September 1973


The following events occurred in September 1973:

[September 1], 1973 (Saturday)


  • Died:
  • *J. R. R. Tolkien, 81, South African-born British writer who wrote the bestselling fantasy novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, died of a perforated ulcer. A requiem mass was held four days later at the chapel of St Anthony of Padua, Oxford.
  • *Shirali Muslimov, Soviet Azerbaijani shepherd who claimed to be 168 years old of having been born in 1805

    [September 3], 1973 (Monday)

  • The Argentine magazine La Causa Peronista published an interview with Esther Norma Arrostito and Mario Eduardo Firmenich, in which they described in detail the 1970 kidnapping and assassination of former President Pedro Eugenio Aramburu. After the overthrow of Isabel Perón in 1976, Arrostito would be captured by the Argentine Army and executed.
  • During the Conference of American Armies in Caracas, General Breno Borges, head of the Brazilian army, proposed to "extend the exchange of information" between various right-wing generals in South America in order to "struggle against subversion", with Operation Condor being launched two years later.
  • Colonel Tom Parker, the longtime manager of Elvis Presley, quit after Presley's verbal criticism of the Hilton Hotels chain that was hosting the concert. Since 1956, Parker had been receiving more than one-half of Presley's earnings as compensation.
  • Died: Rufino Santos, 65, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Manila and the first Cardinal from the Philippines

    [September 4], 1973 (Tuesday)

  • U.S. Patent No. 3,757,306 for the single-chip microprocessor, invented by Gary W. Boone, was granted to Texas Instruments, which had used it to successfully operate the first hand-held calculator.
  • In the African colony of Portuguese Guinea guerrillas with the independence group PAIGC killed 22 Portuguese Army soldiers in an ambush. The PAIGC reported the attack, one of several that had killed 35 Portuguese troops in the first two weeks of September, on September 18.
  • The world record for the Women's 4 × 100 metres medley relay in swimming was broken by the East German team of Ulrike Richter, Renate Vogel, Rosemarie Kother and Kornelia Ender.
  • Died: James Shabazz, Black Muslim leader, was shot and killed by in the driveway of his home in Newark, New Jersey.

    [September 5], 1973 (Wednesday)

  • Agents of Italy's intelligence agency, and paramilitary police foiled a plot by five Arab terrorists who were planning to use a heat-seeking missile to shoot down an Israeli jetliner. Police had been tipped off that terrorists planned to fire the missile as a plane was approaching Rome's Fiumicino International Airport. A raid on a home at Ostia, four miles from Fiumicino, found two Soviet-made SA-7 missiles and a missile launcher in the possession of Mahmoud Azmikamy of Lebanon. A few hours later, four other terrorists were arrested at a Rome hotel.
  • Tropical Storm Delia became the first tropical cyclone on record to make landfall in the same city twice, when it returned to Freeport, Texas in the U.S., two days after its first visit.
  • A group of five Palestinian terrorists seized the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Paris and held 15 employees hostage, demanding the release of Abu Daoud, leader of the Black September Organization that had carried out the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics. The terrorists eventually flew to Saudi Arabia, surrendering in Riyadh and releasing their hostages in on September 8. The operation, planned by Abu Nidal, succeeded in persuading the Kingdom of Jordan to release Daoud from prison two weeks later.
  • The asteroid 2014 RC passed within 0.01073 astronomical units or of Earth.
  • Died: Lester Lane, 41, recently hired as head coach of the Oklahoma University basketball team, died of a heart attack shortly after playing a pickup game of basketball with other faculty members. Hired on August 6, he would have coached his first Sooners' game in December.

    [September 6], 1973 (Thursday)

  • The first underground subway in North Korea, the Chollima Line of the Pyongyang Metro, began operations.
  • The Kenya Pipeline Company was incorporated as a state corporation under Kenya's Ministry of Energy, with 100% ownership by the Kenyan government.
  • The landmark class action case of Rajender v. University of Minnesota was filed by assistant professor of chemistry Shyamala Rajender after she had been turned down for a tenure-track position despite being recommended by several university committees, and would ultimately issue in a ruling enjoining the university from sexual discrimination against women.
  • Former United Mine Workers President Tony Boyle was arrested in Pittsburgh on murder charges for the December 31, 1969 slaying of rival Joseph A. Yablonski, along with Yablonski's wife and daughter.

    [September 7], 1973 (Friday)

  • The existence of Japan's military, the Japan Self-Defense Forces, was ruled as unconstitutional by a district court judge in Sapporo. Judge Shigeo Fukushima held that the creation of Japan's Army, Navy and Air Force had violated Article 9 of the 1947 Constitution of Japan, which declared that "Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation... In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained." The government announced that it would appeal the ruling.
  • Faina Melnik of the Soviet Union broke her own world record in the women's discus event at an athletics meeting in Edinburgh.

    [September 8], 1973 (Saturday)

  • The first edition of The Ocean Race began as 17 yachts began a round-the-world trip from Portsmouth in the United Kingdom. Co-sponsored by the Royal Naval Sailing Association and the British hotel and restaurant company Whitbread, the event was originally called the "Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race" and would be won on April 9, 1974, by the yacht Sayula II, skippered by Ramón Carlin of Mexico.
  • Australian tennis star Margaret Court won the U.S. Open for the fifth time, defeating fellow Australian Evonne Goolagong, 7–6, 5–7 and 6–2 to win her 24th major championship.
  • Baseball's Hank Aaron hit his 709th home run, a record for homers in a single league and five short of the 714 hit by Babe Ruth. The technicality was that Ruth had 708 home runs in the American League, and six in the National League, while all of Aaron's runs had been in the NL.
  • Four years after the cancellation of the original Star Trek series, the science fiction program returned as a 30-minute Saturday morning cartoon, also called Star Trek, and subtitled "Created by Gene Roddenberry". Produced by Filmation studios, the program featured the voices of seven of the original actors,, and brought back several of the original scriptwriters. The animated series won an Emmy Award, but was cancelled after two seasons, though it helped revive the Star Trek franchise for the actors to be reunited in the 1979 film.

    [September 9], 1973 (Sunday)

  • Jackie Stewart's fourth-place finish in the Italian Grand Prix gave him sufficient points to clinch the title of World Drivers' Champion in the Formula One season. With two races still left, and a maximum 18 points left to be won, Stewart had 69 points, far ahead of Emerson Fittipaldi, François Cevert and race winner Ronnie Peterson.
  • Australian tennis player John Newcombe won the U.S. Open men's singles in the fifth set after overcoming a 2 to 1 deficit against Jan Kodeš of Czechoslovakia. Newcombe's results were 6–4, 1–6, 4–6, 6–2 and, in the deciding set, 6–3.
  • Died:
  • *Everett O. Alldredge, 60, American archivist, died of cancer.
  • *Giovanni Ricci, 69, Italian mathematician

    [September 10], 1973 (Monday)

  • Two days of voting concluded in Norway for the 155 seats of the unicameral parliament, the Storting. The Norske arbeiderpartei of former prime minister Trygve Bratteli lost 12 seats, but remained the largest party with 62 seats. Prime Minister Lars Korvald of the Kristelig Folkeparti had formed a minority government in 1972 after Bratteli's government fell apart after Norwegian voters rejected the nation's entry into the European Economic Community.
  • The tiny Republic of San Marino, which had denied women the right to vote until 1959, changed its laws to allow women to hold public office for the first time in Sammarinese history. The Grand and General Council voted to change the law effective October 1 by a 28 to 1 margin, with 18 members of the Communist and Democratic Socialist parties abstaining.
  • The sinking of the Greek cargo ship Condor killed 10 of its crew after the vessel collided with the Portuguese ship H. Capelo in thick fog off Guernsey, Channel Islands. Only two of the crew survived.
  • A Chilean military officer reported to an American CIA station officer that a coup d'état against the Allende government was being planned, and asked for U.S. government assistance in aiding the overthrow. The unidentified officer was told that the U.S. would not get involved because the coup "was strictly an internal Chilean matter," but that his request would be forwarded to Washington. The CIA thus learned of the exact date of the coup shortly before it took place. According to Reuters News Agency at the time, a White House source said that one of the officers from the planned military junta "had been in touch with official or unofficial American representatives" at least 48 hours before the coup and that the White House "had originally expected the coup on Monday," but the coup was postponed by the leaders until Tuesday. A U.S. State Department official said two days after the coup that the government had received a warning the night before the takeover but that the text was "not seen by responsible officials until after the coup had begun."
  • Under an agreement between West Germany and East Germany, garbage trucks from West Berlin were allowed to haul rubbish "through a newly opened hole in the Berlin Wall" into East Germany in order to dump their contents into an abandoned quarry.