December 1975

Month of 1975

The following events occurred in December 1975:

The People's Republic of China became only the third nation to successfully conduct photographic reconnaissance from space, recovering the Fanhui Shi Weixing series spy satellite China 4, which had been launched on November 26 to take photographs. The U. S. House of Representatives voted 213–203 to rescue New York City from bankruptcy, narrowly approving a plan for $6.9 billion of short term loans over a three year period. Three days later, the U. S. Senate approved the measure 57–30. Laos came under full communist control, when Vientiane fell to the Pathet Lao leader, Prince Souphanouvong, as the first President of the People's Democratic Republic of Laos. Seven terrorists from a group seeking independence for the South Moluccan Islands from Indonesia, seized control of a passenger train at Beilen in the Netherlands, killing an engineer and a civilian, and holding 50 other people hostage. The action came as a Dutch court was preparing to render a verdict on 17 other terrorists on trial for plotting to kidnap Queen Juliana. The hijackers would release their remaining 23 hostages on December 14 and surrender to police, after being visited by Johannes Manusama, the unofficial leader of Holland's South Moluccan community.

The wreck of the British hospital ship HMHS Britannic was found by Jacques Cousteau, 59 years after it was sunk off of the coast of Greece by a German submarine on November 21, 1916. Gunmen seized control of the Credit Lyonnaise Bank in Paris and, the next day, received a $2.2 million ransom and a getaway car. As they drove away with their two hostages, they ran into heavy traffic and crashed into a taxi. The hostages were rescued, and the robbers quickly captured.

Six South Moluccan terrorists seized the Indonesian consulate in Amsterdam, taking 37 hostages, including 17 children. The gunmen would release their remaining 25 hostages on December 19 after Dutch authorities assured that they would discuss their grievances. Died: Hannah Arendt, 69, German political theorist, while entertaining guests at her New York City apartment.

The British policy of "preventive detention" without trial was ended. Beginning on August 9, 1971, any person in Northern Ireland who was suspected of terrorism could be arrested and kept in prison indefinitely. During the more than four years of detention, 1,874 of the 1,981 detainees were Roman Catholic, and only 107 were Protestant.

Before ending a state visit to Jakarta, U. S. President Gerald R. Ford and U. S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger assured Indonesia's President Suharto that the United States would not interfere with his plans to invade East Timor, although both would later express surprise at the invasion and deny that Suharto had raised the subject at all. A State Department telegram, declassified 26 years later, would show that Suharto told the two that "We want your understanding if we deem it necessary to take rapid or drastic action" in East Timor, and that Ford responded "We will understand, and will not press you on the issue", and Kissinger added, "If you have made plans, we will do our best to keep everyone quiet until the President returns home." On "Black Saturday" during the Lebanese Civil War, the murder of four Lebanese Christians provoked the massacre of 200 Lebanese Muslims by Phalangist gunmen.

The United Nations General Assembly voted to approve the Declaration on the Rights of Disabled Persons and the Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Being Subjected to Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Nationally syndicated newspaper columnist and radio commentator Jeffrey St. John said in a debate, on the TV show Good Morning, America, that he had confirmed, with "one close, personal friend" of U. S. President Ford, "some very disturbing rumors that the President has a drinking problem". Deputy White House Press Secretary William Greener responded later in the day that St. John's claims were something that he "would not even dignify with a comment". Died: William A. Wellman, 79, American film director

The observation deck at 2 World Trade Center opened, giving visitors a chance to see New York City from the 111th floor of the nation's tallest building. The tourist attraction would host its last visitors on September 10, 2001, and would be 45 minutes away from its 9:30 am opening when the attack on the Twin Towers began on 9/11. Pope Paul VI offered an unprecedented and symbolic reconciliation between his own Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, kneeling and then kissing the foot of the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan of Chalcedon, Meiliton Hadjis. At the same time, Patriarch Demetrios I of Constantinople honored a representative of the Vatican in Istanbul. The East–West Schism between the churches in Rome and Byzantium had taken place more than 900 years earlier, in 1054. Four people were killed and 80 injured when a storage tank exploded outside the Hooker Chemical Company in Niagara Falls, New York, sending a cloud of chlorine gas across a wide area. All of the dead were company employees; many of the injured were bystanders who had been walking or driving by the factory. Died: Arthur Treacher, 81, English character actor famous for portraying the proper English butler. At the time of his death, Treacher was the lender of his name to the Arthur Treacher's Fish & Chips restaurant chain, which had more than 800 franchises at the height of its popularity.

A. Q. Khan, a Pakistani scientist who had been working on uranium enrichment for the FDO (Fysisch Dynamisch Onderzoekslaboratorium or Physical Dynamic Research Laboratory) in the Netherlands, left his job suddenly and returned home. Khan took with him copies of blueprints for centrifuges and company information about suppliers of components, then set about to accelerate the Pakistani nuclear program. Pakistan would successfully detonate its first atomic bomb on May 28, 1998. Three days after taking office, New Zealand Prime Minister Robert Muldoon announced the immediate halt of further mandatory contributions from employers and employees into the New Zealand Superannuation Scheme created earlier in the year, and that the money that had been paid into the national pension fund would be refunded in 1976. More than 30 years later, an investment strategist would describe the Muldoon government's action as "our worst economic decision over the past 40 years" that "transformed New Zealand from the potential Switzerland of the Southern Hemisphere into a low ranking OECD economy". The People's Republic of China handed over the remains of two U. S. Navy airmen who had been shot down over Chinese territory in the 1960s. At the border between China and Hong Kong, the American Red Cross received urns containing the ashes of Lt. Comm. James L. Buckley of Sioux City, Iowa, and Parachute Rigger Kenneth W. Hugh of Lancaster, California.

Sara Jane Moore, who had fired a bullet at U. S. President Ford on September 22, pleaded guilty to charges of attempted assassination, despite protests from her court appointed public defender, James Hewitt. She would be sentenced to life in prison, but would be paroled after 32 years, on December 31, 2007, a little more than a year after Gerald Ford's passing at the age of 92. The U. S. television sitcom One Day at a Time, developed by Norman Lear and starring Bonnie Franklin, Mackenzie Phillips, Valerie Bertinelli and Pat Harrington Jr., premiered on CBS. One critic commented that "This new sit com has all the elements that have made Lear's TV comedies so successful— crisp, funny dialogue, brilliant casting, honest situations and mutual misunderstanding," while another opined that the comedy "has a mechanical, assembly line quality to it, which is very surprising for a Norman Lear production," and added, "Lear has created a rather ordinary series." The series would last for nine seasons and 209 episodes.

American plans for $28,000,000 in military aid, to combat the Marxist government of Angola, were rejected, 54–22, by the U. S. Senate, and 323–99 in the House of Representatives. Choi Kyu hah became the new Prime Minister of South Korea, replacing Kim Jong pil, who had held the office since 1971. At a meeting with Argentine President Isabel Perón at her official residence, the Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires, the commanders of the three branches of Argentina's armed forces told her that if she did not resign, she would be ousted. Lt. General Jorge Videla, commander of the Army of Argentina, made the announcement after the Air Force had mutinied.

The Energy Ministers for eleven of the 13 OPEC nations were taken hostage at the Vienna headquarters of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. A six member team of Palestinian commandos, believed to include Carlos (the Jackal), killed three people while fighting their way into the building. The terrorists were provided a jet and free passage from Vienna. After flying to Algiers, the gunmen released the ministers of Ecuador, Gabon, Indonesia, Nigeria and Venezuela, while still keeping those of Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya and Saudi Arabia. Representatives from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates had missed the summit. The remaining hostages were freed on December 23, reportedly after the King of Saudi Arabia and the Shah of Iran paid a combined fifty million dollars. The Ramsar Convention (Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, especially as Waterfowl Habitat), signed in the Iranian city of Ramsar on February 2, 1971, went into effect.

The standard "reserve clause" in Major League Baseball contracts was voided in a decision rendered in arbitration proceedings for two players from different teams. Andy Messersmith of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Dave McNally of the Montreal Expos had been prevented from signing with other teams because of the clause that allowed their employers to keep renewing their contracts for one more year. Peter Seitz, who would say later, "I'm not a new Abraham Lincoln freeing the slaves," had been the deciding vote in a 2 1 decision, with union executive director Marvin Miller voting in favor, and the owners' agent, John Gaherin, voting against. Challenges of the ruling would be upheld in court action, and the precedent would allow players in all professional sports to sell their services to the highest bidder after completing their initial contracts. A bolt of lightning killed 21 people, who were inside a hut, seeking shelter from a storm in eastern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The incident remains the record for number of people electrocuted by one bolt. The U. S. Metric Conversion Act of 1975 was signed into law by President Ford, to guide the gradual replacement of the English system of measurements with the metric system. "To say this legislation is historic is an understatement", Ford told reporters. However, the metric system has never caught on in the United States. Richard S. Welch, a 46 year old attaché at the United States Embassy in Athens, was murdered outside his suburban home in Psychiko after returning with his family from a Christmas party. On November 25, Welch had been identified as an American CIA agent by the English language daily paper The Athens News. Credit for the killing was taken by the Greek Revolutionary Organization 17 November (Epanastatiki Organosi dekaefta Noemvri).

The Soviet Union's supersonic transport jet airplane, the Tupolev Tu 144, began regular service a month before the British and French Concorde began scheduled flights. On the initial flight between Moscow and Alma Ata, the Tu 144 carried no passengers and was used instead to transport freight and mail at Mach 2.35; the Tu 144 would begin flying Aeroflot customers on November 1, 1977, the stop seven months later. Born: Marcelo Ríos, Chilean professional tennis player, ranked No. 1 on two occasions in 1998; in Santiago

Roberto Quieto, the third in command for the Argentine Montoneros guerrillas, was captured by soldiers in Martinez during a raid on a warehouse. Within a few weeks, the location of Montoneros bases throughout Argentina was discovered by the Army, apparently because Quieto had betrayed the group while under torture. He was never seen again. In the first confrontation between the naval forces of the UK and Iceland in the Third Cod War over fishing rights in the North Atlantic Ocean, the Icelandic Coast Guard vessel ICGV Týr rammed the Royal Navy frigate HMS Andromeda while Andromeda was escorting two British fishing trawlers in what Iceland claimed as its territorial waters. Other authors claim that Andromeda deliberately rammed the Tyr

Eleven travelers were killed and 74 others injured by a terrorist bomb placed in a luggage locker at New York's LaGuardia Airport. The time bomb had been placed inside the coin operated locker inside the baggage claims section used by both TWA and Delta, and at 6:33 pm, the explosive, equivalent to 25 sticks of dynamite, detonated. Nobody claimed responsibility for the attack and the crime remains unsolved. The Norwegian oil supertanker MV Berge Istra, carrying iron ore and a crew of 32, vanished in the Pacific Ocean while sailing from Brazil to Japan with a cargo of iron ore. Although a search for traces of the ship found nothing, two members of the crew had survived and would be found, drifting on a raft, on January 18, after the search had been called off. A commission, chaired by Belgium's Prime Minister Leo Tindemans, and requested by the Common Market nations, outlined proposals for creating what would become the European Community. A commentator would write later, "Widely dismissed at the time as timid, the report was in fact a shrewd assessment of the limits to integration in Western Europe and an intelligent guide to the direction that further measures of integration would have to take."

The Parliament of France voted to approve independence for three of the four islands of its colony of the Comoros. Grand Comore (now Ngazidja), Anjouan (Nzwani) and Moheli (Mwali), which had proclaimed a nation in July without French interference, were recognized as an independent nation, but the Parliament set a referendum for the island of Mayotte, which had elected to remain part of France. The U. S. Postal Service increased the price of a postage stamp by 30 percent, from 10 cents to 13 cents. The NHL's Montreal Canadiens hosted the defending Soviet ice hockey champion, HC CSKA Moscow, and played to a 3–3 tie.