November 1974

[November 1], 1974 (Friday)

• Alberto Villar, the director of the Policía Federal Argentina secret police and a member of the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance terrorist group, was assassinated by the Montoneros terrorist group after a team of commandos, led by diver Maximo Nicoletti, placed a remote controlled bomb underneath Villar's cabin cruiser yacht and detonated it. Chief Villar died along with his wife in the blast, which took place as the boat was sailing near Tigre, Buenos Aires.
• The white minority government of South Africa granted limited self-government to QwaQwa, a portion of land bordering the Kingdom of Lesotho, as "homeland" for 180,000 members of the Sotho people. The homeland, which would exist until 1994, was governed during its 20-year existence by Chief Minister Tsiame Kenneth Mopeli and its capital was Witsieshoek.
• Born: Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud. Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister since 2019 and prince in the House of Sajd; as the son of Prince Farhan bin Abdullah Al Saud in Frankfurt, West Germany
• Died:
• *Baroness Moura Budberg, 82, Russian adventuress and suspected double agent for both the Soviet Union's OGPU secret police and the United Kingdom's MI6 intelligence agency
• *Ernest Muir, 94, Scottish medical missionary known for work with leprosy
• *Poco Pine, 20, American Quarter Horse and winner of 50 AQHA horse showing competitions during his career and sire of 37 other horse show champions.
• *Bullet Joe Bush, 81, American Major League Baseball pitcher who played for seven major league teams in a 17-year career

  [November 2], 1974 (Saturday)

• Chilean-born British stockbroker William Beausire, who had dual citizenship in both the UK and Chile, was kidnapped by the Argentina Federal Police while he was at the Ezeiza International Airport at Buenos Aires, where he was scheduled to board a flight to Paris. Beausire was turned over to the Chilean secret police, the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional, where he was tortured. He was last seen in public on July 2, 1975, and became one of the thousands of "desaparecidos" who disappeared during the Pinochet regime in Chile.
• In an exhibition at Korakuen Stadium in Japan, U.S. and world career home run leader Hank Aaron and Japan's career home run leader Sadaharu Oh competed against each other in a "home run derby". Aaron narrowly defeated Oh, 10 runs to 9.
• The historic Jagiełło Oak tree in Poland, standing tall and in circumference, was blown down in a storm.
• Born:
• *Nelly, American rapper; in Austin, Texas
• *Aleksey Shevchenkov, Russian stage and film actor known for Tourist and The Red Ghost; in Chernyakhovsk, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
• Died: Nelson "Jack" Edwards, 57, the first African-American vice president of the United Auto Workers, was shot and killed while trying to break up an argument at a West Side Detroit bar.

  [November 3], 1974 (Sunday)

• An early-morning fire at the Daewang Corner building in the Dongdaemun District of Seoul killed 88 people and injured 35. Firefighters reported that 65 of the victims had been inside the Time Go-Go Club on the building's sixth floor; 13 others had been trapped in their hotel rooms on the seventh floor, and six of them had jumped to their deaths. According to witnesses who were able to escape immediately, employees of the club closed the only exit door to prevent other customers from leaving without paying.
• The popular German TV detective series Derrick, starring Horst Tappert as Detective Chief Inspector Stephan Derrick and Fritz Wepper as his assistant, Detective Sergeant Harry Klein, premiered on West Germany's ZDF network for the first of 281 episodes over 25 seasons.
• A yes or no election was held in the North African nation of Tunisia for official approval of the re-election of President Habib Bourguiba and the approval of the list of candidates for the 112-member Majlis, as selected by the nation's sole legal political party, the Parti socialiste destourien. The government reported that almost 97% of registered voters turned out for the election and none of them voted against Borguiba or the PSD candidates.
• The U.S. Navy nuclear ballistic missile submarine collided with an unidentified Soviet Navy Victor-class nuclear-powered attack submarine, during a dive just after departing from the Fleet Ballistic Missile Refit Site One on Scotland's Holy Loch. No confrontation took place, and no casualties were sustained on the U.S. sub, which was under inspection and repair for a week afterward. Any damage to the Soviet submarine was not revealed by the Soviets.
• Died:
• *Frances Bemis, 76, American public relations specialist and fashion director, was murdered in a vacant lot in St. Augustine, Florida, near the location of the January 23 murder of Athalia Ponsell Lindsley. As of 2007, both Lindsley's and Bemis's murders remained unsolved.
• *Ahindra Choudhury, 78, Indian stage actor who had a 53-year career

  [November 4], 1974 (Monday)

• The first patent application for a process for recombinant DNA was filed for the invention of Stanley N. Cohen of Stanford University and Herbert W. Boyer of the University of California, San Francisco. U.S. Patent No. 4,237,224 would be granted on December 2, 1980.
• The first solar-powered airplane, Sunrise I, made its initial flight after being launched in the U.S. by brothers Robert J. Boucher and Roland Boucher, founders of the AstroFlight company, at a dry lake within the Mojave Desert in Camp Irwin, California; Sunrise I had a wingspan of and weighed, with a 400-watt array of solar cells mounted on the wings. The airplane, not yet ready for a human pilot, flew for almost 20 minutes at an altitude of.
• In one of the great upsets of boxing, heavyweight Earnie Shavers, who had a record of 46 wins and only 3 losses, lost a unanimous decision to unknown boxer Bob Stallings, who had 21 wins, 24 losses and only four knockouts.
• Born: Numair Atif Choudhury, Bangladeshi novelist; in Dhaka
• Died: Edgar Fernhout, 62, Dutch painter

  [November 5], 1974 (Tuesday)

• In the United States, the Democratic Party made major gains nationwide in the elections for the U.S. Congress, particularly in the House of Representatives, where the Democrats won a two-thirds majority, with 291 of the 435 seats. The election also brought 93 first-time Representatives. With 34 of the 100 U.S. Senate seats on the ballot, the Democrats gained four formerly Republican seats to increase their majority to 61 to 37. Former NASA astronaut John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, was elected to the U.S. Senate for the first time.
• The People's Republic of China failed in its first attempt to launch its new Long March 2 rocket.
• Simas Kudirka, who had made an unsuccessful attempt to defect from the Soviet Union to the United States in 1971, arrived in New York along with his wife, his two children and his mother after being allowed to leave Moscow earlier in the day. Kudirka had jumped onto a U.S. Coast Guard ship but then was returned to the custody of the Soviets, who sentenced him to 10 years imprisonment for treason.
• Born:
• *Zheng Li, Chinese television news anchor known for her China Central Television evening program Xinwen Lianbo ; in Kedong County, Heilongjiang province
• *Ryan Adams, American singer and songwriter; in Jacksonville, North Carolina
• *Dado Pršo, Croatian footballer with 23 caps for the Croatia National Team; in Zadar, Socialist Republic of Croatia, Yugoslavia
• *Jerry Stackhouse, American college and NBA basketball player; in Kinston, North Carolina
• Died:
• *Anwar Ali, 61, Pakistani economist, governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority since 1958, died following a heart attack.
• *John C. Farrar, 78, American editor, writer and publisher, co-founder of Farrar & Rinehart and Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• *Patrick Buchan-Hepburn, 1st Baron Hailes,, 73, British politician, Governor-General of the West Indies Federation from 1958 to 1962
• *Stafford Repp, 56, American actor known for playing Chief Miles O'Hara on the Batman television series, died of a heart attack.
• *Marguerite Namara, 85, American opera soprano
• *William Gardner Smith, 47, American journalist, novelist and editor, died of cancer of the esophagus.
• *Abdellatif Zeroual, 23, Moroccan dissident and official of the Ila al-Amam Marxist group, disappeared after being taken away by a group of plainclothes police.

  [November 6], 1974 (Wednesday)

• At least 80 people died in a collision between two passenger trains west of Cotonou, Dahomey.
• The Soviet Union's lunar probe Luna 23 landed on the Moon in the Mare Crisium for the purpose of gathering and returning lunar soil to the Earth. The probe's drill was damaged when Luna 23 tipped over after landing on "unfavorable" terrain.
• Argentina's President Isabel Perón unexpectedly issued an emergency decree of a "state of siege" in the South American nation in an effort to deal with political violence that had claimed 136 lives during her first 129 days in office. The decree banned all public meetings and allowed any suspected terrorists to be arrested without a court order and held indefinitely without being brought to trial.
• Thirty-three inmates at the Long Kesh Prison in Northern Ireland, most of them convicted terrorists of the IRA, attempted to escape through an underground tunnel which they had dug. IRA member Hugh Coney was shot and killed by a guard after emerging outside the walls, and 29 others were captured only a few yards past the prison. The other three were captured within 24 hours.
• U.S. Treasury Secretary William E. Simon conceded in a press conference that the United States economy was in a recession as stock prices continued to fall.
• The Parliament of Singapore unanimously re-elected Benjamin Sheares to a second term as president, a largely ceremonial job, with 59 of the 65 members present and all 59 voting in his favor.