The British Royal Navy submarine HMSArtemis sank in 9 metres (30ft) of water while moored at Gosport during refueling, because the repair crew had loaded ballast into the sub for testing without having made sure to "batten down the hatches", causing salt water to flood the interior and destroy most of the electronics and machinery. A book about the blunder, HMS Artemis — The Lessons Learnt, would be produced by the Royal Navy "and is still required reading for submarine commanders" nearly 50 years later.[4]
The United States made the largest single withdrawal of troops — 6,100 — from South Vietnam since the beginning of the Vietnam War. leaving only 236,000 troops, almost half of the 542,500 that were stationed in Vietnam during the height of the war in 1969.[6]
The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards was formed at Holyrood, Edinburgh, by the amalgamation of the 3rd Carabiniers (Prince of Wales's Dragoon Guards) and The Royal Scots Greys (2nd Dragoons).[11]
The first national election in 16 years in Indonesia took place for all 360 seats of the lower house of Indonesia's parliament, the Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (DPR).[13] Preparation for election day had taken several months because Indonesia's 992 inhabited islands (out of 13,667) are spread out over a width of 3,000 miles (4,800km) along the Equator.[14] When the results were announced on August 7, President Suharto's political party, Sekber Golkar (Sekretariat Bersama Golongan Karya or Secretariat Union of Functional Groups), captured 70 percent of the seats in the House of Representatives.[15]
Died:Jim Morrison, 27, American singer and leader of The Doors, was found dead in his bathtub in Paris, France;[18] the cause of death remains uncertain, but an unintentional heroin overdose was the most popular theory.[19]
July 6, 1971: Jazz legend Louis Armstrong dies, aged 69
Hastings Kamuzu Banda was proclaimed President for Life of Malawi on the occasion of the African nation's seventh anniversary of independence. The Malawian constitution had been amended in November to provide for Banda specifically to be given lifetime tenure.[26]
The July Theses were introduced by Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu in his speech to the Executive Committee of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR), marking the beginning of a "mini cultural revolution"[27]
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ordered a nationwide recall of all canned products of the Bon Vivant Soup Company and a shutdown of the factory in Newark, New Jersey.,[30] one week after the June 30 death of a New York man from botulism poisoning from a contaminated can of vichyssoise.[31] Out of 324 cans sampled, five were found to be contaminated by the botulism toxin; the shutdown caused the Bon Vivant Company to go out of business by 1974.[32]
Todor Zhivkov, already the de facto leader of Bulgaria as the First Secretary of that nation's Communist Party and the nation's Prime Minister, was elected to the newly created position of Chairman of the State Council as head of state.[33]Georgi Traykov, the last "Chairman of the Presidium of the National Assembly" had been the ceremonial head of state and became the State Council First Deputy Chairman, while Stanko Todorov took Zhivkov's place as Prime Minister.
Died:Charlie Shavers, 50, American jazz trumpeter and composer, died from throat cancer. Shavers, hearing of the death of Louis Armstrong two days earlier, had requested that his own trumpet mouthpiece be buried in Armstrong's coffin.[37]
U.S. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger made a secret trip to the People's Republic of China after boarding a jet in Pakistan, part of his itinerary for an official worldwide "fact finding trip" and diplomatic visit to Asian nations.[38] On its flight to Pakistan, Kissinger's plane turned north and flew to Beijing, where he met with Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai for three days. While Kissinger was in China, the international press in Pakistan was told that Kissinger was "temporarily incapacitated by a stomach ailment" and staying in "a mountain resort in the hills of northeast Pakistan" overnight.[39] The visit was disclosed six days later by U.S. President Nixon.
The funeral of Louis Armstrong was attended by 500 people at the Corona Congregational Church in New York City. "When the Saints Go Marching In", his theme tune, was played at the service, and Peggy Lee sang The Lord's Prayer. A crowd of 2,000 people gathered outside the church for what The New York Times described as "to ogle the invited celebrities".[41]
During the 42nd birthday party of King Hassan II of Morocco, 1,400 cadets took over the king's palace for three hours and killed 93 guests; 158 rebels died when the king's troops stormed the palace.[44] Ten high-ranking Moroccan Army officers — four generals, five colonels and a major— were executed by a firing squad a few days later for involvement.[45]
American golfer Lee Trevino won the British Open by a single stroke over Lu Liang-Huan of Taiwan. The margin of victory was Trevino's 69 to 70 lead over Lu on the first day of play; in the other rounds, the two had finished identically every day with 70, 69, and 70 strokes, giving Trevino the 278 to 279 victory on 72 holes.[48]
Died: Samuel Bronfman, 80, Canadian whiskey distiller who built the Seagram liquor company into a worldwide billion dollar retailer.[49]
The wreckage of England's first royal yacht, HMY Mary, was discovered off the coast of Anglesey almost 300 years after its sinking. On March 25, 1675, HMY Mary struck rocks and shattered, with the loss of 35 of the 74 passengers and crew.[50]
The Chilean Congress unanimously approved an amendment to the South American nation's constitution to give authority to President Salvador Allende to nationalize the nation's largest copper mines. Those affected were operated by the U.S. companies Kennecott, Anaconda and Cerro, which had previously operated as a joint venture with the state-owned Codelco corporation (Corporacion Nacional delCobre de Chile). The vote was 158 to 0, with 42 of the 200 members not in attendance, and was written to take effect immediately.[51]
Bold Ruler, 17, American thoroughbred racehorse and 1957 horse of the year whose descendants would win seven of the 10 Kentucky Derby races during the decade of the 1970s.
Pedro Rodríguez, 31, Mexican Formula One racing driver, was killed in an Interserie sports car race at the Norisring Nürnberg 200 at Nuremberg in West Germany. Rodríguez, whose brother Ricardo Rodríguez had been killed in 1962, was driving a 750-horsepower Ferrari 513M on its racing debut, rather than his own British Racing Motors BRM car, which was not ready for entry. On the 12th lap of the race, a tire blew and the Ferrari "struck a guard rail and the wall of a bridge spanning the track, was catapulted across the track and immediately caught fire".[53]
U.S. President Richard Nixon signed the first emergency public employment law to be passed in the United States since the Great Depression, implementing the Emergency Employment Act of 1971. The act, the first since the Works Progress Administration had been operated in 1935, provided $2.25 billion over two years for the funding of 150,000 jobs for unemployed Americans.[55]
The Army of Jordan launched an "all-out offensive" against Palestinian fedayeen guerrillas encamped at bases in Jerash and Ajloun, as an armored infantry fired artillery shells at suspected guerrilla positions.[61]
Ólafur Jóhannesson formed a coalition government as the new Prime Minister of Iceland after his Progressive Party won a plurality of seats in the Althing on June 13. Johanneson's seven-member cabinet had two members of the Iceland Communist Party, two from the Liberal-Left Party and three from his own Progressives.[62]
Libya severed its diplomatic ties with Morocco following accusations by Morocco of Libyan involvement in the failed coup of July 10.[64]
A British soldier was shot and killed in an IRA ambush on a mobile patrol in the Andersonstown area of Belfast. Three IRA gunmen using automatic weapons fired at least 35 shots at the patrol.[65]
U.S. President Nixon announced in a nationwide radio and television address that he had accepted an invitation to become the first U.S. president to visit the People's Republic of China, after being invited by China's Prime Minister Zhou Enlai. Nixon said that the visit would take place sometime before May 1972.[66] Nixon's visit, the first by an American president, would take place on February 21, 1972.[67]
Spanish dictator and head of state Francisco Franco, who, on July 22, 1969, had already named Prince Juan Carlos as his successor, issued a decree making it possible for Juan Carlos to rule Spain if Franco were to become ill or was out of the country.[72]
Jeanne M. Holm became the first woman in the United States Air Force to receive the rank of general. She had enlisted in the Air Force in 1948 as a student at Lewis and Clark College because, as she noted in her remarks, "I was between semesters, had nothing to do anyway, and was flat broke."[73]
The Trucial States nation (later the United Arab Emirates) was formed in the Persian Gulf. With the British military scheduled to withdraw at the end of the year, the emirs of Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharja, Ajman, Umm Al Quwain and Fujairah agreed to a federation with themselves as members of the Supreme Council as the executive, as well as a cabinet and a 34-member legislature, the Consultative Assembly, apportioned based on population. The emirate of Ras Al Khaima declined to enter into the agreement.[77]
Died:Giulio Sarrocchi, 84, Italian former Olympic gold medal-winning fencer
The South Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City was topped out at 1,362 feet (415m), making it the second tallest building in the world.[80]
George Klippert, the last person in Canada to be arrested, charged, prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned for homosexuality before its legalization in 1969, was released from prison.[86]
Nobel Prize-winning chemist Glenn T. Seaborg resigned as Chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) after ten years of service, in order to return to being a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Seaborg, who was replaced by James R. Schlesinger, commented that he had also been influenced by the accidental death of another AEC panelist, Theos J. Thompson, in a plane crash.[87]
Born:Nuno Markl, Portuguese comedian, writer, and television personality, in Lisbon
In Sudan, troops supporting President Gaafar Nimeiri defeated those of Major Hashem al-Atta. Lieutenant Colonel Babakr al-Nur Osman, an exile who had agreed to assume control as Chairman of the Ruling Council, boarded a BOAC airliner in London and was attempting to fly to Khartoum to take office when the Libyan Air Force intercepted his plane and forced it to land at Benghazi.[88] Major Al-Atta and three of his officers were executed by a firing squad the next day.[89][90]
The national convention of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks (B.P.O.E., commonly known as "The Elks Club") rejected a resolution that would have ended the service club's policy of barring non-White members by removing the word "white" from the Elks' membership requirements. Voting by about 3,000 members, meeting in a closed session, was made by a show of hands. The members approved a separate resolution that would give the Grand Exalted Ruler of the Elks authority to suspend the Whites-only requirement for a year if the Grand Ruler found that it was "in the best interests of the Order".[91]
Jorge Pacheco Areco was impeached as President of Uruguay by 52 to 2 vote of the Uruguayan House of Deputies, to be tried by the Uruguayan Senate on charges of violating the South American nation's constitution by suspending civil rights and restoring security measures that the Congress had annulled earlier. Under the Uruguayan Constitution, immediate removal from office without trial could only be had by a vote of two-thirds of all 99 members of the House, and 44 of Pacheco's supporters declined to attend the session.[92]
Huang Hua, who would later become the Chinese Vice Premier and Foreign Minister, arrived in Ottawa to become the first Ambassador to Canada from the People's Republic of China.[93]
The crash of Aeroflot Flight 1912 killed 97 of the 118 people on board as the Tupolev Tu-104 jet made a hard landing 500 feet (150m) short of the runway on its arrival at Irkutsk. The airliner's left wing broke off and the aircraft caught fire.[98] News of the disaster reached the Western press almost three weeks later.[99]
Under the direction and planning of Muhammad Kamaruzzaman, the Al-Badr paramilitary group aided the Pakistan Army in a massacre of 187 men living in the Bangladesh village of Sohaghpur in the Nalitabari division of the Sherpur District. Afterwards, the troops raped the wives of the men killed. Kamaruzzaman would be executed for the massacre more than 40 years later after being convicted by an international war crimes tribunal.[100]
Apollo 15, carrying astronauts David Scott, Alfred Worden, and James Irwin, was launched from Cape Kennedy in Florida at 9:34 in the morning local time on its mission to the Moon.[101] After separating from the attached lunar module, turning around and docking with the module without incident, the spacecraft then departed Earth orbit at 12:24 in the afternoon and proceeded on a four-day journey to the Moon.
Died:Charlie Tully, 47, Northern Irish footballer, of a heart attack[105]
The United States announced that it would discontinue further airplane surveillance flights over the People's Republic of China, after years of flying SR-71 spy planes and sending unmanned reconnaissance drones into Chinese airspace.[106]
Mikhail S. Solomentsev was named as the new Premier of the Russian SFSR, upon the retirement of Gennadi I. Voronov, as part of the opening of the new session of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet legislature. Voronov, a member of the 15-man Soviet Communist Party Politburo, was apparently demoted by being reassigned to the job of chairman of the People's Control Committee after disagreeing with the economic policies of Communist Party First Secretary Leonid Brezhnev. Solomentsev was promoted from being the CPSU Party Secretary for Heavy Industry.[107]
A Gillette Cup semi-final between Lancashire and Gloucestershire became one of the most famous matches in English cricket after David Hughes scored 24 off one over to win the match for Lancashire just before 9pm.[108]
The body of Diane Arbus, 48, U.S. photographer, was found in her New York City apartment. She had committed suicide by ingesting barbiturates and slashing her wrists with a razor, and was thought to have died two days earlier.[109]
Died:Abdel Khaliq Mahjub, 43, Sudanese communist leader, was hanged for treason following his attempted coup d'état on July 19.
A flood and subsequent landslide in Afghanistan destroyed a village in the Khinjan District in the northeast part of the kingdom, and reportedly killed more than 1,000 people.[110] The disaster occurred near the Khinjan Pass.
In what was, at the time, the worst civil aviation disaster in history, all 162 crew and passengers on All Nippon Airways Flight 58 were killed after the Boeing 727 collided with a Japanese Air Force F-86 Sabrejet fighter while flying over Shizukuishi in Japan's Iwate Prefecture. The flight had departed Tokyo and was on its way to Sapporo; 125 of the 155 passengers were in a tour group for the flight for a society for relatives of Japanese servicemen who had been killed in World War II. The mid-air collision happened at an altitude of 26,000 feet (7,900m). The pilot of the F-86, a Japanese Air Force sergeant with only 21 hours of training in flying the fighter, parachuted to safety.[115] The 22-year old student pilot was arrested, as well as his instructor, who had been flying in another F-86, and both were charged with criminal negligence.[116]
All 37 paratroopers and crew aboard a French Air Force military transport were killed when the airplane crashed during a training mission. An air force captain and a lieutenant had safely parachuted out of the plane minutes earlier to test the wind over the drop zone, and the trainees were preparing to follow when one of the airplane's engines caught fire.[117]
Pan Am Flight 845, a Boeing 747 taking off from San Francisco toward Tokyo, struck the Approach Lighting System (ALS) structures located past the end of the runway. The accident was the worst for a 747 "jumbo jet" since the aircraft line began operation on January 21, 1970.[118] The Federal Aviation Administration concluded that the 747 jet had been overloaded beyond its weight capacity, by as much as 25 tons. All aboard survived, but 13 were hospitalized and three were seriously injured, including one passenger whose foot was amputated, and another who had lost an arm.[119]
July 31, 1971: U.S. astronaut David R. Scott becomes first driver on the Moon
At 1620 UTC (11:20a.m. Eastern time in the U.S.), US Apollo 15 astronaut David Scott became the first person to drive a wheeled vehicle on the surface of the Moon, after landing the day before, with James Irwin travelling as a passenger. The two drove roughly 2.5 miles (4.0km) from the landing site, returning after six hours and 34 minutes.[123] At 9:52a.m. Eastern time (1442 UTC), Scott and Irwin removed Rover 1, the lunar rover, from the compartment below the module and unfolded it.[124][125]
"10 Are Executed by Army in Rabat; 4 Generals Among Officers in Moroccan Mutiny to Face Firing Squad", by John L. Hess, The New York Times, July 14, 1971, p. 1
"Sudanese Leader Reclaims Power After His Ouster— Libya Orders British Plane Down and Seizes 2 Rivals on Flight From London", by Raymond H. Anderson, The New York Times, July 23, 1971, p. 1
"Bangladesh hangs Islamist leader Kamaruzzaman for war crimes 'worse than Nazis'", by Sumon Mahbub and Liton Haider, bdnews24.com (Bangladesh News 24 Hours Ltd., Dhaka), April 11, 2015
Beecher, William (July 29, 1971). "U.S. Spy Flights Over China to Avoid Incident— Missions Suspended to Bar Interference With Nixon Trip, Officials Assert". The New York Times. p.1.
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