October 1972

[October 1], 1972 (Sunday)

• The first reports were made about the production of a recombinant DNA molecule, marking the birth of modern molecular biology methodology.
• Malaysia Singapore Airlines broke up into two companies, Singapore Airlines, with 10 aircraft, and Malaysia Airlines. SIA now serves 80 cities in 40 nations around the world.
• An explosion on board the killed 19 sailors and injured ten others. The blast occurred off of the coast of South Vietnam at about 1:00 a.m. local time.
• Florida's new death penalty statute, the first to be passed in the United States since the U.S. Supreme Court decision that declared all existing capital punishment laws unconstitutional, went into effect.
• The Oregon Minimum Deposit Law took effect, as Oregon became the first state to require a deposit on all beverage containers, including cans.
• Died:
• *Louis Leakey, 69, Kenyan-born British anthropologist known for his 1959 discovery of the remains of Zinjanthropus, a 1.7 million-year old ancestor of humans.
• *Neville Goddard, 67, Barbadian author and mystic, died of an esophageal rupture. the author's death certificate cites the esophageal rupture. He had been a resident of Los Angeles for roughly 20 years.

  [October 2], 1972 (Monday)

• Voters in Denmark approved the Treaty of Accession in a referendum, with 63.5% voting in favor of joining the European Economic Community, known as the "Common Market". One week earlier, voters in neighboring Norway had rejected the treaty.
• An Aeroflot Il-18 airliner crashed at Sochi, in the Soviet Union, killing all 109 people on board.
• The Indian State of Rajasthan launched the Antyodaya Programme, which would identify the five poorest families in each of the state's villages, and then provide government assistance for one year in the form of allotting land for cultivation, bank loans, assistance in finding employment, or a pension. The experiment was less successful in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh.

  [October 3], 1972 (Tuesday)

• The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty went into effect following ratification by both the United States and the Soviet Union, as did the Interim Agreement on Offensive Forces.
• Born: Lajon Witherspoon, American rock musician and singer, in Nashville, Tennessee

  [October 4], 1972 (Wednesday)

• The abbreviation "Ms." was used for the first time in the Congressional Record, in reference to U.S. Representative Bella Abzug. The other eleven women in Congress, however, continued to be referred to as "Mrs."
• The first ABC Afterschool Special was telecast. The anthology drama series for children, shown once a month on a Wednesday afternoon, addressed contemporary issues and ran until 1997.
• Peter Bridge, a reporter for the defunct Newark Evening News went to jail for contempt of court for not revealing his source for a statement that the Newark Housing Authority had been offered a bribe. Bridge was the first journalist to be incarcerated after a June 29 U.S. Supreme Court ruling held that newsmen could not withhold confidential information from a grand jury investigation. Bridge would be released on October 24 after three weeks in the Essex County Jail, after a grand jury declined to return an indictment against anyone in the housing authority.

  [October 5], 1972 (Thursday)

• In New York, the General Agreement on Participation was signed between the governments of oil exporters Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates on one side, and representatives of the petroleum producing corporations Exxon, Chevron, Texaco and Mobil. In return for a total of $500,000,000 a 25% interest in the Arab-American Company, Aramco, was sold by the oil companies to the four OPEC nations, with an objective of the national oil companies of each country acquiring a 51% ownership by 1983.
• In the first exhibition basketball game between the New York franchises of the rival NBA and ABA, the NBA's New York Knicks defeated the ABA's New York Nets, 117 to 88, at New Haven, Connecticut. The next night, the Knicks came to the Nets home court on Long Island and won again, 100 to 91. Both the Knicks and the Nets had been the runners-up in their respective leagues.
• Born: Grant Hill, American NBA player; in Dallas
• Died:
• *Ivan Yefremov, 64, Soviet paleontologist and science fiction author
• *Henry Dreyfuss, 68, designer of New York Central Railroad's "20th Century Limited" train

  [October 6], 1972 (Friday)

• A train crash near Saltillo in Mexico killed 208 people and injured more than 700. The train, carrying more than 1,500 religious pilgrims, derailed near the bridge over the Moreno River. An engineer and four crewmen who survived were found to have been intoxicated, and were charged with homicide.
• Six schoolgirls, ranging in age from 5 to 11 years old, were kidnapped along with their teacher from their school at Faraday, Victoria. Parents arrived at the school to find a demand for one million Australian dollars. The seven escaped from an unguarded van the next day near Lancefield.
• Died: Solomon Lefschetz, 88, American mathematician who made major contributions to algebraic geometry, topology and differential equations.

  [October 7], 1972 (Saturday)

• The National Hockey League's two expansion teams, the New York Islanders and the Atlanta Flames, played against each other for their first game to open the 1972-73 NHL season. Playing at the Nassau Coliseum before 12,221 the Flames won 3–2. Morris Stefaniw and Ed Westfall scored the first goals for the Flames and Islanders, respectively. The Islanders, who played on at Uniondale, New York, on Long Island, would finish their first season as the NHL's worst team, with a record of 12–60–6, but would later win the Stanley Cup four years in a row. The Flames, named for the burning of Atlanta during the American Civil War, would move to Calgary in 1980 and win the Stanley Cup in 1989.

  [October 8], 1972 (Sunday)

• At the Paris Peace Talks, North Vietnam's negotiator, Lê Đức Thọ reached an agreement with Henry Kissinger of the United States on ending the Vietnam War. Demands were dropped for Nguyễn Văn Thiệu to step down as President of South Vietnam, but elections would be held there within six months, North Vietnamese troops would remain in the South, and the United States would recognize the sovereignty of North Vietnam. Kissinger envisioned signing the treaty on October 30, but Thieu's objections led to a breakdown in the agreement.
• In a nationally televised baseball game of the American League championship series, shortstop Bert Campaneris of the Oakland A's hurled his bat at pitcher Lerrin La Grow, after being struck by a wild pitch. "Campy" was barred from further postseason play and fined $500.
• Died: Prescott Bush, 77, U.S. Senator from Connecticut 1952–63, father and grandfather, respectively, of U.S. Presidents George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush.

  [October 9], 1972 (Monday)

• Written by Gerome Ragni, who had scored a Broadway success with the musical Hair, the rock musical Dude: The Highway Life, opened at the Broadway Theatre, Dude was universally reviled by the critics and closed after 16 performances, having lost $800,000. Martin Gottfried described it as "incoherent, childish, and boring".
• Born: Etan Patz, American boy whose disappearance in 1979 remained a mystery for more than 30 years, in New York. In 2012, a man who had lived in the neighborhood would confess to the crime, although there was no physical evidence to corroborate his statement.
• Died: Miriam Hopkins, 69, American film and TV actress

  [October 10], 1972 (Tuesday)

• With the headline "FBI Finds Nixon Aides Sabotaged Democrats", the Washington Post carried Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward's revelation that the Watergate break-in was not an isolated incident, but part of a campaign by the White House. "The activities, according to information in FBI and Department of Justice files, were aimed at all the major Democratic presidential contenders", the investigative reporters noted, "and—since 1971—represented a basic strategy of the Nixon re-election effort."
• John Betjeman was appointed Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom.
• Born: Jun Lana, Filipino playwright and screenwriter, in Makati
• Died: Kenneth Edgeworth, 92, Irish astronomer

  [October 11], 1972 (Wednesday)

• The case of Roe v. Wade was reargued before the United States Supreme Court, after having first been argued on December 13, 1971, before seven Justices. While the initial opinion by Justice Harry Blackmun had simply found the challenged laws against abortion to be "unconstitutionally vague", the revised 1973 Blackmun opinion went further in declaring most restrictions against the right of choice to be unconstitutitional. "Had the Blackmun first drafts in the abortion cases come down as the final decisions", notes one commentator, "American life and politics might have been quite different."
• The World Hockey Association opened its first season in Ottawa, Canada, as the Alberta Oilers defeated the Ottawa Nationals, 7–4, before a crowd of 5,006 and a Canadian national television audience. Ron Anderson of the Oilers scored the first WHA goal. The last WHA goal would be scored in 1979 by Dave Semenko of the Edmonton Oilers. The other WHA game of the night was in Ohio, where the Cleveland Crusaders beat the Quebec Nordiques, 2–0.
• Born: Claudia Black, Australian actress, in Sydney

  [October 12], 1972 (Thursday)

• A brawl on board the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Kitty Hawk injured 46 people. About 100 black and white sailors fought for hours with knives, forks and chains, before the fight was broken up by a squad of U.S. Marines. Details were released six weeks afterward by the U.S. Navy. The fight began when a sailor asked for two sandwiches at the ship's mess hall and was given only one. Twenty-five men, only one of whom was white, were charged. Of those, 23 African-Americans would be convicted on charges of assault or allowed to plead to lesser offenses, with charges dismissed against one black sailor and the lone white sailor being acquitted after a court-martial.
• The Dai Gohonzon, inscribed by the Buddhist monk Nichiren was placed at a special location, 693 years after its inscription. An object of veneration among Buddhists of the Nichiren Shōshū branch of Nichiren Buddhism, the Gohonzon had been inscribed on October 12, 1279, and was placed in the specially constructed Sho Hondo at Fujinomiya, Shizuoka, Japan.
• Troops from Portugal invaded the West African nation of Senegal, believed to be housing the rebel group Acção Revolucionária Armada, in an action condemned by the U.N. Security Council.