At 7:30 in the morning local time (0030 UTC)[1] 8,000 United States Army troops[2] followed South Vietnam's
Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) troops into
Cambodia's
Kampong Cham Province, and expanding the American involvement in the
Vietnam War to attack
North Vietnamese Army (NVA) enclaves in an area known as
the Fishhook . Helicopters and ground troops of the U.S. Army's
1st Air Cavalry Division and an ARVN airborne brigade caught the NVA off guard, while troops of the
25th Infantry Division drove their attack northward and westward; by May 3, the United States would claim 467 of the enemy had been killed, and only eight American soldiers[3][4] Simultaneously with the invasion, U.S. President
Richard Nixon was preparing to announce the invasion in a nationwide address, which began at 0200 UTC (9:00 in Washington, DC on Thursday night). Protests against the expansion of the Vietnam War began on American college campuses later in the day on Friday.[5] For the first time in more than 50 years, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to ask for a meeting with a U.S. president, after having been given no notice of the invasion, and the request was unanimous from both political parties.[6]
At
Yale University in
New Haven, Connecticut, demonstrations against the trial of the
New Haven Nine,
Bobby Seale, and
Ericka Huggins (all of the Black Panthers activist group) drew a crowd of 12,000. Although city merchants were prepared for an anticipated riot.[7] and 4,000 U.S. Army and U.S. Marine troops were deployed to nearby bases "as a precautionary measure"[8] the rally was relatively peaceful.[9]
U.S. Army physician Dr.
Jeffrey R. MacDonald was formally charged by the Army with three counts of murder, after an investigation implicated him in the February 17 murder of killing of his wife and two daughters at their home at
Fort Bragg, North Carolina.[10]
Yi Eun, 72, the last Crown Prince of Korea during the reign of his older brother, the
Emperor Sunjong from 1907 until the annexation of Korea by Japan in 1910. Yi Un, who had been the head of the
House of Yi since the 1926 death of the last
Emperor of Korea, his older brother
Sunjong, had been allowed to live in South Korea since November 22, 1963 after President
Park Chung Hee allowed him to return from Japanese exile. Yi Eun, seriously ill, was allowed to live in a home on the grounds of
Changdeok Palace, one of the former Korean royal family residences in
Seoul, and would be buried at the royal family tomb site. His 38-year-old son,
Yi Ju became the new head of the former royal house.[11]
William L. St. Onge, 55, U.S. Congressman for Connecticut since 1962. Mr. St. Onge had been on his way to the shipyards at
Groton to be a guest of honor at the launching of a new submarine, when he collapsed from a heart attack.[12]
May 2, 1970 (Saturday)
Twenty-two passengers and one crew member on
ALM Flight 980 drowned when the Overseas National Airways
DC-9 jet ran out of fuel and made a forced landing in the
Caribbean Sea, 33 miles (53 km) from the nearest land, the island of
Saint Croix in the
United States Virgin Islands.[13] The Antillean Airlines flight had departed New York City at 11:00 a.m. for
St. Maarten, with 57 passengers and a crew of six, and, after two unsuccessful attempts at landing at Juliana Airport, was cleared for an emergency landing at St. Croix and ditched in the ocean at 3:48 p.m.[14] Forty survivors able to depart the plane and were rescued by helicopters from the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marines, while the other 23 were trapped on the sinking airplane.[15][16]
In the aftermath of a protest the evening before, an estimated 500 students from
Kent State University (KSU) went off campus after midnight and into the streets of downtown
Kent, Ohio, smashing windows of local businesses and of cars parked on the street, prompting the imposition of an 8:00 p.m. curfew for Saturday night.[17] Five police officers were injured, and 14 students were arrested before tear gas was used to disperse the crowd at 3:00 a.m. Later in the day, a group of 600 protesters set fire to the ROTC building on the KSU campus, prompting Kent mayor Leroy M. Satrom to ask for the Ohio National Guard; 400 guardsmen were dispatched from nearby
Akron and deployed on campus.[18]
Dust Commander, a thoroughbred racehorse that had been purchased for a bargain price of $6,500 by his owner, won the
Kentucky Derby by five lengths.[19] In addition to winning jockey
Mike Manganello, the Derby was also the first American Triple Crown race to include a female jockey.
Diane Crump, riding Fathom, came in 15th of 17 horses.[20] Holy Land with no jockey to ride him, came in last, after throwing Hector Pilar prior to the final turn.
Darrell Pace of
Hamilton, Ohio, who would become a legend in the sport of
archery, went to an archery range for the first time (at the age of 13) and discovered that he was "unusually good at aiming" a bow and arrow. Within three years, he would win the first of four world championships, and would become a gold medalist at the 1976 and 1984 Olympic games. In connection with its centennial celebration in 2011, the
World Archery Federation honored him as "Archer of the Century."[21]
U.S. Senator
Ralph Yarborough, at one time one of the most powerful members of the U.S. Senate, was defeated by former Congressman
Lloyd Bentsen, Jr. in a statewide primary election to determine the Democratic Party nominee. On the same day, Congressman and future U.S. President
George Bush won the Republican Party nomination for the Senate seat by an almost 7 to 1 margin over his challenger,
University of Plano founder
Robert J. Morris.[22]
May 3, 1970 (Sunday)
Blessed
Leonardo Murialdo of
Turin, a 19th-century advocate in Italy for labor reform and the creation of educational institutions, was
canonized as a Saint in the
Roman Catholic Church by
Pope Paul VI. Thousands of members of the order founded by Murialdo, the Congregation of St. Joseph, made the pilgrimage to Rome to attend the ceremony.[23]
At 12:24 in the afternoon,
four college students were shot and killed at
Ohio's
Kent State University, and nine others wounded by
Ohio National Guardsmen, during a protest against the incursion into
Cambodia.[24][25] Around noon, the Guardsmen fired tear gas into the crowd of 500 protesters, and some demonstrators threw rocks and threw back tear gas grenades. According to an eyewitness, one student threw a rock as the Guardsmen were turning away to leave the area and "one section of the Guard turned around and fired and then all the Guardsmen turned around and fired."[26] A later investigation determined that about 28 members of the Guard had fired their rifles, with 61 shots in the space of 13 seconds.[27][28] Eight National Guardsmen would be indicted in 1973 for the shooting, and would be acquitted. On May 1, 2007, a student's audio of the recording would be released that included the moment that the command was given to prepare to fire.[29] After the killings, several eyewitnesses said that the initial gunshots, that might have led the Guardsmen to believe they were under attack, had been an ill-timed
warning shot fired by
a 21-year-old student who was working as an informant for the campus police and for the FBI.[30]
On the same day, seven members of the U.S. Army's 101st Assault Helicopter Battalion were killed in the mid-air collision of a Huey UH-1H and a Cobra AH-1G during a practice Red Alert at Fire Support Base Kathryn in the
Thua Thien province of
South Vietnam.[31][32] Six Army members and one U.S. Marine were killed in the
Quang Tin province, and two other Marines and seven from the Army died in other provinces, for a total of 24 deaths in the war that day.[33]
In
Chicago, on the 84th anniversary of the
Haymarket bombing that killed seven police officers and four civilians, Mayor
Richard J. Daley unveiled the restored
Haymarket Square Statue, seven months after it had been destroyed by a bomb placed by the
Weather Underground organization.[34] Five months later, on October 6, the Weathermen group would destroy it again with another bomb.[35]
Born: Will Arnett, Canadian TV actor and comedian known for 30 Rock and Arrested Development; in
Toronto
The
Sahaja Yoga religious movement was founded at the village of
Nargol in
India's
Gujaratstate, after
Nirmala Srivastava reported her discovery of what she described as "the technique to open the
Sahasrarachakra, the energy centre located at the crown of the head" and making it "possible for anyone to experience self-realization". The decades that followed, Sahaja Yoga centers have been established worldwide, reportedly in 80 countries.[36]
Prince
Norodom Sihanouk, who had been deposed as the reigning monarch of
Cambodia on March 12, announced from
Beijing that he had formed a
government-in-exile that would ally with the Communist government of China and the Cambodian
Khmer Rouge to overthrow head of state
Lon Nol.[37] Sihanouk's group of 11 ministers in waiting was called "
GRUNK", and
acronym for Gouvernement Royal d'Union Nationale du Kampuchéa (Royal Government for the National Union of Kampuchea, the Khmer name for Cambodia) and was a coalition of government officials exiled in China (former premier
Penn Nouth as the Prime Minister) and Khmer Rouge leaders within Cambodia, chief of whom was Khmer Rouge leader
Khieu Samphan).
The
Hekla volcano in southern
Iceland erupted, raining ashes and debris within at 30 mi (48 km) radius and forcing the evacuation of the surrounding villages.[38] Hekla had last erupted in 1948; since the 1970 event, the eruptions have happened every ten years.[39]
Died: Chris Ross, 24, American stand-up comedian and TV actor who was a member of the San Francisco improv group
The Committee[40][41]
May 6, 1970 (Wednesday)
Twenty-seven members of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division were killed when North Vietnamese attackers overran their encampment at
Fire Base Henderson, located in
South Vietnam 16 miles (26 km) south of the
Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). The pre-dawn assault on the American
fire support base in the
Quang Tri Province, near
Cam Lo, lasted for 45 minutes; three South Vietnamese Army soldiers also died. Most of the dead were from the 2nd Battalion of the
501st Infantry Regiment.[42] The deaths marked the highest loss of American soldiers in a single day's action since 1968.[43]
The first wristwatch to use an
LED display, the
Pulsar watch, was introduced by the
Hamilton Watch Company with a demonstration on The Tonight Show. After being told that the Pulsar's retail price was $1,500 (equivalent to $9,970 in 2019),
Johnny Carson quipped, “The watch will tell you the exact moment you went bankrupt!”[44][45]
Yūichirō Miura of
Japan became "
The Man Who Skied Down Everest" (the title of a 1975 film) when he skied down the Lhotse face of
Mount Everest after starting from the South Col at an altitude of more than 24,000 feet (7,300 m).[46] Reaching a peak speed of 93.6 miles per hour (150.6 km/h) Miura covered a distance of 1.8 miles (2.9 km) in two minutes and 20 seconds, and used a parachute to slow to a stop at the end of his run.[47]
Died: Giovanni Giuriati, 83, Italian fascist politician who served as Minister of Public Works for Benito Mussolini and was President of Italy's Chamber of Deputies from 1929 to 1934
May 7, 1970 (Thursday)
Leadership of the west African nation of
Dahomey (now
Benin) was transferred to a civilian control by a three-man
presidential council, with the unusual feature of rotating the presidency for two-year terms among all three of the leading candidates in the
March election. In addition to rotating the job, each man had his own cabinet of ministers.[50] Souza picked former president
Hubert Maga to serve the first two years as chief executive, concluding that Maga would have won if the election had not been suspended.[51] After two years, Maga turned over the main presidency to former prime minister
Justin Ahomadégbé-Tomêtin with the former president
Sourou-Migan Apithy to serve the final two-years of the rotating presidency. Ahomadégbé served less than six months. Major
Mathieu Kérékou led a coup in 1972, deposing the presidential council and placing all three presidents under house arrest.[52]
The U.S.
Federal Communications Commission gave notice of the new
Prime Time Access Rule, to go into effect on September 1, 1971, restricting TV networks to only three hours of evening programming (from 8:00 to 11:00 pm) and allowing the network affiliates an extra half hour to air their own programming. At the time, the weeknight network prime time schedule began at 7:30 p.m. Eastern.[53]
One month after
The Beatles had officially broken up, their 12th and final album, Let It Be was released.[58][59]
The
New York Knicks won their first
National Basketball Association championship, defeating the
Los Angeles Lakers, 113–99, in Game 7 of the
championship series at New York's Madison Square Garden.[60][61][62] Despite tearing a muscle in his thigh muscle four days earlier,
Willis Reed chose to start the game for the Knicks and, with a shot of carbocaine and cortisone to help him endure severe pain, remained in until shortly before halftime, "inspiring his teammates merely with his presence on the court",[63] and
Walt Frazier scored 36 points. The Knicks led 69–42 at the half in a game which New York City residents could only watch on tape delay.
Jose Figueres Ferrer was inaugurated as the 36th
President of Costa Rica, in the fourth consecutive peaceful transition of power since the restoration of democracy in the Central American republic.[64] With the exception of two periods of military rule, Costa Rican presidents have been inaugurated on May 8 for four year terms since 1890.[65]
Born:
Naomi Klein, Canadian author and activist, known for the bestseller This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate; in
Montreal
Luis Enrique (Luis Enrique Martinez), Spanish soccer football manager of Spain's national team since 2018, and midfielder for Spain from 1991 to 2002; in
Gijón
Michael Bevan, Australian cricketer and batsman for Australia national team from 1992 to 2004; in
Belconnen, ACT
May 9, 1970 (Saturday)
Hours before a large anti-war protest began at
Washington, D.C., U.S. President Nixon surprised most of his Secret Service bodyguards and about eight demonstrators by walking in to the
Lincoln Memorial at 4:55 in the morning. The Associated Press described it as a "strange encounter, unique in recent political annals,"[66] which began after Nixon woke up his
valet,
Manolo Sanchez and asked him to come along on a visit. As word got around that the President was chatting with students, the group had increased to 50 by the time he left, and his parting words were "Go shout your slogans on
the Ellipse. Just keep it peaceful."[67] Later in the day, a crowd of about 100,000 demonstrated peacefully in the event organized by the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam.[68] in one of many anti-war protests that took place across the nation that day.
U.S. Vice President
Spiro Agnew traveled to
Atlanta for ceremonies to dedicate the
Confederate Memorial Carving at Georgia's
Stone Mountain Park.[69] Although a crowd of 100,000 had been expected by organizers, only 10,000 showed up, and the American vice president called for national unity by imploring the listeners to avoid what he called "the new slavery" which he described as "the willingness of some to become slaves to their passions, devoid of reason and individuality."[70]
A
transit of Mercury (the planet Mercury passing directly between the Sun and the Earth) took place. The Sun-Mercury-Earth alignment happens 13 times in a century and had last taken place on November 7, 1960; it would happen again on November 10, 1973.[71][72]
Died: Walter P. Reuther, 62, President of the
United Auto Workers since 1946, was killed in a plane crash, along with his wife and four other people.[73] Reuther's chartered Learjet had departed Detroit for
Pellston, Michigan, from which he was planning to travel to the UAW's new training facility at
Onaway. While making its approach to Pellston's airport in a rainstorm, the jet clipped a tree top and crashed in the woods about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) from the runway, killing all six people aboard.
U.S. Army Specialist Four
Leslie H. Sabo Jr., 22, was killed while protecting other members of his reconnaissance team at Se San in Cambodia. He would be nominated for the
Medal of Honor but, because the paperwork was misplaced for decades, would not be recognized until 2012.[77]
A tornado killed 26 people after it touched ground in downtown
Lubbock, Texas and then swept a path of destruction through the businesses and then into residential neighborhoods.[78] One twister brought a hailstorm at 8:30 p.m. local time, but the larger and more destructive tornado touched down at 19th Street and University Avenue at 9:35 just as sirens were sounding, and initially swept a path 1.5 miles (2.4 km) wide, damaging 15 square miles (39 km2) of the city of about 149,000 people.[79] A review after the storm showed that the first fatality was the collapse of a home at 10th Street and S Avenue, followed by eight people in a neighborhood along 4th Street.[80] More than 500 people were injured and the damage estimated at $250,000,000 ($1.66 billion in 2019). An estimated 80% of plate glass windows downtown were smashed, and severe damage and destruction included 430 houses; 600 apartments; 250 businesses; 10,000 motor vehicles and 119 aircraft.[79] The "
Fujita scale", which ranks wind speeds from F0 to F5, was developed from data gathered from the storm by Dr.
Ted Fujita of the
University of Chicago, who gave the tornado the first F5 rating.[79][81]
At Wrigley Field,
Ernie Banks of the
Chicago Cubs became only the ninth player in Major League Baseball history to hit at least 500 home runs. The 500th homer, made before 5,264 fans in the second inning of a 4–3 win over the
Atlanta Braves, also brought him the milestone of exactly 1,600
runs batted in[85] Banks, who had started his career in Negro league baseball with the
Kansas City Monarchs before joining the Cubs in 1953, would retire after the 1971 season and finish his career with 512 home runs.
Consisting of only 15 words,
United Nations Security Council Resolution 279 was passed unanimously by all 15 members, who were meeting in an emergency session. As a reporter noted at the time, "the council decided to debate later and act first after Spain introduced the shortest resolution on record: 'The Security Council demands the immediate withdrawal of all Israeli armed forces from Lebanese territory."[86][87]
The
International Olympic Committee chose
Montreal as the site for the
1976 Summer Olympics, after it appeared that
Moscow would receive the bid. On the first ballot, no bidder got the required 35 vote majority, but Moscow had 28, Montreal 24 and
Los Angeles 17, and the Soviet news agency TASS issued an erroneous bulletin celebrating Moscow as the victor. After the IOC narrowed the candidates to two, Montreal received 41 votes and Moscow 28. The
1976 Winter Olympics were awarded to
Denver, with the American city finishing ahead of Canada's
Vancouver;
Sion, Switzerland; and
Tampere in Finland.[88] Denver voters would reject funding for the games in a 1972 referendum, and the games would be held instead in the
Austrian city of
Innsbruck.
Trial began in
Düsseldorf,
West Germany, against
Franz Stangl for war crimes committed while he was the Commandant of the
Treblinka concentration camp during the Second World War.[90] Stangl had been arrested in Brazil on February 18, 1967, after being tracked down by Nazi-hunter
Simon Wiesenthal, who described him as third on his list of most wanted missing war criminals (after
Martin Bormann and
Heinrich Müller). On December 22, Strangl would be convicted of complicity in the murder of 400,000 Jews at Treblinka; the charges did not include those of an additional 450,000 people murdered during Stangl's earlier administration of the
Sobibor extermination camp. He would be sentenced to life imprisonment.[91] Stangl lived for only six more months after his seven-month long trial, and was found dead of a heart attack in his prison cell on June 28, 1971.[92][93]
Died: Bill Dobell, 70, Australian portrait and landscape artist
May 14, 1970 (Thursday)
West German terrorist
Andreas Baader escaped from incarceration after only 40 days in jail, the day after a permissive prison warden approved his request to be allowed to visit a library to do research "on a book on youthful criminals". Baader and his co-author,
Ulrike Meinhof, had signed a book contract. Guarded by two prison attendants, Baader was taken to West Berlin's Deutsches Zentralinstitut für Soziale Fragen (The German Central Institute for Social Questions), where Meinhof joined her friend in the reading room. A few minutes later, two additional women (later identified as Irene Goergens and Ingrid Schubert) forced their way into the reading room at gunpoint. During the gun battle that followed, the four conspirators escaped out a window and drove away.[94] The group created the
Red Army Faction, known commonly as "The Baader-Meinhof Gang". Although Baader and Meinhof would be arrested in 1972 and commit suicide in prison, the Red Army Faction would continue to commit crimes until 1998.
U.S. President Nixon signed a bill expanding the national school lunch program's coverage to 50% more students, providing a free (or reduced price) lunch for schoolchildren whose family income was below the poverty line ($3,968 for a family of four in 1970)
Weighted Average Poverty Thresholds for Families, 1960–2012. Lunch prices for eligible students could not exceed 20 cents (equivalent to $1.30 in 2019)[95]
Born: Daniel Lewin, American-born Israeli mathematician, internet entrepreneur and member of IDF special forces unit
Sayeret Matkal; in
Denver. Lewin is known for being the first casualty of
9/11, when he was stabbed to death on
American Airlines Flight 11 before it was hijacked and flown into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
Died: Billie Burke, 85, American stage, film, radio and TV actress, best known for portraying Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz
May 15, 1970 (Friday)
In the second day of demonstrations at the predominantly-black
Jackson State College in
Jackson, Mississippi, state law enforcement officers
rained gunfire on a college dormitory shortly after midnight, killing two students and injuring 12.[96] A group of 40 Mississippi State Police expended 150 rounds of ammunition in firing into the rooms at Alexander Hall women's residence and into the crowd of demonstrators, after claiming to have seen a
sniper at a window on the building's top floor, but no sniper was ever located.[97][98][99]
The 138th, and last, original episode of the TV spy spoof Get Smart was broadcast at 7:30 Eastern Time, bringing an end to the show after five seasons.[101]
Ronald de Boer, twin brother of Frank de Boer, Dutch soccer football midfielder with 67 appearances on the Netherlands national team; in
Hoorn
Rod Smith, American football wide receiver, inductee of College Football Hall of Fame, with 14 seasons for the NFL Denver Broncos; in
Texarkana, Arkansas
The first fatal injury ever sustained by a spectator at a
Major League Baseball game occurred when a 14-year old fan, Alan Fish, was struck by a foul ball while at
Dodger Stadium in
Los Angeles[102] Fish was sitting in the second row along the first base line and, in the third inning, a foul ball hit by
Manny Mota struck him in the head. After getting treated at the stadium's first aid station, Fish returned to his seat to watch the remainder of the Dodgers' 5–4 loss to the Giants. As his headaches got worse, he was admitted to the children's hospital and lapsed into a coma the next day, and died four days after being struck.[103]
Thor Heyerdahl and his crew of seven men and a monkey departed from the harbor at
Safi, Morocco on Heyerdahl's 8-ton boat made of
papyrus, the Ra II, in an attempt to prove that the ancient
Egyptians could have crossed the
Atlantic Ocean more than 5,000 years before the voyage of Christopher Columbus.[104] In 1947, Heyerdahl had become famous for the successful
Kon-Tiki expedition, sailing a raft of balsa logs across the Pacific Ocean, but in 1969, his first Ra expedition failed the papyrus boat became water-logged less than two months later. Heyerdahl's second voyage, of about 4,000 miles (6,400 km) reached
Barbados on July 12, 1970.[105][106]
Died: Heinz Hartmann, 75, Austrian-born American psychoanalyst
May 18, 1970 (Monday)
In
Minneapolis,
Minnesota a senior deputy clerk of
Hennepin County District Court, administered oaths to
Michael McConnell and Jack Baker after taking down their information on an application for a
marriage license. Baker, a law student at the
University of Minnesota, had determined that since state law did not prohibit a marriage between people of the same gender, he and his partner would have the same rights as a man and a woman. The deputy clerk, Robert Anderson, had the gentlemen swear that the information on the license application was true, and advised that his office would consult Hennepin County attorney for advice whether the license to wed could be issued.[109] Hennepin County Attorney George M. Scott recommended on May 22 that the license be denied and, referring to a law requiring a marriage license to be issued in the county in which the woman resides, and a 1949 case noting that it was the duty of the state to guard marriage "in the conservation of public morals". To permit two males to marry, Scott concluded, would "result in an undermining and destruction of the entire legal concept of our family structure in all areas of law."[110] District court clerk Gerald R. Nelson stated that he would abide by Scott's recommendation and deny the license[111] In 1971, McConnell and Baker were granted a license in
Blue Earth County, Minnesota and a marriage ceremony was performed; though challenged, it was never invalidated.[112]
Eleven missing fishermen from
Cuba were found on
William Island, an uninhabited isle, by a search plane from the
Bahamas.[114] A week earlier, the men had been rescued, and then held captive, by the militant Cuban exile group
Alpha 66. After the Cuban government refused Alpha 66's proposal to release the fishermen in return for the release of Alpha 66 guerrillas captured on April 17, the militants freed their hostages on the small
islet, located a mile from the rocky western side of the largest of the Bahamian islands,
Andros.
Born: Tina Fey, American comedian and actress known as creator of 30 Rock and as head writer for Saturday Night Live; as Elizabeth Stamatina Fey in
Upper Darby Township, Pennsylvania
May 19, 1970 (Tuesday)
The
"Bikini alert state" system was first used within the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence to indicate the level of a threat to UK national security.[115] The system is analogous to the
DEFCON indication of defense readiness condition used by the United States Department of Defense, but uses five colors rather than numbers.
"
Barbapapa", a best-selling children's book series and television cartoon in France and other European nations (and in nations in Africa where French is an official language), was created by French architect Annette Tison and her American partner, Talus Taylor at a restaurant in
Paris.[116] Tison and Taylor would later say that the name for the title character had been inspired by a child who had asked his parents to buy him “barbe-à-papa” (
cotton candy) at a store in the
Luxembourg Gardens.
Died: Ray Schalk, 77, American baseball player and catcher, inductee to the Baseball Hall of Fame
May 20, 1970 (Wednesday)
John W. McCormack, the U.S. Speaker of the House Representatives, announced that he would not run for re-election and would retire after 42 years as a Massachusetts congressman.[117] McCormack, first elected in 1928, had been elected Speaker after the 1961 death of
Sam Rayburn. House Majority Leader
Carl Albert of Oklahoma was considered by the press to be the likely successor if the Democratic Party retained control of the House in the 1970 elections.
At a session in
Belize City, the legislature of the colony of
British Honduras (now
Belize) voted to approve the name "
Belmopan" for the new capital located at the former logging center of Roaring Creek.[118] "Belmopan" was a
portmanteau for Belize and for the
Mopan people, the Mayan tribe indigenous to the area.
Nearly two weeks after the "
Hard Hat Riot" broke up an anti-war student protest at New York's City Hall Park, a pro-war rally attracted 150,000 people to the same location, with a crowd that included
blue collar workers and union members who supported the Nixon administration's policies in the
Vietnam War.[119]
Chinese Communist Party Chairman
Mao Zedong, the de facto leader of the
People's Republic of China, issued a statement to his people for the first time in five years, with
Radio Peking delivering the word to listeners nationwide. Urging Chinese citizens to work together "to defeat U.S.
imperialism" in Vietnam and Cambodia, Mao's statement declared, “People of the world, unite and defeat the U.S. aggressors and all their
running dogs!” Mao went on to say that "[U.S. President] Nixon's fascist atrocities have kindled the raging flames of the revolutionary mass movement" and added that "The Chinese people firmly support the revolutionary struggle of the American people", predicting that "the fascist rule in the United States will inevitably be defeated."[120] Mao's statement was read aloud the next morning to an anti-U.S. rally that brought 500,000 loyal supporters to
Tiananmen Square in
Beijing.
The African nation of
Sudan adopted
a new flag in advance of the first anniversary of
Gaafar Nimeiry's "May Revolution" that brought him to power in 1969, and in time for the hosting of President Nasser of Egypt and President Gaddafi of Libya to discuss Arab unity. The new flag incorporated the four
Pan-Arab colors (green, red, white and black).[121]
Based on a computer simulation in 2010 of the flight data from
Apollo 13, an analyst has determined that if the ill-fated mission had failed to return to Earth following the April 13 explosion of one of its oxygen tanks, the spacecraft would have returned to Earth orbit after drifting for five weeks, traveling 350,000 miles (560,000 km) away from the Earth before its path brought it close enough to the Moon's gravitational field to propel it back toward Earth. According to the simulation by Analytical Graphics, Apollo 13 would have re-entered the Earth's atmosphere on May 20 and would have been incinerated. Previous predictions had been that the Apollo 13 astronauts would have missed the Earth by 40,000 miles (64,000 km) and drifted in space indefinitely.[122]
Born: Louis Theroux, Singapore-born British-American journalist and BBC documentary producer; in
Singapore[123]
May 21, 1970 (Thursday)
Willi Stoph, the head of government of
East Germany, became the first East German leader to travel to
West Germany.[124] Under tight security, Stoph, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, met with West German Chancellor
Willy Brandt, two months after Brandt had visited him at
Erfurt on March 19. Even with the presence of several hundred West German police, a crowd of about 6,000 protesters blocked Stoph from a ceremony to lay a wreath at Kassel's memorial to the victims of Nazi fascism.
Brody Stevens, American stand-up comedian and Comedy Central host; in
Los Angeles (committed suicide, 2019)
Died: Joseph Wood Krutch, 76, American theater critic and conservationist
May 23, 1970 (Saturday)
The 120-year old
Britannia Bridge, an historic landmark that connected the
Welsh island of
Anglesey to the British mainland, was heavily damaged and rendered impassable by
when two teenagers accidentally set it afire.[127][128] The
tubular bridge across the
Menai Strait had been built by structural engineer
Robert Stephenson and had carried rail traffic since 1850. Although the island's 57,000 residents could still drive across the strait on the Menai Suspension Bridge, the primary source of Anglesey's economy—the use of the port of
Holyhead to transport cargoes between the United Kingdom and Ireland—was shut down by the loss of the railroad.[129] A reconstructed bridge would finally open to rail traffic on January 30, 1972, after
British Rail's spending of £3,250,000,[130] equivalent to GBP £49,858,000 or US$61,000,000 in 2019.[131]
The
drilling of the
Kola Superdeep Borehole began in the
Soviet Union, at a research station above the Arctic Circle outside of the town of
Zapolyarny in Russia's
Murmansk Oblast. After their initial success, the Soviets revealed the plan a year later.[132] By the time of the project's halting in 1994, the drilling had reached a depth of 40,230 feet (12,260 m), or 7.618 miles below the Earth's surface. The borehole itself is only 9 inches (230 mm) in diameter. At that depth, however, the temperature was 356 °F (180 °C), far higher than predicted, and the drilling columns had broken, making further drilling impractical.[133]
Born: Jeff Zgonina, American football defensive tackle with 17 seasons for seven NFL teams; in
Chicago
May 25, 1970 (Monday)
The first sale of a programmable
desktop computer was made when the
Computer Terminal Corporation (CTC) sold 40 of its
Datapoint 2200 computers to the
General Mills Company of Minnesota.[134] The original Datapoint had eight
kilobytes (8K) of internal memory and its data could be stored on cassette tapes that could hold 130 KB capacity. Most of the machines were leased to buyers at a cost of $168 per month for each unit (equivalent to $1,100 per month in 2019), or sold for $1,280 ($8,500 equivalent) apiece.
More than two weeks after the New York Knicks defeated the Los Angeles Lakers to win the NBA championship, the
Indiana Pacers defeated the
Los Angeles Stars (described in the L. A. Times as "the orphans of pro basketball"[135]) in Game 6 to win their first
American Basketball Association title. The Pacers'
Roger Brown, who never played in the NBA but would later be inducted into the
Basketball Hall of Fame, scored 45 points on seven 3-point shots and 11 regular baskets, for a 111 to 107 win before a crowd of 8,233— the most fans to ever see the Stars play in Los Angeles.
George Stone, whose pro career was limited to the ABA, was the high scorer for the Stars, who moved to Salt Lake City for the 1970-71 ABA season to become the Utah Stars.
Two days before its conclusion, the
1970 London to Mexico World Cup Rally auto race suffered a fatality when driver
Henri "Ido" Marang, was killed, and his co-driver
Paul Coltelloni was seriously injured. Marang and Coltelloni had completed about 14,000 miles (23,000 km) of a 16,000-mile (26,000 km) journey and were in last place among 26 vehicles. Marang was driving his Citroën at high speed near
Penonomé in
Panama when a businessman pulled his car out in front of them.[136]
In the
Soviet Union, the
Tupolev Tu-144 became the first airplane designed for passenger transport to exceed
Mach 2.[137] At an altitude of more than 10 miles (16 km), where the
speed of sound is less than the 767 miles per hour (1,234 km/h) at sea level, the
Tupolev Tu-144 reached a speed of 1,336.5 miles per hour (2,150.9 km/h). "No passenger plane in the world has ever flown at such a speed," the Soviet news agency
TASS wrote in its press release about the supersonic jet, flown by test pilot Eduard Yelyan.[138]
Nobuhiro Watsuki, Japanese manga artist known for the popular Rurouni Kenshin series; in
Tokyo
Died: R. V. C. Bodley, 78, English army officer, anthropologist and journalist
May 27, 1970 (Wednesday)
Despite predictions for a close vote,[139] in
parliamentary elections in Ceylon (now
Sri Lanka), the result was an overwhelming loss of seats for the ruling
United National Party (UNP) and Prime Minister
Dudley Senanayake. The
Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SFLP) gained 50 seats, while the UNP lost 49. Having gone from having a 66 to 41 advantage, to having only 17 seats in the 151 seat House of Representatives, Senanayake resigned the next day.[140] SFLP leader and former prime minister
Sirimavo Bandaranaike, whose party had a 91-seat majority in the House, resumed her leadership of the government the day after.[141]
Two British mountain climbers, Don Whillans and Dougal Haston, became the first people to scale the south face of
Annapurna I, reaching top of the 26,504 ft (8,078 m) peak as part of an 11-man British expedition team.[142] The first people to reach Annapurna-1, Maurice Herzog and Luis Lachhenal of France, had ascended by way of the less difficult north face route in 1950.
Driving a
Ford of Britain Escort, the team of Finland's
Hannu Mikkola and Sweden's
Gunnar Palm won the
World Cup Rally.[143][144] Mikkola and Palm had been sponsored by the London tabloid The Daily Telegraph and arrived at the finish line in
Mexico City, 38 days after 96 vehicles had departed London for a distance of 16,000 miles (26,000 km). With transit assisted by ferry boats, the vehicles raced through Europe and then through South America and Central America to reach their destination. Only 26 of the 96 starters finished the race.[145]
Born:
Bianka Panova, Bulgarian gymnast and gold medalist in three women's world championships; in
Sofia
The
National University of Malaysia (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia or UKM) held its first classes, with 192 undergraduate students at a temporary campus in
Kuala Lumpur. By 2016, it would be ranked as one of the highest-ranked research universities in the world by Times Higher Education and have almost 27,000 students (approximately 13,000 undergraduates and 14,000 graduate students) at its main campus at
Bandar Baru Bangi.[146]
The
National League of POW/MIA Families was incorporated by a group of wives of American servicemen who were listed as
prisoners of war or
missing in action in the
Vietnam War. The emblem of the organization, the
POW/MIA flag, adopted in January 1972, continues to be flown at public locations. After the war, more than 1,600 servicemen were still listed as missing in action by the United States Department of Defense.[147]
Born: Glenn Quinn, Irish-born television actor known for Roseanne and for Angel; in
Dublin (died of heroin overdose, 2002)
Died: Bishop
Iuliu Hossu, 85, Romanian Catholic cleric and
Bishop of Cluj-Gherla since 1917; detained by Romania's Communist government since 1948, Hossu had been released from prison in 1955 and kept under house arrest.
May 29, 1970 (Friday)
A former
President of Argentina,
Pedro Aramburu, was kidnapped from his
Buenos Aires apartment by two men wearing military uniforms.[148] Aramburu, who had been president from 1955 to 1958, was normally guarded by police, but voluntarily left with the men on the pretext that he was asked to travel with them to Argentina's army command headquarters "for security reasons". The kidnappers, who were members of the
Montoneros anti-government group, murdered the former president three days later.
Six people, all but one of them the occupants of a car that was "in the wrong place at the wrong time" were killed when a chartered
Martin 4-0-4 airliner lost power shortly after takeoff from
Atlanta's
DeKalb–Peachtree Airport and crashed on to the east bound lanes of
Interstate 285 east of the
Moreland Avenue bridge.[153][154] One passenger on the plane, which was transporting prospective home buyers from the Atlanta area to the Lehigh Acres Subdivision in
Fort Myers, Florida, was killed. The dead in the car were a family of four two parents and two children, and another child who were on their way to a picnic.[155] The accident was traced to the airport by a ground crew, who mistakenly filled the propeller plane's tanks with
jet fuel.[156]
Around 9:30am on May 30, 1970, Edward Graves was killed when his liquid oxygen delivery truck exploded while he was making a delivery to Victory Memorial Hospital in
Bay Ridge, New York. “It ripped the truck apart, shattered scores of windows in the 117‐bed hospital and surrounding buildings,” the Times reported, “and ignited propane in a shack on an adjacent construction site, killing a plumber in the construction shack, Steve Pascale. Thirty patients and 10 other people were injured by flying glass.
Died:
Ian Clough, 32, British mountaineer, was killed by falling ice while descending the
Annapurna Massif, three days after his British expedition team had conquered the South Face of Annapurna-1. Clough had descended to 17,800 feet (5,400 m) from the 26,504 foot peak as the expedition made its way back down.[157]
Cheng Chin-ho (鄭金河), Chiang Ping-hsing (江炳興), Chen Liang (陳良), Chan Tien-tseng (詹天增) and Hsieh Tung-jung (謝東榮), five prisoners convicted of being the leader of the
Taiyuan Prison Rebellion in February, were executed. In later years, they would be commemorated as the "Taiyuan Prison Martyrs" by advocates of the
Taiwan independence movement against the government composed mainly of former government officials who had fled mainland China after the Communist revolution in 1949.[158]
May 31, 1970 (Sunday)
A 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck Peru at 3:23 in the afternoon local time (20:23 UTC), triggering avalanches in the Andes Mountains that killed tens of thousands of people. The official death toll was 66,794.[159] although later estimates were that 74,000 died and 25,600 were missing.[160] Most of the casualties were residents of towns in northern Peru's
Ancashdepartamento, particularly the
Yungay Province. The villages of
Yungay and
Ranrahirca were completely buried, while the city of
Huaraz saw 80% of its buildings destroyed.[161] Only 50 of the 1,850 residents of Ranrahirca (which had rebuilt after being buried in a quake on January 10, 1962) survived, and only 3,000 of Yungay's 19,000 people lived,[161] after both towns were buried beneath ice, rock and mud that rushed down
Mount Huascarán.[162] The nearby city of
Huaraz suffered 10,000 deaths, and 2,000 died in the city of
Chimbote[163] More people would have died in Yungay had it not been for a
circus that was taking place on higher ground outside of the town.[164]
Opening ceremonies were held to begin the
1970 FIFA World Cup in
Mexico.[165] The opener was a 0–0 tie between the host nation and its Group 1 rival, the team of the Soviet Union.[166] Sixteen teams qualified and played over the next three weeks, with the final held on June 21.
Died: Terry Sawchuk, 40, Canadian NHL goaltender since 1949 and
Hockey Hall of Fame member, died from injuries sustained in an April 29 fight with his
New York Rangers teammate,
Ron Stewart.[167] Before he had lost consciousness, Sawchuk told his physician that he blamed himself for starting the fight.[168]
References
^Henry Kissinger, Ending the Vietnam War: A History of America's Involvement in and Extrication from the Vietnam War (Simon and Schuster, 2003) p163
^"Nixon Stuns U.S. in Cambodia Thrust; 8,000 Yanks Sweep Across Border", Wilmington (DE) Evening Journal, May 1, 1970, p1
^"End Sectional Slavery, Subdued Agnew Pleads— Only 10,000 Attend Rites At Mountain", by Don Winter and Peter Scott, Atlanta Constitution, May 10, 1970, p1
^"Mercury to Pass Across Sun", Dayton (O.) Daily News, May 8, 1970, p39
^"Transit of Mercury Scheduled", Chicago Tribune, May 9, 1970, p3
^"Reuther, Wife, 4 Others Die In Jet Crash", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 10, 1970, p1