November 1971

[November 1], 1971 (Monday)

• The planned launch of the World Hockey Association for the 1972-1973 professional hockey season, as a competitor to the National Hockey League, was announced in New York City by Dennis Murphy and Gary Davidson, who had created the American Basketball Association as a rival to the NBA in 1967. The initial lineup of 10 franchises was announced as being in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, St. Paul and Dayton in the U.S.; and Winnipeg, Edmonton and Calgary in Canada.
• In the U.S., the Eisenhower dollar was made available to the general public for the first time by the United States Mint.
• Reverend Gonville ffrench-Beytagh, the Anglican Church's Dean of Johannesburg, was sentenced to five years imprisonment under South Africa's Terrorism Act for speaking out against the apartheid policies of South Africa's white-minority government. Free on bail while pursuing his appeal, ffrench-Beytagh, a coloured member of the Anglican clergy, was allowed to leave South Africa in April after his conviction was upheld.
• The Toronto Sun daily newspaper began publication in Canada, two days after the final issue of the Toronto Telegram.
• The Body Politic, Canada's first significant gay magazine, published its first issue.
• Born: Dennis King, Canadian politician, Premier of Prince Edward Island since 2019; in Georgetown, Prince Edward Island
• Died:
• *Mikhail Romm, 70, Russian film director;
• *A. Willis Robertson, 84, U.S. Senator for Virginia from 1946 to 1966, U.S. Representative 1933 to 1946, father of Pat Robertson
• *British-Burmese commercial diver Htun Minn, 36, died of an air embolism after making an uncontrolled ascent to the surface while conducting a surface-orientated hard-hat dive in the North Sea from the drill ship Glomar III. Minn's family would try for many years to prove negligence.

  [November 2], 1971 (Tuesday)

• Professor Gerhard Herzberg of Canada was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research into the structure of the molecule, and Professor Dennis Gabor, a Hungarian-born British scientist, won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention of holography.
• The People's Republic of China, recently approved as the representative of the Chinese people in the United Nations, named its nine-member delegation to the UN, headed by its chief delegate, Qiao Guanhua.
• Off-year elections were held for governors and state legislators in the United States, and included the election for Governor of Mississippi, the first in that state in which an African-American challenged a white nominee. Bill Waller, the Democratic nominee, was a prosecutor who had unsuccessfully sought to convict the accused murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers, and his independent challenger, James Charles Evers, was the brother of Medgar and the incumbent mayor of the primarily-black municipality of Fayette, Mississippi. There was no Republican nominee. Waller won overwhelmingly with over 75% of the vote in a race that had an unprecedented large turnout of black voters and white voters.

  [November 3], 1971 (Wednesday)

• The first UNIX Programmer's Manual was published, originally to quickly bring in more users for the testing of the world's first portable programming system for the so-called Uniplexed Information and Computing Service as an improvement on multics.
• Born: Unai Emery, Spanish footballer and coach; in Hondarribia

  [November 4], 1971 (Thursday)

• Emma Groves, Irish mother of eleven, was hit in the face by a rubber bullet and blinded; she spent the rest of her life campaigning against the use of rubber bullets.
• Born: Lieutenant General Vladimer Chachibaia, Georgian military leader and former Chief of Georgian Defense Forces; in Tbilisi, Georgian SSR, USSR
• Died:
• *Guillermo León Valencia, 62, former President of Colombia, of a heart attack, during a visit to New York City
• *Ba Than, 76, Burmese surgeon, pathologist and hospital founder
• *Ann Pennington, 77, American stage and film actress and dancer, prominent in the 1920s

  [November 5], 1971 (Friday)

• The first, and only, launch of the Europa-2 rocket by the European Launcher Development Organisation failed when the missile exploded two minutes and 41 seconds after liftoff from the ELDO launch site at Kourou in French Guiana. Electrical interference in the inertial guidance system for the rocket's third stage when it reached an altitude of and the Europa-2 tilted, putting a strain on the second stage that ended in the explosion.
• The 24th Amendment to the Indian Constitution went into effect, giving the Indian Parliament the power to suspend the listed "Fundamental Rights" as deemed necessary.
• Born:
• *Jonny Greenwood, English musician and composer, in Oxford
• *Corin Nemec, American TV actor known for Parker Lewis Can't Lose and Stargate SG-1; in Little Rock, Arkansas

  [November 6], 1971 (Saturday)

• The U.S. tested a thermonuclear warhead in Alaska at Amchitka Island, after federal courts denied a petition by environmentalists to prevent the test, code-named Project Cannikin. At around five megatons, it was the largest ever U.S. underground detonation. The test went ahead, as scheduled, as the U.S. Supreme Court voted, 4 to 3, not to allow an injunction for its postponement.
• Died: Spessard Holland, 79, former four-term U.S. Senator and wartime Governor of Florida from 1941-1945 of an apparent heart attack at his Bartow, Florida home. Holland sponsored the 24th amendment to the U.S. Constitution banning poll taxes in elections for federal office.

  [November 7], 1971 (Sunday)

• Elections were held in Belgium for the 212 seats in the Chambre des représentants or Kamer van Volksvertegenwoordigers and the 106 seats of the Belgian Senate. The Flemish Christelijke Volkspartij, led by Prime Minister Gaston Eyskens, won a plurality of seats and continued its coalition government with the Christian Social Party and the Belgian Socialist Party, both regional parties.
• Born: Robin Finck, American lead guitarist of Nine Inch Nails, in Park Ridge, New Jersey

  [November 8], 1971 (Monday)

• The fourth best selling record album of all time the untitled fourth studio album of Led Zeppelin, was released, making its debut in the United States four days before its November 12 release in the United Kingdom, and contained the band's most popular song, "Stairway to Heaven".
• Elections were held for the Philippine Senate, and although the Nacionalista Party of President Ferdinand Marcos retained control of 16 of the 24 seats, the Liberal Party of Gerardo Roxas gained three to increase its share to eight seats. Jovito Salonga of the Liberals, who had been critically injured in the bombing of a Liberal Party rally on August 21, won 5.6 million votes, more than any other candidate.
• Berkeley, California, became the first "sanctuary city" in the United States, with the passage of an ordinance that prohibited its city employees, including its police, from enforcing federal arrest warrants for non-violent offenses. The "sanctuary city" concept was later adopted in other politically liberal communities in the U.S.
• The U.S. House of Representatives considered, but failed to pass, a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that would have permitted voluntary prayer in public schools. The response to the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Abington School District v. Schempp, which had barred state-sanctioned Bible reading and prayer in non-private schools, the proposed 27th Amendment received 240 votes in favor and 162 against, but constitutional amendments required a two-thirds majority to pass.
• Died: Robert "Bobbie" Brown, Jr., 68, U.S. Medal of Honor recipient for his bravery in the 1944 Battle of Crucifix Hill in Aachen during World War II, committed suicide with a single gunshot wound to the chest. Brown had been suffering from PTSD and constant pain from his war injuries for more than 27 years.

  [November 9], 1971 (Tuesday)

• All 52 people on board a Royal Air Force Hercules C-130K air transport— the six-member British crew and 46 Italian Air Force paratroopers— were killed when their plane crashed during a NATO training mission.
• In Westfield, New Jersey, accountant John List murdered his mother, his wife and his three children. He would remain a fugitive for almost 18 years, working under a variety of aliases, before being captured in 1989 after the case was featured in a nationwide broadcast of the relatively new FOX Network show America's Most Wanted. List would remain in prison until his death in 2008 at the age of 82.
• The Bangladesh Navy was inaugurated with six patrol vessels.
• Born: Dimitris Kontopoulos, Greek songwriter, in Athens
• Died: Friedrich Günther, Prince of Schwarzburg, 70; the last member of the House of Schwarzburg

  [November 10], 1971 (Wednesday)

• All 69 people on board were killed in the crash of a Vickers Viscount turboprop airplane operated by Merpati Nusantara Airlines in Indonesia. Carrying 62 passengers and seven crew, the airliner had taken off from Jakarta and was approaching its destination at Padang when it crashed into the sea.
• In Cambodia, Khmer Rouge forces attacked the Phnom Penh international airport, killing 44 people, mostly civilians who were members of families traveling with soldiers, wounding 30 others and damaging nine aircraft.
• Cuba's Premier, Fidel Castro, arrived to the only other Latin American nation where he was welcomed by the government, arriving in Santiago as the guest of Chile's Marxist President, Salvador Allende. The relationship between Cuba and Chile fueled the belief by U.S. President Nixon that, if either regime continued, "you will have in Latin America a red sandwich. And eventually, it will be all red."
• The U.S. Senate voted, 84 to 6, to ratify the Okinawa Reversion Agreement, returning the island of Okinawa, and other Japanese territory captured in 1945 during World War II, to Japanese control. The treaty, signed on June 17, provided that the United States would be able to maintain its military bases on Okinawa, but would not be able to launch military operations from the bases without consultation and approval by the Japanese government.
• Peru's military government, headed by General Juan Velasco Alvarado, issued the "General Telecommunications Law" by decree, requiring that the Republic of Peru be the owner of at least 51 percent of the shares of the South American nation's 19 television stations, and that the government have 25 percent ownership of its 222 radio stations.
• Born:
• *Mario Abdo Benítez, Paraguayan politician, President 2018–, in Asunción.
• *Niki Karimi, Iranian actress and director, in Tehran.