March 1977

Noteworthy events in the month

The following events occurred in March 1977:

"Ask President Carter", the first and only radio show allowing ordinary residents across the U. S. to call the President of the United States, was broadcast live on the CBS Radio Network. With CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite serving as moderator, U. S. President Jimmy Carter spoke with 42 people who had been able to get through to the White House after calling a special "900" number paid for by CBS. Japan became only the third nation to place a satellite into geosynchronous orbit, after easing the spacecraft (launched from Tanega Shima on February 23) into position over Indonesia. The launch marked the 10th satellite put into orbit by Japan. Born: Adler Volmar, U. S. and Haitian judo athlete; in Miami
Died: Tom Pryce, 27, the only Welsh racecar driver to win a Formula One race, was killed along with a race official while racing in the South African Grand Prix in Midrand.

Voters in the U. S. territory of the Northern Mariana Islands overwhelmingly approved the proposed constitution to establish the Northern Marianas as a self governing Commonwealth within the United States. With a 58.5% turnout of the 6,500 registered voters, the result was 3,557 for and 258 against. The constitution would come into effect on January 9, 1978. The U. S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee revealed that U. S. military leaders had considered using the atomic bomb in 1953 during the Korean War, releasing a transcript of closed door testimony to the Committee made by U. S. Army General Omar N. Bradley on February 10, 1953. General Bradley had told the Committee members, "We have discussed many times the use of the atomic bomb, tactically," but added, "Of course, you know there are no strategic targets worth mentioning in Korea. We have looked and it is rather hard to find a target at this time that we think is sufficiently remunerative as a target for the expending out of the stockpile."

Voting was held in Pakistan for all 216 seats of the Qomi Assembly. Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) won almost 60% of the vote and 155 seats, while the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA) of Abdul Wali Khan finished a distant second with 36 seats. By royal decree, King Juan Carlos I of Spain legalized gambling casinos for the first time in more than 50 years, acting as part of a plan to bring tourism to the Kingdom as it moved towards democracy. The King wrote in the decree that the 1924 ban on all games of chance (except for two state operated lotteries and for soccer pools) had failed to stop gambling. Queen Elizabeth II of New Zealand announced that had appointed former Prime Minister Sir Keith Holyoake to serve as Governor General of New Zealand, with authority to act on her behalf in the United Kingdom's Queen in her capacity as the monarch of New Zealand. The Queen was in New Zealand as part of a tour of the British Commonwealth's Asian nations during the 25th anniversary of her accession to the throne. Died: Bernie Bierman, 82, U. S. college football coach who led the University of Minnesota to five national championships; Bierman's Minnesota Gophers teams are recognized by the NCAA as champions for 1934, 1935, 1936, 1940 and 1941, with the Gophers becoming the first Associated Press poll #1 at the end of the 1936 season, and the AP sportwriters' favorite again in 1940 and 1941.

Angered over perceived blasphemy in the film Mohammad, Messenger of God, a group of 12 armed U. S. Hanafi Muslims members invaded three buildings in Washington, D. C., and took 134 hostages. The sites attacked were the District Building, the Islamic Center of Washington mosque and the B'nai B'rith Headquarters. The leader of the siege was Hamaas Abdul Khaalis, whose four children were among seven victims in a mass murder in 1973 by Black Muslims targeting him. The siege would end 39 hours later. Future Washington DC Mayor Marion Barry, at the time a member of the D. C. City Council, was shot and wounded when the group opened fire during the building takeover. The U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it was banning saccharin, the only artificial sweetener approved for use in the United States, after studies showed that large doses of the substance caused cancer in laboratory animals. Belgium's Prime Minister Leo Tindemans dissolved the 212 seat Chamber of Representatives and called for new elections on April 17. The move came after the collapse of the coalition government of his Social Christian Party with the Freedom and Progress Party and the Walloon Rally (a party of Belgium's French speaking citizens). The Walloon MPs had abstained from a vote to approve the government's budget. U. S. Navy Admiral Stansfield Turner became the new Director of Central Intelligence, after being confirmed by the U. S. Senate following nomination by U. S. President Carter. Turner replaced Acting Director E. Henry Knoche; Carter's first choice, Ted Sorensen, had withdrawn from consideration after it was clear that the Senate would not confirm his appointment. Francine Hughes of Dansville, Michigan, killed her abusive ex husband, Mickey Hughes, by setting his bed on fire while he was sleeping. She would be acquitted of the crime based on a defense of temporary insanity. The case would later be dramatized in a 1984 TV film, The Burning Bed. Died: Frances P. Bolton, 91, U. S. Representative for Ohio from 1940 to 1969 and the first woman to represent that state in Congress

The U. S. Senate released reports on human rights abuses in 82 world nations that were receiving military aid from the United States, three of which— Ethiopia, Argentina and Uruguay— had been cut off completely because of their rights record. The reports had been mandated by an amendment to the 1976 budget bill for American foreign aid. The Communist government of the Lao People's Democratic Republic arrested the nation's last King of Laos, Savang Vatthana and former Crown Prince Vong Savang, charging them and two other people of masterminding a rebel attack. Savang had been forced by the Pathet Lao to abdicate the throne on December 2, 1975. Savang Vatthana, Queen Khamphoui and Vong Savang were deported to a prison camp at Phong Saly province. Turkish journalist Taner Akçam, incarcerated in Ankara for sedition connected with his writings about Turkey's treatment of the Kurdish minority, escaped from Ankara Central Prison after digging a hole using the leg of an iron stove. He fled to West Germany and was granted citizenship and freedom to continue his political activities. Yeungjin University opened in South Korea at Daegu as Yeungin Technical School, becoming a college in 1985.

The Qey Shibir (Red Terror) in Ethiopia escalated as Ethiopia's ruling military council, the Derg, ordered house by house searches within Addis Ababa and other major cities to look for members and suspected members of the rebel Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP). The searches were carried out by Derg supported armed civilian groups who invaded homes and took the residents away on any evidence suggesting opposition to the government, including possession of a typewriter or a camera. The coalition government of Netherlands Prime Minister Joop den Uyl collapsed, prompting the calling of a new election to be held on May 25 for the 150=seat Tweede Kamer of the Staten Generaal. Indira Gandhi resigned as Prime Minister of India after 11 years in office. James Earl Ray, the convicted assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., voluntarily met for two hours with two attorneys of the U. S. House Assassinations Committee, who came to the Brushy Mountain State Prison where Ray was serving a 99 year sentence. Ray was not under oath, but answered all questions from committee attorneys Richard A. Sprague and Robert Lehner.

The collision of two Boeing 747 airliners killed 583 people at the airport in Tenerife on the Canary Islands, with most of the passengers and crew on a KLM jet and a Pan American World Airways jet perishing. Pan American Flight 1736 was taxiing toward runway 12. At 5:06 in the afternoon, KLM Flight 4805's pilot mistakenly believed that he had been cleared for takeoff and accelerated into the slower moving Pan Am airplane. The KLM crew took off in an attempt to avoid hitting the Pan Am jet, but the bottom of the KLM fuselage struck the top of the Pan Am fuselage. All 248 people on the KLM jet (234 passengers and 14 crew). On the Pan Am jet, there were 61 survivors, but 335 of the 396 people on board were killed. Most of the people on Pan Am 1736 had been on their way to Las Palmas to board a cruise ship, the Golden Odyssey, for a Mediterranean cruise. Died: Diana Hyland (stage name for Diana Gentner), 41, American TV actress and one of the stars of Eight Is Enough, died of cancer 12 days after the show's premiere.

The Academy Awards were presented in Los Angeles on live television in the U. S. with Rocky winning for Best Picture (along with an Oscar for its director John G. Avildsen). The late Peter Finch was honored as Best Actor and Faye Dunaway as Best Actress, both for their performances in the film Network. The Marquette Warriors (of Milwaukee's Marquette University) won the NCAA basketball championship, defeating the North Carolina Tar Heels, 67 to 75, in Atlanta. Mexico and Spain restored diplomatic relations for the first time in almost 40 years, after having separated them in 1939 after Francisco Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War. Architect Erno Rubik of Hungary received Hungarian patent No. 170,062 for his invention, a "spatial logic game" which would be marketed as the Bűvös Kocka (Magic Cube). Exclusive rights to the magic cube would be purchased by Ideal Toy Company in 1979 for marketing worldwide as "Rubik's Cube." Filming began at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, England, for Superman: The Movie. In England, ITV Yorkshire began an experiment of televising the UK's first morning TV news show, Good Morning Calendar. The show was the first in what is referred to in the UK as breakfast television.

For the first time in more than 40 years, Spain granted workers the right to form their own trade unions. During the rule of Francisco Franco, government operated trade unions mediated disputes between employees and manufacturers. Died: Abdel Halim Hafez, 47, popular Egyptian singer and film actor nicknamed "The Dark Skinned Nightingale" ("'el Andaleeb el Asmar"), died from liver failure caused by 35 years of illness from the parasitic disease schistosomiasis.

Hamaas Abdul Khaalis, who had been released on his own recognizance after the Hanfai Muslim seizure of 134 hostages in Washington D. C., as part of a deal, was sent to jail without bond after wiretap evidence revealed that he had threatened to kill 200 people. In the Philippines, a veteran airline pilot left the controls of a DC 3 that he had been flying from Zamboanga City to Bongao in the Sulu Island, picked up an M 16 automatic rifle, killed seven people (including a stewardess) and wounded 14 others before he was subdued. Ernesto Abuloc told investigators that he was aware that the chartered flight's manifest included a bank manager who was carrying $95,000 in cash, and that his intent was to rob all 38 people aboard. Copilot Rolando Suarez subdued Abuloc when the gun misfired and Abuloc was trying to insert another clip of ammunition. Police in Thailand arrested Tij Leka Mbret Shqptarvet, pretender to the throne of Albania as son of the late King Zog I, after finding a cache of assault rifles, rocket launchers and dynamite in his Bangkok hotel room. Booked on charges of illegal possession of deadly weapons, the 6'8" Albanian claimant, who told reporters "Call me King Leka I," and said that he lived in exile in Spain, said that he had started a guerrilla war to overthrow the Communist regime that had ruled Albania since the end of World War II. Leka explained "We are sending operational teams into Albania, on and off, in an out. I am the political head of the movement and, if you wish, the military commander. I am fighting to liberate my people. I'll continue to fight until we are free or I am dead. We are very stubborn people." The U. S. Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security was abolished. During the era of McCarthyism in the 1950s, the Subcommittee, counterpart to the House Un American Activities Committee (HUAC), had investigated charges of Communist infiltration of the federal government. The HUAC and its successor, the House Internal Security Committee, had been abolished in 1975. The Shadow Box, written by Michael Cristofer and winner of the Tony Award for Best Play, made its debut on Broadway at the Morosco Theatre and ran for 315 performances.