November 1972

[November 1], 1972 (Wednesday)

• The groundbreaking, made-for-television film That Certain Summer appeared as the ABC Wednesday Night Movie. Actors Hal Holbrook and Martin Sheen addressed a controversial topic, portraying an adult gay couple in the Golden Globe winning movie.
• Born: Toni Collette, Australian actress, in Blacktown, NSW
• Died: Ezra Pound, 87, American poet, in Venice

  [November 2], 1972 (Thursday)

• Pierre Trudeau announced that he would not step down as Prime Minister of Canada despite what appeared to be a 109–109 tie between his Liberal Party and Robert Stanfield's Progressive Conservatives. David Lewis of the New Democrats announced that the 30 NDP members would form a coalition with the Liberals to give Trudeau a majority in Canada's House of Commons.
• Five members of the American Indian Movement took over the office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington and held it for seven days.
• Died: Grigoriy Plaskov, 73, Soviet Jewish artillery Lieutenant General; in Moscow

  [November 3], 1972 (Friday)

• A group of 132 sailors on board the, mostly African-American, began what has been described as "the first mass mutiny in the history of the U.S. Navy". The men refused to leave the mess deck in protest over announcements, the day before, that 250 black sailors would be discharged, six of them less than honorably, and demanded to meet with ship Captain J.D. Ward. The next day, the men disobeyed a direct order to report to the flight deck, and on November 9, the men refused orders to return to the ship while in San Diego. None of the sailors were ever arrested. Some were discharged early, and most were reassigned to shore duty.

  [November 4], 1972 (Saturday)

• The CIA spy ship Glomar Explorer was launched on its first voyage. Although the 170-member crew was ostensibly conducting mining exploration on the ocean floor, the ship's true mission was to attempt recovery of the contents of a Soviet submarine that had sunk on April 11, 1968.
• Gusty Spence, leader of the Ulster Volunteer Force, was recaptured by British authorities four months after his escape on furlough from a prison in Northern Ireland. Between his rearrest and his release in 1984, Spence renounced violence and worked towards reconciling Catholics and Protestants in Ireland.
• Born: Luís Figo, Portuguese footballer with 127 appearances for Portugal's national team, in Almada
• Died: Yuri Galanskov, 33, Soviet dissident poet, in a labor camp

  [November 5], 1972 (Sunday)

• Organic farming entered a new era when the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements was founded in Versailles, France, by five organizations from France, Great Britain, Sweden, South Africa and the United States.
• Died: Reginald Owen, 85, British actor

  [November 6], 1972 (Monday)

• A fire broke out in the dining car of an express train in Japan while it was traveling through an eight-mile-long tunnel near Fukui. The smoke killed 29 people and injured another 678.
• The first intercollegiate game of ultimate frisbee was played between Rutgers University and Princeton University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on the site of the first intercollegiate football game which had matched Princeton and Rutgers. Rutgers won, 29–27.
• The comic strip Frank and Ernest, by Bob Thaves, made its debut. In the first strip, Frank's punchline was "Maybe the battery's getting weak, Ernie", and the sight gag was a curved flashlight beam.
• Born:
• *Thandiwe Newton, British actress, in London
• *Rebecca Romijn, American model and actress, in Berkeley, California
• Died: Edward V. Long, 64, U.S. Senator for Missouri, 64. Long's personal secretary would later tell prosecutors in Clarksville, Missouri, that Long had told her that he believed that he had been poisoned by candy which had been sent to him in the mail, although no box of candy was found and no charges were ever filed arising from Long's death. An autopsy would determine later that no traces of poison had been found, and concluded Long had died of natural causes.

  [November 7], 1972 (Tuesday)

• In the 1972 United States presidential election, Richard M. Nixon won re-election by a landslide over Democrat George S. McGovern, winning the electoral votes of all states except for Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. Nixon had 47,168,710 votes to McGovern's 29,173,222 and 520 of the 537 possible electoral votes.
• Ten people were killed in the collapse of the Sidney Lanier Bridge in the U.S. state of Georgia after the U.S. cargo ship African Neptune collided with the structure, causing vehicles and their occupants to fall into the Brunswick River. Another 11 people were rescued survived
• Born: Danny Grewcock, English national rugby union team lock; in Coventry, Warwickshire

  [November 8], 1972 (Wednesday)

• HBO, the first "pay cable" television channel, was launched in the United States at 7:30 pm ET. The first evening of programming was a National Hockey League game between the New York Rangers and the Vancouver Canucks from Madison Square Garden, followed by the film Sometimes a Great Notion, and was broadcast to 365 subscribers in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Each household paid an additional $6.00 per month to Service Electric Cable TV for the service.
• On the day after his re-election as President of the United States, Richard Nixon announced that he had asked for the resignations of his cabinet and everyone he had appointed to office, with plans for "restructuring and reorganizing" the entire Executive Branch.

  [November 9], 1972 (Thursday)

• Canada's first geostationary communications satellite, Anik-1 was launched from Florida. The project was a joint venture by Telesat Canada and the Hughes Aircraft Company.
• In the Mozambican War of Independence, FRELIMO launched a major offensive against the Portuguese army.
• Born:
• *Eric Dane, American actor, in San Francisco
• *Corin Tucker, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (Sleater-Kinney, in Eugene, Oregon

  [November 10], 1972 (Friday)

• Southern Airways Flight 49 from Birmingham, Alabama, to Montgomery was seized by three hijackers at local time, and flown from one airport to the next, going to Jackson, Mississippi, for refueling, then to Detroit, where the McDonnell Douglas DC-9 circled while the three men negotiated their demands, including a $10,000,000 ransom. At one point the hijackers threatened to crash the airplane into the nuclear installation at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After two days, the DC-9 landed in Havana, Cuba, where the hijackers were jailed by Fidel Castro.
• Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, assembled the highest-ranking admirals of the United States Navy in Washington, and told them, "The Navy has made unacceptable progress in the equal opportunity area. The reason for this failure was not the programs, but the fact that they were not being used". Beginning on November 14, the U.S. Navy accelerated programs to combat racism within the service. President Richard Nixon was unhappy with Zumwalt's handling of the recent African American revolt in the Navy. Presidential Advisor Bob Haldeman wrote in his daily diary that day "The President considered Zumwalt and his Navy officers had failed to act on the blacks that refused to sail on the Constellation. The President has told Henry Kissinger to have Melvin Laird order all the men court-martialed and to be given dishonorable discharges. However instead, Zumwalt gave them active shore stations with Coca-Colas and ice cream and now he wanted John Ehrlichman to let Zumwalt know that the President was terribly displeased."
• Born: Shawn Green, American MLB player, in Des Plaines, Illinois

  [November 11], 1972 (Saturday)

• The hijacking of Southern Airways Flight 49 continued as the DC-9 landed in Cleveland for refueling, then flew to Toronto, where the three skyjackers refused $500,000 cash. Taking off again, the airplane circled Knoxville, where the men threatened to crash it into the nuclear plant at Oak Ridge, before landing in Lexington, Kentucky, then returning to Knoxville and Chattanooga, where ransom was collected and the men took the airplane to Cuba. The jet then made landings in Havana, Key West and McCoy Air Force Base near Orlando, Florida. FBI snipers shot out four of the airplane's tires in an unsuccessful attempt to hinder takeoff. The DC-9 then flew back toward Havana.
• Born: Adam Beach, Canadian First Nations actor, in Ashern, Manitoba
• Died:
• *Berry Oakley, 24, bass guitarist for The Allman Brothers Band. Oakley was killed in a motorcycle accident in Macon, Georgia, and only three blocks away from the scene of the October 29, 1971, accident that had killed band co-founder Duane Allman.
• *Barbara Daly Baekeland, wealthy socialite, was stabbed to death by her 25-year-old son, Antony, in London. The killing, with allegations of incest, was the subject of the 2007 film Savage Grace.

  [November 12], 1972 (Sunday)

• The hijacking of Southern Airways Flight 49 ended after 29 hours as the DC-9 made an emergency landing in Havana, after several of its tires had been shot out on takeoff by FBI agents hours before. One passenger noted later that "Everyone believed they would be dead in an hour" after the airplane took off on the damaged tires. The three hijackers – Henry Jackson, Lewis Moore and Melvin Cale – were arrested by Cuban authorities. Another Southern Airways jet flew the 27 passengers and four crew back to the United States.
• Born: Vasilios Tsiartas, Greek footballer with 70 caps for the Greece National Team; in Alexandreia
• Died: Rudolf Friml, 92, Czech composer of operettas and musicals