November 1973


The following events occurred in November 1973:

[November 1], 1973 (Thursday)

[November 2], 1973 (Friday)

  • The United Nations General Assembly voted, 93 to 7, to recognize the independence of Guinea-Bissau, the former colony of Portuguese Guinea, which had made a unilateral declaration in September.
  • The IMCO Conference for Marine Pollution, attended by 665 delegates from 79 countries, ended in London with the adoption of the MARPOL convention.
  • Moscow police foiled the hijacking of Aeroflot Flight 19 after four armed men took control of the Yak-40 shuttle jet as it was approaching the city of Bryansk on a flight from Moscow. The hijackers diverted the airplane back to Moscow's Vnukovo Airport and held the 24 passengers and three crew hostage, demanding to be flown to Sweden and to be paid 1.5 million dollars in U.S. currency. Under the direction of KGB Director Yuri Andropov and Internal Affairs Minister Nikolai Shchelokov, a four-member police team stormed the aircraft. Two hijackers were killed, but the passengers and crew were rescued.
  • Six of the 16 people aboard a Colombian airliner were killed in the crash of a La Urraca Airlines flight as it made an emergency landing at Villavicencio.

[November 3], 1973 (Saturday)

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  • A passenger on National Airlines Flight 27 was blown out of the window of an airplane at an altitude of over the U.S. state of New Mexico, after the number 3 engine on the Douglas DC-10-10, exploded and fragments penetrated the fuselage. The jet had been en route from Houston to Las Vegas when the accident happened at 4:40 in the afternoon, and made a safe emergency landing in Albuquerque, New Mexico. According to the subsequent NTSB investigation, the cockpit voice recorder showed that the engine explosion happened immediately after the first officer asked the captain "Wonder— wonder if you pull the N1 tach will that— autothrottle respond to N1?" and the captain replied, "Gee, I don't know." The first officer then said "You want to try it and see?" Thirty-four seconds later, the explosion happened. An extensive search was unable to locate the passenger, machinist George F. Gardner of Beaumont, Texas, who had been sitting by the window in seat 17F.
  • The crash of a Greyhound bus in Sacramento, California killed 13 people, including the driver, and injured the other 31 people on board after striking a bridge support at a speed of. The bus had been chartered by the "Variety Swingers", all residents of Richmond, California, and was returning from a day of gambling in Reno, Nevada.
  • Arnold Taylor of South Africa won the World Boxing Association bantamweight championship in Johannesburg by knocking out titleholder Romeo Anaya of Mexico in the 14th round.
  • Born:
  • *Ben Fogle, British adventurer and TV presenter; in London, the son of actress Julia Foster.
  • *Ana Milán, Spanish journalist and TV presenter; in Alicante

[November 4], 1973 (Sunday)

  • The first "no driving Sunday" went into effect in the Netherlands as part of the Western European nation's attempt to conserve fuel during the Arab oil embargo. The only exceptions were emergency vehicles, taxis, public buses and motor vehicles with foreign license plates.
  • The Gigantinho sports arena was opened in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
  • Died: Dr. Haim G. Ginott, 51, Israeli-American child psychologist, newspaper columnist and author, died after a long illness.

[November 5], 1973 (Monday)

[November 6], 1973 (Tuesday)

  • In Oakland, California, the assassination of school superintendent Marcus Foster was carried out by three members of a U.S. terrorist group, the Symbionese Liberation Army. Foster, who was shot multiple times, was the first African-American superintendent of schools for a major U.S. city. The white Deputy Superintendent, Robert W. Blackburn, was seriously wounded in the same attack. Two days later, the San Francisco Chronicle received a letter from the SLA, claiming responsibility for the shooting and declaring that Foster was "guilty of crimes against children and the lives of the people."
  • Pioneer 10, launched from Earth on March 2, 1972, began returning its first photographs of the planet Jupiter, starting from 16 million miles. It would make its closest approach to the solar system's largest planet on December 3.
  • The Israeli Defense Forces revealed that the death toll from the recent Yom Kippur War had been far higher than expected, with 1,854 dead and nearly one out of every 400 residents of the Middle Eastern nation killed or wounded. In contrast, Syria had one out of every 884 citizens as casualties, and Egypt had one of every 4,550.
  • U.S. financier Robert L. Vesco, who had fled to the Bahamas after being investigated for embezzlement in making a donation to President Nixon's re-election campaign, was arrested in Nassau on a U.S. federal extradition warrant.
  • The Liberian supertanker SS Golar Patricia exploded and sank in the Atlantic Ocean, but 44 of the 45 people on board were rescued by the Spanish liner MV Cabo San Vicente.
  • Died: George Biddle, 88, American mural painter

[November 7], 1973 (Wednesday)

[November 8], 1973 (Thursday)

  • The Second Cod War between the United Kingdom and Iceland was ended by agreement between the Prime Ministers of the two nations.
  • Millennium '73, a three-day festival hosted by the 15-year-old Guru Maharaj Ji and his Divine Right Mission, drew 20,000 of his devotees to the Astrodome in Houston. The Guru called the festival "the most significant event in human history" and promised to launch 1,000 years of world peace.
  • The British government made £146 million compensation available to three nationalized industries to cover losses resulting from its price restraint policies.
  • The animated musical Robin Hood was released by Walt Disney Productions, with the characters re-imagined as anthropomorphic animals.
  • Died: Faruk Nafiz Çamlıbel, 75, Turkish novelist and poet

[November 9], 1973 (Friday)

[November 10], 1973 (Saturday)

[November 11], 1973 (Sunday)

[November 12], 1973 (Monday)

[November 13], 1973 (Tuesday)

  • The U.S. and six other nations jointly decided to terminate an agreement to buy and sell gold only with each other, clearing the way for the U.S. to sell its dwindling, but still large stockpile, to private individuals. The seven nations had agreed on March 17, 1968, to halt sales of their gold stocks.
  • The government of the United Kingdom proclaimed a state of emergency in light of the selective strikes of British coal miners.
  • U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke of Massachusetts talked to President Nixon personally during a meeting along with 14 other Republican senators, and said he thought that Nixon should resign in light of the Watergate scandal. Brooke said later of Nixon, "He took it very graciously. He said he understood it was made without malice. But he said it would be the easy way."
  • Died:
  • *Cardini, 77, Welsh-born U.S. magician
  • *Elsa Schiaparelli, 83, Italian-born French fashion designer.
  • *Bruno Maderna, 53, Italian conductor and composer, died of lung cancer
  • *B. S. Johnson, 40, English novelist and TV producer, committed suicide

[November 14], 1973 (Wednesday)

[November 15], 1973 (Thursday)

  • The exchange of Israeli and Egyptian prisoners of war began the day after the announcement of an agreement between the two nations for repatriation of personnel captured during the Yom Kippur War. The International Red Cross flew a group of Egyptian POWs from Tel Aviv to Cairo on a DC-9, while an IRC DC-6 flew 26 wounded Israelis back home at the same time. The exchange was completed by November 22.
  • An apartment building fire in the U.S. city of Los Angeles killed 24 residents and injured 52 others after starting on a sofa in the building's lobby and then spreading quickly through open stairwells in the wood-frame structure. Although firefighters arrived at the Stratford Apartments within five minutes after the alarm sounded, many of the casualties died from jumping from their windows.
  • Six weeks before the speed limit in the United States would be dropped to, the U.S. state of Washington enacted a law lowering its speed limit to. The traffic fatality rate would drop by 11 percent for the rest of the year.

[November 16], 1973 (Friday)

[November 17], 1973 (Saturday)

[November 18], 1973 (Sunday)

  • At a meeting in Vienna, the oil ministers and administrators of the Arab states said they would postpone their plans for a 5 percent reduction in oil shipments to eight of the nine Common Market nations.
  • Died: Sir Gerald Nabarro, 60, controversial UK politician

[November 19], 1973 (Monday)

[November 20], 1973 (Tuesday)

[November 21], 1973 (Wednesday)

  • U.S. President Richard Nixon's attorney, J. Fred Buzhardt, revealed that an 18½-minute gap existed in one of the White House tape recordings related to the Watergate scandal.
  • In one of the stranger qualification games for soccer football's the FIFA World Cup, the Chilean national football team showed up, as scheduled, for the 1974 [FIFA World Cup qualification (UEFA–CONMEBOL play-off)|match in Santiago against the Soviet Union], which was boycotting because the game was being played in the Estadio Nacional, where political prisoners had been tortured and executed after the September 11 coup d'état. With 15,000 fans in the stands and the scoreboard activated, the Chilean team took the field and worked their way down to the empty goal in the next 30 seconds, and team captain Francisco Valdés kicked the ball into the net to make the victory official. FIFA referee Erich Linemayr then signaled a victory for Chile.
  • In Argentina, the right-wing terrorist group Argentine Anticommunist Alliance, which would go on to kill at least 1,122 people, committed its first known act, an unsuccessful attempt to murder Argentine Senator :es:Hipólito Solari Yrigoyen with a car bomb. Solari was injured, but survived the attack.

[November 22], 1973 (Thursday)

  • Under the threat of an oil embargo from the Arab oil producing nations, Japan's government agreed to drop its support for Israel and joined the United Nations in advocating for a separate nation for Palestinian people in Israel. The decision of Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, announced by government spokesman Susumu Nikaido, has been called "Perhaps the most important policy decision ever made on the Middle East in the twentieth century."
  • Saudi Arabia warned the United States that if the U.S. did not stop supporting Israel, the Saudis were prepared to reduce oil production by 80 percent, and added that if the U.S. attempted to use force, Saudi Arabia would destroy its oil wells.
  • Born:
  • *Marjolein Kriek, Dutch clinical geneticist, and the first woman to have her total DNA genome sequenced; in Leiden.
  • *Giorgi Targamadze, opposition leader of the Parliament of Georgia as president of the Christian-Democratic Movement ; in Tbilisi, Georgian SSR, Soviet Union
  • Died: John Dedman, 77, Australian politician

[November 23], 1973 (Friday)

[November 24], 1973 (Saturday)

[November 25], 1973 (Sunday)

[November 26], 1973 (Monday)

  • Representatives of the nations of Indonesia and Malaysia signed a memorandum of understanding agreeing to pay jointly for an independent survey and demarcation of their boundaries on the island of Borneo.
  • In testimony before a U.S. District Judge John J. Sirica, U.S. President Nixon's personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, took the blame for an 18-minute gap on a tape recording that would have been important evidence in the investigation of the Watergate scandal. The recording was of conversation between President Nixon and Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman on June 20, 1972, three days after the Watergate burglary. Mrs. Woods said that the erasure had been an accident.
  • Born: Peter Facinelli, American actor; in Queens, New York
  • Died: Charles E. Whittaker, 72, former U.S. Supreme Court justice, 1957-1962.

[November 27], 1973 (Tuesday)

[November 28], 1973 (Wednesday)

[November 29], 1973 (Thursday)

  • In Japan, 104 people were killed in the Taiyo department store fire in Kumamoto, in Kyūshū prefecture. Ironically, the store's sprinkler system wasn't working because it was "under repair for fire prevention week."
  • The world's highest flying bird was proven to be the Ruppell's griffon, a vulture indigenous to central Africa. One of the species happened to be flying at an altitude of more than seven miles when it was sucked into a jet engine flying over Côte d'Ivoire. The plane's altimeter was at when the encounter occurred, forcing an emergency landing.
  • Born: Ryan Giggs, Welsh footballer and coach, in Cardiff

[November 30], 1973 (Friday)

  • The United Nations General Assembly voted, 91 to 4 to approve the UN's Apartheid Convention, officially the "1973 United Nations International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid".
  • The government of Bangladesh issued a pardon for approximately 26,000 of the 37,000 people who had been in prison for collaboration with the enemy during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. The amnesty did not apply to collaborators who had been charged with crimes of violence.
  • Zaire's President Mobutu Sese Seko announced in a speech to the central African nation's parliament that his government would seize and redistribute all foreign-owned businesses. Smith, Hampton; Merrill, Tim; Sandra W., Meditz.