North Vietnamese troops increased their probing attacks in the Mekong Delta today, and Western intelligence officials said it appeared that the Communists might now be trying to open a new front on Saigon’s southern flank. Clashes were reported in a number of provinces across the delta with the principal fighting in Kiên Giang on the Gulf of Siam. The Saigon command said that its troops there had killed 77 Communist soldiers while losing five killed and eight wounded. It also said that 39 Communist soldiers had been killed in fighting in five other provinces during the day.
Meanwhile, Communist pressure appeared to have eased northwest of Saigon in the Tây Ninh area, which the government had heavily reinforced. Western officials said a North Vietnamese division that had been threatening to cut a major highway in the area had been moving south through the Parrot’s Beak of Cambodia into the Mekong Delta to bolster Communist forces operating there. It appeared, officials suggested, that the North Vietnamese might have decided that a battle in the Tây Ninh area now might be too costly. Last week, many South Vietnamese and Western officials said that the North Vietnamese appeared poised for an attack on Tây Ninh as a first step in an assault on Saigon.
Action in the Mekong Delta during the day included the shelling of Tan An Luang, a village in Vĩnh Long Province. The Communists were reported to have fired 300 mortar rounds into the headquarters there and to have wounded 15 South Vietnamese militiamen. Twenty homes were said to have been destroyed.
In another development favorable to the Saigon Government, South Vietnamese military sources said that 9,000 marines from the 15,000‐man division that had been stationed north of Huế in the northern part of the country had managed to arrive at Vũng Tàu, southeast of Saigon. The division, which had been pne of the Government’s elite units, was one of the six Saigon divisions that had retreat tcrin disorder as the northern and central parts of the country were abandoned in the last three weeks.
Other favorable news for Saigon was that Nha Trang, the important city on the south Central coast that had been reported lost to the Communists on Wednesday, had apparently still not been occupied by the North Vietnamese. Information from Nha Trang wros sketchy because most of its government authorities, civilian population and regular garrison had fled. But some soldiers were still said to be there, and the Saigon Government reportdely was trying to put new troops into Nha Trang. A Saigon military spokesman said that some fighting was going on outside the city, but it was not known whether the Communists were making a major assault on Nha Trang.
Other pockets of defenders were reported in the enclaves of Phan Rang, Phan Thiết and Cam Ranh. Why such government enclaves still existed in areas hold by Communists was not clear, but one explanation suggested by Western officials was that the speed of the government’s retreat had caught the North Vietnamese by surprise and that they had simply outrun their planning and probably their supply lines. It was noted that the Cornmunists, although daring in their attacks, have usually followed a rather rigid, conservative pattern of moving only according to plan and where they have first built up their supplies.
Some analysts believed that the North Vietnamese were reluctant to move openly over Route 1, the coastal road that now is under their control from the North Vietnamese border to Nha Trang. It is subject to air strikes by the South Vietnamese, the analysts said, and the Communists may want to bring up their antiaircraft guns before advancing.
In other military action during the day, North Vietnamese troops northeast of Saigon kept up pressure on Long Khánh Province, now the buffer between the capital and the Central Highlands, which the Communists have occupied. Communist gunners fired four 122‐mm. rockets into Xuân Lộc, the provincial capital. The Saigon command said that its troops had killed 14 Communist soldiers and had freed 400 civilians held by the North Vietnamese in an area 10 miles east of Xuân Lộc. There were reports of fighting north of Saigon close to the important Government base at Lai Khê.
Intelligence officers, speaking of the shift of the North Vietnamese Fifth Division into the Mekong Delta, said that the Communists’ immediate objective appeared to be to reopen their old infiltration route from Cambodia into the rice‐producing province of Định Tường in the heart of the delta. They added that the Fifth Division’s move would also put them in a position to cut Route 4, the critical artery over which the delta’s rice, fruit and vegetables are sent to Saigon.
Reports on developments in Vũng Tàu said that the marines from the Huế area were being regrouped and that it would probably take considerable time before they could be made into an effective fighting force again. In their retreat they lost virtually all their tanks, artillery and other weapons. Many of them managed to get aboard South Vietnamese or United States contract vessels at Đà Nẵng before that northern port city fell. They were landed in recent days at Vũng Tàu.
Armed South Vietnamese troops being sent by Saigon authorities to a penal island off the country’s coast aboard an American ship mutinied yesterday, hijacked the ship and forced it to proceed to the port of Vũng Tàu, it was learned tonight from South Vietnamese military sources. The ship, the Greenville Victory, was one of the many vessels under the United States flag chartered to the Military Sealift Command for carrying Vietnamese refugees. It was not clear how many Government soldiers were aboard at the time of the mutiny, but the ship was apparently full of evacuees who were being taken from Vũng Tàu, 40 miles southeast of Saigon, to the large Vietnamese island of Phú Quốc off the Cambodian coast.
On the way, sources said, the troops decided against being taken to the island and forced the ship’s crew at gunpoint to turn back. The passengers, officially described later as “hostile Vietnamese armed forces,” were have been taken to what had been a prisoner‐of‐war camp on Phú Quốc. At one time it held 28,000 captured Việt Cộng soldiers. Rampaging government troops in central Vietnam and in coastal cities have caused significant loss of civilian lives and property, not to mention the damage they have done to the South Vietnamese armed forces as a whole; they have largely collapsed. In many cases, troops sent in to check looting and bring the renegades to bay have turned looter themselves, taking the belongings the soldiers had stolen and keeping them.
Secretary of State Kissinger said the administration would reconsider its policies toward the Saigon government this week following an assessment of the situation by General Frederick Weyand, the Army Chief of Staff. Mr. Kissinger said various options would be debated by the National Security Council on Tuesday or Wednesday and that President Ford would disclose his decision to Congress on Thursday in his scheduled foreign policy address. At a news conference in Palm Springs, California, where Mr. Ford is vacationing, Mr. Kissinger left the impression that the government did not know what to do about the worsening military situation, which he described as serious. The tone of his remarks was pessimistic.
There were reports in Saigon that President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu was planning action against a number of his generals in the belief that they were personally responsible for the loss to the Communists of two-thirds of South Vietnamese territory in the last few weeks. President Thiệu has been having increasing difficulties with most of his generals lately, including the Army Chief of Staff, General Cao Văn Viên. The general staff, sources said, has urged President Thiệu repeatedly to step down, but reports that a military coup was being organized were wrong.
Informants said measures were expected to be taken against Lieutenant General Ngô Quang Trưởng, commander of Military Region I, Major General Phạm Văn Phú, commander of Military Region II, and Major General Bùi Thế Lân, commander of the Marine Division. Military Regions I and II were lost to the Communists in a matter of days as Government units collapsed, with little or no fighting anywhere. Thousands of Government troops remained behind with the Communists after getting rid of their uniforms, and others threw away vast amounts of equipment and weapons in fleeing. General Phú and General Trưởng are both reported at present in a hospital in Saigon recovering from what is described in French as a “crise des nerves.”
In Paris, the French Government called for the carrying out of a “process” that would bring a political settlement in South Vietnam. There was no explanation of what the government had decided to do.
Two chartered jumbo jetliners and two C-14 military cargo planes flew nearly 900 orphans from South Vietnam to American families, and 263 others were flown to Australia and Canada. Meanwhile, investigators found three more bodies in the rice paddy where an Air Force cargo plane, carrying at least 319 people, including 243 children, crashed Friday on the way to the United States. The number of dead is now estimated at 200. The United States Embassy in Saigon refused to release precise casualty figures pending the results of the investigation and notification of next of kin.
President Ford boarded a chartered plane that brought 325 South Vietnamese children to the United States tonight and carried an infant girl from the jumbo jet. They were among 900 flown from Saigon by United States planes today. As Red Cross attendants watched, the President walked down a boarding ramp and to a waiting bus with the child, clad in pajamas and wrapped in a blanket to protect her from a heavy rain. The President and Mrs. Ford flew here from Palm Springs, California, where they are vacationing, to greet the aircraft when it landed at San Francisco International Airport after a flight from Saigon, with a stop at Yakota, Japan.
With the insurgents continuing to test the unevenly manned defense perimeter around Phnom Penh today, two more embassies closed their doors and the Americans appeared to be speeding their departure. The departure of the Japanese and South Korean diplomats left the American and South Vietnamese embassies as the only functioning diplomatic missions in the capital. The Americans had announced two days ago that they were evacuating “nonessential” personnel and that only 15 per cent of the embassy’s staff would be leaving. But today a spokesman acknowledged that more might have already left. Throughout the day cartons were being carried out of the embassy and papers were being burned. Indications were that a majority of the nearly 200 Americans once employed in the embassy were now being reclassified as “nonessential.”
The insurgents were reported to be bringing up several thousand fresh troops to reinforce positions northwest of Phnom Penh’s Pochentong airport, which has been under daily rocket attack. The capital’s defense perimeter appeared to be holding but government forces were making no headway in regaining ground lost in the last week. In some areas, especially the vital northern sector, the line appears to be held by a confused array of undermanned units. Sharp clashes were reported eight miles south of Phnom Penh on Saturday, The Associated Press said.
Sixteen miles south of the capital, the front line was little more than a roadblock today. A hundred yards away a soldier’s wife with an infant daughter in her arms waited in a hunker for her husband to return from that front. The proximity of army wives and chilldren to Cambodian combat operations is one of the necessities of life here. Enlisted men in the Cambodian Army earn less than $10 a month. Sharing their rations is their only way to make sure their families eat.
About five miles to the south, the insurgents were believed to be building an important troop concentration at Prek Yuon. Other rebel troops were only half a mile from the bunker. Firing at close range. Government artillery sought to keep the insurgents from digging in. The soldier’s wife, In Sameu, had had one child for each of the five years of the Cambodian war. She had heard predictions of an imminent rebel attack on Phnom Penh from the south and had sent her older children to what she hoped would be a safe haven in a town about four miles up the highway. “When the shelling starts,” she said, “it’s very hard to get all the children down into the trenches in time.”
When the Cambodian High Command starts airlifting reinforcements to Phnom Penh, as it has been doing this week following the loss of the strategic Mekong River town of Neak Luong, it airlifts the soldier’s wives and children too. Of the more than one million refugees now jamming Phnom Penh, the widowed army wives are perhaps the most pitiful. This afternoon in Samrong, an abandoned railway junction west of the capital, two young widows were waiting with their babies in hopes of collecting the pay still due their husbands who died in combat a couple of days ago. They had no relatives in Phnom Penh and no money, they said. One of the commander’s aides told the women to return on Monday.
The younger of the two widows — 20‐year‐old Tuom Phoung — said they had been airlifted by helicopter only a week ago with their husbands from Lovek, an isolated provincial town about 50 miles north of here. Will she return when the war ends? she was asked. Obviously not reaching for dramatic effect, she answered: “If I’m still alive.” She had been wounded once and now she and her 10‐month‐old daughter had severe dysentery. She did not know how long they could last. The suffering and exhaustion that the war has brought provide part of an answer to a question some foreigners here now ask: Why is there no panic in Phnom Penh when the city seems so close to falling? In simplest terms, most people here seem unable to imagine their situation getting any worse than it is now.
[Ed: But it will. God Help Them; It will. The Nightmare in Cambodia is only beginning.]
The refugee camp on Route 5, about five miles north of Phnom Penh, was bustling less than a week ago with more than 10,000 persons. Today it was a ghost town. Small arms fire crackled through the camp from across the Tonle Sap, a river, and several times an hour, artillery shells and rockets burst among the deserted shanties. For Am Min, it was the fourth time that she has had to move her home and family in the past year, fleeing before the advance of the fighting and the tightening circle around Phnom Penh.
Last spring, the insurgents entered her native village of Samrong on Route 5, 15 miles north of Phnom Penh. They burned her house, she said, and with her five children, she fled south four miles to a refugee camp in the town of Tuol Sakor. Her husband died six years ago, she said, and it was difficult for her to support her children. Four months later, the war reached her again and she fled three Miles south to Phum Baset and this January she reached the camp at Kilometer 9. “If they attack I will move again.” she said. Her hands continued their mechanical work of weaving long dried reeds into mats on the wooden floor before her. “But someday I would like to go back to my own village if the war ends.”
Blackboards are being used in refugee camps to keep daily track of those who are present and those who must be fed and housed. There are those who wind up in no refugee camp or organized unit and whom the refugee workers must seek out. The small camp in which Am Min found herself is one of these. It is a small collection of lean‐tos at the end of a two‐mile dirt track, the last half of which must be walked by foot across rickety footbridges over steaming tidal pools. But vegetables are grown near the camp, and some of the more affluent refugees have brought some water buffalo to tend the fields.
Not so fortunate are the refugees from Tnal Totung. A week ago, the fighting out along Route 4, 10 miles past the airport, reached that village, and Tuy Phuong and his children and grandchildren. Carrying three baskets and two pots filled with rice, they hid in the long grass to the south of the road, when the fighting was to the north, and in the gullies on northern shoulder of the highway, when the fighting shifted to the south. In a day and a half, they covered the 10 miles to the Catholic Relief services’ camp ion Route 4. But they are worried. There is fighting now near Tuol Leap, and at night, there is artillery less than two miles away.
Chiang Kai-shek, President of Nationalist China, died of a heart attack in Taipei, Taiwan, late tonight, his physicians reported. He was 87 years old and was the last survivor of the original Big Four Allied leaders of World War II. An announcement by the Government said Generalissimo Chiang suffered a heart attack at 10:20 P.M. and was taken to the Taipei Central Hospital, where he died at 11:50 PM (10:50 AM, New York time). His wife and his eldest son, Premier Chiang Ching‐kuo, were at his bedside. A state funeral will be held, but no plans were announced immediately.
General Chiang will be succeeded automatically as President by Vice President C. K. Yen, but the real power in the government is expected to remain in the hands of Premier Chiang, 65, who assumed control when his father fell ill and was incapacitated nearly three years ago. Two hours after his death, the government made public, a political testament of General Chiang. Dated March 29, 1975, it called on his supporters to recapture the mainland from the Communists, a dream he had long cherished in vain.
The 15-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization is considering a meeting of heads off government in Brussels at the end of May to reassert principles of Western unity, diplomatic officials reported today.
Thousands of demonstrators marched in the streets in Utrecht, Holland, to protest plans by Holland, Denmark, and Norway to spend millions of dollars on new fighter planes to replace their obsolete Starfighters. The demonstrators, estimated at about 5,000, held a mass meeting organized by the self-styled “No Millions for New Jet Fighters National Committee.”
At least two people died in avalanches in the Italian-Swiss border area. A man tending cattle was killed by a slide in the Valscamp area of Switzerland and a woman died in the Italian village of Preddi when snow swept over her home. Six other people were dug out of the Preddi avalanche. Four Italian tourists were rescued from their car after it was buried by an avalanche just south of the Brenner Pass between Italy and Austria.
One of the most remarkable letters in existence, the first authenticated message dispatched by the Islamic prophet Muhammad, is about to be sold in London for a record figure believed to be close to $2.5 million. The prospective buyer of the letter, which has been scrutinized by British and Arab scholars, is Abu Dhabi’s ruler, Sheik Zayed Bin Sultan al Nahayan. The letter is understood to belong to the last wife of King Abdullah, Jordan’s former sovereign.
Egypt has received a Soviet reply to her call for a resumption of the Middle East peace conference at Geneva, amid reports that Moscow, like Cairo, feels that thorough preparation is needed before the conference should start.
The Red Cross is trying to get Israel, Syria, and Egypt to declare populated areas bomb- and missile-free zones in the event of a new Mideast war, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said in an NBC television interview. He said Israel had given tentative approval. In a second interview, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat said his missiles would strike “in the depth of Israel” if reconstructed cities along the Suez were attacked.
Saudi Arabia’s oil minister. Ahmad Zaki Yamani, said in Paris that oil-producing countries and developing nations have agreed on a common position in preparation for talks with the United States. Japan and the nations of the European Common Market. The talks, which begin Monday in Paris, are to set an agenda and determine participants for a full conference on the energy crisis planned for the middle of the summer.
The end of the Kurdish rebellion as an outgrowth of Iraq’s improvement of relations with Iran is viewed by diplomats here as a setback for the Soviet Union and a potential major gain for the United States. Iraq’s socialist regime, in which the Russians appear to have placed their main hope for influence in the Persian Gulf, has shown bold independence in striking a bargain, with Iran. The agreement has reduced political tensions in, this oil‐abundant region. Arab and Western diplomats here say that the Soviet Union, which has several thousand military, economic and cultural representatives in Iraq was taken by surprise by the scope of the Iraqi‐Iranian accord, which was announced March 6 in Algeria.
Saddam Hussein, deputy chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, the ruling body in Iraq, is going to Moscow April 14 to meet Soviet officials. Informed Iraqi sources said the meeting had been scheduled before Iraq’s accord with Iran. Mr. Hussein who is regarded as the major political figure in Iraq after President Ahmed Hassan al Bakr, is expected to visit Teheran before the end of this month, at the invitation of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi. The Shah is considering a visit to Iraq in May if work on demarcating the disputed frontier between the two countries is completed before then.
Brahman priests immersed in neckdeep water chant holy scriptures, Muslims congregate in thousands to say special prayers. Christians attend special services. Madras, the southern Indian city of three million people on the Bay of Bengal, hit by the worst water shortage in 100 years, is praying for rain. The rains have failed for two years, so that two of the three reservoirs that feed the city are already dry and the third is nearly so. The municipal authorities have shut down swimming pools at luxury hotels and forbidden the use of water for gardens and parks and are frantically digging wells.
A Filipino chess official said in Manila that “Soviet pressure” forced the International Chess Federation to strip Bobby Fischer of his world chess crown and award it to Soviet grandmaster Anatoly Karpov by default. Florencio Campomanes said the Russians pressured some federation delegates at a meeting March 18-20 in the Dutch city of Bergen to reject one of Fischer’s conditions for a match with Karpov — a rule that would declare the defending champion the winner if the match reached a 9-9 tie.
A strong earthquake struck a cluster of cities in western Venezuela, shattering the small town of San Pablo, killing two persons and injuring scores of others. Reports on the intensity of the quake ranged from 5.3 to 6.3 on the Richter scale. It reportedly lasted 10 seconds. A 66-year-old man was killed when his house collapsed, and an 80-year-old woman died in falling rubble, officials said.
President Isabel Martinez de Perón emerged during the last week from her isolation and began efforts to consolidate support within the Perónist movement. Her political initiative comes after several weeks of rumors that her government was in trouble because of internal divisions, political violence and economic problems, including an inflation, shortages and strikes. Earlier this week, the President met with leaders of the Perónist coalition, including several allies who have criticized the government’s policies.
Two hundred Sudanese mercenaries recruited into the Ugandan air force will be sent to Russia for training as pilots of MIG fighter-bombers, according to the London Sunday Telegraph. The paper quoted sources in Kampala as saying another squadron of MIGS will be sent to Uganda soon following delivery of 12 MIG-21s.
The number of black elected officials in the South has increased more than 2,000 in the last 10 years, but blacks still hold only 2% of the elected offices in the 11 Southern states, the Voter Education Project reported. The project’s figures show that 1,588 of more than 79,000 elective offices in the South are now held by blacks, compared with only 72 in 1965. When the privately funded project was organized in 1962, no blacks held seats in Southern state legislatures. Now there are 95.
More than $3.3 million was spent by the Committee for the Preservation of the White House to refurbish the executive mansion during the Nixon administration. No federal funds were involved, the committee said in the first spending report in its 11-year history. President Lyndon R. Johnson instituted the committee to continue the restoration work begun by Jacqueline Kennedy. More than $3.5 million was received in contributions from private individuals and foundations and from sale of the White House guidebook. About $91,000 was spent to redecorate Mr. Nixon’s bedroom, including $5,000 for an antique bed. $450 for box springs and $10.700 for curtains and bed coverings.
A jury in Houston sentenced a 43-year-old Mexican national from Acapulco to die in the electric chair for his involvement in the slaying of a woman hostage during an attempted breakout at Texas State Prison last summer. Ignacio Cuevas had been convicted Tuesday in the death of prison librarian Julia Standley, who was shot in the back by another rebel inmate during an 11-day siege.
A $10 million damage suit against the CIA has been filed by a Miami mortgage broker who contends CIA agents persuaded him to sell counterfeit mortgages to raise money for the agency’s covert operations. The suit, by Andres Castro, charges that two Cuban exiles with known CIA connections persuaded him to sell the bogus mortgages. It names as defendants the two exiles, Guillermo Iglesias and Antonio Yglesias, as well as the federal government CIA Director William E. Colby and ex-CIA Director Richard M. Helms.
After 10 years on the defensive, Detroit’s automobile industry is striking back at environmentalists and safety advocates. Industry officials believe consumers are less interested these days, when many are less affluent, in improvements like strong bumpers, complex braking systems, and sophisticated antipollution equipment. The car companies — arguing that federal guidelines are helping drive up prices at a time of economic hardship — are demanding relief from some government regulations together with a five-year moratorium on any new safety and emissions standards. Opposing interests range from Ralph Nader to many of the big insurance companies.
Over the last 10 years the Bell System has been carrying out a multibillion-dollar electronic revolution in call-handling. Electronic exchanges allow the customer to purchase services that enable him to forward calls automatically to another number, to set up conference calls without an operator, to dial an overseas number directly, and to receive warnings during a call that someone else wants to reach him.
Operators of all 53 privately owned atomic power reactors in the United States were ordered by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission to review their emergency shutdown procedures and to make sure their personnel understand the procedures. The order from Washington follows a March 22 fire in electrical insulation at the Brown’s Ferry power plant near Athens, Alabama. The blaze resulted in the automatic shutdown of one reactor at the plant and the manual shutdown of another.
The jury in the trial of two former Attica inmates convicted both defendants tonight, John Hill of murder, and Charles Joseph Pernasilice of attempted assault, for their roles in the death of a prison guard during the September, 1971, rebellion at the prison.
Thousands of bluefish in a feeding frenzy attacked swimmers off south Miami Beach. Three surfers were treated for gashes inflicted by the pointed, razor-sharp teeth of the sport fish, about two feet long and weighing 8 to 12 pounds Lifeguard Jesse Alper. in describing the fish, said. “The water was gray with them. There were thousands in huge schools in a feeding frenzy Alper said the blue fish had been attracted by mullet. He said that the surfers hands, paddling the surfboards, probably looked like finger mullet to the bluefish, prompting the attack.
Drug education appears to encourage the use of marijuana and alcohol among younger students, according to a $750,000 study. However the study, supported by National Institute of Mental Health and National Institute of Drug Abuse grants, indicated that such courses, when taught to older students, tend to discourage the use of drugs somewhat. Researchers compared drug use among New Haven, Connecticut, students in the 7th to the 12th grades.
The Soviet manned space mission Soyuz 18a ended in failure during its ascent into orbit when a critical malfunction occurred when the third stage of the booster rocket failed to separate. The spacecraft and cosmonauts, Vasily Lazarev and Oleg Makarov, landed in Mongolia and their Soyuz spacecraft having to be ripped free from the vehicle.
Snow tapered off in the hard-hit Northeastern states but the storm. that had brought it caused gale warnings along stretches of the Atlantic Coast. In New York state, wind-whipped snow stranded more than 500 travelers overnight in Steuben County, and Buffalo reported its heaviest April snows since 1894. Across much of the Midwest and Southeast, the sun was shining for a change. Travelers and stockmen’s warnings were issued for the Dakotas, northeast Wyoming and northwest Nebraska, with forecasts of blowing snow, new snow and cold, wet weather.
The first Super Sentai series, “Himitsu Sentai Gorenger,” is premiered.
Robert Wilson and Alan Lloyd’s musical theatre work “A Letter for Queen Victoria” closes at ANTA Theater, NYC, after 18 performances
129th Grand National: Irish combination of jockey Tommy Carberry aboard L’Escargot wins by 15 lengths from 7/2 favourite and 1973-74 winner Red Rum.
American tennis star Chris Evert wins her 3rd WTA Tour Championship at the Los Angeles Sports Arena; beats Martina Navratilova 6–4, 6–2.
The Philadelphia Phillies trade outfielder Bill Robinson to the Pittsburgh Pirates for pitcher Wayne Simpson.
Born:
“Juicy J” [as Jordan Michael Houston III], American rapper, songwriter, and record producer (Three 6 Mafia), in Memphis, Tennessee.
Cory Withrow, NFL center (Minnesota Vikings, San Diego Chargers, St. Louis Rams), in Spokane, Washington.
Shammond Williams, NBA point guard and shooting guard (Atlanta Hawks, Seattle SuperSonics, Boston Celtics, Denver Nuggets, Orlando Magic, New Orleans Hornets, Los Angeles Lakers), in the Bronx, New York, New York.
Domingo Guzmán, Dominican MLB pitcher (San Diego Padres), in San Cristobal, Dominican Republic.
Caitlin Moran, English journalist and broadcaster (“Celebrity Watch”), in Brighton, England, United Kingdom.
Died:
Chiang Kai-shek, 87, President of the Republic of China (1928-1975), who later relocated to the island of Taiwan after the Communist takeover of the mainland.
Victor Marijnen, 58, Dutch politician (Prime Minister of the Netherlands, 1963-1965).
Inez Courtney, 77, American stage and screen actress (“The 13th Man”; “Crime Ring”; “The Raven”).
Ralph Austin Bard, 91, U.S. Navy Undersecretary, who wanted to warn Japan before using the atomic bomb.
Harold Osborn, 75, American track athlete, decathlon winner in 1924 Olympics.
History Diaries 