1977: Events and Inventions

Mar14

Throughout 1977 and the rest of the decade. Thousands of desperate refugees flee South Vietnam in the wake of the communist takeover of that country (1975). In Vietnam, the new communist government has sent many people who supported the old government in the South to “re-education camps”, and others to “new economic zones.” An estimated 1 million people have been imprisoned with no formal charges or trials. These “boat people” take to the sea in small, unsafe craft, hoping to reach a country that will allow them to live freely or emigrate to the U.S. or another Western country.

January, 1977. The world’s first personal all-in-one computer, the Commodore PET, is demonstrated at the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago.

May 17, 1977. The Likud Party, led by Menachem Begin, wins the elections in Israel. In the 1940’s before Israel became a nation, Begin was the leader of the Zionist militant group Irgun which killed British military who were occupying Palestine.

June 15, 1977. Spain has its first democratic elections, after 41 years under the Franco regime.

August, 1977. Space probes Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are launched on journeys to Jupiter and Saturn.

August 12, 1977. The NASA Space Shuttle Enterprise makes its first test free-flight from the back of a Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft.

September 7, 1977. The U.S. signs a treaty with Panama agreeing to transfer control of the Panama Canal to Panama at the end of the 20th century.

October 26, 1977. The last natural smallpox case is discovered in Somalia. Authorities in the health field consider this date the anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, the most spectacular success of any vaccination program to date.

November 19, 1977. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat becomes the first Arab leader to make an official visit to Israel, where he meets with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, seeking a permanent peace settlement.

December 4, 1977. Jean-BÃ©del Bokassa, president of the Central African Republic, crowns himself Emperor.

1976: Events and Inventions

Mar13

The Lebanese Civil War, which began in 1975, continues to see fighting between Palestinians (Palestinian Liberation Organization), the Lebanese government, and Phalangists (supported by Maronite Christians). In June, Syria intervenes in the civil war, sending in troops to keep the peace, support the government and establish SYrian control over the northern half of Lebanon.

January 5, 1976. The Khmer Republic (Cambodia) is officially renamed Democratic Kampuchea as a new constitution is proclaimed by the Pol Pot regime.

January 21, 1976. The Air France supersonic turbojet Concorde makes its first commercial flight from Paris to Rio de Janeiro. The new faster-than-the-speed-of-sound jet can cross the Atlantic in just three hours.

February 4, 1976. In Guatemala and Honduras an earthquake kills more than 22,000 people.

April 1, 1976. Apple Computer Company is formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in Cupertino, California. The new company begins assembling its first personal computer kits for sale later in the year in the U.S.

June, 1976. Rioters and police clash in Soweto, a township just outside Johannesburg, South Africa where black students and adults are protesting the segregated and unjust educational system in the country. At least fifty people are killed, and hundreds more are wounded, when police open fire on a protest march by schoolchildren.

July 4, 1976. Entebbe Raid: Israeli airborne commandos free 103 hostages being held by Palestinian hijackers of an Air France plane at Uganda’s Entebbe Airport; 1 Israeli soldier and several Ugandan soldiers are killed in the raid.

July 20, 1976. The Viking 1 lander successfully lands on Mars and sends back to Earth the first close-up pictures of the planet’s surface.

August 14, 1976. Ten thousand Protestant and Catholic women demonstrate for peace in Northern Ireland.

September 9, 1976. Chairman Mao Zedong, leader of the People’s Republic of China since 1949, dies at the age of 82, after suffering a series of strokes. The Chinese Communist Party has already split into at least two groups, radical Maoists led by Mao’s widow Chiang Chin and the more moderate communists led by Deng Xiaoping. In October Chiang Chin is arrested for plotting to overthrow the government.

1967-68: Movies

Mar12

Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood by Mark Harris, reviewed by Lazygal, is a nonfiction history of the five movies that were nominated for Best Picture Oscars in 1968: Dr. Doolittle, The Graduate, Guess Who’s Coming for Dinner, In the Heat of the Night and Bonnie and Clyde. I haven’t read the book, but I have it on hold at the library.

I’ve seen four of the five movies; I may have seen In the Heat of the Night. I did see a few episodes of the TV show that came after the movie. If I did see the movie, I don’t remember much about it. The Academy found it much more memorable: In the Heat of the Night won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1968.

The Graduate was the top-grossing film of 1967, and Bonnie and Clyde was probably the most violent and disturbing film of the year. I didn’t see either of those two when they first came out, since I would have been too young for the content of either. I did see them later on, but by that time The Graduate was already history, somewhat passÃ©. And Bonnie and Clyde was, well, violent and disturbing.

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner was OK, a Sidney Poitier vehicle about racism and interracial marriage, but Poitier’s better film of the year was To Sir With Love, which starred the popular black actor as a schoolteacher in an inner city high school in London.

Dr. Dolittle was silly, with Rex Harrison as the doctor who could speak to the animals. He certainly couldn’t sing, and I don’t know why he ever tried. It didn’t matter so much in My Fair Lady, since Professor Higgins was such a pretender anyway. It made sense that he would only pretend to sing.

The film version of Camelot also came out in 1967, and it won three Academy Awards, but it was not even nominated for any the biggies: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director. If I were choosing the best film of 1967, I’d certainly choose Camelot over any of the above nominees for Best Picture. Richard Harris and Vanessa Redgrave were amazing and memorable as King Arthur and Guinevere, and the “messages” of the movie about temptation, pride, sin and imperfection are spot-on. The screen-play is based on T.H. White’s version of the King Arthur story, Once and Future King, published in 1958.

Don’t Be Conned

Mar9

Poetry Friday: Poem #43, The Village Blacksmith by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1841

Mar9

“Do you say you can’t endure poetry? What! not while you have the grand, heroic songs of Homer, the deep grandeur of Dante, the sublime majesty of Milton, the subtle, sympathetic humanity of Shakespeare, together with the sweet singing of America’s Longfellow, Whittier and Bryant?” ~Occupations for Women, 1897

UNDER a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.

His hair is crisp, and black, and long,
His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate’er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.

Week in, week out, from morn till night,
You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
When the evening sun is low.

And children coming home from school
Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing-floor.

He goes on Sunday to the church,
And sits among his boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach,
He hears his daughter’s voice,
Singing in the village choir,
And it makes his heart rejoice.

It sounds to him like her mother’s voice,
Singing in Paradise!
He needs must think of her once more,
How in the grave she lies;
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
A tear out of his eyes.

Toiling,—rejoicing,—sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night’s repose.

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought.

1975: Events and Inventions

Mar7

April 30, 1975. Two years after the last U.S. troops left Vietnam in 1973, the South Vietnamese government surrenders Saigon, the capital city, to invading communist North Vietnamese troops who rename the city Ho Chi Minh City. Thousands of South Vietnamese who have some association with the United States or with the South Vietnamese government try to escape the new communist regime by boat or by plane.

April, 1975. Nineteen-year-old Bill Gates forms Microsoft with his friend, Paul Allen. Their first computer software program is Altair-BASIC for the Altair 8800 microcomputer.

April, 1975. The new communist Khmer Rouge government, led by dictator Pol Pot, embarks on a program of radical social transformation. The Khmer Rouge will ban all religion and especially target Buddhist monks, Muslims, Christians, Western-educated intellectuals, educated people in general, people who have contact with Western countries or with Vietnam, disabled people, and the ethnic Chinese, Laotians and Vietnamese. The four-year period of Khmer Rouge rule will see the deaths of approximately two million Cambodians as a combined result of political executions, starvation, and forced labour. Due to the large numbers, the deaths during the rule of the Khmer Rouge are often considered a genocide, and commonly known as the Cambodian Holocaust or Cambodian Genocide.

June 5, 1975. The Suez Canal opens for the first time since the Six-Day War in 1967.

July 17, 1975. American Apollo and Russian Soyuz spacecraft dock in space, and astronaut Tom Stafford and cosmonaut Alexei Leono shake hands 140 miles above the Atlantic Ocean in the first joint Russian/US space venture.

August 1, 1975. The Helsinki Accords, which officially recognize Europe’s national borders and respect for human rights, are signed in Finland. Thirty-five nations, including the USA, Canada, and all European states except Albania and Andorra, sign the declaration in an attempt to improve relations between the Communist bloc and the West.

September 16, 1975. Papua New Guinea gains its independence from Australia.

November, 1975. The United Kingdom opens its first underwater pipeline for North Sea oil.

November, 1975. The nation of Angola in southern Africa gains its independence from Portugal and almost immediately is torn by civil war between at least four political groups vying for power in the country. The Marxist (Communist) group, MPLA, receives aid from the SOviet Union and from Cuba, while other factions are supported by the U.S. or by South Africa.

November 22, 1975. Don Juan Carlos Borbon y Borbon becomes King of Spain after the death of General Francisco Franco who has ruled Spain since 1939. Spain’s government will transition to a constitutional democratic monarchy.

1974: Events and Inventions

Mar6

February, 1974. Soviet author Alexander Solzhenitsyn is exiled from the Soviet Union after publication of his epic novel The Gulag Archipelago, a book critical of the communist government in the USSR. Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970.

March 8, 1974. Charles de Gaulle Airport opens in Paris, France.

April 25, 1974. Carnation Revolution: A coup in Portugal restores democracy. Despite repeated appeals from the revolutionaries on the radio asking the population to stay home, thousands of Portuguese descend on the streets, mixing with the military insurgents. The name Carnation Revolution comes from the fact that no shots are fired, and the celebrating Portuguese citizens put carnation flowers on the soldiers’ guns and on their uniforms.

May 17, 1974. Dublin and Monaghan bombings: The Protestant terrorist group, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), explode numerous bombs in Dublin and Monaghan, in the Republic Of Ireland. The attacks kill 33 civilians and wound almost 300.

May 18, 1974. India successfully detonates its first nuclear weapon, becoming the 6th nation to do so.

August 8, 1974. President Richard Nixon, facing impeachment by Congress over the Watergate scandal and cover-up, becomes the first U.S. president to reign from office. Vice-President Gerald Ford will become the new president.

September 12, 1974. Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia is deposed by the Derg, a military committee which soon embraces communism and will rule in Ethiopia for the next thirteen years.

November 21, 1974. In Birmingham, England, IRA (Irish Republican Army) terrorists bomb 2 pubs, killing 21 people.

Rubik’s Cube, a 3-D mechanical puzzle, is invented sometime in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture ErnÅ‘ Rubik. As of January 2009, 350 million cubes have been sold worldwide, making Rubik’s Cube the world’s top-selling puzzle game.

'Solving the Rubik's Cube' photo (c) 2008, Steve Rhodes - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/

1973: Events and Inventions

Mar5

January 1, 1973. The United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and Denmark enter the European Economic Community, which later becomes the European Union.

January 22, 1973. Roe v. Wade: The U.S. Supreme Court overturns state bans on abortion and declares that a right to privacy under the due process clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution extends to a woman’s decision to have an abortion.

January 27, 1973. The Paris Peace Accords to end the Vietnam War are signed in France. President Nixon tells the American people that the treaty will “bring peace with honor.”

February 27, 1973. The American Indian Movement occupies Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Seventy days later in May the occupation by Native American activists ends with an agreement between protesters and the U.S. government.

May 3, 1973. The Sears Tower in Chicago is finished, becoming the world’s tallest building at 1,451 feet.

May 14, 1973. Skylab, the first orbiting space station for the U.S., blasts off from Cape Canaveral.

September 11, 1973. President Salvador Allende of Chile commits suicide or is assassinated, and opponents take over the government of Chile in a military coup. General Augusto Pinochet becomes President of Chile and Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army. According to various reports and investigations 1,200â€“3,200 people will be killed, up to 80,000 interned, and up to 30,000 tortured by Pinochet’s regime, including women and children. Pinochet rules as dictator in Chile until the transfer of power to a democratically elected president in 1990. Gringolandia by Lyn-Miller Lachman is a Young Adult fiction novel set in the United States and in Pinochet’s Chile.

October, 1973. Students revolt in Bangkok, Thailand, resulting in democratic elections in 1975 and 1976 and the withdrawal of American forces from Thailand. Political instability and communist insurgencies continue in Thailand throughout the 1970’s and the 1980’s.

October 6-25, 1973. A coalition of of Arab states, including Egypt and Syria, launches an attack on Israel on Yom Kippur, a Jewish holy day of atonement and forgiveness. Egyptian and Syrian forces cross ceasefire lines to enter the Israeli-held Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights, and the Soviet Union and the United States support opposite sides in the war with weapons and strategic advice. As a result of this war, Israel and Egypt both realize that it in both countries’ best interest to reach a peace accord.

November 27, 1973. Greek dictator George Papadopoulos is ousted in a military coup led by Brigadier General Dimitrios Ioannidis.

Sunday Salon: Books Read in February, 2012

Mar4

I’m taking a mostly-break from blogging for Lent, so most of the following books will be reviewed here after Resurrection Sunday in April.

Children’s and Young Adult Fiction:
Love Twelve Miles Long by Glenda Armand. Semicolon review here.
Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson. Semicolon review here.
Okay for Now by Gary Schmidt. Should have won the Newbery Award.
Blood Red Road by Moira Young. Winner of the Cybils Award for Young Adult Fantasy/Science Fiction.

Adult Fiction:
Lone Star Rising by Elmer Kelton. A three book trilogy about Texas Ranger, Rusty Shannon, that I picked up at a library book sale a long time ago. Semicolon review of The Buckskin Line, the first book in the trilogy, here.
The Hour Before Dawn by Penelope Wilcock. Semicolon review here.
Dancing Priest by Glynn Young.
What Alice Forgot by Lianne Moriarty.
The Expats by Chris Pavone.
Joy for Beginners by Ericca Bauermeister.

Nonfiction:
Desert Elephants by Helen Cowcher. Semicolon review here.
The Devil in Pew Number Seven by Rebecca Nichols Alonzo. Semicolon review here.
Sahara: A Natural History by Marq de Villiers and Sheila Hirtle. Semicolon review here.
Passport Through Darkness by Kimberly L. Smith.
Moon Shot by Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton with Jay Barbree.

Poetry Friday: Poem #42, Bright Star by John Keats, 1838

Mar2

“The poetry of earth is never dead.”~John Keats

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art–
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors–
No–yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever–or else swoon to death.

A 2009 movie called Bright Star tells of the tragic love between John Keats and his neighbor, Fanny Brawne, throughout the years in which Keats wrote several of his most celebrated poems, including this sonnet. This sonnet may or may not have been written specifically for Fanny, but it is similar to these words from a letter Keats wrote to Fanny Brawne: “I will imagine you Venus tonight and pray, pray, pray to your star like a Heathen. Your’s ever, fair Star.”