March 1970

March 1, 1970 (Sunday)

• There was no clear winner in Guatemala's presidential election, as none of the three candidates had the required majority of the vote. Colonel Carlos Arana Osorio won 43% of the vote while campaigning on a "law and order" ticket, while Mario Fuentes Pieruccini got 35% and Jorge Lucas Caballeros had 22%. Arana's National Liberation Movement party won 31 of the seats in the 55-member Congreso de la República, however, and would select Arana as President on March 21.
• Eight days after the bombing of Swissair Flight 330 killed 47 people, a security agent aboard Ethiopian Airlines Flight 715 discovered a suitcase bomb before the airliner could depart Rome's Fiumicino airport on a multi-stop flight to Lubumbashi in the Congo. The explosive had been designed to detonate in midair while the flight was enroute from Rome to Athens, and would have killed all 40 people aboard.
• Born: Miho Nakayama, Japanese singer and actress, in Saku, Nagano

  March 2, 1970 (Monday)

• Burlington Northern Railroad, the longest railway in the world by number of miles served, was created by the merger of four railroads in the northern United States The U.S. Supreme Court had upheld the merger on February 2, combining the Burlington Route, the Great Northern Railway, the Northern Pacific Railway, and the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway into one network of of track in 18 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. With combined assets of $2.8 billion USD, Burlington Northern was less than half as large as the Penn Central railroad's $6.5 billion properties.
• Rhodesia severed its last tie with the United Kingdom and declared itself a republic, with former British solicitor Clifford Dupont signing the proclamation dissolving the parliament and becoming the first President of Rhodesia. Dupont had been the administrator of Rhodesia since 1965, when Prime Minister Ian Smith, who continued as the head of government, had declared the African colony's independence from the United Kingdom. The republic's new constitution continued the policy of white minority rule. Rhodesia's 341,000 white citizens, representing seven percent of the population, maintained authority over the nation's 4,500,000 nonwhite residents.
• Born: Alexander Armstrong, English comedian and actor and half of the comedy duo Armstrong and Miller; in Rothbury, Northumberland
• Died: Daniel Frost Comstock, 76, American chemical engineer who developed the Technicolor process for motion pictures.

  March 3, 1970 (Tuesday)

• Norma McCorvey, a pregnant 22-year old resident of Texas, filed a federal lawsuit under the name "Jane Roe" with the assistance of Dallas lawyers Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, seeking the right to an abortion and commencing what would become the landmark United States Supreme Court case of Roe v. Wade.
• A mob of at least 150 white men and women attacked two school buses in the small town of Lamar, South Carolina as the vehicles were bringing African-American students to morning classes in compliance with a racial desegregation order. As the buses approached Lamar High School, they were struck by bricks and rocks, and some students were injured by broken glass. South Carolina Highway Patrol troopers, on alert for violence after incidents the day before, rescued the 32 students and escorted them to safety. The protesters then overturned the empty buses. Within two days, state police arrested 30 of the riot leaders, identified by photographs taken by the State Law Enforcement Division. The first man arrested was the owner of a cafe in nearby Lydia, who had created the anti-busing group "Darlington County Council of Citizens for Freedom of Choice". He would later serve a two year jail sentence for rioting.
• Born: Julie Bowen, American TV actress and winner of two Emmy Awards for her role as Claire Dunphy on Modern Family; in Baltimore

  March 4, 1970 (Wednesday)

• All 57 of the crew of France's Marine Nationale submarine Eurydice were killed after the vessel made a practice dive and never resurfaced. The Daphné-class submarine was in deep waters in the Mediterranean Sea off of Cape Camarat, after sailing from its base at Saint-Tropez. At 7:00 a.m. local time, it radioed that it was making a dive and less than an hour later, signs of a violent explosion were detected. An oil slick and debris from the Eurydice were found late in the afternoon by rescue ships.
• Born: Mohammed Shia' Al Sudani, Iraqi politician, Prime Minister of Iraq, in Baghdad.

  March 5, 1970 (Thursday)

• The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty went into effect after being ratified by 47 nations. Leaders of the three sponsoring nations — U.S. President Richard M. Nixon, Soviet Union Premier Alexei N. Kosygin, and United Kingdom Prime Minister Harold Wilson — signed instruments of ratification in their respective capitals, and leaders of five other nations executed similar documents. Treaty members agreed that they would not share nuclear weapons, nor acquire such weapons in the future. Under the terms of the agreement, signed on July 1, 1968, the pact would go into effect upon ratification by the three sponsors and by at least 40 other nations.
• The disaster film genre of movies was revived with the premiere of Airport in New York City before its U.S. and worldwide release. Based on the bestselling suspense novel by Arthur Hailey, Airport was made on a budget of USD $10.2 million and would gross almost ten times that amount worldwide, using the formula of a cast of well-known actors facing a disaster
• *John Frusciante, American rock guitarist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers; in Queens, New York City

  March 6, 1970 (Friday)

• Three members of the Weathermen, an American terrorist group, were killed in New York City when a pipe bomb they had constructed exploded prematurely. The group had settled in a four-story townhouse at 18 West 11th Street in Greenwich Village and was constructing explosives in the basement. Shortly before noon, dynamite in one of the bombs exploded and triggered secondary gas line blasts. Diana Oughton and Terry Robbins, who were working on a bomb, were killed instantly, along with Ted Gold, who had walked in to the home moments before the explosion. Cathlyn Platt Wilkerson, whose father owned the townhouse and was out of town, escaped along with another accomplice, Kathy Boudin. Another member of Weather Underground, Mark Rudd, would write later that the group had planned to place the bomb at a dance hall at Fort Dix, New Jersey, where U.S. servicemen and their dates would have attended a dance. Wilkerson would surrender to the police in 1980, and would spend 11 months in prison. Boudin would be arrested in 1981 after driving the getaway vehicle in an armored car robbery, remaining incarcerated until 2003.
• Süleyman Demirel of AP became Prime Minister of Turkey upon forming a new government of ministers.
• Died: William Hopper, 55, American film and TV actor known for portraying Paul Drake in the Perry Mason television series; following a stroke.

  March 7, 1970 (Saturday)

• A solar eclipse passed along the Atlantic coast region. Totality was visible in an wide band across southern Mexico, portions of the Atlantic Coast of the United States, and Nova Scotia and Newfoundland in Canada A reporter at the time noted that "There won't be another total eclipse of comparable duration in or near the United States until 2024."
• Born: Rachel Weisz, English-born film and television actress, winner of best supporting actress Oscar for The Constant Gardner and BAFTA award for The Favourite; in Westminster
• Died: Wally Vernon, 65, American comedian and character actor in film, was fatally injured by a hit-and-run driver while he and his wife were crossing a street in Van Nuys, California

  March 8, 1970 (Sunday)

• A team of assassins in Nicosia attempted to assassinate Makarios III, the President of Cyprus, riddling the presidential helicopter with machine gun fire as it was lifting off from the rooftop of his residence, Nicosia Palace. Palace guards fired at the assassins, Greek Cypriot members of the EOKA group advocating the island's annexation by Greece, who had taken a position on the roof of a nearby building. President Makarios escaped injury; the helicopter pilot was critically wounded by three bullets, but managed to safely land the copter.
• Born: Jason Elam, American-born pro football kicker; in Fort Walton Beach, Florida
• Died: Waldo Peirce, 85, American impressionist painter nicknamed "The American Renoir"

  March 9, 1970 (Monday)

• The United States Department of Defense, on orders from President Nixon, reversed a policy of U.S. secrecy regarding American military involvement in Laos. The move came after a March 6 statement from Nixon, that no Americans stationed in Laos had been killed in combat; in fact, U.S. Army Captain Joseph K. Bush, Jr., based in Laos, had died 13 months earlier when his helicopter was shot down over the Plain of Jars. Previously, the DOD had listed U.S. casualties in Laos as being part of the war in Vietnam.
• Died: Jackie Opel, 32, Barbados-born musician who created the Barbadian music style spouge, was killed in a car accident in Bridgetown

  March 10, 1970 (Tuesday)

• France made its first successful launch of its new tall, three-stage Diamant-B rocket, and the first satellite launch from its new Guiana Space Centre. Prior to building the rocket base in Kourou in the South American colony of French Guiana, the French space program had launched four satellites from Hammaguir in the Republic of Algeria The payload was two West German satellites, Wika and Mika, sent into orbit to study the Van Allen radiation belt; vibrations from the first rocket stage, however, disabled the Mika communication system.
• The first Arctic Winter Games were inaugurated as a competition for hundreds of athletes from Canada's Northwest Territories and the Yukon territory, as well as the United States state of Alaska, with sponsorship by the state and territorial governments of the participant areas. Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau appeared at Yellowknife, the capital of the N.W.T., to open the five-day event. The first day included ice hockey, basketball, and cross-country skiing while the Saturday closer was for "Eskimo Games Day" in demonstrations of the games of ayagaq, ipirautaqturniq, the blanket toss and harpoon throwing
• Two residents of East Germany made an unsuccessful attempt to flee to West Germany by hijacking a domestic Interflug airline flight. The couple, later identified as Christel and Eckhard Wehage, drew guns after the Antonov 24 turboprop plane had departed East Berlin toward Leipzig. The East German news agency ADN reported that the pilots, instead, landed back the plane back in East Berlin and that the Wehages committed suicide before they could be arrested.
• Born: Michel van der Aa, Netherlands classical music composer; in Oss