February 1974


The following events occurred in February 1974:

[February 1], 1974 (Friday)

[February 2], 1974 (Saturday)

[February 3], 1974 (Sunday)

[February 4], 1974 (Monday)

[February 5], 1974 (Tuesday)

  • The U.S. space probe Mariner 10, launched on November 3, made the first successful broadcast to Earth of images of the planet Venus, starting with the transmission of 4,165 photographs. At 17:01 UTC, it made its closest approach, coming within of Venus, then proceeded toward the planet Mercury.
  • Cardinal József Mindszenty of Hungary, long a symbol of resistance against totalitarian governments by the Roman Catholic Church, was dismissed by Pope Paul VI from his positions as Archbishop of Esztergom and Primate of Hungary. Mindszenty had been imprisoned for eight years in Hungary and then spent another 15 years inside the U.S. diplomatic legation in Budapest, before being allowed to leave the country in 1971. The dismissal was linked to the Vatican's campaign to establish better relations with the Communist nations in Eastern Europe and Mindszenty's refusal to resign, a condition demanded by the Hungarian Communist Party in negotiations with the Vatican.
  • Dr. Raymond Damadian received U.S. Patent No. 3,789,832 for his invention of a proposed "Apparatus and method for detecting cancer in tissue" using nuclear magnetic resonance, after applying on March 13, 1972. The patent described a means of scanning, but not of generating images from a scan, the basis for the magnetic resonance imaging scanner.
  • Mats Wermelin of Sweden set a record by scoring 272 points for his team in a 272 to 0 win in a regional boys tournament in Stockholm. The story was reported the next day in the Stockholm tabloid Aftonbladet. Wermelin would later play professional basketball for the Stockholm Capitals.
  • A two-year-old child who had been kidnapped at knife point more than a year earlier was rescued by the Stanislaus County Sheriff's Department in California. Tommy Lauver, who had been taken from his mother on January 20, 1973, from a supermarket parking lot in Modesto, was found at the home of Robert Coffey and Marjorie Coffey in West Modesto, California, who were arrested after a tip from their neighbor, who had read a story in a local newspaper, The Modesto Bee.
  • Harold Potts, the Fire Chief for Gladewater, Texas, was killed by a gunman, and two other firemen were wounded, after responding to a call to extinguish a blaze at a tavern.Died: Mestre Bimba, 74, master of the Brazilian martial art form capoeira who performed as "Mestre Bimba".

[February 6], 1974 (Wednesday)

[February 7], 1974 (Thursday)

[February 8], 1974 (Friday)

[February 9], 1974 (Saturday)

[February 10], 1974 (Sunday)

[February 11], 1974 (Monday)

  • The first Titan IIIE rocket launched from Cape Canaveral was destroyed by the range safety officer 748 seconds after liftoff due to engine failure. The pieces of the $20,500,000 rocket fell into the Atlantic Ocean down range after the destruct order was carried out. Destroyed along with the rocket was its payload, the SPHINX satellite and the supporting Viking Dynamic Simulator.
  • Khmer Rouge guerrillas in Cambodia fired a heavy barrage of 105-mm howitzer shells and 122-mm rockets on the capital, Phnom Penh, killing 139 residents and wounding 300 others, as well as destroying 1,200 homes. Most of the victims were in the crowded Sa Deoum Ko marketplace in the southwestern part of the city.
  • The Islamic Republic of Libya announced that its government would nationalize Amoseas Petroleum Ltd., jointly operated by Texaco and Standard Oil of California, and the Libyan-American Oil Company, already 60 percent owned by the Libyan government.
  • The three-day Washington Energy Conference of oil-consuming nations began to discuss ways of combating the oil crisis.
  • Dick Woodson of the Minnesota Twins became the first Major League Baseball player to have his case accepted for arbitration, after being among 45 players to invoke MLB's new free agency clause to resolve a salary dispute. Born:
  • * D'Angelo, American singer and songwriter, 4-time Grammy Award winner; in Richmond, Virginia
  • * Alex Jones, American conservative talk radio host, conspiracy theorist, author and filmmaker, known for having a defamation lawsuit judgment against him for $1.4 billion in Lafferty v. Jones; in Dallas, Texas
  • * Pedrito de Portugal, Portuguese matador known for Portuguese-style bullfighting; in LisbonDied:
  • *Anna Q. Nilsson, 85, Swedish-born American silent film star
  • *Ghantasala Venkateswararao, 51, popular Indian singer and film score composer, died of a sudden heart attack.

[February 12], 1974 (Tuesday)

  • Soviet police agents arrested Russian writer and dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, author of The Gulag Archipelago, at his apartment in Moscow. He would be deported to West Germany and stripped of his Soviet citizenship the following day.
  • The Soviet Mars 5 space probe successfully entered orbit around Mars at 14:44 UTC, but sustained a micrometeoroid impact along the way, causing a slow leak in the spacecraft's pressurized instrument compartment. Mars 5 would cease transmission 16 days later, after returning 43 good quality photographs and making spectrometer observations of elements on the Martian surface, and obtaining specific surface temperatures ranging from during the day to at night.
  • On Indonesia's Lombok Island, an angry mob raided the houses of the village elders in Dasan, Lajut and Newar Praja and beheaded nine of the men. Police arrested 132 people and their leader, who had compiled a list of 32 village leaders who had tried to stop his business of selling sacred oil to the local residents.Born:
  • * Naseem Hamed, British boxer, WBO featherweight world champion 1995 to 2000, holtder of WBO, IBF and WBC titles 1999 to 2000; in Sheffield, South Yorkshire
  • * Philippe Léonard, Belgian footballer with 28 caps for the Belgium national team; in Liège, BelgiumDied:
  • *Arthur Samish, 75, California lobbyist
  • *Alec Harris, 76, Welsh and South African spiritualist known for conducting elaborate séances with multiple "spirit" figures

[February 13], 1974 (Wednesday)

[February 14], 1974 (Thursday)

[February 15], 1974 (Friday)

  • The North Korean Navy sank a South Korean fishing boat that had strayed too close to the Five West Sea Islands, killing 13 of the 14 people on board. The sole survivor was captured by the North Koreans after a rescue. Later in the day, the crew of 14 of another fishing boat was captured.Born: Mr Lordi, Finnish singer and make-up artist; in Rovaniemi, LaplandDied:
  • * George W. Snedecor, 92, American mathematician and statistician known for the F-distribution
  • * Kurt Atterberg, 86, Swedish composer and engineer

[February 16], 1974 (Saturday)

[February 17], 1974 (Sunday)

[February 18], 1974 (Monday)

  • At 7:29 p.m., Colonel Thomas L. Gatch, Jr., took off in his balloon Light Heart from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to attempt the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in a balloon. Air currents pushed Light Heart far south of Gatch's planned course. An airliner would make the final radio contact with Gatch on February 19, and the last sighting would be by a freight ship, Ore Meridian, on February 21. The search by the U.S. Department of Defense was abandoned on March 6 after more than two weeks. Neither Light Heart nor Gatch had been found almost 50 years after his disappearance.
  • Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the U.S. Ambassador to India, presented the largest check on record to the government of India, canceling India's $3.2 billion debt to the U.S. for food and humanitarian aid after signing an agreement with the government. Moynihan presented the Indian Secretary of Economic Affairs, M. G. Kaul, with a check signed by John G. Kaptain, the disbursement officer for the U.S. Embassy in India, for 16,640,000,000 Indian rupees, equivalent to $2,046,700,000 in U.S. dollars under the prevailing exchange rate. The remainder of the remaining 1.17 billion dollars would be drawn upon for operations of the U.S. embassy and for educational and cultural projects. Moynihan commented later, "I never saw so much money on such a small piece of paper in my life."Born:
  • *Nadine Labaki, Lebanese film director, actress and activist; in Baabdat, Mount Lebanon Governorate
  • *Jillian Michaels, U.S. fitness expert and TV personality; in Los AngelesDied: Arthur Elrod, 49, American interior designer, was killed in a traffic accident when the vehicle he was in was struck by a drunk driver.

[February 19], 1974 (Tuesday)

  • The Foreign Ministry of the Soviet Union summoned ambassadors from the U.S., the UK, France and other Western nations and announced that it would end most travel restrictions against diplomats. A spokesperson told the ambassadors that they would be allowed to travel, without prior permission, to any non-restricted area of the Soviet Union, as long as 24 hours notice had been given, and allowing free access to all but restricted areas within the radius of central Moscow.Born: Keila Vall de la Ville, Venezuelan author, known for Los días animales.Died: John Oliver Henderson, 64, United States federal judge, died after surgery for a ruptured aorta.

[February 20], 1974 (Wednesday)

  • Second Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda, a member of the Imperial Japanese Army's intelligence unit who had been in hiding on Lubang Island in the Philippines for 29 years after World War II, was located by a Japanese adventurer, Norio Suzuki. After being told that World War II had ended, 2nd Lt. Onoda told Suzuki that he would not surrender until ordered to by a superior officer, and finally gave up on March 9 when his former commander, Major Yoshimi Taniguchi, delivered the order. Onoda was the second-to-last Japanese officer to surrender after World War II. The last one, Teruo Nakamura, would be located in Indonesia on December 18, 1974.
  • J. Reginald Murphy, editor of the Atlanta Constitution newspaper, was kidnapped by a right-wing activist who claimed to be a member of a group called the "American Revolutionary Army". Murphy was freed two days later after the newspaper paid a ransom of $700,000, and William A.H. Williams was arrested later in the day after the FBI had been tipped off by a Miami investor who had been swindled out of $6,000 by Williams.
  • Born:
  • *Ömer Halisdemir, Turkish Army non-commissioned officer who foiled the 2016 attempt to overthrow the Turkish government; in Niğde
  • *Monita Rajpal, Hong Kong-born Canadian journalist and TV anchor for CNN; in Hong Kong
  • Died: Matilde Hidalgo, 84, Ecuadorian physician and women's rights activist

[February 21], 1974 (Thursday)

[February 22], 1974 (Friday)

[February 23], 1974 (Saturday)

[February 24], 1974 (Sunday)

[February 25], 1974 (Monday)

[February 26], 1974 (Tuesday)

  • The Gambell incident occurred when a Soviet ice reconnaissance aircraft was running low on fuel and made an emergency landing in the United States. The Antonov An-24 touched down at the airport at Gambell, Alaska on St. Lawrence Island with 15 people on board; the 12 passengers were all Soviet scientists. Two days later, the An-24 was refueled by a U.S. Air Force C-130 airplane and departed at 7:30 in the evening.
  • "SN 1974C", a supernova that had occurred at least 46 million years earlier, was observed on Earth for the first time. The supernova was first spotted from Earth by astronomer Arp van der Kruit.
  • Officers of the 2nd Division of the Ethiopian Army and at an Ethiopian Air Force base seized control of the African nation's second largest city, Asmara.Died: Paul Sample, 77, American artist

[February 27], 1974 (Wednesday)

  • The sinking of a Mexican Navy tugboat drowned 43 of the crew of 46. The vessel sank off of the coast of Veracruz after having engine trouble during bad weather.
  • U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was in Damascus meeting with Syrian president Hafez al-Assad, and because the meeting "lasted longer than expected", he apparently avoided an assassination attempt that would have been made on him at the Umayyad Mosque. Syrian intelligence officials said that they learned about the plot only after the missed visit.
  • On the same day that Ethiopia's Emperor Haile Selassie opened a meeting of the Organization of African Unity hosted in Addis Ababa, rebels within the Ethiopian Navy seized control of the naval base at Massawa, the nation's leading port. Prime Minister Aklilu Habte-Wold and his entire cabinet submitted their resignations later in the day.
  • After being nominated by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, John Kerr was appointed by Queen Elizabeth II to be the next Governor-General of Australia, as the successor of Paul Hasluck. Kerr would take office on July 11. Less than two years later, Kerr would dismiss Whitlam and replace him with Malcolm Fraser.
  • France's Interior Minister Raymond Marcellin was forced to resign after police from the Ministry's Directorate of Territorial Security were caught attempting to place eavesdropping devices in the offices of Le Canard enchaîné, a weekly investigative newspaper.
  • The Governor of Argentina's Córdoba Province, Ricardo Obregón Cano, was taken prisoner at his residence in the Córdoba after a rebellion by the provincial police by officers. An estimated 800 mutineering police, angry at Obregon for firing police chief Antonio Navarro, invaded the Government House and took him hostage, along with the Vice-Governor, Atilio Lopez and the new police chief. The next day, the Provincial Superior Court cleared the way for Mario Agodino, a supporter of President Juan Perón, to replace the left-leaning Governor Obregón, based on a section of the Córdoba constitution that provided that a successor could be appointed when the governor was "unable to perform his duties", including being held hostage. Obregón Cano and Vice Governor Lopez were freed two days later, but not allowed to return to office.Born:
  • * Hiroyasu Shimizu, Japanese speed skater, 1998 Olympic gold medalist and winner of five world championships in the 500 metre race; in Obihiro, Hokkaido island
  • * Julie Andrieu, French food critic and host of multiple cooking shows on television; in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Paris
  • * Carte Goodwin, U.S. Senator for West Virginia for four months from July to November 2010, appointed to fill the seat of the late Robert Byrd.

[February 28], 1974 (Thursday)