March 1971

March 1, 1971 (Monday)

• Future U.S. President George H. W. Bush, described by The New York Times as "a 46-year old Republican and former Congressman from Texas without previous diplomatic experience", took office as the new United States Ambassador to the United Nations.
• A ten-day period of voting began in India for the 518 seats of the directly elected house of parliament, the Lok Sabha, for the fifth time since India's independence. On the first day, voting took place in nine of India's 18 states and three of its 8 union territories. In all, 275 million people were eligible to vote.
• A bomb exploded in a men's room at the United States Capitol. Nobody was injured in the blast, which took place at 1:52 in the morning and was preceded by a bomb warning phoned in a half hour earlier to the Capitol switchboard. Weather Underground Organization later claimed responsibility.
• Pakistani President Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan indefinitely postponed the pending National Assembly session, precipitating massive civil disobedience in East Pakistan.
• The government of Poland lowered food prices to their 1970 levels after rioting and strikes in December, January and February.
• In Italy, a government crisis began as the PRI left the coalition government of Prime Minister Emilio Colombo, a Christian Democrat, leading to the second largest party in the coalition, the Socialists, threatening to go against him in a confidence unless Colombo formed a coalition with the Italian Communists Party.
• Singapore banned all tobacco advertising in newspapers and magazines, two months after the December 31 ban on TV and radio commercials.
• Bass player John Deacon became an official member of Queen and the band was complete, creating the classic lineup of the legendary British rock band with Freddie Mercury on piano, Brian May on guitar, and Roger Taylor on drums.
• British commercial diver Michael Brushneen drowned after experiencing a decompression problem while conducting a dive in the North Sea from the semi-submersible drill rig Ocean Viking. Brushneen suffered a pulmonary barotrauma resulting in pneumothorax. Another British diver, Michael Lally, had died exactly one month earlier during a dive from the same rig.
• Born:
• *Ma Dong-seok, South Korean film actor, billed in the U.S. as Don Lee
• *Allen Johnson, American track athlete and 1996 Olympic gold medalist in the 110 meter hurdles; gold medalist in four world championships in 1995, 1997, 2001 and 2003; in Washington, D.C.
• Died:
• *Harald Damsleth, 64, Norwegian cartoonist and illustrator
• *Bernardo Mattarella, 65, Italian government minister and co-founder of the revived Democrazia Cristiana after World War II; father of the current President of Italy Sergio Mattarella and of the martyred Sicilian Region President Piersanti Mattarella

  March 2, 1971 (Tuesday)

• Norway's Prime Minister Per Borten and his cabinet of ministers resigned after Borten admitted that he had leaked a confidential report from Norway's embassy in Belgium concerning Norway's negotiations for entry into the European Economic Community, the Common Market.
• The Tupamaros guerrillas in Uruguay released Dr. Claude Fly, a U.S. agricultural adviser who had been kidnapped on August 7. After Fly suffered a heart attack in captivity, the Tupamaros drove him to The British Hospital in Montevideo in a station wagon, carried him out on a stretcher, and departed before police realized what had happened.
• A flag of Bangladesh was hoisted for the first time as a group of students at Dhaka University, led by future cabinet minister A. S. M. Abdur Rab raised a banner in East Pakistan, similar to what the official flag would later be. The flag was unveiled in places across East Pakistan on "Resistance Day", March 23, a campaign of civil disobedience against the martial law imposed by Pakistan's President Yahya Khan, along with announcements at rallies that the flag was for what was reported in the Western press for the first time as "Bangla Desh", the Bengali nation.
• Born:
• *Dave Gorman, English comedian, in Stafford
• *Stefano Accorsi, Italian actor, in Bologna.
• *Manami Toyota, Japanese female professional wrestling champion; in Masuda, Shimane
• *Karel Rada, Czech Republic soccer football defender; in Karlovy Vary, Czechoslovakia
• Died:
• *Charles W. Engelhard, Jr., 54, American multimillionaire businessman, philanthropist and owner of Nijinsky, one of the few winners of the Triple Crown of English thoroughbred racing, winning the 2,000 Guineas Stakes, the Epsom Derby and the St Leger Stakes in 1970.
• *Assault, 28, American thoroughbred racehorse and one of the few winners of the Triple Crown of U.S. thoroughbred racing, winning the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes in 1946.

  March 3, 1971 (Wednesday)

• The People's Republic of China launched a satellite into Earth orbit for the second time, sending ShiJian 1 up from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Shuangchengtze in China's Gansu province. The launch took place at 7:15 pm local time. China's Xinhua News Agency announced on March 16 that the launch was successful and that the "man-made scientific experiment" weighed.
• A final effort to prevent the breakup of Pakistan, which was divided among the primarily Urdu-speaking West Pakistan and the mostly Bengali-speaking East Pakistan, was made in the East Pakistani capital at Dhaka, where the new parliament had been scheduled to meet. With Pakistan's President Yahya Khan moderating, Pakistan Peoples Party leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Awami League leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman reached a tentative agreement for Bhutto to be president and Mujibar Rahman to be prime minister. The compromise was scuttled, however, when Yahya Khan voided the election results that had given the Awami League majority control of the National Assembly.
• Born: Willie Martinez, Puerto Rican jockey, in Santurce, San Juan

  March 4, 1971 (Thursday)

• A Lockheed D-21B military reconnaissance drone aircraft made an abortive attempt to spy on the Lop Nor nuclear test site in the People's Republic of China. The first two unmanned D-21B missions failed in spying on Lop Nor; the first failed to turn around and crashed with its cargo in the USSR; the second, on December 16, 1970, turned around but the parachute on its container of photographs failed and the cargo crashed into the sea. On the March 4 attempt, photographs were taken and the container was released, but a midair recovery attempt failed and a ship recovery struck the package and caused it to sink.
• The southern part of Quebec, and especially Montreal, averaged 17 inches of snow from the night before and until 5:00 in the evening, in what became known as La tempête du siècle.
• Canada's Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who had remained a bachelor until the age of 51, married 22-year old Margaret Sinclair in North Vancouver, British Columbia, concealing the event from the press by announcing that he had departed Ottawa on a skiing vacation. The ceremony was conducted by Gordon Gibson, a special assistant in Trudeau's office. The Trudeaus' first child, future Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, would be born slightly more than nine months later, on December 25.
• American mathematician Bryant Tuckerman discovered the 24th Mersenne prime number, by proving that
• Died: Jacinto Gutierrez, University of Puerto Rico Río Piedras campus ROTC cadet, and Puerto Rican police officers Juan Birino Mercado and Miguel Rosario Rondón, all killed at the Reserve Officers Training Corps building during a riot by groups opposing the program's presence on the campus

  March 5, 1971 (Friday)

• Led Zeppelin performed "Stairway to Heaven" live for the first time, at Belfast's Ulster Hall. Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones would recall later that the first listeners "were all bored to tears waiting to hear something they knew"
• Born: Yuri Lowenthal, American voice actor, producer, and screenwriter, in Alliance, Ohio
• Died:
• *Allan Nevins, 80, American historian and Pulitzer Prize winner who pioneered the oral history movement of recording memories of ordinary citizens for preservation for future generations.
• *Punch Broadbent, 78, Canadian ice hockey power forward for the National Hockey League and its predecessor, the National Hockey Association, and an inductee into the Hockey Hall of Fame

  March 6, 1971 (Saturday)

• Tempo, the Indonesian weekly news magazine, published its first issue. On June 21, 1994, in a crackdown on freedom of the press in Indonesia, Tempo would be banned, but would be revived after the fall of the government of President Suharto in 1998.
• Pakistan's President Yahya Khan announced in a speech that despite the cancellation of the scheduled March 3 opening of Pakistan's newly elected National Assembly in Dhaka, the first session to draft a new constitution would be held in the East Pakistan capital on March 25 in preparation of the return to civil rule.
• A fire at Burghölzli, the psychiatric research hospital for the University of Zurich in Switzerland, killed 28 men who were patients.
• Italy sustained the coldest recorded temperatures in its history, with a low of measured in Plateau Rosa and a snowstorm shutting down Rome and surrounding cities.
• In Rome, one of the bloodier title fights in modern boxing history took place as both boxers had cuts above their eyes. Italy's Bruno Arcari retained the World Boxing Council junior welterweight world championship in a rematch against Brazil's João Henrique on points given by the sole judge, Teddy Waltham of England. Neither boxer was knocked down during the 15-round bout. The 9th round ended with both fighters bleeding from open cuts over their eyebrows, Arcari having blood dripping into both eyes and Henrique a cut over his right eye. Waltham deemed Arcari to be ahead, 74 points to 68, at the fight's end and declared him the victor. Because of Rome's blizzard, only 9,000 people attended at the Palazzetto dello Sport.