Leaks in the dam started at 7:30 am and increased over a two hour period. Crews were sent to repair the dam but by noon the earthen dam was beyond repair and collapsed.
Belfast pubs were bombed as part of ongoing IRA and UVF campaigns.
Last edition:
Showing posts with label 1970s. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1970s. Show all posts
Friday, June 5, 2026
Monday, June 1, 2026
Tuesday, June 1, 1976. End of the Cod Wars.
The UK and Iceland came to an agreement ending the Cod Wars.
Last edition:
Monday, May 31, 1976. Syria invades Lebanon.
Labels: 1970s, 1976, Cod Wars, East Timor, Growing up in the 1970s, Lebanese Army, Lebanese Front, Lebanon, Palestinian Liberation Organization, Syria, Syrian Army, Syrian invasion of Lebanon, Teenagers
Sunday, May 31, 2026
Monday, May 31, 1976. Syria invades Lebanon.
It was Memorial Day for 1976.
Indeed, it's probably just a trick of the calendar and memory, but this year's Memorial Day seemed freakishly early to me. We probably went fishing.
I was a newly minted teenager as of a few days prior.
Syria invaded Lebanon, occupying part of the country until 2005. In the weird way that history works, the first column which was targeting Sidon was stopped by the PLO, a second by the Lebanese Army, and a third column by Christian militias.
That says something about how crappy the Syrian Army was, and frankly always was. They endured huge casualties.
The goal was to annex Lebanon into Syria. They'd never achieve a full occupation of the country, but they would over time expand the amount of territory they were occupying.
The Indonesian installed "People's Assembly of East Timor" voted unanimously in favor of the "Act of Integration" to make East Timor Indonesia's 27th province.
The UK and Iceland entered into negotiations to end the Cod Wars.
Last edition:
Thursday, May 20, 1976. Kleptocracy.
Labels: 1960s, 1967, 1970s, 1976, baseball, Congo, Disaster, Expo 67, Kleptocracy, Personalities, Quebec (Montreal), The Second Trump Administration, Zaire
Wednesday, May 20, 2026
Thursday, May 20, 1976. Kleptocracy.
The President of Zaire Mobutu Sese Seko endorsed kleptocracy, the practice of public officials stealing tax money for personal use, in a speech at a stadium before 70,000 people and millions of listeners, noting that he himself "personally spent on average more than 35 percent of the national budget on himself" during the 1970s and 1980s.
He warned; "If you want to steal, steal in a nice way, but if you steal too much to become rich overnight you will soon be caught."
He was eventually overthrown and died in exile at age 66.
This sort of open corruption used to be pretty much a third world thing, and I guess it still is in some ways. Now, of course, we're seeing corruption of a different type, but rivaling, or exceeding it, in the United States, which pretty much informs the world of what we now are.
The acrylic bubble of the Montreal Biosphere, designed by Buckminster Fuller for Expo 67, was destroyed by a fire during remodeling.
It was rebuilt, but without the transparent panels, and reopened in 1990.
Baseball great Ramón Hernández was born in Venezuela.
Last edition:
Friday, May 7, 1976. Jacelyne Khoueiry at Martyrs' Square.
Saturday, May 16, 2026
Women Wearing Hair Scarves in the 1940s & 1950s
When I was young I recall my mother commonly doing this, which would have been in the 60s and 70s.
Women Wearing Hair Scarves in the 1940s & 1950s
Friday, May 8, 2026
Thursday, May 7, 2026
Friday, May 7, 1976. Jacelyne Khoueiry at Martyrs' Square.
Maronite Catholic Jacelyne Khoueiry and six other Lebanese Christian women defended a building in Martyrs' Square in Beirut from an attack by 300 Palestine Liberation Organization fighter.
Khouneiry would go on to command a female Christian unit of 1,500 members before laying down her arms in 1986. She'd go on to found charitable and prolife organizations and participated in a 2012 synod on the Middle East and the 2014 Third Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops. She was appointed to the Pontifical Council for the Laity.
Last edition:
Friday, April 30, 1976. The end of the Greek Language Question.
Labels: 1970s, 1976, 2000s, 2006, boxing, Cod Wars, fishing, Greece, Greek, Health, Iceland, Icelandic Coast Guard, languages, Mental Health, Third Cod War
Thursday, April 30, 2026
Friday, April 30, 1976. The end of the Greek Language Question.
The Greek Parliament decided that the official language of Greece would be Demotic Greek, "Demotiki", the modern colloquial form of the Greek language, rather than "Katharevousa" an updated version of Ancient Greek. The latter had been the official form.
The Greek language question (γλωσσικό ζήτημα) had been going on since the 19th Century.
The British fishing trawler Arctic Corsair rammed the Icelandic Coat Guard vessel ICGV Óðinn.
The ship continued to serve until 2006, and appears as a US vessel in Flags of our Fathers. It's presently a museum ship.
Muhammed Ali barely clung on to his heavyweight title in a fight against Jimmy Young in Landover, Maryland.
Both boxers health declined enormously after their boxing careers, due to their boxing careers. Young died at age 56.
Last edition:
Sunday, April 25, 1976. Saving the flag.
Saturday, April 25, 2026
Sunday, April 25, 1976. Saving the flag.
Chicago Cubs baseball player and Marine Corps Reserve veteran Rick Monday noticed two protesters trying to burn an American flag in the outfield during a game at Dodger Stadium and snatched the flag from them.
Portugal's constitution proclaimed socialism to be a national goal.
A mass prison outbreak occurred in Laos.
Last edition:
Monday, April 5, 1976. "April 5, 1976: The Soiling of Old Glory"
Thursday, April 16, 2026
A Fossil Fuel Free Future is Here.
This was obvious, but will remain unrecognized for quite some time, for the same reason that coal is almost dead, but people don't grasp it.
Average people's ability to really grasp an existential change in something is pretty poor as a rule. It's not so much that people choose to live in the past as it is that they have no grasp that the past of their younger lives and of their parents lives, the latter of which a lot of people hold to in a sort of mythical way, evolves. We see that a lot in the U.S. right now.
The entire imaginary economy of Donald Trump is one that's grounded in a mythical 1970s, when he was young and clubbing and men lusting after girls in their teens was basically okay, du e to the sexual revolution. MAGA, for its part, imagines a mythical 1950s economy, not understanding why the economy of the 1950s was the way it was. In both instances, and particularly in regard to the 1970s economy, things were not as rosy as imagined.
Coal has been dying ever since the Royal Navy went to oil for ships. We've discussed that before here:
Coal: Understanding the time line of an industry
Labels: boats and ships, British Navy, Coal, Daily Living, Industry, Lodging, Mid-Week at Work, Petroleum, Railroads, Transportation, U.S. Navy, United States Fuel Administration
Coal is not coming back. In fact, it's demise is accelerating. Lot of the globe, including China, in spite of what a demented Donald Trump thinks, is racing towards renewables. Trump can't really imagine it as he's 80 years old and in the 70s there weren't very many big windmills, although even then there was a push towards renewable power.
Indeed, that push was started by the Arab Oil Embargo and people have been working on the technology ever since. Now renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels for power generation. Only nuclear can compete.
Every since the 70s engineers have been working on electric vehicles as well. Their day has arrived.
And Donald Trump started a war that will accelerate the pace of this change, rapidly. Trump might end up being recalled as the greenest President ever, accidentally.
The change just won't be a switch to clean electrical power, and that switch is rapidly coming and no amount of John Barrasso and Harriet Hageman calling for the mythical "clean coal" will stop it. It's also going to be a switch away from the sort of vehicle based economy we have now. People aren't going to stop owning cars, but already a younger generation really isn't all that enamored with them. Self driving vehicles, as much as I hate the idea, are coming in. With them will come self driving semi tractors and more importantly, in my view, remotely driven electric trains.
There's no reason that railroads can't be controlled like giant model train layouts. Model trains already provide the model for it. We're not far from that day.
That day is coming now whether Donald Trump, Harriet Hageman, John Barrasso, or people with an emotional tie to fossil fuels like it or not. Your livelihood depending on it won't matter either.
It's already happening.
Sunday, April 5, 2026
Tuesday, March 31, 2026
Wednesday, March 31, 1976. Karen Ann Quinlan.
The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that Karen Ann Quinlan, suffering from irreversible brain damage, could be disconnected from the ventilator that had been keeping her alive since April 15, 1975. She had been found unresponsive after she consumed Valium along with alcohol while on a crash diet and lapsed into a coma. A Catholic, her parents had appealed to Catholic moral theology arguing that extraordinary means not be required to preserve her life.
She'd live for an additional nine years.
She had been trying to lose weight to fit into a bikini.
This is one of those events I can personally recall. It was a major news story at the time.
The UN Security Council found South Africa liable for an act of aggression against Angola, a fairly dubious Security Council conviction given that what South Africa really did is intervene in a civil war that other powers were likewise involved in.
The slam dunk was restored as a legal college basketball feature.
Last edition:
Wednesday, March 24, 1976. Passing of Field Marshal Montgomery.
Tuesday, March 24, 2026
Wednesday, March 24, 1976. Passing of Field Marshal Montgomery.
Bernard Law Montgomery died at age 88.
Of Scots Irish descent, he was born in Kennington, England to a Church of Ireland cleric and grew up principally in Australia when his father was appointed Bishop of Tasmania. He was commissioned an Army officer in 1908. He became a British Field Marshall during World War Two and is justifiably famous. He was deputy commander of NATO until 1958, when he retired at age 70.
Isabel Peron was deposed.
Last edition:
Tuesday, March 16, 1976. Wilson resigns at the point where Trump should have.
Saturday, March 21, 2026
Monday, March 16, 2026
Tuesday, March 16, 1976. Wilson resigns at the point where Trump should have.
Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced his retirement at age 60 due to what he knew was advancing dementia, although, in those years before this was as understood as well as it currently is, he cited physical and mental exhaustion. He would die in 1995, although his dementia never took fully hold.
The more power to him. Right now, in the United States, we have a demented President in a family with a history of dementia, who is sending people off to war based on his feelings. History will not forgive us for putting up with this.
John Thune, in the Senate, is too old for his job.
John Barrasso, in the Senate, is 73, way too old for his job.
And the people who will die in the current war can take no comfort in that, as Congress is composed, on the Republican side of abject cowards.
Last edition:
Tuesday, February 17, 1976. The ABA starts its descent. Abuna Theophilos, Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, arrested.
Saturday, March 16, 1946. Route 66. George Mikan turns pro.
Route 66 was recorded for the first time, the introductory edition of the Bobby Troup work by Nat King Cole.
Troup was a songwriter and actor, married to actress Julie London
He was also a graduate of Wharton, which produced the unfortunate Trump and Gray, but that's another matter. He served in the Marine Corps in World War Two, by which time he was already a songwriter. The war did not really interrupt his songwriting.
Route 66 was an absolute masterpiece, and has been recorded an innumerable number of times, and was even used for the basis of a television series that ran from 1960 to 1964.
In some very real ways, Route 66 symbolized the post war world and its sense of youth, indicability, and automotive freedom.
Route 66 itself was one of the original U.S. Highways of the United States Numbered Highway System. It was established on November 11, 1926, with road signs erected the following year. It became a huge factor in Depression Era migration to California, which makes the way its nostaglically remembered somewhat ironic, but as
College basketball player George Mikan, who was hugely popular turned pro.
He was a great player, and notably played with glasses. He struggled with diabetes in his final years, which focused attention on the plight of pre big money players.
He died in 2005 at age 80, a basketball great.
The Rocky Mountain News focused again on gambling.
An intersting service was being offered:
A tryst with a German Madchen went rather poorly.
To popular one panel cartoons of the day:
Last edition:
Friday, March 15, 1946. Soviets in Iran.
Labels: 1930s, 1940s, 1946, Harry S. Truman, Iran, Nazi Germany, Propaganda, Radio, Skiing, United States, USSR, World War Two
Tuesday, February 17, 2026
Tuesday, February 17, 1976. The ABA starts its descent. Abuna Theophilos, Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, arrested.
The American Bar Association (ABA) voted to amend its rules of ethics to allow lawyers to advertise their services. Initially, the ABA approved letting attorneys buy display ads in telephone directories (specifically, the "Yellow Pages" for business phone numbers), with limitations on what could be allowed in the ad.
It's been an absolute disaster.
I used to be a member of the ABA, which does provide some good services, but I ultimately dropped out as it truly had some "woke" sections to it that had little to do with reality.
Abuna Theophilos, Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, was removed from office by Ethiopia's military rulers and imprisoned. He'd be murdered on August 14, 1979.
During his captivity he escaped on one occasion and thought about seeking refuge in the Greek Embassy. He decided instead to head for a monastery, but was captured en route.
The Clark National Forest and the Mark Twain National Forest, both in Missouri. were merged into one unit.
Last edition:
Blog Mirror: February 9, 1976: "Taxi Driver" Premieres
Labels: 1940s, 1960s, 1961, 1969, 1970s, 1976, 1976 at the Movies, 1980s, 1981, Blog Mirror, Movies, New York, Uncle Mike
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