September 1970

September 1, 1970 (Tuesday)

• An assassination attempt was made in against King Hussein of Jordan as his motorcade approached a railway underpass in Amman. The King and his entourage were on their way to the airport to greet the arrival of his daughter, Princess Alia, and the attack happened a few minutes before she was scheduled to land. Hussein was unharmed, and was able to divert the incoming Jordanian airliner to neighboring Beirut. The attempt on the monarch's life precipitated the Black September in Jordan crisis that would see more than 10,000 Palestinian Jordanians killed in less than a week.
• The cabinet of the government of Israel voted to promote the status of the 35,000 members of the Arabic-speaking Druze community, abolishing their classification as a minority group. The reclassification of the Druze, many of whom had fought for the Israeli Army, was the next step to full Israeli citizenship.
• The U.S. Senate voted not to approve a resolution by Senators George S. McGovern and Mark O. Hatfield to force U.S. President Nixon to withdraw all American troops from Indochina by December 31, 1971. The vote to curb an American president's war powers had 39 supporters and 55 voting against it.
• The "Agreement on the International Carriage of Perishable Foodstuffs and on the Special Equipment to be used for such Carriage", commonly called the ATP Treaty was signed in Geneva by seven Western European nations.
• Hapag-Lloyd AG, one of the world's largest shipping container companies, was created by the merger of the Hamburg America Line and North German Lloyd.
• Born:
• *Hwang Jung-min, South Korean film star, in Masan, South Gyeongsang Province
• *Max Pollak, Austrian dancer, in Vienna.
• Died:
• *François Mauriac, 84, French novelist and 1952 laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature
• *Agnes E. Meyer, 83, American journalist, philanthropist and activist

  September 2, 1970 (Wednesday)

• Astronauts would no longer be sent to the Moon after 1972, as NASA announced the cancellation of the Apollo 18 and Apollo 19 missions to the Moon, which had been scheduled for 1973 and 1974, respectively. The Apollo 20 mission had been canceled on January 4, 1970. The original mission of Apollo 15, less than 24 hours at the Censorinus crater, was replaced by Apollo 18's schedule for an extended mission of three days on the Moon at the Hadley Rille. The scrubbing of the missions was estimated to save $42.1 million in the upcoming fiscal year, but also meant the layoff of 700 NASA employees.
• Britain attempted its first launch of an orbital satellite from the RAAF Woomera Range Complex in South Australia. The Black Arrow rocket lifted off successfully, but the second stage had a leak in its high-test peroxide tank pressurization system and shut down 15 seconds too soon. The rocket and its payload lacked sufficient propulsion to reach orbit, and the Orba crashed into the Gulf of Carpentaria off Australia's northern coast.
• The crash of Aeroflot Flight 3630 in the Soviet Union killed all 32 passengers and 5 crew. The Tu-124 had departed from Rostov-on-Don on a flight to Vilnius. The pilot lost control of the airliner at an altitude of and, in a common occurrence at the time, the censored Soviet press did not publish news of the incident.
• Died:
• *General Marie-Pierre Kœnig, 71, French military officer and former French Minister of Defense
• *Kees van Baaren, 63, Dutch classical composer

  September 3, 1970 (Thursday)

• All 21 people on Aeroflot Flight W-4 were killed in the crash of a Yak-40 commuter plane, after the pilot flew into the side of a mountain. The plane had departed Frunze in the Kirghiz SSR on a flight to Leninabad in the Tadzhik SSR, and was nearing its destination when it hit a peak at an altitude of.
• After being alerted by Israel that the Soviet Union and Egypt were placing missiles on the west side of the Suez Canal, in violation of the ceasefire agreement in the Middle East, the United States presented aerial photographic evidence to the foreign ministries in Moscow and in Cairo and asked for the withdrawal of the new weapons
• Born: Jeremy Glick, American business executive known for fighting the 9/11 hijackers of United Flight 93; in Saddle River, New Jersey
• Died:
• *Vince Lombardi, 57, legendary American professional football coach who guided the Green Bay Packers to six NFL titles; from colon cancer
• *Alan Wilson, 27, American rock musician and co-founder of the group Canned Heat, died of barbiturate overdose.

  September 4, 1970 (Friday)

• Chileans voted for a new President and Marxist Senator Salvador Allende of the Socialist Party of Chile received more votes than his two opponents, former President Jorge Alessandri and Christian Democrat Radomiro Tomic. Under the South American nation's constitution, if no candidate received a majority of the popular votes, a joint session of the Chilean Congress would choose from the top two vote recipients. The joint session was scheduled to take place on October 24. Allende had a plurality of 36.2% of the votes and Alessandri had 34.9%, while Tomic was third with 27.8%. Allende would be selected, and would take office on November 3.
• Soviet Russian prima ballerina Natalia Makarova defected to the West while on tour with the Kirov Ballet in London.

  September 5, 1970 (Saturday)

• Formula One driver Jochen Rindt was killed during qualifying races for the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. His Lotus 72 race car lost its right front wheel and veered into a guard rail at. The 28-year old driver from Austria had won five of the first nine races on the 1970 Grand Prix circuit, including four in a row in the summer, and told reporters before his run, "Last year I had a lot of bad luck, but this year it has changed." After the 12th and penultimate race of the circuit, all other challengers for the World Driving Championship had been mathematically eliminated and Rindt won the title posthumously based on the points he had collected in finishes before his death.
• In Creston, British Columbia, Dale Nelson murdered eight people in a killing spree. Nelson was arrested after a two-day manhunt.
• In Vietnam, the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army and the South Vietnamese 1st Infantry Division began Operation Jefferson Glenn in a 13-month long campaign to drive the Viet Cong from the Thua Thien Province. The campaign was the last major operation by American ground forces during the Vietnam War. The 101st Airborne constructed three firebases and gradually turned over responsibility for the operation to the South Vietnamese Army's 1st Infantry Division, withdrawing on October 8. Four days after the operation's end, President Nixon would announce that U.S. troops would operate only for defensive purposes.
• Born: Johnny Vegas, English comedian and actor, St Helens, Lancashire
• Died:
• *Jesse Pennington, 87, English soccer football left-back with 25 appearances in the England national team
• *André Simon, 93, French wine expert and connoisseur

  September 6, 1970 (Sunday)

• Four passenger aircraft were hijacked on the same day in an operation carried out by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which boarded airliners from four different airlines that were departing for Europe from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. At 11:20 UTC, TWA Flight 741, a Boeing 707, was hijacked with 155 on board. Almost an hour later, at 12:14 UTC, Swissair Flight 100, a DC-8 with 155 people was taken control of. Half an hour later, two terrorists attempted to take control of El Al Flight 219, but the plan was thwarted by the crew and the plane landed in London. Almost two hours after that two passengers who had been removed from the El Al Flight hijacked Pan Am Flight 93, a Boeing 747 with 175 people was successfully taken. The TWA and Swissair jets landed at Dawson Field, an airstrip in the desert of Jordan near Zarqa. The 747, too large to land at the airstrip, flew to Beirut where it was refueled and wired with explosives as nine more PFLP terrorists boarded and the plane was flown to Cairo. The passengers and crew were allowed to evacuate after the plane landed and the time bomb on board then destroyed the empty Boeing 747, which had cost $20,000,000.
• India's President, V. V. Giri, issued an executive order to the 320 rulers of India's former princely states informing them that under the power recently given him under Article 366, recognition of their special privileges would cease and the privy purses that 278 of the 320 received as income would be halted. The move came a day after the Rajya Sabha, upper house of India's parliament, failed to endorse the constitutional amendment bill that had passed the lower house at the beginning of the year. Although the vote was 149 in favor and 75 against the measure, it fell one vote shy of the required two-thirds majority needed for amendments. A few months later, India's Supreme Court would strike down the presidential ruling as unconstitutional, leading to the amendment of Article 363 of the Constitution to discontinue the privileges permanently.
• The new Ontario Motor Speedway opened in Ontario, California, from Los Angeles, with the first running of its USAC Indy-car race, the California 500. A crowd of 180,223 watched "one of the most dramatic 500-mile finishes in history" as Jim McElreath crossed the finish line two seconds ahead of Art Pollard.
• Clay Regazzoni won the 1970 Italian Grand Prix at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza, the 10th of 12 Grand Prix races in the 1970 season. The event was overshadowed by the death of Jochen Rindt at Monza the day before.
• Jimi Hendrix performed his final concert, in an appearance on the West German island of Fehmarn. He was found dead 12 days later in London.