August 1973

The following events occurred in August 1973:

August 1, 1973 (Wednesday)

• The Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) is inaugurated.

August 2, 1973 (Thursday)

• A flash fire kills at least 50 people at the Summerland amusement centre at Douglas, Isle of Man.^[1]
• The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting 1973 opens in Ottawa, Canada.

August 3, 1973 (Friday)

• The 9th CONCACAF Champions' Cup is won by SV Transvaal.

August 4, 1973 (Saturday)

• The Pekan Olahraga Nasional Games open in Djakarta, Indonesia.

August 5, 1973 (Sunday)

• Black September members open fire in a crowded passenger lounge at Athens airport; 3 people are killed, and 55 injured.

August 6, 1973 (Monday)

• Stevie Wonder and his friend, John Harris, are injured when their vehicle collides with a truck loaded with logs. For four days Wonder is in a coma caused by severe brain contusion, causing media attention and the preoccupation of relatives, friends and fans.^[2]

August 7, 1973 (Tuesday)

• Theodorus Lumanauw becomes Archbishop of Makassar.
• Larry Norman begins recording his album So Long Ago the Garden at AIR Studios in London.

August 8, 1973 (Wednesday)

• South Korean politician Kim Dae-Jung is kidnapped in Tokyo by the KCIA.^[3]
• Gordon Banks, the England football team's goalkeeper, announces his retirement from football, having lost the sight in one eye in a car accident in the previous year.^[4]
• Died: Dean Corll, 33, US serial killer, shot by his accomplice Elmer Wayne Henley.

August 9, 1973 (Thursday)

• Dean Corll's accomplice, Elmer Wayne Henley, leads police to the bodies of several murder victims.^[5][6] Over subsequent days, this results in the discovery of the Houston Mass Murders: at least 28 boys were killed over a three-year period by Corll, Henley and David Owen Brooks.
• Died: Donald Peers, 65, Welsh popular singer; Nikos Zachariadis, 70, Greek Communist politician

August 10, 1973 (Friday)

• Bulgaria issues a new decoration, in recognition of the 50th Anniversary Of The People's Anti-Fascist Uprising 1923, to be awarded to all surviving anti-fascist participants in the June and September 1923 Bulgarian uprisings.

August 11, 1973 (Saturday)

• Soviet TV station Programme One airs the first part of the Soviet television miniseries Seventeen Moments of Spring, which would run until 24 August. With an audience of between fifty and eighty million viewers per episode, it becomes the most successful television show of its time in the USSR.
• DJ Kool Herc originated the hip hop music genre in New York City.^[7]

August 12, 1973 (Sunday)

• Died: Karl Ziegler, 74, German chemist and Nobel Prize laureate

August 13, 1973 (Monday)

• Aviaco Flight 118, a Sud Aviation SE 210 Caravelle, crashes into an abandoned farmhouse in Montrove, Spain, while attempting to land at Alvedro Airport, now A Coruña Airport, in A Coruña, Spain, killing all 85 people on board and one person on the ground.
• Kim Dae-jung is released by his kidnappers and returned to his home.
• A grand jury convenes in Harris County, Texas, to hear evidence against Dean Corll's accomplices Henley and Brooks;^[8] Henley is indicted on three murder charges and Brooks on one.

August 14, 1973 (Tuesday)

• Zulfikar Ali Bhutto is sworn in as Prime Minister of Pakistan.
• British cruise liner SS Canberra runs aground off St Thomas, British Virgin Islands, and is refloated the following day.^[9]

August 15, 1973 (Wednesday)

• The U.S. bombing of Cambodia ends, officially halting 12 years of combat activity in Southeast Asia.
• In the Gulf of Tonkin off North Vietnam, the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Constellation (CVA-64) departs Yankee Station for the last time. She is the last aircraft carrier to operate at the station, where American aircraft carriers had deployed since 1964.

August 16, 1973 (Thursday)

• The Venda legislative election is won by the Venda Independence People's Party.^[10]
• Died: Selman Waksman, 85, Ukrainian-born biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

August 17, 1973 (Friday)

• Died: Jean Barraqué, 45, French composer

August 18, 1973 (Saturday)

• Born: Victoria Coren, English writer, television presenter and poker player, in Hammersmith, London, the daughter of journalist Alan Coren

August 19, 1973 (Sunday)

• Born: HRH Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway, as Mette-Marit Tjessem Høiby, in Kristiansand

August 20, 1973 (Monday)

• De Temporum Fine Comoedia, the last work of Carl Orff, is given its première at the Salzburg Music Festival by Herbert von Karajan and the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.
• The Denver Windmill in Norfolk, UK, is signed over to Norfolk County Council by its owner.^[11]

August 21, 1973 (Tuesday)

• The coroner in the Bloody Sunday inquest accuses the British army of "sheer unadulterated murder" after the jury returns an open verdict.^[12]

August 22, 1973 (Wednesday)

• Kosmos 580 is successfully launched by the Soviet Union as part of the Dnepropetrovsk Sputnik programme.

August 23, 1973 (Thursday)

• The Norrmalmstorg robbery occurs in Stockholm, the first criminal event in Sweden covered by live television. The perpetrators, Jan-Erik Olsson and Clark Olofsson, persuade their hostages that they are safer with them than if the police intervene; the incident becomes famous for the origin of the term Stockholm syndrome.

August 24, 1973 (Friday)

• The European Athletics Junior Championships opens in Duisburg, Germany.
• William E. Nelson replaces William E. Colby as Deputy Director of Operations for the Central Intelligence Agency (United States).
• Born: Inge de Bruijn, Dutch swimmer and most successful Dutch Olympian of all time, in Barendrecht

August 25, 1973 (Saturday)

• Harry Schwarz, leader of the liberal "Young Turks", wins the leadership of the United Party (South Africa) in the Transvaal, replacing its long-time leader Marais Steyn.

August 26, 1973 (Sunday)

• Died: Robert Lelièvre, 30, French musician (suicide)

August 27, 1973 (Monday)

• The Barringer Trophy, awarded for the longest distance soaring flight from any type of launching method other than airplane tow, is regained by its holder, Wallace Scott II, after a flight of |639 miles (1,028 km) from Odessa, Texas, to Kearney, Nebraska, in a Schleicher ASW 12.^[13]

August 28, 1973 (Tuesday)

• Gas is used by Swedish police to end the hostage situation following the Norrmalmstorg robbery.

August 29, 1973 (Wednesday)

• British submarine Pisces III sinks in the Atlantic Ocean south west of Ireland.^[14] The submarine is raised after a multi-agency rescue effort. Both crew survive for 76 hours in the vessel which had sunk in 1,375-foot (419 m) deep water.^[15][16]

August 30, 1973 (Thursday)

• Auguste Batina becomes Minister of Primary and Secondary Education in the Congolese government.^[17][18]

August 31, 1973 (Friday)

• Soviet cruise liner Baltika runs aground off Bermuda.^[19]
• Died: John Ford, 79, US film director

References