April 1969

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April 15, 1969: North Korea shoots down American spy plane over international waters
A similar EC-121M spyplane
April 28, 1969: France's President de Gaulle resigns after voters reject his plan
April 4, 1969: CBS cancels the popular Smothers Brothers' show

The following events occurred in April 1969:

April 1, 1969 (Tuesday)

The original Space Shuttle design
  • At Houston,
    Max Faget showed 20 colleagues a small balsa wood and paper model with "straight, stubby wings and a shark-like nose" and told them. "We're going to build America's next spacecraft. It’s going to launch like a spacecraft; it’s going to land like a plane." Faget, the director of engineering and development at the Manned Space Center, was introducing the assembled group to a planned reusable spacecraft, the American Space Shuttle.[1][2]
  • The Harrier GR1, a jet fighter with vertical takeoff and landing capability, entered military service for the first time, with the original Harrier jets becoming part of Britain's Royal Air Force fleet at RAF Wittering.[3] The Harrier had first flown on December 28, 1967.[4]
  • The 9th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party opened in Beijing, with 1,512 delegates appearing for 24 days of meetings. Lin Biao, the Vice-Chairman of the Party, Vice-Premier of China and Defense Minister, delivered the opening address and was accepted later in the Congress as the official successor to Chairman Mao Zedong. The Congress was the first in almost 14 years.[5]
  • Meeting in
    April Fool's Day joke or the first official recognition by any government agency of the possibility of the existence of "Bigfoot".[6] Whether intended as humorous or not, the ordinance was published in the April 4 and April 11 issues of the weekly Skamania County Pioneer, a requirement under state law, and was amended again in 1984. The text of the 1969 enactment noted "evidence to indicate the possible existence" in the county of an ape-like creature, a large number of "purported recent sightings" and "an influx of scientific investigators as well as casual hunters, many armed with lethal weapons", and was passed to discourage "laxity in the use of firearms" that posed a threat to "persons living or traveling within the boundaries of Skamania County", and made slaying of the creature described as "Sasquatch", "Yeti" or "Bigfoot" a felony punishable by a $10,000 fine and/or five years imprisonment.[7]
  • Born:

April 2, 1969 (Wednesday)

  • All 51 people aboard LOT Polish Airlines Flight 165 were killed when the Antonov An-24 crashed into a mountain slope during its scheduled flight from Warsaw to Kraków.[8] With visibility low in a snowstorm, and the pilot well off course, the propeller-driven airplane impacted with 4,491 feet (1,369 m) Polica Mountain at an altitude of 3,937 feet (1,200 m), after flying 50 miles (80 km) past its destination and impacting in the mountains above the town of Zawoja.[9]
  • Twenty-three South Vietnamese soldiers and an American pilot were killed when their CH-47 Chinook combat helicopter crashed north of the abandoned Khe Sanh combat base, and another 53 soldiers were injured. The 77 people on board were flying into combat when a rotor of the Chinook struck a tree and brought the aircraft down in what was described as "the costliest helicopter crash of the war".[10]
  • The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, "apparently bowing to a Soviet ultimatum", reluctantly announced strict censorship of the Czechoslovakian news media, and the government's Ministry of the Interior issued new regulations.[11] The CTK government news agency issued a statement saying that punishment awaited any newspaper or broadcast report that did not "proceed in harmony with the interests of the domestic and foreign policy of the State", and that the government "expressed its regret and apologies" to the USSR for instances where a mood of "anti-Soviet hysteria" had been created by the press.
  • Born: Ajay Devgn, Indian Hindi cinema actor and two-time National Film Award Best Actor winner; in New Delhi

April 3, 1969 (Thursday)

April 4, 1969 (Friday)

Dr. Denton Cooley
  • Dr.
    St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital in Houston.[15] The recipient was 47-year-old Haskell Karp of Skokie, Illinois, whose diseased heart was removed from his chest and replaced by the Liotta TAH plastic and fabric mechanical pump, developed by Dr. Domingo Liotta. Sixty-five hours after the implantation of the mechanical heart, Karp received a donor heart from a 40-year-old woman whose body had been flown in from Lawrence, Massachusetts.[16] However, Karp survived only 32 hours after the new heart was implanted, before he succumbed to pneumonia caused by Pseudomonas bacteria; another artificial heart implant would not take place until 1981.[17]
  • Popular, but controversial,
    Tommy Smothers, "consistently had failed to deliver tapes" of their programs in time for CBS executives and local TV stations to review the content, and added that it was "abundantly clear" that the brothers were "unwilling to accept the criteria of taste established by the network's program practices department." [18]
  • Also popular and controversial, singer Jim Morrison of The Doors appeared with his attorney before the Los Angeles office of the FBI to answer federal charges of "interstate flight to avoid prosecution" in relation to his indecent exposure at his March 1 concert in Miami. By arrangement, Morrison was arrested and immediately released upon posting of a $5,000 bond. By then, The Doors' 1969 concert dates had been canceled and the group was blacklisted by the Concert Hall Managers' Association.[19]
  • Born: Mo Cowan, American lawyer and interim United States Senator from Massachusetts; in Yadkinville, North Carolina
Staff Sgt. Falcón
  • Died: U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Félix Conde Falcón, 31, was killed in the Vietnam War while leading a charge against a large complex of enemy bunkers at Ap Tan Hoa. Almost 35 years later, the case of the Puerto Rican non-commissioned officer would be reviewed and Falcón would be awarded the Medal of Honor for his bravery.

April 5, 1969 (Saturday)

April 6, 1969 (Sunday)

  • Twenty-five crewmen on the
    Greater New Orleans Bridge. The freighter, with 51 men on board, collided head-on with a set of three linked oil-laden barges that were being pushed by the tugboat Warren Doucet, causing the lead barge to split in two and set fire to its cargo of 9,000 barrels of crude oil.[23]
  • Born:
  • Died: Gabriel Chevallier, 73, French satirical novelist and author of the 1934 book Clochemerle

April 7, 1969 (Monday)

Crocker in 2007
  • UCLA graduate student and computer scientist Steve Crocker wrote and circulated the very first Request for Comments (RFC) publication to be circulated among the Network Working Group (Crocker, Jeff Rulifson and Bill Duvall of Stanford Research Institute, and Steve Carr of Utah) that was developing the communication protocols for the upcoming ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet.[24] The very first RFC [25] summarized the tentative agreements that the group had settled on for the Interface Message Processor (IMP) routers in the network sites, with initial messages being limited to 8,080 bits
    .
  • The
    United States Supreme Court ruled in Stanley v. Georgia that the possession of obscene material was protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Writing for the majority, Justice Thurgood Marshall commented that "A state has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his house, what books he may read or what films he may watch," adding that individual state governments remained free to restrict public distribution of those materials.[26]

April 8, 1969 (Tuesday)

  • The Montreal Expos defeated the New York Mets, 11 to 10, in what sportswriter Dick Young described as "the first international major league baseball game in history" [27] The Expos, one of four new major league teams and MLB's first team from outside the United States, played the Mets at New York's Shea Stadium, and Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau tossed out the ceremonial first pitch; ten-year MLB veteran Maury Wills batted first for the Expos, who almost blew an 11–6 lead in the final inning.[28] The result was not a sign of things to come; the Mets would win the 1969 World Series, while the Expos and the other new National League team, the San Diego Padres, would tie for MLB's worst win–loss record (52–110) in 1969.
  • All four of baseball's newest teams won their openers. The San Diego Padres debuted at home and beat the Houston Astros, 3 to 1, taking the field first in a half-filled stadium in front of an opening-day crowd of just 23,370. Dick Selma threw the first pitch and allowed only five hits, and Rafael Robles was the first to bat.[29] The Kansas City Royals, bringing major league ball back to Kansas City after the Kansas City Athletics had moved to Oakland for 1968, beat the visiting Minnesota Twins, 4 to 3, before just 17,688 fans in a half-filled Municipal Stadium; the win came in the 12th inning as Joe Keough hit a single with the bases loaded; Lou Piniella was the first to bat for the Royals. Finally, the new Seattle Pilots (who would go bankrupt and become the Milwaukee Brewers the following year) won 4–3 at Anaheim to beat the California Angels; Tommy Harper batted first for the Pilots.[30]

April 9, 1969 (Wednesday)

  • Students for a Democratic Society. Shortly after midnight, the Harvard administrators called the Cambridge police and the Massachusetts State Police, and law enforcement officers charged in with billy clubs and pepper spray, arresting 184 people and injuring 45.[31] Among those arrested was future Fox News journalist Chris Wallace, who "used his one phone call to contact the campus radio station", which recorded a first-hand account filed from behind bars.[32]

April 10, 1969 (Thursday)

  • On the morning that he was preparing to overthrow the government of the Central African Republic, Lieutenant Colonel Alexandre Banza was arrested when he arrived at the army barracks at Camp Kassai. Banza, the Republic's former Finance Minister, had been betrayed by his confidant, Lieutenant Jean-Claude Mandaba, who had informed C.A.R. President Jean-Bédel Bokassa of the plot. Mandaba's soldiers seized Banza, who confessed under torture that he had intended to exile General Bokassa rather than kill him, confirmed by the written plans for the coup found in Banza's jacket pocket, which included the names of people whom he had planned to have serve in his cabinet. A military tribunal convened at Camp de Roux in Bangui, found Banza guilty of treason, and had him executed by firing squad the next day.[33][34][35]
  • Charles de Gaulle announced in a live interview that he would resign as President of France if voters did not approve his referendum proposal for reducing the power of the French Senate and decentralizing the national government. "There cannot be the slightest doubt. On the reply the country makes to what I have asked it, will depend the continuation of my mandate or my immediate departure."[36]
  • NASA announced its choice for the crew of Apollo 12, the second crewed mission to the Moon, with Charles Conrad and Alan L. Bean to walk the lunar surface while Richard F. Gordon remained in the lunar orbiter.[37]
  • Died: Harley Earl, 75, American automobile designer for General Motors known for creating the Corvette and for introducing the "tailfin" to the automobile industry, peaking in popularity between 1955 and 1961.

April 11, 1969 (Friday)

April 12, 1969 (Saturday)

  • The Soviet Union revived the concept of the Subbotnik, a day when millions of Soviet citizens, particularly members of the Communist Party and their families, would do community service on a Saturday that they would normally not be required to work. The "All-Union Communist Subbotnik" (from Subotta for Saturday) came on the 50th anniversary of the first Subbotnik held on the weekend of April 11–12, 1919.[42]
  • Wales won the Five Nations Championship in rugby union play by scoring 27 points in the second half of the game against England to win 30–9. By beating England, Ireland and Scotland, Wales also won the rugby union "Triple Crown", in which one of the four "home nations" on the British Isles defeats the other three; a Welsh draw with the fifth nation, France, did not have any effect on winning the Crown.[43]
  • Seven of the 13 member crew of the Spanish trawler Gaztalupe were killed when their ship collided with the French trawler Olagorra and then sank in the North Sea, about 34 miles (55 km) from Scotland's Outer Hebrides islands, while two crewmen on the Olagorra were killed from the impact of the collision. Olagorra limped into port at Stornoway with two bodies and the six survivors of the Gaztalup.[44][45]
  • Born: Michael D. Jackson, American NFL wide receiver; as Michael Dywane Jackson Dyson in Tangipahoa, Louisiana (killed in motorcycle accident, 2017)

April 13, 1969 (Sunday)

  • Less than 24 hours before the scheduled shutdown of the United States railway system by a nationwide walkout of workers was scheduled to begin, the nation's major railroad companies reached an agreement with the 10,000-member Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen. The pact came after a 28-hour bargaining session overseen by the National Mediation Board, averting a strike that was to have started at 6:01 Monday morning.[46]
  • KPD in 1956, as the 773 delegates to the first DKP Congress in Essen voted 770-0 (with three abstentions) to approve "a party platform stressing its nonrevolutionary nature", its lack of a relationship with East Germany's ruling Communist Party (the Socialist Unity Party of Germany or SED) and its plans to seek representation in democratic elections.[47]
  • Born: Harold Pruett, American television actor; in Anchorage, Alaska (died of drug overdose, 2002)

April 14, 1969 (Monday)

April 15, 1969 (Tuesday)

  • At 1:47 in the afternoon local time (0447 UTC),
    an unarmed American EC-121 reconnaissance aircraft was shot down by a North Korean MiG-21 jet fighter over the Sea of Japan, killing all 31 U.S. servicemen on board.[53] Presented with a variety of options ranging from diplomatic protests to military retaliation (including a possible nuclear strike) [54] against North Korea, U.S. President Nixon limited the American response to adding armed escorts for future spy plane flights and redeploying four aircraft carriers and other Seventh Fleet ships into the Sea of Japan for ten days.[55][56] The bodies of Lt. (j.g.) Joseph R. Ribar and AT1 Richard E. Sweeney were recovered two days later from the sea, but none of the effects of the other 29 crewmen were found.[52] In 2000, author Anthony Summers would write in his book, The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon, that White House insiders had told him that President Nixon had been intoxicated when he was informed of the EC-121 shootdown, and quoted former CIA employee George Carver as saying that "The Joint Chiefs were alerted and asked to recommend targets" for a tactical nuclear strike, but that "Kissinger got on the phone to them. They agreed not to do anything until Nixon sobered up." [57]
  • The White House hosted its largest number of visitors since March 4, 1829, when new U.S. President Andrew Jackson invited the general public to come inside the presidential mansion, with 26,000 people arriving in what would become known as the "Inaugural Brawl". First Lady Pat Nixon welcomed 4,702 members of the Daughters of the American Revolution for a reception.[58]
  • American
    U.S. Virgin Islands in a saturation diving environment.[59] The group underwent more than 19 hours of decompression between the time of emerging from Tektite I and returning to dry land.[60]
  • Died:
    Queen consort of Spain from the time of her marriage to King Alfonso XIII in 1906 and the abolition of the monarchy in 1931. Victoria-Eugenie had lived in exile in Switzerland since 1942, and was buried at Lausanne
    .

April 16, 1969 (Wednesday)

April 17, 1969 (Thursday)

April 17, 1969: Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, charged with murder
  • Sirhan Bishara Sirhan was convicted of the first-degree murder of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, ten months after the fatal shooting of Kennedy on June 5, 1968. After a trial that had lasted 14 weeks, a Los Angeles County Superior Court jury of seven men and five women deliberated (and asked Judge Herbert V. Walker for instructions relevant to second-degree murder) before returning the conviction, which carried with it a sentence of either life imprisonment or the death penalty. After almost 17 hours of deliberation (spread out over four days), the jury returned its verdict at 10:47 in the morning. Jurors also convicted Sirhan of five counts of assault with intent to kill for five bystanders who had been wounded in the shooting.[63]
  • Tay Ninh Province on February 10, 1968, and was promoted to SP5 while missing.[65]
  • Antonin Novotny, on charges of having participated in a "Trotskyite-Titoite-Zionist conspiracy" against the KSČ, but had been released in 1959 and politically rehabilitated.[67]
The "Flying Bathtub"

April 18, 1969 (Friday)

April 19, 1969 (Saturday)

April 20, 1969 (Sunday)

  • A grassroots movement of Berkeley community members seized an empty lot owned by the University of California, to begin the formation of "People's Park". The university had demolished all buildings on the block of Berkeley, California bounded by Telegraph, Haste, Bowditch and Dwight streets, leaving a vacant lot that had gone undeveloped for more than a year, so thousands of UC students and Berkeley residents – "hippies and freaks and Yippies and street people and politicos and radicals and peace activists and the Free Church of Berkeley and environmentalists and students and grad students and professors and architects and neighbors and their children" began landscaping. By May 15, the lot would have brick paths, flowers and trees, a playground and even an amphitheater.[76] On May 15, the university would put a fence around the park and begin dismantling it, and the protests and response would escalate into a riot and the calling out of 2,000 state national guard troops.[77]
  • For the first time in its 223-year history,
    coeds" to begin the fall semester. Under the long range plan, 375 more would be admitted in 1970, 550 in 1971, 630 in 1972 and 650 in 1973.[78]
  • British Army troops already stationed in Ulster Province in Northern Ireland were called for the first time to reinforce the local Royal Ulster Constabulary.[79] The British Army already had 2,500 men from its Royal Irish Rangers infantry regiment, including an armored unit, stationed at St Patrick's Barracks in Ballymena and at Palace Barracks in Holywood, and a government spokesman in London emphasized that no additional troops would be sent from England, and that the British Army's role would be to guard reservoirs and power stations.[80]
  • U.S. President Nixon announced that he would order the withdrawal of 150,000 American troops from South Vietnam over the next 12 months in a gradual policy of "Vietnamization", putting more responsibility on the Army of the Republic of Viet Nam (ARVN). At the same time, Nixon was expanding the bombing of North Vietnam and had carried the war into Cambodia.[81]
  • Born:
    • Felix Baumgartner, Austrian skydiver who is widely known for jumping to Earth from a helium balloon from the stratosphere on October 14, 2012; setting the world record for skydiving an estimated 39 km (24 mi) and reaching an estimated top speed of 1,357.64 km/h (843.6 mph); in Salzburg[82][83]
  • Died: Benny Benjamin, 43, American jazz drummer who later became the recording studio drummer of Motown's R&B hits; of a stroke after years of battling drug and alcohol addiction. Benjamin would be posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

April 21, 1969 (Monday)

April 22, 1969 (Tuesday)

  • Robin Knox-Johnston became the first person to sail around the world alone and without taking on additional supplies or even approaching land. Knox-Johnston sailed his yacht, the Suhaili, into Falmouth, Cornwall, 312 days after his June 14, 1968 departure on the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race.[89] By the time he returned to the cheers of thousands of onlookers at Falmouth and even more watching him on live television, Knox-Johnston had traveled 30,123 nautical miles (34,665 mi) (55,788 km).[90][91] Up until he was sighted by a British tanker near the Azores on April 5, Knox-Johnston had not been seen or heard from for since November 20.[92]
Future President Clinton
  • ROTC program at the University of Arkansas in 1970, although he would renege on that commitment.[94]
  • John Lennon of The Beatles legally changed his name from "John Winston Lennon" to "John Oko Lennon" in honor of his new wife, Yoko Ono Lennon. Lennon told reporters, "Yoko changed her name for me; I've changed mine for her. It gives us nine O's between us, which is good luck."[95]
  • Republic of Biafra for 18 months after the fall of Enugu, was recaptured by Nigerian Army troops of the First Nigerian Army Division, commanded by Colonel Mohammed Shuwa.[96][97] The Nigerian Civil War
    , however, would continue for another nine months.
  • Northern Irish Prime Minister Terence O'Neill allowed for the 'One Man, One Vote' policy to be incorporated into the voting system of Northern Ireland. This abolished the unpopular Housing License voting requirement and gave no incentive for the county councils to discriminate against Catholic families in the distribution of council housing.
  • NASA Headquarters recommended that the palatability of food and water be enhanced for longer duration crewed flight. To accomplish this, a food development plan would be directed toward the following objectives: utilization of more conventional foods; resolution of stowage and preservation problems for inflight foods; development of facilities to enable more conventional food preparation and eating in space; and application of principles and practices already utilized by the food industry for commercial products.[98]
  • According to a copyrighted story in the
    corneal transplant of the front portion of the donor eye, rather than totally replacing it.[101] The patient, a photo shop owner in Conroe, Texas, would be released on May 12, able to move the new eye but without having regained any sight,[102] though he would later claim that he had partial sight in the right eye and could see bright flashing light.[103] Dr. Moore would be expelled from the ophthalmological society on June 9[104] and from the Harris County Medical Society on September 22.[105]
  • Died: Husain Bey Gouta, 76, the first and only Crown Prince of Tunisia after having been designated as the heir to the throne by King Muhammad VIII al-Amin when Tunisia became independent in 1956. After the abolition of the Tunisian monarchy in 1957, Husain Bey remained in Tunisia and was pretender to the throne from the last king's death in 1962 until his own death.

April 23, 1969 (Wednesday)

  • Six days after convicting
    San Quentin State Prison. Sirhan, who showed no emotion upon hearing the sentence, reportedly told his defense attorney "Even Jesus Christ couldn't have saved me."[106] Sirhan, however, would be saved from execution three years later by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on June 29, 1972 in Furman v. Georgia, finding the death penalty as written to be unconstitutional.[107] Fifty years after Robert Kennedy's death, Sirhan would still be in prison, transferred in 2013 to the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego.[108] Sirhan would be denied parole 15 times, the last time being on February 10, 2016.[109]
  • Oregon serial killer Jerome "Jerry" Brudos kidnapped and murdered his fifth and last victim, on the same day of the discovery of the body of a woman whom he had killed the day before. Over the course of a year, Brudos had abducted and strangled five women in northwest Oregon, all of whom were between the ages of 19 and 23, then mutilated their bodies. The body of Mrs. Janet Shanahan, 22, was found inside the trunk of her car, a 1951 Plymouth which had been stolen and abandoned in Eugene, where she was a student at the University of Oregon.[110] The same day, Linda Salee, a 22 year old secretary, disappeared after driving to a shopping center in Portland; her body would be found in the Long Tom River on May 10.[111] Two days later, a search of the Long Tom River found the body of Karen Sprinker, 19, an Oregon State University student who had been missing since March 27.[112] Jerry Brudos, an electrician, would be arrested on June 2 and would eventually be convicted of three murders; he would die in prison in 2006.[113]
  • Born:
    West Champaran, Bihar

April 24, 1969 (Thursday)

  • After Iraq had announced that it closed the Shatt al-Arab waterway to neighboring Iran, the Shah of Iran responded with Joint Operation Arvand, sending his navy's warships to escort an Iranian tanker down the river to the Persian Gulf and daring the Iraqis to attempt an attack. Faced with the superiority of the Iranian military, the Iraqis "had no choice but to remain immobile"; the two nations would agree to share control of the Shatt-al-Arab in 1975.[114]
  • In Taiwan, the government-controlled China Petroleum Company launched the new China Petrochemical Development Company (CPDC) "to promote national development of the petroleum industries, and to free Taiwan from reliance on foreign commerce and control over prices and raw material supplies." [115]
  • De Havilland Comet 4B flying vacation groups to La Palma in the Canary Islands. Now called British Airtours, the company continues to operate for British Airways.[116]
A 1969 Austin Maxi

April 25, 1969 (Friday)

  • The Treaty of Tlatelolco, a nuclear non-proliferation agreement among the signatory nations to ban nuclear weapons from Latin America and in the Caribbean, went into effect after Barbados became the 11th nation to ratify the pact.[119] The treaty had been signed in Mexico on February 14, 1967.
  • Born: Renée Zellweger, Oscar-winning American film actress and winner of three Golden Globes; in Katy, Texas
  • Died: Generalleutnant Vollrath Lübbe, 75, German tank commander during World War II and prisoner-of-war in the Soviet Union from 1944 to 1955

April 26, 1969 (Saturday)

  • 1970 European Cup Winners' Cup
    .
  • At the National Black Economic Development Conference in Detroit, militant leader James Forman delivered what he called "The Black Manifesto", encouraging African-American militants to disrupt services in white Christian churches and Jewish synagogues until the religious institutions agreed to pay $500 million in reparations for the injustices done to the black race.[120][121]
  • Died: Morihei Ueshiba, 85, Japanese martial artist who created aikido

April 27, 1969 (Sunday)

  • General
    Luis Adolfo Siles
    was sworn into office but would be overthrown in a military coup five months later.
  • Voters in Metropolitan France rejected President de Gaulle's proposal to dramatically reform the government, with 10,512,469 voting in favor, but 11,945,149 voting against. More than 80 percent of the registered voters cast ballots. The difference of almost 1.5 million votes meant that the roughly 750,000 yet-to-be-counted votes from France's overseas departments would make no difference in the outcome. "The threat which had helped him to win" in referendums in 1958, 1961, and 1962, an author would note later, "was no longer relevant", because by 1969, there were several reliable and capable candidates who could succeed de Gaulle.[124]
  • Born:

April 28, 1969 (Monday)

Acting French President Poher
  • Charles de Gaulle resigned as president of France after suffering defeat in a referendum the day before, abiding by a pledge to step down if the voters showed no confidence in his plan, and bringing an end to 11 years in office. In a brief statement issued from his home in Colombey-les-Deux-Églises, de Gaulle announced, "I am ceasing the exercise of my functions as President of the Republic. This decision takes effect at noon today." [125] "With a complete absence of formality," the Associated Press noted,[126] Alain Poher, the President of the French Senate, was named as the Acting President of France by being delivered a letter from the French Constitutional Council advising him that a vacancy in the presidency existed and noting that the constitution authorized him to serve as the chief executive until elections could be held for a new President.
  • Terence O'Neill resigned as Prime Minister of Northern Ireland after seven years in office and increasing civil rights violence between the UK nation's Protestant majority and Roman Catholic minority. O'Neill had previously advocated a gradual reform of Northern Ireland's political system.[127]

April 29, 1969 (Tuesday)

Ellington and Nixon

April 30, 1969 (Wednesday)

  • The number of United States troops in South Vietnam reached its peak, with 543,482 American servicemen and women – more than half a million – in a nation of 19 million people. From May onward, the number of U.S. troops would gradually decline until the end of the Vietnam War.[129]
  • Convair 440[131] Widerøe took the controls of the for the first time on May 8.[132]

References

  1. ^ "STS-135: The Final Mission", NASA press kit, p. 3
  2. ^ Rowland White, Into the Black: The Extraordinary Untold Story of the First Flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia and the Astronauts Who Flew Her (Simon and Schuster, 2017) p. 3
  3. ^ Robert Jackson, Britain's Greatest Aircraft (Pen and Sword, 2007) p. 214
  4. ^ "Aircraft of the Month: Hawker Siddeley Harrier", Tangmere Military Aviation Museum
  5. ^ Cheng Nien, Life and Death in Shanghai (Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 2010) p. 267
  6. ^ Joe Gisondi, Monster Trek: The Obsessive Search for Bigfoot (University of Nebraska Press, 2016)
  7. ^ "Skamania County, Washington State Bigfoot Ordinance, No. 69-01
  8. ^ "Polish Airlines Crash Claims 51 Victims", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 3, 1969, p. 1
  9. ^ Aviation-Safety.net report
  10. ^ "24 Killed In Vietnam Copter Crash", Pittsburgh Press, April 4, 1969, p. 1
  11. ^ "Czechs Accept Soviet Rules Of Censorship", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 3, 1969, p. 1
  12. ^ "Vietnam Deaths Surpass Korea", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 4, 1969, p. 3
  13. ^ "Ghana, Republic of", in Heads of States and Governments: A Worldwide Encyclopedia of Over 2,300 Leaders, 1945 through 1992, by Harris M. Lentz III (Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1995) pp. 315–316
  14. ^ Missale Romanum.
  15. ^ "Man Gets Plastic Device for Heart", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 5, 1969, p. 2
  16. ^ "Real Heart Replaces Man's Synthetic One", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 8, 1969, p. 1
  17. ^ Kaplan's Cardiac Anesthesia: The Echo Era, by Joel A. Kaplan, et al. (Elsevier, 2011) p. 828
  18. ^ "Brothers Smothered By CBS-TV – Network Charges Dick and Tommy Didn't Cooperate", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 5, 1969, p. 3
  19. ^ Stephen Davis, Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend (Penguin, 2005)
  20. ^ "18 Rescued After Burial In Snow", Cincinnati Enquirer, April 6, 1969, p. 3
  21. ^ "Turnpike Gun Spree Kills 4", '"Detroit Free Press', April 6, 1969, p. 1
  22. ^ "Sniper Spree On Pike Kills 4 And Injures 15", Pittsburgh Press, April 6, 1969, p. 1
  23. ^ "Ship, Barges Crash, Burn", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 7, 1969, p. 1
  24. ^ Terry D. Pardoe and Gordon F. Snyder, Jr., Network Security (Thomson Delmar Learning, 2005) p. 151
  25. ^ Internet Engineering Task Force archive, IETF.org
  26. ^ "Possession Of Obscene Matter OKd – Supreme Court Bars Censorship In Private Homes", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 8, 1969, p. 1
  27. ^ "Mets, Expos at Shea Has International Flavor", by Dick Young, Daily News (New York), p. 71
  28. ^ "Look who's in first place! Expos take the opener", Montreal Gazette, April 9, 1969, p. 1
  29. ^ "Padres Start Off on Right Foot in NL, Top Astros, 2–1", Los Angeles Times, April 9, 1969, p. III-1
  30. ^ "New Pilots Make Their First Night a Big One", Los Angeles Times, April 9, 1969, p. III-1
  31. ^ "Rough Charge by Police Subdues Harvard Rebels", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 10, 1969, p. 2
  32. ^ Peter Rader, Mike Wallace: A Life (Macmillan, 2012) p. 123
  33. ^ "Banza, Alexandre (1923–1969), in Historical Dictionary of the Central African Republic, by Richard Bradshaw and Juan Fandos-Rius (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016) p. 103
  34. ^ "Loyalists Foil Army Coup in Central Africa", Philadelphia Inquirer, April 13, 1969, p. 2
  35. ^ "African Coup Chief Killed by Firing Squad", Chicago Tribune, April 14, 1969, p. 2
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