 of the nation's 80,000 residents; most citizens on the island of Tongatapu were preparing instead for the arrival of 1,700 passengers from the ocean liner Oriana.
• The hijacking of a TWA Flight 486, and its 51 passengers, ended eight hours after it started, when police at Dulles International Airport in Washington persuaded Arthur G. Barkley to leave the plane. Three hours earlier, Barkley had been paid the first ransom ever given to an American hijacker when TWA provided him with $100,750 when the Boeing 727 flight from Phoenix to Washington landed at its intended destination of Dulles. Barkley was upset, however, to discover that he was not being provided the ransom of $100,000,000 he had demanded and forced the plane to take flight again. Barkley would later be found not guilty by reason of insanity, of crimes arising from the wounding of Flight 486's pilot, and the air piracy charges would be dropped when he was committed to a hospital for the criminally insane
• Born: Izabella Scorupco, Polish-born Swedish film actress known for GoldenEye; in Bialystok
• Died: Menasha Skulnik, 80, American stage and radio comedian, known for his performances in Yiddish theater and as the recurring character "Uncle David" on ''The Goldbergs''

  June 5, 1970 (Friday)

• U.S. President Richard M. Nixon held a meeting with the four chiefs of the American intelligence agencies and prepared a plan for the "Huston Plan", a program to spy against, infiltrate, and make arrests of the members of, groups protesting against the Vietnam War Tom Charles Huston, a lower level member of the White House staff, delivered a detailed proposal on June 26, which President Nixon approved on July 14. The Huston plan, however, was abruptly canceled the next day before it could be implemented. Existence of the plan would later be revealed during testimony by Huston before U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee in 1973.

  June 6, 1970 (Saturday)

• Two masterpiece paintings, Paul Gauguin's "A Still Life of Apples and Grapes" and Pierre Bonnard's Les Deux Sauteuils, were stolen from the North London home of a British philanthropist Mathilda Marks-Kennedy, Sir Mark Kennedy, creating a mystery that would remain unsolved for the next 43 years. Sold for US$25 at a police auction in Turin in 1975 after being abandoned by the burglars in a railway station, the paintings would be found in 2014 in the home of an Italian auto worker who was unaware of their value. In 1970, the Gauguin was valued at £120,000 and the Bonnard at £35,000. By 2014, the worth of the Gauguin and the Bonnard works together would be valued at US$50,000,000. The good faith purchaser "known only as Nicolo", would be allowed to keep the Gauguin painting

  June 7, 1970 (Sunday)

• Rock music was performed for the first time at "The Met", New York's Metropolitan Opera House, when The Who performed their rock opera, Tommy.
• Voters in Switzerland rejected a proposed constitutional amendment to require non-citizens to leave the country. James Schwarzenbach, a member of the federal parliament who had gotten the proposal on the ballot, sought to stop what he called Überfremdung of Switzerland. The vote was 645,588 against and 557,714 in favor of the proposal and brought a turnout of 74% of the nation's men.
• Voters in the western part of West Germany's state of Baden-Württemberg, overwhelmingly rejected a constitutional amendment that would have made Baden a separate state from Württemberg.
• Earl Anthony, who would later be the six-time national champion of the Professional Bowlers Association, won the first of 43 PBA Tour tournaments in a 14-year career. Rookie Anthony's first win came at the Heidelberg Open in Seattle.
• Born:
• *Ronaldo da Costa, Brazilian long distance runner who held the world record for fastest marathon for 11 months; in Descoberto, Minas Gerais state
• *Dulmatin, Indonesian Muslim terrorist who planned the 2002 Bali bombings; as Djoko Pitono in Pemalang
• Died:
• *E. M. Forster, 91, English novelist known for A Passage to India
• *Manuel Gómez-Moreno, 100, Spanish archaeologist

  June 8, 1970 (Monday)

• Argentina's President Juan Carlos Ongania was overthrown in a military coup d'etat, after Ongania fired the commander-in-chief of the Argentine Army, Lieutenant General Alejandro Agustín Lanusse. As military units began seizing control of strategic points in Buenos Aires and the rest of the nation, Ongania barricaded himself inside the presidential offices at the Casa Rosada, protected by 1,200 members of his presidential guard. After 12 hours of negotiation, Ongania agreed to be driven, with police escort, to army headquarters where he submitted his resignation, then departed to the presidential residence at Quinta de Olivos. A three-man junta consisting of Lanusse, Admiral Pedro Gnavi and Air Force General Juan Carlos Rey, then advised the Argentine Supreme Court that they had assumed control of the executive branch and that they would name a president within ten days. On June 14, they designated General Roberto M. Levingston as the new President.
• Russian serial killer Boris Serebryakov, who had murdered nine victims over 14 months, was arrested in Kuybyshev, three days after he had killed a family of four. He would be executed by a single gunshot to the back of his head after a trial in 1971.
• Born:
• *Mike Modano, American NHL center and inductee into the Hockey Hall of Fame; in Livonia, Michigan
• *Gabby Giffords, U.S. Representative for Arizona from 2007 to 2012, known for being severely wounded in an assassination attempt in 2011; in Tucson, Arizona
• *Steve "Pearl" Renouf, celebrated Australian rugby league centre; in Murgon, Queensland
• Died: Abraham Maslow, 62, American psychologist known for formulating the theory of hierarchy of needs

  June 9, 1970 (Tuesday)

• The Supreme Court of the United States had nine members again after having operated with only eight for more than a year. Harry A. Blackmun, the third nominee for the vacancy, was sworn in as the new Associate Justice, 13 months after the resignation of Abe Fortas on May 15, 1969.
• Died: Rafael Ángel Calderón, 70, President of Costa Rica from 1940 to 1944

  June 10, 1970 (Wednesday)

• In Mozambique, at the time a southwest African colony of Portugal, the Portuguese Army launched Operation Gordian Knot, its counter-offensive against the nationalist guerrillas of FRELIMO. Using 35,000 troops, the seven-month battle in the Portuguese Colonial War was partially successful in forcing the rebels to retreat, but FRELIMO forces ultimately regrouped after the operation ended. In 1975, after a change of government, Portuguese forces would withdraw from their overseas colonies, and Mozambique would be granted independence.
• Born:
• *Katsuhiro Harada, Japanese video game producer and developer of the Tekken series; in Osaka
• *Gerður Kristný, Icelandic author of children's books; in Reykjavík
• *Kelli Williams, American television actress, in Los Angeles
• Died: Bartolomé Blanche, 91, Chilean military officer who served as President of Chile for 19 days in 1932