White House Chief of StaffAlexander Haig came to the home of U.S. Vice PresidentGerald Ford at 514 Crown View Drive in Alexandria, Virginia, and told him to prepare to assume the presidency. Ford would write later in his 1979 memoir, A Time to Heal, "Al Haig asked to come over and see me, to tell me that there would be a new tape released on a Monday, and he said the evidence in there was devastating and there would probably be either an impeachment or a resignation. And he said, 'I'm just warning you that you've got to be prepared, that things might change dramatically and you could become President.' And I said, 'Betty, I don't think we're ever going to live in the vice president's house.'"[2]
Harry Manning, 77, American mariner and aviator known for his overseeing the 1929 rescue of 32 crew of an Italian freighter, and for his record crossing the Atlantic in the maiden voyage of the ship United States in 1952. Manning was also a vice admiral in the United States Naval Reserve.[7]
Uganda's President Idi Amin called off plans for a threatened invasion of neighboring Tanzania, a day after having ordered the Uganda Army and Uganda Army Air Force to go on full alert.[9] After the mobilization, Tanzania's President Julius Nyerere warned that the African nation's armed forces were also on alert to repel any invasion. Amin's change of mind was disclosed in a telegram to the President of Liberia, William R. Tolbert.
A fire aboard the Swedish motor ship Eos in the North Sea killed four people.[11]
American comedian and actor Shelley Berman was robbed at gunpoint of $60 and a watch and left bound and gagged on the floor of his hotel room in Queens, New York City.[12]
Born:
Siddharth Roy Kapur, Indian film and TV producer, founder of Roy Kapur Films; known for co-producing the highest-grossing Indian film to date, Dangal (2016) and the Netflix TV series Aranyak and the streaming SonyLIV series Rocket Boys; in Bombay (now Mumbai)
The 10-day Huntsville Prison siege ended with an escape attempt by drug baron Fred Gómez Carrasco and his two accomplices, during which two women hostages and one of Carrasco's cohorts were shot and killed and Carrasco committed suicide. Two other hostages were wounded.[16][17]
A bomb exploded on the Italicus Express train between Italy and West Germany, killing 12 people and injuring 48.[31][32][33][34] Italian neo-fascists claimed responsibility.[35]
The West African nation of Ghana began requiring its 80,000 motorists, as well as other vehicle operators, to drive on the right-hand side of the road after decades of left-hand side driving that dated from Ghana's days as a British colony. On the day before, the government banned the sale of alcohol for nine hours in order to ensure sobriety of vehicle operators after midnight.[36]
The derailment of an express train in Dol-de-Bretagne, France, killed nine people and injured 30.[32]
French Army Commandant Pierre Galopin, posted in Chad, was captured by Chadian rebels in the Sahara desert, after traveling to the rebel-held portion of the African nation to negotiate the release of hostages. Galopin would be sentenced to death by his captors and executed by hanging on April 4, 1975.[38]
Bob Pleso, a stunt motorcyclist attempting to break the distance record of Шаблон:Convert (set by Bob Gill rather than Evel Knievel) in jumping over parked automobiles, was fatally injured in front of 3,000 spectators while trying to jump over 30 cars at the Phenix Dragway in Phenix City, Alabama. Pleso's motorcycle cleared the first 27 cars before coming down on the windshield of the 28th, and he died in a hospital two hours later.[39][40]
Nixon also released a statement saying that after he listened to the June 23 conversations, "Although I recognized that these presented potential problems, I did not inform my staff or my counsel of it... This was a serious act of omission for which I take full responsibility and which I deeply regret." He added that "a House vote on impeachment is, as a practical matter, virtually a foregone conclusion, and that the issue will therefore go to trial in the Senate."[42]
At 10:24 in the morning, the roof of a U.S. government office building in downtown Miami, Florida, collapsed, killing 7 employees of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and injuring 15 others.[47][48][49][50] An inspection would later conclude that materials used in resurfacing of a parking lot on top of the building, as well as salt and sand, had eroded and weakened the supporting steel structure.[51]
The comic strip Tank McNamara, created by Jeff Millar and Bill Hinds, made its debut with distribution by United Press Syndicate. Billed as a satire on the American obsession with organized sports, the strip commented on the sports world through its title character, a former pro football player who had become a TV sports newscaster.[52][53]
The sport of dogs catching flying discs (including the Wham-O Frisbee) gained national exposure in the U.S. when a 19-year-old college student brought his dog, Ashley Whippet, onto the field at Dodger Stadium for an unauthorized interruption of a nationally televised baseball game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the visiting Cincinnati Reds. Prior to the start of the ninth inning a crowd of 51,062 fans and millions of NBC viewers watched the whippet dog catch four out of five tosses with high leaps; the Dodgers won, 6 to 3.[54]
Robert C. Berger died at the age of 46 during an attempt to make the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in a balloon. An hour after Berger took off from Lakehurst Naval Air Station, his helium balloon disintegrated over Barnegat Bay in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Berger had reportedly never flown in a balloon before.[62]
Richard Nixon became the first (and, as of 2024, the only) U.S. President to announce his resignation. Earlier in the week, Nixon had admitted his coverup of the Watergate scandal.[83] In a televised address to the nation, Nixon said, "I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is opposed to every instinct in my body. But as President I must put the interests of America first." He added that continuing to fight "would almost totally absorb the time and attention of both the President and the Congress... when our entire focus should be on the great issues of peace abroad and prosperity without inflation at home. Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in as President at that hour in this office."[84]
A team of Japanese and American climbers discovered the bodies of 7 members of an 8-woman team of Soviet climbers, led by Elvira Shatayeva, which had reached the summit of Lenin Peak, the third-tallest mountain in the Soviet Union, on August 5. The eighth woman was believed to have been swept off the mountain by high winds.[85][86][87]
U.S. Vice President Gerald Fordwas sworn in as the 38th President of the United States upon Nixon's resignation. In a speech after being sworn in, President Ford said, "My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over."[96]
All nine people on a United Nations peacekeeping force were killed when their Canadian Armed Forces airplane was shot down by missiles fired from a Syrian airbase. Buffalo 461, a de Havilland Canada DHC-5 Buffalo transport, was making a supply trip for UN forces enforcing the ceasefire to the war between Israel and Syria, and had been cleared for a landing by the control tower at the Damascus airport, but was hit by a surface-to-air missile as it passed over the Syrian town of Ad Dimas.[97]
Bill Chase, 39, American musician, was killed in a plane crash along with three other members of his band and the pilot and co-pilot of the Piper Twin Comanche.[99]
Twelve people died and 14 were injured in a collision between a bus and a train in Calumpit, Bulacan, Philippines.[102]
U.S. President Gerald Ford requested that all members of President Nixon's Cabinet and all heads of U.S. Government agencies remain in office for "continuity and stability."[103]
In West Branch, Iowa, the hometown of former U.S. President Herbert Hoover, nearly 7,000 people gathered to celebrate the 100th anniversary of his birth. President Nixon had been scheduled to attend prior to the events of the week leading to his resignation.[106]
A collision between two buses on the Ankara-Istanbul highway near Bolu, Turkey, killed 21 people and injured 41.[116]
In front of an audience of 20,000 at an air show in northern Japan, 23-year-old skydiver Nobutaka Yoshinoya fell Шаблон:Convert to his death after his parachute struck the parachute of another skydiver and failed to open properly.[117]
Christian Fouchet, 63, French politician who was the last colonial governor of French Algeria before independence in 1962, died of a heart attack.[124]
In Uganda, physician Peter Mbalu Mukasa died of poisoning. Police discovered the dismembered body of Kay Adroa, a former wife of PresidentIdi Amin, in the trunk of a car belonging to Mukasa. Adroa's autopsy showed she had died from bleeding after an incomplete abortion. Mukasa's death was ruled a suicide.[128][129]
All 27 people aboard Avianca Flight 610 were killed when the Piper DC-3 airliner flew into the side of Trujillo Mountain in Colombia at an altitude of Шаблон:Convert. The plane was on a flight from Tumaco to Cali, and its wreckage would not be discovered until October 31.[130]
Four mountain climbers died in the Alps in two separate incidents. Two Austrians fell while climbing the Matterhorn, while two West Germans fell on the Rimpfischhorn.[131]
During a televised address to a joint session of the United States Congress, U.S. President Ford said, "To the limits of my strength and ability, I will be the President of the black, brown, red and white Americans, of old and young, of women's liberationists and male chauvinists and all the rest of us in between, of the poor and the rich, of native sons and new refugees, of those who work at lathes or at desks or in mines or in the fields, and of Christians, Jews, Moslems, Buddhists and atheists, if there really are any atheists after what we have all been through."[134]
At the age of 23, jockey Johnny Hathaway was fatally injured when his horse threw him into the path of another horse during a race at Waterford Park in West Virginia.[135]
Born:Trent Keegan, New Zealand investigative journalist who was murdered while working on a report in Kenya; in New Plymouth (killed 2008)[136]
In Japan, the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front (EAAJAF) attempted to assassinate the EmperorHirohito, preparing to explode a bomb underneath a railway bridge where the royal train was scheduled to cross.[153] The plan was aborted after an EAAJAF member was spotted by police. The terrorists would use the explosives to carry out the Mitsubishi building bombing on August 30.
In Kansas City, Missouri, 15-year-old David Eyman was found bound at the wrists and knees and burned alive on the boundary road between Jackson and Cass counties. Шаблон:As of his murder remained unsolved.[154]
American motorcycle racer Rickie K. Milner, 22, was killed during a competition at the Corona Raceway in Corona, California. Milner spilled his motorcycle and was struck in the neck from behind by racer Bill Matherson's motorcycle.[155]
Yuk Young-soo, the wife of South Korea's President Park Chung Hee, was fatally wounded during an attempt by a Japanese-born North Korean sympathizer, Mun Se-gwang, to assassinate President Park. The event occurred as the President was giving a speech at the National Theater of Korea in Seoul for National Liberation Day. During the gun battle that followed, a bullet fired by one of the president's guards ricocheted and killed Jang Bong-hwa, a member of a high school choir performing at the event. After the shooting and Mun's arrest, President Park resumed his address.[160][161][162] President Park would be assassinated in 1979.
The British travel operator Court Line, and its subsidiaries Court Line Aviation, Clarksons Travel Group and Clarksons Travel Group, ceased operations as the Court Line Group went bankrupt. More than 49,000 tourists were left stranded with no means of returning home from vacation, but would be rescued by Court Line's competitors who organized an airlift, at no additional cost to the tourists, through the Tour Operators' Study Group.[164][165]
False statements attributed to two Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives appeared in the Congressional Record, the official record of U.S. Congress proceedings and debates. Representative Earl Landgrebe of Indiana, who had supported President Nixon during the Watergate scandal, was represented as recommending that President Ford appoint Nixon as Vice President and then resign. Representative John M. Ashbrook of Ohio supposedly praised the military dictatorship of Chile. Both men denied making the statements and asked for them to be expunged from the permanent bound version of the Congressional Record.[166]
In Santo Domingo, Joaquín Balaguer was sworn in for his third consecutive term as President of the Dominican Republic. Bombs had exploded in the city during the previous night, and the country's main opposition parties called for a two-day curfew to protest the inauguration.[172]
Nineteen incarcerated members of the Provisional IRA escaped from Portlaoise Prison in County Laois in the Republic of Ireland. The prisoners, including Tom McFeely, overpowered guards, took uniforms, and then used gelignite to blow open the gates.[187]
Rodger Davies, the United States Ambassador to Cyprus, was shot and killed while standing in the central hall of the U.S. Embassy in Nicosia during a demonstration outside the embassy by Greek Cypriots, angry over the Turkish invasion and division of the capital. A bullet fired from outside passed through the shuttered window of Davies' office and through another office before striking him in the chest. Antoinette Varnavas, an embassy secretary who was a Greek Cypriot national, was struck in the head by a bullet and killed after going to Davies' assistance.[192] The shooters were believed to be gunmen from the Greek Cypriot paramilitary organisation EOKA B.[193]
After 10 days of the U.S. presidential residence being at the home of Gerald and Betty Ford at 514 Crown View Drive in Alexandria, Virginia,[194] U.S. President Gerald R. Ford and his family moved into the White House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.[195] During his first ten days as President, Ford had been driven to and from his office at the White House, along with his Secret Service escorts and with help from the Alexandria police.[196]
A bomb threat forced American musician Ray Charles to cut short a performance at the Schaefer Music Festival in Central Park after only four songs. No bomb was discovered.[197] Charles would return to Central Park to fulfill his engagement on September 2.[198]
U.S. President Gerald Ford nominated Nelson Rockefeller, the former Governor of New York, to be Vice President of the United States.[200] Rockefeller was selected despite a poll of Republican leaders showing a preference for Republican National Committee chairman George H. W. Bush. In compensation, Ford offered Bush the chance to be a major U.S. diplomat and Bush asked to be the first representative to Communist China.[201] The U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives would confirm Rockefeller in December.
Spain announced that a referendum on self-determination for the Spanish Sahara would be held in the first six months of 1975. In response, Morocco, which claimed the same area, announced that they would take the issue to the International Court of Justice, and Spain would postpone the referendum in December.[203]
In the deciding game of the European ice hockey championship, HC CSKA Moscow, champions of the Soviet Union on a team composed of members of the Soviet Army, defeated the champions of Sweden, Brynäs IF, located in Gävle. After losing the first game, 2 to 6, on November 20, Brynäs needed to win by 7 or more points in the second game, but CSKA Moscow won, 12 to 2, for an aggregate of 18 to 4.[204]
Mort Lloyd, 43, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Congress in the 3rd Congressional District of Tennessee, was killed when his light plane crashed, three weeks after he won the Democratic primary. Lloyd, a newscaster for a Chattanooga TV station, was flying to visit his parents in Shelbyville when the aircraft lost part of its propeller.[209][210] Lloyd's widow, Marilyn Lloyd, would be named to replace him on the ballot, and would go on to serve ten terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1975 to 1995.[211]
Dr. Latunde Odeku, 47, Nigerian neurosurgeon and the first neurosurgeon in West Africa[212]
Tio Ie Soei, 84, Indonesian novelist who wrote under the pen name Tjoa Pit Bak [213]
W. D. Jones, 58, former member of the Barrow Gang and associate of Bonnie and Clyde during 1933, was shot and killed by a friend with whom he had gotten into an argument.[214]
The nude, strangled body of aspiring actress Karin Schlegel was discovered on the roof of a building in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Music teacher Charles Yukl, who had pled guilty in 1968 to first-degree manslaughter in the strangulation death of another young woman and had been released on parole in 1973, would be arrested for Schlegel's murder on August 24.[218] Yukl would plead guilty in 1976 and would hang himself in prison in 1982.
Buford Pusser, 36, former sheriff of McNairy County, Tennessee, subject of the Walking Tall series of films, was killed in an automobile accident hours after signing a contract to portray himself in a sequel to the 1973 film.[221]
The Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 was signed into law by U.S. President Gerald Ford, after being approved in the Senate, 76 to 11, and by the House, 351 to 25.[225] The law created the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) for public housing authorities in the U.S. to spend on housing, public facilities, child care and economic development to fill local needs. In effect, as one historian noted, "the U.S. government got out of the construction business," with the housing authorities being allowed to distribute Housing Choice Vouchers to low-income families and "letting the tenants shop around the private market to find an apartment of their own choosing."[226]
For the first time, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) provided crude oil from its own storage facility to give aid to a developing country.[227]
The government of India ratified the nation's National Policy for Children to reduce poverty, with the objective of guaranteeing that "all children in the state get the necessary prenatal, postnatal and developmental care to ensure optimal health", to be accomplished by a comprehensive health program, funding for nutrition for women and children, free education for all children up to age 14, and prevention of the exploitation of child labor.[228][229]
South Korea's President Park Chung Hee rescinded two decrees that had authorized the arrest of dissidents. A January 8 emergency measure had prohibited all criticism or demands for a revision of the nation's constitution, while an April decree had prohibited student protests against the government, with penalties ranging from five years imprisonment up to execution. Still in place was another January 8 decree, permitting arrests without warrants, and establishing secret trials by court-martial for suspects.[236]
Two children were killed when a Cessna 172 single-engine plane crashed into their home at 403 Tioga Street in Catasauqua, Pennsylvania. The plane's pilot and his passenger were also killed moments after taking off in a pouring rain from the Slatington Airport, one mile from the house, at 3:15 in the morning.[237][238]
Former lightweight boxing contender Tommy Tibbs, 40, was shot during an argument at a cafe in Roxbury, Boston. He would die the following day at Boston City Hospital.[239]
A report from the New York Times News Service quoted unidentified White House sources as stating that "Defense SecretaryJames R. Schlesinger and the Joint Chiefs of Staff kept unusually close control over lines of command during the last days of the Nixon Administration to ensure that no unauthorized orders were given to military units by the White House,"[255] a story with "the clear implication being that the secretary of defense had helped avert a coup d'etat."[256] President Ford would learn a year later that the source was Secretary Schlesinger himself, who admitted to the Undersecretary of Defense that he had invented the story during a lunch with reporters on August 23. Ford would fire Schlesinger a year later, on November 1, 1975, after commenting to aides, "For the Secretary of Defense to speculate to the press that our military commanders— men who are controlled by civilians under the Constitution— might take some unilateral and illegal action at a moment of grave national crisis was to stab our armed forces in the back."Шаблон:Citation needed
The Copa Chile, the knockout tournament for soccer football in the South American nation of Chile, was won by Colo-Colo, 3 to 0, over the Santiago Wanderers team, in front of 50,468 fans at the Estadio Nacional in Santiago.[263] Colo-Colo, which had finished third in regular season play, was based in the Santiago suburb of Macul. Wanderers had finished in 15th place with a losing record (9 wins, 15 losses, 10 draws) before sweeping through the playoffs. Less than a year earlier, the stadium had been used as a detention center for thousands of people arrested after the military coup d'etat of September 11.
Pierre-Louis Gabriel Falaize, 69, French journalist and diplomat who was France's ambassador to Jordan, Libya, Laos and Lebanon at different times between 1954 and 1967[266]
Representatives of Portugal and of the independence guerrilla organization PAIGC (Partido Africano para a Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde) signed an agreement in Algiers to end the 11-year war between Portugal and the PAIGC. Portugal agreed to remove its troops from Portuguese Guinea and to recognize the independence of the Republic of Guinea-Bissau, in return for the PAIGC agreeing to protect Portuguese citizens and property in the West African nation.[273]
Sir Donald Hopson, Шаблон:Postnominals, 58, British diplomat and Ambassador to Argentina since 1973, and the Chargé d'affaires to the People's Republic of China from 1965 to 1968, died of a heart attack. Hopson had also served as ambassador to Laos (1962-1965), Mongolia (1965-1966), and Venezuela (1969-1972).[279]
By a vote of 40,083 to 27,932, residents of Alaska voted to move the state capital from Juneau to a location near the village of Willow, Шаблон:Convert away. The proposed capital was Шаблон:Convert from Anchorage and voters opted for a site at least Шаблон:Convert from Anchorage or Fairbanks.[281] However, voters would later reject the move's associated construction costs, and Juneau remains the state capital.
At the age of 12, Becky Schroeder of Toledo, Ohio, was granted her first patent for an invention, receiving U.S. Patent 3,832,556 for her creation, the "Glow Sheet", a "luminescent backing sheet for writing in the dark" that could be placed underneath a regular sheet of paper for use by persons needing to work in dimly lit places. She had applied for the patent on December 26, 1973, with the assistance of her father, a patent attorney.[282]
The case of Joan Little began at the jail in Beaufort County, North Carolina, when she stabbed a guard as he was raping her. Little escaped, then turned herself in to police and was charged with the murder of Clarence Alligood, who had made a practice of forcing female inmates to engage in sex with him. Little would be acquitted of the murder charge on August 15, 1975, after autopsy evidence confirmed her claim of self-defense. She became the first African-American woman to be acquitted of murder committed in self-defense against a sexual assault.[283]
British commercial diver Peter Kelly died of anoxia due to pure helium being fed through his breathing mask during a bell dive in the Norwegian Sector of the North Sea. The other diver in the bell pulled off his mask before losing consciousness and survived.[284][285]
Andrew Head, a tractor driver, discovered a woman's headless body near Swaffham, Norfolk in England. Police concluded that the woman was murdered during the first two weeks of August.[286] The woman's head has never been found; she remains unidentified and her murder remains unsolved.
A memorial service for Charles Lindbergh was held in Kipahulu, Hawaii, at the small church next to which Lindbergh had been buried the previous day. Lindbergh's name was not mentioned during the half-hour service, at which fewer than 24 people were present.[288]
Died:Otto Strasser, 76, Nazi German politician who broke with the party in 1930 in opposition to Adolf Hitler, and lived in exile in various countries until coming to West Germany in 1955.[289][290]
Gerald Ford held his first news conference as President of the United States in the East Room of the White House.[292]
The CBS network withdrew its $50,000 bid for live television coverage of stuntman Evel Knievel's Snake River Canyon jump, planned for September 8. Top Rank, Inc., which was promoting the jump, had threatened to cancel it if the state of Idaho granted live TV rights to any broadcaster.[293]
At Windsor Great Park, a Crown Estate property in southern England, police took action to disperse the 2,000 music fans attending the "Festival of the People", resulting in an eight-hour battle, 220 arrests and over 50 injuries.[298]
A 3:05 a.m. explosion destroyed an entire city block in the African-American nightclub district of Chattanooga, Tennessee, causing one death and at least 13 injuries.[299]
Aerialist Philippe Petit fulfilled his promise to give a free show for the children of New York, crossing a Шаблон:Convert cable at a 30-degree angle from a stand of trees on the northeast side of Belvedere Lake in Central Park to an Шаблон:Convert height on the watchtower of Belvedere Castle, southwest of the lake.[301]
Malcolm "Mac" Graham and Eleanor "Muff" Graham (born Eleanor LaVerne Eddington), a married couple from San Diego, California, disappeared on Palmyra Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, to which they had traveled from Hawaii aboard their sailboat, the Sea Wind. Another sailor would discover Eleanor Graham's remains on the beach of Palmyra in 1981, after which ex-convict Buck Duane Walker and his girlfriend, Stephanie Stearns, the only other persons on Palmyra at the time of the Grahams' disappearance, would be charged with murdering Eleanor. Walker was convicted of the killing, but Stearns was acquitted. Stearns' defense attorney, Vincent Bugliosi, would co-write a 1991 book about the case, And the Sea Will Tell, which was adapted the same year into a television film.[302]
Stanton Griffis, 87, American diplomat and financier, died from injuries sustained in an August 13 fire in his suite at the Pierre Hotel in New York. Griffis had served as U.S. ambassador to Poland, Egypt, Argentina and Spain during his career.[304]
The Soviet Kashin-class destroyerOtvazhny sank after a defective anti-aircraft missile launched during Black Sea Fleet drills ignited a fire which resulted in the explosion of the ship magazines.[309]
American racing driver Robert W. Bunselmeier was fatally injured during a sprint car race in Bloomington, Indiana. He would die of his injuries at the age of 27 the following day.[314]
Died:Eleanor Platt, 64, American sculptor, was found dead in her studio at the Park Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, New York City.[315] Her death was ascribed to heart failure.[316] After Calvin Jackson's arrest for the murder of Pauline Spanierman the following month, he would confess to the murders of 8 other women, including Platt.[317]
In the early morning hours on Interstate 10 in California, a sniper in a car pulled up alongside other drivers at random and fired at them, killing 3 people and wounding 6. A suspect was arrested shortly after 6 a.m.[318]
B. D. Jatti (Basappa Danappa Jatti) was sworn in as the fifth Vice President of India, with the oath administered by President Ahmed. Jatti would serve as the Acting President of India for five months in 1977 after Ahmed's sudden death.
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