September 1971

[September 1], 1971 (Wednesday)

• Voting took place simultaneously in Egypt, Syria and Libya on a referendum of whether to join the proposed Federation of Arab Republics. On paper ballots, citizens were to mark a red circle if they were in favor and a black circle if they were against the union, and participation in the voting was mandatory. Voters approved the loose federation that would bring together 42 million of the 100 million Arab people in the Middle East, with a reported 96.4% approval in Syria, 98% in Libya, and "99.956%" in Egypt.
• A radio broadcast from Qatar announced the intention of the rulers of the Arab sheikdom to declare independence, with the announcement that Qatar was going to terminate "special treaty relations and all agreements, engagements and arrangements arising therefrom that were concluded with the British government."
• The Pittsburgh Pirates fielded the first all-black lineup in Major League Baseball history, with six African-American players and three dark-skinned Hispanic players. The Pirates beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 10 to 7, with the non-white lineup scoring five runs in the first inning.
• The "Prime Time Access Rule" went into effect on U.S. television, prohibiting the three national networks from airing programs prior to 8:00 p.m. Eastern time on all nights except for Sunday. The 7:30 to 8:00 time slot, formerly open for network shows, was reserved for the network affiliates to sell local commercial time.
• Born: Hakan Şükür, Turkish footballer with 112 appearances for the Turkey National Team; in Sapanca, Sakarya Province
• Died: Assault, 28, American thoroughbred racehorse and 1946 Triple Crown winner, was humanely euthanized at the King Ranch in Kingsville, Texas after breaking his left front leg in a fall.

  [September 2], 1971 (Thursday)

• In announcing the results of the referendum on the Federation of Arab Republics, the Egyptian government ceased referring to the nation as the "United Arab Republic" for the first time in more than 13 years, and identified the country as "The Arab Republic of Egypt".
• Ten people were killed in a stampede in the city of Udaipur in India's Rajasthan state after thousands of people showed up in response to a dealership's announcement of a registration for purchase of motor scooters. At the time, the demand for motorized transportation exceeded the available supply to the extent that the waiting time for delivery was an average of nine years after registration.

  [September 3], 1971 (Friday)

• Qatar gained independence from the United Kingdom, under the leadership of the Emir Ahmad bin Ali Al Thani. Qatar declined to become part of the United Arab Emirates after being unable to reach a favorable agreement about its status within a union.
• Michael McConnell and Jack Baker, a librarian and a law student, respectively, at the University of Minnesota, became the first-ever legally married same-sex couple in modern history after obtaining a marriage license from the county clerk's office in Mankato in Blue Earth County, and then having the ceremony performed by a Methodist minister, Reverend Roger Lynn, at the minister's home. The two men had an ongoing lawsuit, Baker v. Nelson, arising from the denial of a license in Hennepin County, and went to another county during the pendency of the litigation. While the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case arising from Hennepin County, the couple's marriage in Blue Earth County was never challenged.

• The Quadripartite Agreement on Berlin was signed by the leading foreign affairs representatives of the four Allied powers of World War II, Alec Douglas-Home of the United Kingdom, Maurice Schumann of France, Andrei Gromyko of the Soviet Union, and U.S. Secretary of State William P. Rogers, with the Soviets respecting the existence of a West Berlin surrounded entirely by East Germany, and the "corridors" between West Berlin and West Germany.
• In the United States, Northwest Orient Airlines was acquired and merged into National Airlines.
• Under the authorization of U.S. presidential adviser John Ehrlichman, a team of burglars who would later coordinate the Watergate burglary, broke into the office of Dr. Lewis Fielding, a psychiatrist in Washington who was treating former U.S. Department of Defense employee Daniel Ellsberg, who had leaked the "Pentagon Papers" to the press earlier in the year. The burglars were able to locate Ellsberg's file but were not able to find any useful information.
• Sergei Kourdakov, a former agent of the Soviet Union's KGB and an officer on a trawler, defected to Canada while the ship, the Elagin, was anchored in the Vancouver harbor. Kourdakov would be granted political asylum by Canada, but would be found dead from a gunshot wound on January 1, 1973.
• The embalmed body of Eva "Evita" Perón, concealed by Argentina since the 1955 overthrow and exile of President Juan Perón, was returned to Mr. Perón in Spain. The location of Evita, who had died of cancer in 1952 after seven years as First Lady of Argentina, had been a mystery for 16 years, relocated to avoid the possibility that Peronists would make a shrine of Evita's burial place. Instead, the remains of Evita, held in a silver coffin, had been in Italy "in a small cemetery near Rome".
• Manlio Brosio resigned as NATO Secretary General.
• Long distance telephone service was restored between the United States and the People's Republic of China, almost three years after the link had been abruptly terminated in November 1968. The AT&T company said that calls could be made between 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Eastern time, corresponding with 9:00 p.m. to 9:00 a.m. in Beijing, at a rate of a minimum of $12 for a call of up to three minutes, $4 for each additional minute.

  [September 4], 1971 (Saturday)

• All 111 people on Alaska Airlines Flight 1866 were killed when a Boeing 727 crashed into the side of a mountain near Juneau, Alaska. The accident was the worst single aircraft disaster in U.S. history up to that time. The flight had originated in Anchorage and had a final scheduled destination of Seattle, making multiple stops, and made a premature descent on its approach to Juneau, flying too low to avoid crashing into the Chilkat Range at an altitude of.
• The Concorde supersonic airliner made its first transatlantic crossing. After departing Toulouse in France and landing at Sal Rei in the Cape Verde Islands off of the coast of Africa, the Concorde 001 prototype departed Sal Rei and flew to Cayenne in French Guiana in South America in two hours and two minutes at an average speed of more than.
• Major General Hassan al-Amri, was forced to resign as Prime Minister of the Yemen Arab Republic by President Abdul Rahman al-Eryani, after Amri had shot and killed a photographer on August 29.
• The Portuguese freighter MV Ricardo Manuel, arriving from Lisbon, was coming into the Casablanca harbor of Morocco in a thick fog, and was cut in two in a collision with the Moroccan freighter MV Zagora. The Ricardo Manuel sank in the harbor, but its crew of 10 was rescued by the Zagora.
• In an unusual and never-explained incident, a large sack of flour literally "dropped from the sky" onto the baseball field at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles during a game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Cincinnati Reds during the fifth inning. The sack was "heavy enough to kill anyone it hit" and landed in front of Cincinnati shortstop Woody Woodward. The Dodgers went on to win, 2 to 1, in front of a crowd of 21,148 fans.
• Died: Bourke B. Hickenlooper, 75, former U.S. Senator for Iowa and Governor, died of a heart attack caused by arteriosclerosis. He was visiting friends on Long Island at Shelter Island, New York.

  [September 5], 1971 (Sunday)

• Seven people were killed and 20 injured in the destruction of a church in the Portuguese village of Vilar Maior, near Sabugal, when fireworks stockpiled in the church exploded. The village was preparing for its annual festival and had stored the explosives at the building.
• The 1971 Women's World Cup final in Association football was played. Denmark defeated the host, Mexico, 3 goals to 0, and Denmark's Susanne Augustesen made all of the scores. The tournament, with six teams.
• The All-Ireland Hurling Championship was played before 61,393 people at Croke Park in Dublin and was won by Tipperary over Kilkenny on the strength of 17 points to 14 points, each team having scored five 3-point goals.

  [September 6], 1971 (Monday)

• The crash of Paninternational Flight 112 killed 21 passengers and one crew member, out of 121 people on board. The BAC One-Eleven jet's engines failed shortly after takeoff from Hamburg in West Germany and the pilots made an emergency landing on Autobahn 7, where the plane lost both wings after passing under a bridge and burst into flames.
• The Tupamaros terrorist group in Uruguay freed 105 of its members from the maximum security penitentiary in the Punta Carretas section of Montevideo, including Tupamaros founder Raul Sendic and five other inmates, after digging a long tunnel from a house located across the street from the prison. On July 17, the Tupamaros had freed 39 women from another jail in Montevideo by digging upward from a sewer underneath a prison cell.
• The Coney Island Amusement Park in Cincinnati, Ohio, closed at the end of the U.S. Labor Day weekend after 84 years. Most of its rides became the core of the new Kings Island theme park that would open in 1972.
• The British Broadcasting Corporation announced that it was banning the U.S. educational children's TV program Sesame Street from broadcast in the UK because of the "authoritarian aims" of the show. Monica Sims, the director of children's television programming on BBC, told reporters "Educationalists in America have questioned the value of 2-, 3- and 4-year olds' acquiring knowledge in a passive, uninvolved fashion, and have criticised the program's essentially middle-class attitudes, its lack of reality and its attempt to prepare children for school but not for life. I share some of these doubts and am particularly worried about the program's authoritarian aims." The Independent Television Authority announced afterward that it would show Sesame Street on ITV stations on Saturday mornings for 30 weeks beginning on September 25.
• Born: Dolores O'Riordan, Irish singer, in Ballybricken, County Limerick