Pierre E. Trudeau announced that he would step down as Prime Minister of Canada following a 109 to 109 tie between the Liberal Party and the Progressive Conservatives. The New Democrats would have thrown their 30 seats in with the Liberals, which Trudeau knew at the time.
The American Indian Movement took over the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C. The organization had been formed in 1968.
So stated Henry Kissinger publicly, and just eleven days prior to the 1972 Presidential Election.
Nixon did not approve as he felt that Kissinger was hogging the limelight through the announcement, however Kissinger noted that the North Vietnamese had already published the text of the draft agreement.
Unbeknownst to the public, neither Nixon or Kissinger believed that the Republic of Vietnam had any chance of holding out long term against North Vietnam, and they were putting heavy pressure on the South Vietnamese, who had little faith in their abilities themselves to cooperate.
Igor Sikorsky, aviation giant and developer of helicopters, died on this day at age 83.
Sikorsky was born in Kyiv to Russian parents. His father was an internationally known psychiatrist and his mother a physician, meaning he was born into an unusual family for the era. He was drawn to aviation very early in his life and studied in Paris. He worked in Paris during World War One and did not return to Russia due to the Russian Revolution, immigrating to the United States in 1919. His first wife accordingly divorced him, as she remained in Russia with their daughter.
Sikorsky's pioneering work in helicopters would end up being of enormous benefit to his adopted country, and his company still is a leader in heavy helicopters.
Jackie Robinson died on this day in 1972.
He was only 53 years old when he died of a heart attack, a condition brought on by diabetes and heart disease.
Silent screen actress Clair Windsor, whose career bridged into sound, died at age 80.
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat conveyed a council of war in which he announced plans to launch a limited war against Israel.
Field Marshal Sadeq, had not reported to the Supreme Council what the purpose of the meeting was to be, and even though he was ordered to prepare a plan of war by October 1, he was fired a few days later.
The Japanese crime syndicate the Yakuza divided its operations into territories, thereby ending years of inter gang strife.
.svg.png)
Congress overwhelmingly overrode Richard Nixon's veto to pass the Clean Water Act. The Senate voted 52–12 for an override, and the House 247–23.
It was clearly a different era. It's almost impossible to imagine the GOP supporting the act today, and the television "news" would be full of vindictive comments.
The public had been mobilized by Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring, back in the day when it still could sit and read a book, and the 70s saw a host of environmental legislation pass. As the ABA has noted:
The 1970s was a seminal decade for environmental protection. Its first year saw three major accomplishments: the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Clean Air Act, and the creation of the EPA. NEPA alone was groundbreaking
All of which is an understatement. And that text omitted the Endangered Species Act.
The counter reaction set in soon, and already by the mid 1970s there were those who urged the repeal of nearly everything that had been passed, although it never occurred. What has occurred, however, is that an increasingly polarized public, fed slop by such things as "news" outlets that cater only to a person's preformed views, and loud voices on Twitter and Facebook, have made listening to unpleasant scientific news a political act that can be disregarded if it conflicts with a person's preformed views. This reflects a wider crisis in the culture on political issues, that are similarly fed, which is rapidly making the United States nearly ungovernable
On the same day, the USSR agreed to pay the United States $722,000,000 over 30 years for repayment for Lend Lease. The Soviets reneged the following year, but started again, with a reduced amount, under Gorbachev. They paid until 2006, with payments of the renewed obligation having been scheduled to run through 2030. In 06, however, the Russians paid in full and retired the debt. About that same time, the United Kingdom did as well.
ZZ Top preformed at Brannen's Tobacco Warehouse in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
A giant brawl, characterized by the Navy as a race riot, broke out on the USS Kitty Hawk. The event had to be subdued by the Marines.
The incident, which happened off of the Vietnamese coast, was emblematic of the increasing disintegration of the late Vietnam War military, something forgotten in the "thank you for your service" era we live in today. Some elements of the U.S. Army were effectively combat ineffective by this time due to moral reasons, and the chaos had spread to the Navy. As part of the overall picture in the military in general, racial tension has become high in an era which saw the first large scale incorporation of black servicemen service wide, even though integration of the services had commenced in 1948. The generally poorer education of African Americans contributed to that, as they were assigned to less desirable military duties.
The Navy had traditionally been almost all white up until this time, save for certain positions like mess stewards that had been assigned to racial minorities. While this very much changed during the Vietnam War, the Kitty Hawk itself only had a 7% African American population. It was nonetheless tense as the volunteer African American sailors sought to break color boundaries. Added to this, the Navy had dropped recruiting standards during the very late Vietnam War as the risk of being drafted decreased and the military fell into disdain. Part of this saw an effort to recruit sailors for career training purposes, but this had the accidental impact of recruiting those who had been educationally disadvantaged. This dropped the overall effectiveness of the Navy's junior enlisted ranks.
The Kitty Hawk had been experiencing rising racial tensions for weeks. On this day, black Airman Apprentice Terry Avinger went to the mess deck and requested two sandwiches, which a white mess cook refused to give him. Avinger reached across the food line and took a second one, which resulted in a shouting match which rapidly escalated. Avinger reported the situation to his bunkmates and urged reprisals which resulted in an African American violent reaction. Ultimately, the Marines intervened and restored a sense of calm, but the matter was not defused until African American/Native American XO Ben Cloud intervened and talked the rioters down. Prior to this, the Marine Corps detachment, which was commanded by a black officer, was prepared to simply storm the quarters occupied by the rioters. This ended Cloud's carrier, perhaps in part as he thought it prudent to give the Black Power Salute to the rioting party to show his unity with their complaints. With that, the ship returned to war duty.
Six weeks later, twenty-seven black sailors were arrested and charged with due to the incident, twenty-one of whom requested trials. No white sailors were arrested. Cloud testified in the trial that the Marines had acted to enforce orders to break up parties of three or more sailors only on black sailors.
Four sailors were convicted of rioting. Fourteen were convicted of assault. Four were found not guilty of all charges. Five sailors had the charges against them dropped.
It's sometimes noted that the U.S. Navy has never had a mutiny. If that's true, it's at least arguable that it never had one, as it refused to recognize this event as one.
M*A*S*HOkay, now down to the perhaps even more recalled television series M*A*S*H..This is one Korean War drama that nearly anyone who owns a television has to recall, as it's still on television all the time as a rerun.I was a fan of this series as a kid, but I have mixed feelings about it now, even though I'll occasionally catch it as rerun even now. Well acted and written, the very long running and hugely popular television series was billed as a comedy when it was first released, even though it was a dark comedy even then. While it always had comedic elements, as the series progressed towards its final seasons it was heavily moving towards being a drama.The series varies distinctly from its early, middle and late seasons. The early seasons are extremely faithful to the book and do a better job of portraying the feel of the book than the later seasons. The middle seasons were perhaps the most comedic, and the late ones the most dramatic.While this series was enormously popular, its only the really early ones that get the feel of the book, and to some extent, the Korean War, right. The series ran so long that the tour nature of the war, in which servicemen were in the war for only a little over a year, is completely lost. Running much longer than the war itself, the series began to have sort of a peculiar feel to it, for those history minded.One thing worth noting about the series, as compared to the movie, is that the Radar Reilly character, who is played by Gary Burgoff in both the film and the series, and is the only actor to make that transition, was played much differently in the series. The movie portrays the character much more accurately than the series, outside of its first couple of years, as the movie (and the first year or so of the series) accurately reflects that character as a cynical devious professional soldier, as opposed to the lovably childlike character he later became in the series.On material details, the most accurate ones in terms of materiality are the early ones, but the series never became bad in these regards.
The Bob Newhart Show premiered on CBS. One of the great sitcoms of the 1970s, it would run only until 1978.
I'm actually fairly surprised, as I well recall the show and would have thought that it premiered a little later than 1972. Having said that it has always, in my memory, seemed very early and mid 1970s, not late 1970s. My family watched it regularly.
The show was set in Chicago at a time just after the television Rural Purge which would feature a lot of television comedies set in mid-sized Midwestern cities. WKRP In Cincinnati, for example, was set, obviously, in Cincinnati. The Mary Tyler Moore Show was set in Minneapolis.
Earlier that same week, on September 14, the nostalgic The Waltons commenced airing. While fondly remembered, I never liked it. I really dislike Spencer's Mountain, which is based on the same source material.
We didn't watch The Waltons, but even back then I had the feeling I ought to like it. I never did and never have. It always, even in the 1970s, had the feel of a show filmed in the 1970s, with the look of the 1970s, trying to be about the 1930s. It ran until 1981. Additionally, the set and the fact that it was tapped made it impossible to suspend awareness that you were, in fact, watching it in the 1970s.
The show was unusual in that it had a rural setting at a time in which most television shows did not. It was also unusual in that it presented a very clean, romanticized, look at the Great Depression, something that was well within living memory of many of the viewers. In this fashion, it contrasted with the earlier Spencer's Mountain, which was centered on desperation. Both were based on the work of Earl Hamner Jr. who had grown up in Depression era Virginia. Hamner died in 2016 at the age of 92.
FBI Associate Director W. Mark Felt reviewed a draft of Bob Woodward's news story on Watergate by telephone and confirmed an anonymous tip that money from Maurice Stans had been used to finance the break in of the Watergate Hotel. Felt did so undercover, using the odd and somewhat perverted cover name Deep Throat.
A Federal grand jury indicted the Watergate burglars, E. Howad Hunt, and G. Gordon Liddy. Richard Nixon met with White House staff attorney John Dean on covering up hte White House role in the Watergate story. At the meeting, Nixon Chief of Staff H. R. Halderman and Dean also discussed plans to get revenge on Nixon's enemies.
The ARVN regained Quảng Trị after a three-month effort.
The province had been taken in the 1972 Easter Offensive, and in fact it had been the first major North Vietnamese victory in that effort. The ARVN offensive retook most of the province, but not all of it. The northernmost part of the area would remain in NVA hands until the end of the war.
The province has a large Catholic population and remains an area with several sites important to Vietnamese Catholicism. During the Communist occupation, a large percentage of the residents of the province became refugess.
Interesting article on an electric car from 1972, and electric vehicles in general.
On this day in 1972 the Israeli air force bombed ten PLO bases in Syria and Lebanon in retaliation for the Munich Massacre. An attempted interception by the Syrian air force resulted in three Syrian aircraft being shot down.
The British sitcom Are You Being Served? premiered.
On this day in 1972 the Palestinian terrorist organization Black September attacked the Israeli quarters at the Olympic village in Munich, killing two athletes and taking nine hostages.
Black September was named for the failed Palestinian attempt to overthrow the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in September 1970, an event which was a Palestinian disaster. This event itself led to the Palestinians being expelled from Jordan and going to Lebanon. The organization's connection with the Palestinian Liberation Organization has never been clear, but it is clear that there was one. In 1973 the PLO caused the shutting down of the organization, whose violent acts had not been successful in engendering any support for the Palestinian cause.
This is an event I can recall happening, and oddly enough I believe I learned about it after the family went swimming on a Wednesday afternoon, something that was pretty common for us to do. Indeed, we swam a lot during the summer, and almost always did on Saturday afternoons and often on Sunday afternoons. It wasn't a tradition I kept up with my own family, but I probably should have. The day prior Mark Spitz had won his seventh gold medal at the Olympics, the first athlete to do so.
Spitz had intended to become a dentist, but the Olympics interrupted that pursuit, and he did not resume it after 1992, other opportunities having developed. He married the next year and the couple have two children.
.svg.png)
The federation's flag.
Egypt, Syria and Libya ratified a plebiscite taken the day prior to unite their nations in the Federation of Arab Republics.This was the second such attempt at unification of the Arab states, and notably it did not include all of them. With the prior attempt having failed, the suggestion from Egypt was to attempt a looser political federation. Radicalization in Libya quickly caused Egyptian distrust of that entity and the 1973 October War, featuring Egypt and Syria, was undertaken without informing Libya. As it was, Libya was upset by the resulting peace which led towards the collapse of the effort. It officially dissolved, having never really existed in November, 1977.
American Bobby Fischer became the International chess champion in Reykjavík, Iceland, following the withdrawal from match 21 by Soviet player Boris Spassky.
I can dimly recall this, as it was really followed at the time, even though I was only nine years old. Then, as now, it was hard for me to really grasp the interest in this event. I like the game, but as an international sporting event, if that's what we'd call it, it's a little hard to grasp.
The Cold War must principally explain it.
Fischer's prize was $154,677.50, a substantial haul nor or then.
Fischer was an odd character and hard to like. He was anti-Semitic and became a Holocaust denier, even though his mother was Jewish. After the 1972 victory, he didn't play a competitive game in public for another 20 years, although he did play against MIT's Greenblatt computer in 1977, beating it three times. In the early 1990s he replayed Spassky in Yugoslavia, where he won again but where he also didn't seem to have evolved in the game. Spassky remained friends with Fischer throughout his life and introduced him to a known serious love interest of Fischer's, with that latter relationship not lasting, not too surprisingly.
The Yugoslavia match violated economic sanctions in place and made Fischer a fugitive from justice from the United States. He lived in various places before going back to Reykjavík, where he died in 2005 at age 64. A member of the Worldwide Church of God for much of his life, just prior to his death he became intensely interested in Catholicism and requested a Catholic funeral.
The United States dropped its claims on the Swan Islands in favor of Honduras.
The British carried out Operation Motorman on this day in 1972, reoccupying those areas of Northern Ireland controlled by residents and/or the Irish Republican Army.
The operation was a success and reduced violence in the north significantly, although it didn't end it.
The Provisional Irish Republican Army carried out 22 bombings in Belfast, killing nine people in what became known as Bloody Friday. The actions sparked a renewed British offensive against the IRA, which commenced the next day.
The "Provos" in some significant ways were able to conduct this sort of activity due to romanticized backing by Irish Americans. It claimed lineage from the Irish Republican Army of the Irish Civil War period, but it had an evolved Socialist agenda that put it in the far left political sphere, which would partially explain how it obtained backing from Libya at the time.
The IRA itself did in fact carry on in existence after the Irish Civil War, even conducting a bombing campaign in 1939 against the United Kingdom. In 1969, after the Troubles had commenced, the IRA split in two over the issue of abstentionism and forming a National Liberation Front with other left wing groups. The group that became the Provos refused to vote on the second item, and opposed the first. Sein Finn likewise split.
North and South Korea announced that they had agreed to discuss reunification. Their joint statement held:
The July 4 South-North Joint Communiqué
4 July 1972
Recently, talks were held in Pyongyang and Seoul to discuss the problems of improving SouthNorth relations and of unifying the divided country.
Lee Hu-rak, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency in Seoul, visited Pyongyang from May 2 - 5, 1972, and held talks with Kim Young-joo of the Organization and Guidance Department of Pyongyang; Vice Premier Park Sung-chul, acting on behalf of Director Kim Young-joo visited Seoul from May 29 - June 1, 1972, and held further talks with Director Lee Hu-rak.
With the common desire of achieving the peaceful unification of the nation as early as possible, the two sides engaged in a frank and openhearted exchange of views during these talks, and made great progress towards promoting mutual understanding.
In an effort to remove the misunderstandings and mistrust, and mitigate the heightened tensions that have arisen between the South and the North as a consequence of their long period of division and moreover, to expedite unification, the two sides reached full agreement on the following points.
1. The two sides agreed on the following principles as a basis of achieving unification: First, unification shall be achieved independently, without depending on foreign powers and without foreign interference. Second, unification shall be achieved through peaceful means, without resorting to the use of force against each other. Third, a great national unity as one people shall be sought first, transcending differences in ideas, ideologies, and systems.
2. In order to ease tensions and foster an atmosphere of mutual trust between the South and the North, the two sides have agreed not to slander or defame each other, not to undertake military provocations whether on a large or small scale, and to take positive measures to prevent inadvertent military incidents.
3. In order to restore severed national ties, promote mutual understanding and to expedite independent peaceful unification, the two sides have agreed to carry out numerous exchanges in various fields.
4. The two sides have agreed to actively cooperate in seeking the early success of the SouthNorth Red Cross talks, which are currently in progress with the fervent support of the entire people of Korea.
5. In order to prevent the outbreak of unexpected military incidents, and to deal directly, promptly, and accurately with problems arising between the South and the North, the two sides have agreed to install a direct telephone line between Seoul and Pyongyang.
6. In order to implement the above items, to solve various problems existing between the South and the North, and to settle the unification problem on the basis of the agreed principles for unification, the two sides have agreed to establish and operate a South-North Coordinating Committee co-chaired by Director Lee Hu-rak and Director Kim Young-joo.
7. Firmly convinced that the above items of agreement correspond with the common aspirations of the entire Korean people, all of whom are anxious for an early unification, the two sides hereby solemnly pledge before the entire Korean people to faithfully carry out these agreed items.
Upholding the instructions of their respective superiors S
Lee Hu-rak
Kim Young-joo
A similar communiqué has been issued at least one additional time.
Today, in 2022, prospects for reunification are dim, and frankly they may well be moving further, even permanently, apart. In 1973 when this statement was issued, many Korean had lived in a unified state. Now, many fewer have, and its becoming fewer every day. South Korea is a modern, capitalist, democracy, and younger South Koreans have waning interest in reuniting with the communized backwards north.
The news of the day:
Former U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell resigned from Nixon's Committee to Elect the President ostensibly to reconcile with his wife, Martha. She had in fact threatened to divorce him if he did not do so.
Martha, meanwhile, was already beginning to leak a bit to the press regarding Watergate.
