Angola, a Portuguese colony for 500 years, became independent. A civil war for control of the country was already raging.
Australia was in political turmoil.
November 11, 1975: The Australian Constitutional Crisis
It was Veterans' Day.
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Showing posts with label Angolan Civil War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Angolan Civil War. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 11, 2025
Monday, November 10, 2025
Monday, November 10, 1975. The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
The massive Great Lakes freighter went down with all 29 hands.
The storm.
The ballad commemorating the ships loss would come out the following year.
Italy and Yugoslavia signed the Treaty of Osimo resolving the long running dispute over Trieste.
The Communists forces of the MPLA defeated the FNLA in a battle over the capital of Angola, Luanda.
The United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 3379 equating Zionism with racism. The Resolution would be revoked in 1991.
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Thursday, October 30, 1975. King Juan Carlos I of Spain became acting head of state of the country after Franco conceded he was too ill to govern.
Monday, October 20, 2025
Monday, October 20, 1975. Grain, Cubans, Primates, and AIDS.
The US and USSR entered into a five year grain sale agreement by which the US agreed to sell 6,000,000 tons of grain to the USSR each year, as its collective agricultural system tanked, and by which the US accidentally screwed Canadian farmers.
The Cuban Navy's El Vietnam Heroico, El Coral Island and La Plata brought the first Cuban soldiers to Angola to support the MPLA..
Presumably the El Vietnam Heroico didn't celebrate the numerous South Vietnamese who gave their lives in order to attempt to hold the Communist back South East Asia.
Cuban military support to Angola would lead to the introduction of AIDS into Cuba, that region of Africa having been ground zero for the disease. Myths about the origin of the horrific disease, and a supposed ground zero in New York City, have abounded for years, but in reality SIVcpz, the strain in chimpanzees, was transmitted to humans via contact with infected blood, most likely during the process of hunting and butchering chimpanzees for meat. It was a "crossover disease." It spread undetected for some time in Central Africa, notably by hetrosexual sex, and into the Cuban population by that means of transmission. In much of the Western World, of course, it spread through homosexual sex at first, and then by infected needle transmissions.
FWIW, eating primates is a really bad idea. They're too closely related to us, giving rise to things like this.
It's an interesting example of how war brings plagues of all types.
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Tuesday, October 14, 1975. Operation Savannah.
Tuesday, August 5, 2025
Tuesday, August 5, 1975. Ford restores Lee's citizenship. South Africa enters Angola.
President Ford signed a Senate resolution restoring the citizenship of traitor Robert E. Lee.
South African forces drove ten miles into Angolan territory in reaction to the increased presence of Cuban troops in the country.
By Sam van den Berg - Image courtesy of Sam van den Berg, from Port Elizabeth, CC BY 2.5 za, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38327611
This is one of those news stories I can recall watching on the nightly news when I was a kid.
Fairfax County, Virginian K9 Officer Bandit was killed in the line of duty chasing a suspect.
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Friday, August 1, 1975. The Helsinki Accords.
Friday, August 1, 2025
Friday, August 1, 1975. The Helsinki Accords.
The Helsinki Accords were signed by the leaders of 35 nations in Finland, including the 15 member states of NATO and the 7 Warsaw Pact nations.
The text: The Helsinki Accords.
The Satellite Instructional Television Experiment commenced in India. It brought television for the first time to 2,500 villages in six Indian states and territories.
"KNM ER 3733", a woman of the species Homo ergaster, assuming that's a distinct from homo erectus, which it probably is not, was discovered by Bernard Ngeneo. She'd passed away 1,750,000 prior.
The Republic of Cabinda declared independence, ineffectively.
Flag of Cabinda.
Tuesday, July 29, 2025
Tuesday, July 29, 1975. A Nigerian Coup.
The Nigerian government was overthrown in a coup.
The Chinese Army, the Communist one, killed hundreds of rebels and civilians in the Yunnan Province. Most of those killed were Muslim Hui's, of which 900 were killed in the village of Shadian. 400 Red Chinese soldiers were killed in the action.
The OAS voted to lift its embargo on Cuba.
Turkey took control of remaining US facilities in the country.
The US made its first delivery of weapons to UNITA in Angola.
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Monday, July 28, 1975. Turkey acts.
Friday, July 18, 2025
Friday, July 18, 1975. Operation IA Feature.
President Ford communicated to Congress, secretly, his decision to authorize $6,000,000 for a CIA operation to combat Communists troops somewhere, but he didn't say where.
Angola was where.
Railroad workers and railroads came to an agreement, averting a strike.
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Thursday, July 17, 1975. United States-USSR Apollo-Soyuz Test Project succeeds.
Wednesday, July 9, 2025
Wednesday, July 9, 1975. The start of the Angolan Civil War.
Angolan liberation movements broke out in civil war, with the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), attacking the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA), led by Holden Roberto. The country had not yet officially received independence.
Dutch photographer and artist Bas Jan Ader left Cape Cod in an attempt to make an unassisted voyage from west to east of the North Atlantic Ocean. He would disappear and never be heard from again.
Rock musician John Anthony Gillis, better known as Jack White, was born.
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Thursday, July 3, 1975. The U.S. Civil Service Commission ended restrictions on hiring homosexuals.
Saturday, October 10, 2015
Sunday, October 10, 1915. Cooee.
The first Snowball March, shoeleather recruiting drives, commended in New South Wales when 26 men left Gilgandra on the "Cooee" March, so named for their recruitment call as they proceeded.
The word "cooee" originates from the Dharug language of Aboriginal Australians in the Sydney area. and was a cry to attract attention.
Elsewhere in Australia, the German Club in Sydney was targeted by anti-German sentiment in an editorial in The Mirror of Australia claiming that the club was housing Germans who had been ejected from their lodgings.
In spite of the view generally expressed here, the notable figure of Albert Cashier, Civil War veteran, died on this day.
Cashier had been born in Ireland as Jennie Irene Hodgers and was, in fact, female, but she enlisted as a man and assumed a male identify until her death at age 71. She had assumed a male identify prior to the war. There were several instances after the war when her true sex was discovered, but for the most part, until 1914 when dementia set in, those who knew it chose to ignore it.
An interesting aspect of this story, which isn't wholly unique, is that her sex was not discovered during her military service. Having served in the military myself, this is really hard to grasp, but is apparently the case. In her old age, when her sex was discovered and it endangered her pension, her wartime comrades came to her aid.
Last edition:
Saturday, October 9, 1915. Boosting Casper.
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