May 1971

Month of 1971

The following events occurred in May 1971:

Thirty one people were killed in Canada, when their homes in the village of Saint Jean Vianney, Quebec were swallowed by a sinkhole and then buried by mud and debris. After a heavy rainstorm, the ground beneath 35 houses gave way. Most of the victims were employees of the Aluminum Company of Canada and their families. John Froines, sought by the FBI as the leader of the "Mayday Tribe" and accused of conspiracy to interfere with the civil rights of commuters and federal employees as part of a protest, was arrested 15 minutes after an agent had spotted him. To the surprise of FBI agents, Mr. Froines had been recognized while he was addressing a crowd of thousands of anti war demonstrators and standing directly beneath the office window of U. S. Attorney General John N. Mitchell. Four home made bombs were found in the vicinity of Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School in the UK. The authorities at first thought these belonged to the Angry Brigade but concluded that the explosives were more likely to be the work of students who had devised improvised bombs as an experiment on a school trip to Norway in 1970.

The 3rd U. S. Marine Expeditionary Brigade ceased all ground and air operations in Vietnam and prepared for its deactivation. Owners of the teams in the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the rival American Basketball Association (ABA) reached an agreement in New York City to merge the two leagues into a 28 team circuit of 17 NBA teams and 11 ABA teams. Players in both leagues stated at the same time that they opposed the merger because it would move competitive bidding for their services. Although a championship game between the two leagues was not discussed, the parties agreed to play inter league preseason games during the fall. Serial killer Carroll Cole committed the first of 15 strangulation murders of women over a period of more than nine years, starting with Essie Buck, whom he picked up at a bar in San Diego. Arrested in 1980, Cole would be executed by lethal injection in Nevada on December 6, 1985. Died: Ranada Prasad Shaha, 74, Pakistani Bengali philanthropist and businessman, was taken from his home by the Pakistani Army, along with his 3 year old grandson. Their bodies have never been found. Forty eight years later, Mahbubur Rahman, would be convicted of participating in Shaha's murder.

Mariner 8 was launched by the United States from Cape Kennedy on a mission to Mars at 8:11 p. m. local time (0111 UTC 9 May), but a malfunction of the Centaur rocket's upper stage caused the launch vehicle to tumble out of control slightly less than five minutes later, before it could reach orbit. A 24 hour truce began between the combatants in the Vietnam War at noon to allow the festival celebrations in both North Vietnam and South Vietnam of the birthday of Gautama Buddha. Arsenal won the FA Cup final in extra time, 2 to 1 over Liverpool at Wembley Stadium, with Charlie George scoring the winning goal in the 21st minute of play after the game was drawn 1 to 1 at the end of 90 minutes. It was only the second time in the 20th century that an English team had completed the double (finishing in first place in the Football League First Division and winning the FA Cup). On May 3, Arsenal had finished the season with 29 wins, seven draws and six losses. In Long Beach, California, the former British ocean liner RMS Queen Mary, which took passengers on cruises in 1967 began its first day as a tourist attraction, initially limited to taking customers on walking tours of the ship.

The very first Women's FA Cup in England, the Mitre Challenge Trophy for women's professional soccer football, was won when Southampton Women's F. C. defeated Stewarton Thistle, 4 to 1, in the final held at Crystal Palace National Sports Centre. Pat Davies scored three of her team's four goals and Dot Cassell contributed the lone Stewarton score. The Emmy Awards were held in Los Angeles. All in the Family won the award for Outstanding Comedy Series, The Flip Wilson Show was the Outstanding Variety show, and The Bold Ones: The Senator won as the best drama. Best acting awards went to comedians Jack Klugman and Jean Stapleton, and to Hal Holbrook and Susan Hampshire. The award for most outstanding single performance by an actor went to George C. Scott, who had rejected his Academy Award for Patton, but announced that he was pleased to accept the Emmy Award. The "Peace Candle of the World" was first lit, in a ceremony at Scappoose, Oregon before Oregon Governor Tom McCall and the town's mayor. The 50 feet (15 m) tall candle, still a roadside attraction, was ignited by a special 60 feet (18 m) long match. The candle, "a hollow silo coated with 4,500 pounds of wax" was designed by Scappoose resident Darrell Brock.

In the seventh and deciding game of the best of 7 Stanley Cup finals, the Montreal Canadiens defeated the Chicago Black Hawks, 3 to 2. After Chicago had taken a 2 to 0 lead in the second period on scores by Dennis Hull and Danny O'Shea, Jacques Lemaire made the first Montreal score. Henri Richard tied the game and then scored the winning goal early in the final period. Canadiens rookie Ken Dryden, who had never played in the NHL until March, stopped 31 of 33 shots on goal in preserving the win. In Salt Lake City, the Utah Stars won the championship of the American Basketball Association (ABA) in the seventh game of the best of 7 series, 131 to 121 over the Kentucky Colonels of Louisville. Zelmo Beaty had 36 points for the winners, while the Colonels' Dan Issel had 41. U. S. truck manufacturer Mack Trucks, Inc. and the government of the Soviet Union entered into a contract for Mack to design and supply equipment for the Russians to use for the KAMAZ truck factory, under construction in the Russian SFSR at Naberezhnye Chelny on the Kama River. The agreement, which would double the volume of U. S. exports to the U. S. S. R., was kept secret until June 17 at the request of the Nixon administration.

A 6.8 magnitude earthquake, lasting 20 seconds, destroyed most of the city of Bingöl in Turkey. The quake hit at 6:45 in the evening local time. More than 1,000 people were killed, and 10,000 were made homeless. The Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum, more commonly known as the "LBJ Presidential Library" was dedicated in Austin, Texas on the campus of the University of Texas, with U. S. President Nixon and former U. S. President Johnson attending. Died: Efraim Elrom, 58, Israeli consul general to Turkey, was executed by the Turkish Liberation Army, an underground militant organization linked to the Palestine Liberation Organization, five days after he was kidnapped.

Seventy eight of the 83 people aboard Aviogenex Flight 130 were killed as the Tupolev Tu 134A jet crashed while approaching a landing at Rijeka in Yugoslavia during a heavy rain, then burst into flames. The dead included all 73 British vacationers who had chartered the plane through Yugotours Ltd., and who had boarded the aircraft at Gatwick airport in London. Only one of the 76 passengers survived. Limerick GAA defeated Tipperary by a single point to win the championship of the National Hurling League in Ireland. Both sides had three goals, and the final score was 3 12 to 3 11 (equivalent to 21 to 20). Jackie Stewart won the 1971 Monaco Grand Prix.

Voting was held in South Korea for the 204 seats of the unicameral parliament, the Daehanminguk Gukhoe. The opposition New Democratic Party, led by Kim Hong il won 89 seats, 29 of which had been newly created, eroding the ruling Democratic Republican Party majority from 129 45 to 113 89. The Tupolev Tu 144, the Soviet Union's supersonic jet passenger airliner that resembled the British French Concorde, made its first landing in the West, arriving at Le Bourget Airport near Paris for the Paris Air Show. Died: Michael Willetts, 27, English soldier, killed by a bomb while shielding potential victims; he was one of the first to be killed during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and the recipient of a posthumous George Cross.

Portugal resigned from UNESCO. A Berlin based CV 990A operated by Modern Air Transport, with 45 passengers on board, was unexpectedly denied permission to enter Bulgarian airspace, as a result of a new policy adopted by that country's then communist government to deny any aircraft whose flight had originated or was going to terminate at a West Berlin airport the right to take off and land at any of its airports. The plane landed safely back at Berlin's Tegel Airport. In the first meeting between players of the National Basketball Association and the rival American Basketball Association, the NBA All Stars defeated the ABA All Stars, 125 to 120, at the Houston Astrodome in front of a crowd of 13,363. The high scorers were Walt Frazier of the NBA's New York Knicks, and Rick Barry of the ABA's New York Nets. Born: Marco Rubio, Cuban American politician, senior U. S. Senator from Florida; in Miami
Died: Audie Murphy, 45, "the nation's most decorated hero of World War II" who was awarded the Medal of Honor, and later became a successful film actor, was killed along with five other people when the plane he was on crashed into Brush Mountain, near Catawba, Virginia. The twin engine Aero Commander was on its way from Atlanta to Martinsville, Virginia when it went down shortly after 11:00 in the morning, when its pilot radioed that he was going to try to land in Roanoke because of bad weather. The wreckage was found after a two day search.

Beginning with 1971, a three day Memorial Day Weekend became an annual observance within the U. S. federal government and by nearly all of the U. S. states, as the scheduled Memorial Day was fixed permanently for federal agencies as the last Monday in May, pursuant to the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, Public Law 90 363. From 1868 to 1970, Memorial Day (formerly "Decoration Day") had been observed on May 30, regardless of what day of the week it fell upon. The government of South Vietnam announced that it had compiled a list of 660 "sick or wounded" prisoners of war for repatriation to North Vietnam, pursuant to an agreement between the two warring nations, but that 647 of the 660 informed the Saigon government that they did not want to go back to the north. At the time, the U. S. had a list of 339 Americans known to be prisoners of war in the north and had seen the repatriation of the North Vietnamese as a first step in securing the release of the U. S. POWs. The 13 who did agree to go boarded the transport ship USS Upshur on June 3, but were told by the Hanoi government that they could not come back to North Vietnam.