March 1973

Month of 1973

The following events occurred in March 1973:

Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, one of rock's landmark albums, was released in the U. S.; sale in the UK began on March 24. U. S. Ambassador to Sudan Cleo A. Noel Jr., and his chargé d'affaires, Curtis Moore, were kidnapped and murdered by terrorists from the Palestinian group Black September Organization, in an attack on the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Khartoum. Guy Eid, the Belgian Embassy's chargé d'affaires, was wounded in the attack. After the U. S. refused to meet the terrorist demand for the release of assassin Sirhan Sirhan (who had killed presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy in 1968), the terrorists killed Noel, Moore and Eid. The Xerox Alto, the first computer with a graphical operating system (a vertical monitor that displayed keyboard choices of operation to the user) and a mouse (with three buttons), became available for sale or lease. The Alto I was developed by the Palo Alto Research Center of the Xerox Corporation. The Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC), whose assets and operations were nationalized by Iraq in 1968, reached a settlement agreement with the Iraqi government, clearing the way for other Middle Eastern nations to take control of the oil production in their nations. British MP Dick Taverne, having resigned from the Parliament on leaving the Labour Party, was re elected as a 'Democratic Labour' candidate. Admiral Sourendra Nath Kohli became Chief of Staff of the Indian Navy. The American Indian Movement (AIM) occupiers of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, released the 11 hostages that they had taken two days earlier, but continued their standoff and seizure of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building. On March 10, agents of the U. S. Department of Justice ended their blockade of the town and AIM activists left the trenches that they had dug in preparation for a fight, but the cease fire ended the next day when an FBI agent, Curtis Fitzgerald, was shot and wounded by an AIM sniper. Two men kidnapped the mayor of Gallup, New Mexico, from City Hall and then barricaded themselves in a nearby sporting goods store, apparently because of his nomination to the board of regents of the University of New Mexico. Mayor Emmett Garcia was able to escape from a window after police fired tear gas into the store. His kidnapper, a university student, then killed himself.

Fourteen construction workers were killed and 34 injured when the center section of the 26 story Skyline Plaza collapsed in Bailey's Crossroads, Virginia (outside Washington D. C.), sending concrete and steel down on workers below. Workers had completed 23 of the stories and were working on the 24th floor that suddenly gave way under the weight of a crane that was hauling wet concrete to the top. Six bodies were recovered immediately and 12 other people were missing and feared dead. U. S. Secretary of State William P. Rogers announced that the U. S. and China had reached an agreement in principle to settle U. S. claims against the People's Republic dating back to 1949 for $200 million worth worth of confiscated property, and the Communists claim for $100 million of frozen Chinese assets in U. S. banks. The popular Hungarian musical Képzelt riport egy amerikai popfesztiválról (An Imaginary Report on an American Rock Festival), with music by Gábor Presser and lyrics by Anna Adamis, premiered at the Comedy Theatre of Budapest and popularized rock music in the Communist ruled nation, then toured other Communist nations with performances in East Germany, Romania, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. Died: Joe "Red" Hayes, 46, American fiddle player and songwriter with the Faron Young country music band, died of a heart attack after playing at a concert in Manchester while on the "Road to Nashville" tour of the United Kingdom. Young's band was traveling on a bus to its next stop when, as a British newspaper noted, he "died in a coach while travelling from Manchester to Chatham for a concert."

The crash of Iberia Airlines Flight 504 after a mid air collision in France killed all 68 people aboard after the DC 9 was struck by another airliner in an accident which happened while both were flying over La Planche in the Loire Atlantique département, near Nantes. The Iberia DC 9, with 61 passengers and nine crew, was returning mostly passengers to London after a holiday on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca. Spantax Flight 400 was a Convair CV 990 on its way to London from Madrid. Both aircraft had been cleared for an altitude of 29000 feet (8839 m) by substitute air traffic controllers who were filling in during a strike. Without clearance from any controller, the crew of the Spantax began a 360 degree turn and its left wing struck the Iberia plane, which went out of control. The Spantax airliner was able to make an emergency landing at Cognac Châteaubernard Air Base. The Pacific Legal Foundation was incorporated in Sacramento, California, making it the first and oldest conservative/libertarian public interest law firm in the United States. The "Great Michigan Pizza Funeral" was held by the frustrated owner of a food processing factory, Mario Fabbrini of Fabbrini Family Foods, near Ossineke, Michigan. The company had been ordered by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to recall the pizzas on suspicion that the mushroom pizzas had botulism causing bacteria. The pizzas were tipped into an 18 foot (5.5 m) deep hole in the ground before a crowd of onlookers, who were addressed by Michigan governor William Milliken. Donald DeFreeze, who would co found the U. S. Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) terrorist group, escaped from Soledad Prison in California, where he was two years away from completing a 6 year sentence. After his escape, he met Patricia Soltysik and the two created the SLA. Died: Michael Jeffery, 39, English music business manager, was killed in Nantes mid air collision.

John T. Downey, the longest held prisoner of war in United States history, was released after more than 20 years in prison as a humanitarian gesture by the People's Republic of China. Downey crossed over the Sham Chun River bridge from Shenzhen into British Hong Kong. Downey, a pilot for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), had been captured in Manchuria on November 29, 1952, along with Richard Fecteau while on a mission to extract a CIA courier. Fecteau had been set free on December 13, 1971. Downey's release came after U. S. President Nixon had publicly admitted that Downey had been a CIA agent, and after a personal request by Nixon to China's Premier Zhou Enlai following a stroke suffered by Downey's mother. U. S. President Richard Nixon announced that he was expanding the protection of executive privilege, the means in which the U. S. president and staff were immune from having to testify or answer questions about White House events while in office, and said that it applied to former staff members as well. The Italian ore freighter Igara sank one day after striking a rock near Merdarik Island after passing through the Sunda Stait in the South China Sea. Although her 38 man crew was all rescued, the ship was a total loss with a value of US$25 million, the largest marine insurance payout up to that time. While part of the stern of the ship stuck out of the water, the bow section went down in the 130 feet (40 m) deep section of sea and has remained there for more than fifty years. In Chachoengsao Province, Thailand, an unidentified soldier threw a grenade into a large crowd at a temple fair, killing one person and injuring 25 when he got upset over music being played. The final episode of U. S. comedy series Rowan and Martin's Laugh In, at one time the most popular show on television but the victim of declining ratings, aired on NBC. Ben Villaflor of the Philippines, the World Boxing Association (WBA) super featherweight champion, lost to Japanese challenger Kuniaki Shibata in 15 rounds in a bout in Honolulu, Hawaii. In a rematch on October 17, he would win back his title by defeating Shibata.

The late Roberto Clemente was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame less than six months after his last game, as the 424 members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America voted to waive the customary five year waiting period in consideration of Clemente's death in an airplane crash on December 31, 1972. Clemente received 393 of the 420 votes for induction. At a closed door meeting of the Soviet Communist Party's Politburo, the de facto rulers of the U. S. S. R. voted to not enforce the "diploma tax that had been implemented in August to charge significantly higher exit fees for Jews seeking to emigrate to Israel, based on the cost of the education paid for by the state. A study was presented to the Politburo and showed that less than 15 percent of the 25,000 adults applying for an exit visa had a college education, and that most of the Soviet Union's educated people preferred to remain at home, a finding that surprised most Politburo members. Party leader Leonid Brezhnev proposed eliminating the tax, based on a bill introduced in the U. S. Senate by Henry Jackson. Ultimately, the Politburo agreed with the KGB Director Yuri Andropov that, rather than appearing to bow to American pressure, the Soviets should simply keep the diploma tax on the books and decline to enforce it. The details of the meeting would become public decades later with the declassification of secret Kremlin records. On March 29, the Soviets "allowed about 70 Jews formerly subjected to the tax to leave without paying." The Republic of Iraq and the Kingdom of Kuwait fought a battle near al Samirah, a border outpost in Kuwait across from the Iraqi town of Safwan, 18 days after Kuwait's Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah, had returned from discussions with Iraq's Deputy President Saddam Hussein. Two Kuwaiti policemen were killed, and the two nations prepared to go to war until both sides agreed to pull back their forces. The Eider Barrage was opened, protecting the mouth of the river Eider near Tönning on West Germany's North Sea coast from storm surges. A British government White Paper on Northern Ireland proposed the re establishment of an Assembly elected by proportional representation, with a possible All Ireland council which would lead to the unsuccessful Sunningdale Agreement of December 9.

Red Rum won the Grand National steeplechase at Aintree, near Liverpool, UK defeating co favourite Crisp on the run in, having trailed by 15 lengths at the final fence. Former heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali and future heavyweight champ Ken Norton fought the first of three bouts against each other, with Ali sustaining a broken jaw in the second round and continuing to go the distance for the full 15 rounds. Norton won in a split decision by the judges, giving Ali only his second loss in his professional boxing career up to that time. Seven people were killed in an explosion at a restaurant in Cincinnati, Ohio, and 19 injured, after the blast caused two buildings to collapse. All of the dead were in a three story building that housed Clara and Al's Cafe at 1535 Elm Street. An F4 tornado struck Abbeville, South Carolina and killed seven people. A woman in the U. S. city of Cincinnati, Ohio, gave birth to two babies who were not twins, though they had the same biological parents. The unidentified woman had a rare condition of "two uteri, two mouths to the womb and two cervices", only the second time in recorded medical history that such an event had occurred. Died: C. A. Lejeune (Caroline Alice Lejeune), 76, British film critic for The Observer of London as one of the first major female critics.